After · the · Shattering · of · Voices

I have a new journal. That doesn't happen very often--in fact, I've had the same journal since I got on the LJ bandwagon back in September 2004. My entire time at Governor's School and my first year of college are chronicled here.

Which is exactly why I have a new journal. That is my old life, and I am moving past it. I was depressed. I was lonely. I was in a fairy-tale relationship that ended the way fairy tales ultimately do, with somebody dancing to death in hot iron shoes or getting ripped to pieces by birds or being sucked into the earth (take your pick!).

I'm not depressed. I'm working on being not lonely. And I am definitely not in that damn relationship. So I'm putting all that BS behind me.

all_hallows07

Add plz kthxbye.

ATTENTION PICNIC GUESTS

If you are coming from out-of-town and need to stay at my house, whether overnight or for a few days’ vacation, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT. Even if you might not come, LEAVE A COMMENT. It is far better for me to have too many pillows, bars of soap, razors, and boxes of pancake mix than to not have enough. Also, if you are an out-of-town guest who would like to come to town a day or two early to help me with shopping and food preparation, I would greatly appreciate it. I will feed you delicious home-cooked vegetarian meals for the duration of your stay at Dom Nadii.

In your comment, out-of-towners, please tell me the following things:
-if you need a place to park your car
-if you need to refrigerate or otherwise specially store prescription medication
-whether or not you smoke
-how you feel about cats
-any soap scents you really love or really hate
-any dietary restrictions, allergies, or chemical sensitivities
-your favorite color

In general picnic news, while there will be sandwich fixings and a few side dishes supplied by me, please remember to bring some kind of side dish or snack, to be shared potluck-style. There will be water and ice available, but if you want sodas you will have to bring them yourself. Because this is a public park, no alcohol or drugs will be allowed at the picnic.

-Nadia

This weekend I watched Heavenly Creatures twice with two different groups of people, guided a Baptist through an Episcopalian service, took naps, made a mix CD for Roja the Baptist, made a mix CD for the picnic, made a Halloween playlist, and went to mogulflippin' Whole Foods.

The Whole Foods haul:
-three different brands of fruit leather
-Newman's Own ginger mints
-Newman-Os
-pomegranate white tea soda
-seventeen cents' worth of dried bananas from the bulk bins
-lots of other bulk bin things, like pumpkin seeds and dried mango
-chocolate soymilk
-the good flavors of Vitamin Water
-soy pudding
-vegetable samosas
-box of berry-omega3 Odwalla bars
-half a papaya stuffed with slices of lime
-Purely Decadent Pomegranate Chip [soy ice cream]

My hair is very popuar. Also, I might get to go to New York this summer. I've never been!

-Nadia

I had been twisted with indecision over whether or not to ask a young man if he wanted my phone number. I sat in Kellie's room consulting random books Bible-style, opening them and jabbing my finger at the page, looking for an answer.

Just so everyone knows, the nice Russian kid who barely speaks English asked *me* for my phone number and email address before I could even open my mouth. And he's emailed me every day since, in adorably broken English without any apostrophes or present-tense forms of "to be." And he relies heavily on the Russian-to-English dictionary--he has referred to my screenname as "enigmatic" and a rainstorm as "bewitching." He also went "boulling" for the first time.

He's been in the United States for three and a half weeks. And unlike many of my friends, he and I were born in the same year.

-Nadia

Freedom Picnic Update/Date Change

For the convenience of several people who wished to attend, the date of the picnic has been moved to Sunday, May 20th.

The 13th was, for many people, in the midst of exams. Plus the CofC commencement was that day, guaranteeing both conflicts and crowds. If you've already rescheduled around work, tell you boss that you were mistaken about the date of your cousin's wedding.

I would like to take this opportunity to extend the invitation once more! Food, fun, and freedom in Battery Park. Out-of-towners who crash in my house get pancakes in the morning.

-Nadia

So. Next semester. Classes.

MWF
9am--Philosophy 215 (Sequential Logic)--Schonbein
10am--Greek 101 (Elementary Greek)--Morris
11am--Russian 201 (Intermediate Russian)--Adjunct Professor
1pm--Philosophy 298 (Eastern Philosophy)--Coseru
2pm--History 101 (Western Civilization through Middle Ages)--Finefrock

TR
2:30pm--Art History 103 (Asian Art)--Canape

That's right. Five classes a day on MWF. Eighteen hours a week. That leaves 150 hours in my week in which to sleep, eat, bathe, study, write papers, read, ride the bus, and participate in Russian Club (I'm going to be an officer next year).

As you can see, I've added Ancient Greek to my language studies. Also, my Russian class is being taught by an adjunct, because Raisa is going to be on sabbatical next semester. She'll still be around campus, she's just not teaching classes.

I'm good at languages and sequential logic, so this arrangement probably won't overburden me. The art history and the eastern philosophy I see as somewhat complimentary (they're actually covering the same countries). The History 101 I am obligated to take. Freaking gen-ed requirements. I've heard that my history professor is abysmal, too.

Got a good workout today hauling pots and bags of soil, as well as digging up crabgrass. I'm about to transplant all my little seedlings, though--zucchini, carnival bell peppers, serranos, jalapenos, tomato, basil, and okra.

-Nadia

-Nadia

An Open Letter and Reading List, for my Friends Entering College

A suggested list of summer reading, at the request of a soon-to-be-graduated, college-bound reader. It is applicable to anyone—all of these books/writers are either a) culturally significant or b) just very good reads—but it is written with my friends who are headed to college (and there are several of you) in mind.

I doubt that anyone will read all of these books. We’ve all got vibrant lives, with jobs and friends and families, and at this point we still see summer as a time for relaxing. But it’s good to make time for an enriching book or three.

( The Recommended Books )

( Some Recommended Combinations of Books )

If I could recommend only the barest handful of books to my friends who are about to enter college, it would be these four: Heretic’s Heart by Margot Adler, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, Mother Love by Rita Dove, and The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.

Heretic’s Heart, Mother Love, and The Last Unicorn all deal with people who are on journeys. The protagonists—Margot, Persephone, the Unicorn—begin as innocents, people in a sheltered place. We—you (the new undergrads) and me (the hand with a season in the field)—are all intelligent, exuberant young people. We are bright, we’ve had to move out of our homes or have spent time in a pre-professional program, have been to mental hospitals and on suicide watch, we’ve seen family members die and friends abandon us. We’ve been published and won awards. We’ve made 5s on APs and 800s on SAT sections. We think that makes us mature. We are wrong.

We have only begun to live. There are years, miles, and many mistakes ahead of us before the promised land of Maturity. College will change you. Since August, I have learned many things. Papers do not always come easily. Love is not enough to save the day. Most people are not sexual athletes (watch the movie Kinsey). Everybody fails at something. Don’t take geology if you are genuinely interested in rocks. Don’t take psychology if you are genuinely interested in people. You will get a bad grade on something. You will have your heart broken, your phone calls will be unreturned. You will probably change your major. You’ll turn the wrong direction down a one-way street, forget that your presentation is today, spill food, waste $200 on coffee in a month and then panic. You will find yourself with a head cold in a convenience store in December buying Kleenex and 3x5 index cards, furiously trying to read 100 pages of philosophy as you swipe your debit card. You’ll change your major again.

The Prophet’s central character is a man at the end of his journey, offering the wisdom he has gained to the villagers who have housed, fed, and cherished him during his years of meditation and reflection. He has firmly discovered the real nature of himself and everyone around him. That will not happen to you in college. That probably will not happen to you ever. But to reach for even the ideal of it, we have to work cooperatively, learn from each other, from literature, from history, from professors and bus drivers and homeless winos.

I love you all, and I mean that seriously. Your intellectual, spiritual, and emotional growth is important to me. I am far away from most of you, and we are all wrapped in our day-to-day lives. The most that I can do to fill, protect, and guide you is to give you food, armor, and a map. But I am not a cook, a smith, or a cartographer. I am a reader. So here are some books to be devoured, worn, and followed, and a blessing: go forth and conquer.

-Nadia

An account of March's reading:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin
Lust for Life by Irving Stone
I Am No One You Know by Joyce Carol Oates
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
The Sea and the Bells by Pablo Neruda
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Manifesta by Jennifer Baumgardner
The Morning Song of Lord Zero by Conrad Aiken
Thor, With Angels by Christopher Fry
The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

I also re-read Shakespeare's Hamlet and A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, for a total of seventeen books in March.

The longest of these books was Lust for Life, which clocked in at a hefty 489 pages. It was also very boring, a surprise considering that it was a biography of Vincent van Gogh.

The People of Paper and The Castle of Crossed Destinies tie for "most experimental." I would highly recommend both books.

I did not manage to read Gracefully Insane, in part because it disappeared into my room somewhere.

In April, among other things, I will read...
Poet in New York by Federico Garcia Lorca
Portrait of a Romantic by Steven Millhauser
Uncensored by Joyce Carol Oates
The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainier Maria Rilke

Thus spake me.

-Nadia

Children in my family never break bones. So I guess it's only fitting, now that I've turned eighteen, to suffer my first broken bone. As Mom said, "the childhood charm doesn't work now."

On Thursday night, during an argument about moving a blanket into the dryer (stupidest argument ever), one of my sisters slammed a door very hard on my left ring finger. A long trip to the ER later, I had a splint taped to my hand.

Really, I was expecting to hear "Yep. You crushed it in a door. Go home," and not "As you probably guessed, it's broken..."

Note: broken bones hurt.

Here's to six weeks of aluminum and foam strapped to my finger!

-Nadia

I had a lovely weekend on Kiawah with Will and Sarah, involving grilled zucchini and asparagus. Played with the dog, waded in the tidepools, saw hermit crabs, sunbathed (a new experience), and had lunch and a swim at the Beach Club. Sun! Sand! Alligators in the middle of the road obstructing the car! Blueberries!

I am sleepy and smell like water and sunscreen.

I've been trying to cut back on refined carbohydrates. White bread, white pasta, and white rice are a large part of my diet, and I'm not so keen on them since they have no nutritional value (even though Ronald Ann refuses to believe that eating white bread is like eating sugar). This weekend I had lots of vegetables on wheat wraps, grilled vegetables, salad, peaches, banana, strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple. And you know what? It was extremely satisfying.

I finished Manifesta, and have moved on to The Morning Song of Lord Zero by Conrad Aiken. Honestly, he makes me think of a Southern T.S. Eliot. I don't know why I never heard of him before I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

-Nadia

Yesterday on the bus, I was minding my own sweet business and reading Manifesta, a book about third wave feminism. A man sitting next to me looked over, noticed the word "feminism" on the page, and the following conversation ensued:

HIM: Are you reading about feminism?
ME: Yeah. I really don't know much about it. Decided to inform myself and all that.
HIM: Oh, honey. You don't need to be reading that kind of book.

Unfortunately, I can't capture his completely patronizing tone of voice. What kind of book, exactly? Who are you, kind stranger, to decide what kinds of books I do or do not need to read? And why are you calling me "honey"?

I was too amazed to say anything--my parents are huge supporters of literacy and learning and I have never in my life been told that I shouldn't expand my knowledge. I felt like saying "If anything makes me a raging feminist, it's going to be men like you."

-Nadia

I have a revived interest in cooking lately, following on the footsteps of my more general whole-person revival. I've been making salads, stir-fries, roasted vegetables, spring rolls, and so on and so forth. Today I had fruit salad from a coffee cup. Life is nice.

I want to do the Cooper River Bridge Run in 2008. "You're crazy, asthma girl!" some of you may say. Oh well. I want to do it. Don't worry, I'm going to train for it, starting in the near future--I've had a craving for exercise, anyway. And I can register in the noncompetitive walking/jogging group if I think I'll be too wheezy/in danger of death.

I've been reading a little slowly this week (Vladimir Nabokov's memoir is heavy going). Things should pick up after I'm done with him and with this week's flurry of tests, quizzes, and projects. Between this week and spring break, my total count for March might be a little low. I think my pace will go back to normal in April.

Ah, unfamiliar zest for life!

-Nadia