So I realized that I have a paper due today, and that the professor doesn’t allow extensions, and that it’s on material half of which I missed on account of Pesach, and on top of that I’ve barely been able to keep any food down or move for the past three days (I think I’m getting over it, though…) But this is something like a quarter of my semester’s grade, so I should probably stay up or die trying.

So I went to make myself a midnight snack of steamed cauliflower just now, and noticed that from my bag of cauliflower in the freezer had a large hole in the corner that truly resembles a larger-scale rodent hole, and maybe half the cauliflower was missing. Now, I never make just half a bag of cauliflower at a time, so it couldn’t have been me, and I know mice don’t live in the freezer, so I know it’s not mice. I can only conclude that some of my neighbors who use the kitchen are making rodent-like holes in my bags of frozen vegetables and making off with the cauliflower. (Also earlier this semester, a box of frozen spinach.) Now, I admit that on various occasions in my life I have used a sprinkle of someone else’s salt or a few drops of lime juice from a large bottle in a shared kitchen (though not this one), and even with soy creamer I usually went and asked the owner whether I could use some in my coffee, but I generally know who it belongs to and know that it’s fine by them. What is it that possesses you to go and steal $1 worth of other people’s vegetables? Clearly, you are not too poor to afford frozen cauliflower, so what you must find worth stealing is other people’s time — the time they took to go and buy or make the food — so that you don’t have to get off your lazy bum and walk/drive/take a bus to the supermarket. In the manner of a recently popular Princeton pastime, FYL.

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

(Theodore Roethke)

I used to think there was something dark about this poem, when I first read it a long time ago — that there was some kind of dark comedy portrayal of abuse thinly disguised as love, but when I came across it again this evening, I see that really, it isn’t. I’m pretty sure Roethke is simply saying that childhood hurts, because as a small boy, he is a tiny person who has to deal with adult-sized cracks in the sidewalks and belt-buckles, and have adult-sized forces exerted upon him, and that in the end they’re just the casual accidents of love, to be overlooked.

Which makes me wonder sometimes whether I was really experiencing the same sort of thing. But no… it wasn’t, and I wasn’t; and nothing was an accident because they were deliberate and meant to inflict pain.

What is it that causes people of be ashamed of things like this? Surely we are not at fault, and surely it could not be that we fear we’ll be seen as weaklings… because naturally, children are weak. Rather, what is most feared is dismissal. We fear that people will completely disregard us and say, “It really wasn’t that bad; you’re exaggerating and demonizing your father and you ought to be ashamed.” Or maybe even, “Well, my father was a hard-ass too and I dealt with it, so why couldn’t you?”

Spring. A beautiful, new, green, beginning… but ancient in so many ways. The magnolias — by far my favorite part of spring at Princeton — are in full bloom, and their heavy, sweet scent softens everything I associate with them. They always represent the bright side of things to me, but to recognize a bright side means that I also have to acknowledge that there is another side. The tulips, single stemmed, elegant, and scentless, have only one purpose for existence — their short-lived beauty — and so I feel no qualms about plucking them, and I admire them most of all. The pear blossoms that shower white petals everywhere with the slightest puff of breeze (exactly like the ones at the public library at home — undoubtedly the trees are still there, but are the people?) and the ornamental plums, whose willowy, pink-blossom covered branches differ from cherries just so (and remind me that I’m not walking among those trees with you.)

I’m just wondering… say a significant proportion of people boycott sweatshop-produced clothing. This reduces the demand for the product, so… doesn’t that mean either (1) some number of previously employed people are now unemployed or (2) jobs will become even more in demand, so wages will become even lower, or (3) working conditions can become even worse, because more people would be willing to tolerate them in order to be employed?

So among other things I’ve squished (now including a headband, numerous power cables, and Cheerios) is the big end of my camera USB cord. No pictures for a while. Booooo.