I'm Back--With My First Meme!

Hello again! Sorry for the hiatus. The reason why I’ve seemingly abandoned this blog is because I and three other students were sent by the CJF (Center for the Jewish Future) to Scotland for two weeks to run programs there on Shavuot and the following week. ‘But wait!’ you ask, ‘Shavuot was ages and ages ago!’ ‘Ah,’ I respond, ‘since I got back I’ve been putting off writing here because I feel like I must write something about my Scottish experience, but there is so much to say that I don’t know where to start, and therefore I simply haven’t started!’ Shame on me, I know. It takes being tagged by Chana for a meme (my first one!) to bring me back. So ta-da—I’m back!

[Btw, if there is interest in a Scotland post, please leave a topic suggestion or semi-specific question in the comments and perhaps I will choose the most promising and someday get around to writing it. Someone please force me to—I really need to do it already.]

And now, without further ado, the “Eight Things About Me” meme that has already tagged every single blogger I read:

1. I don’t have pierced ears, but I do have an earring fetish—I buy pierced earrings and convert them into clips. I therefore own an obscene number of colorful and funky earrings, and they make me happy.

2. Sometimes I pretend that I’m British. I love their accents--a lot. Two of my very close friends are British. I’ve been to England twice (I was there for 2.5 days in the middle of my Scotland trip). When in England I usually speak with a British accent. I have been taken for a Brit several times. Even in America, I often adopt British spelling to make myself seem more authentic.

3. I am an English Literature major and believe strongly in the ability of fiction to help us better understand and appreciate the world that we live in and the people in it. That said, my own favourite thing to write is creative non-fiction (for those of you who don’t know, that basically means stories about real life, non-fiction that reads like fiction—but it also includes descriptions of interesting people and places, no plot required, and personal essays).

4. Call me naïve, but I am a sucker for happy endings. Though I appreciate and value many books that are sad, I can’t bring myself to like them. I figure that real life is difficult enough—why depress myself for fun and recreation? I also won’t watch sad movies (though I rarely watch movies anyway). And I absolutely cannot stand watching violence. Even the slightest amount literally makes me ill. Give me Happily Ever After every time, please, thanks.

5. I have an unhealthy obsession with ice cream. It is my weakness. Especially ice cream that contains chocolate in some form. Vanilla just isn’t worth it. And while ice cream alone is good (as long as I’m not sad), ice cream with a friend (or many!) is seventeen times better.

6. When I am sad, I don’t eat.

7. The older I get, the more I love and appreciate my family, especially my parents.

8. My two recurring nightmares are:

• I’m supposed to be somewhere important, but instead I’m in my room, unable to find anything suitable to wear. I comb through my closet, but nothing in it fits me nicely or looks good. As the minutes pass, and I get later and later for the event, I grow frantic, throwing clothes around in a frenzy. I wake up incredibly stressed out.

• My house is infested with bugs of some kind, or mice, or lizards, etc. They are everywhere I turn, and no one but me seems concerned about it. I shriek a lot, and desperately search for somewhere to go that will be infestation-free. I wake up feeling covered in crawly things, and let out a huge sigh of relief when I discover it was only a dream.

Since pretty much everyone I read has been tagged, I shall simply issue a general invitation to do this meme if you'd like--consider yourself tagged by me!

What do PDAs, Little Red Bugs, and R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach Have In Common?

They can all be found in Central Park at the same time.

This afternoon, I fled the madness of Stern in finals season (see below, if you haven’t yet) to my favorite NY haven…Central Park. I love Central Park. I could write hundreds of posts about Central Park. There will probably be future posts about Central Park. But tonight I have a hard final that I haven’t studied for yet (again, see below) and therefore I will limit my words.

I went there today with three of my close friends, ostensibly to study in the park, though of course I knew better. We plunked ourselves down on the sun-dappled grass under the shade of a large tree and took out our notebooks. The grass was patchy, and we hadn’t brought a sheet, and thus I was shortly covered in dirt, weird plant thingies, and teeny tiny little bright red bugs that crawled across my notes uninvited. I tried not to think about where else they might be crawling.

After finding an attempt to read my notes unsuccessful (surprise!), I couldn’t resist lying down on my back and staring up at the sunlight streaming through the spring green leaves and branches of the tree high above me. The beauty of that spectacle was literally breathtaking. I gazed into the vast canopy above me, and felt the hard earth under my head. Now let me tell you, I am certainly no hippie-nature-girl, but at that moment, I communed with nature. It was actually stunning. I could have stayed like that for hours.

But I didn’t, because I felt that I should try to study again. So I did. And naturally, several minutes later, I found myself asleep. Not a deep sleep, but a lovely, breezy, summery doze. Asleep enough to be comfortable, but not too asleep not to notice and awaken with a start when I overheard my friends mention food. The food concerned turned out not to be of interest to me, so instead I took out the gummy worms I happened to be conveniently carrying in my bag and distributed them among the masses (a.k.a. my homies). I try not to go anywhere without sugar. Best to be prepared.

Then I tried to study again. My friends and I, however, were shortly distracted once more by a couple a few yards down the slope on which we camped. This couple was horizontal, and they were engaged in, well, let’s just say…they weren’t quite shomer negiah. My friends and I did our best to ignore them, but 10, 15, 30 minutes later, when they were still similarly employed, it started to grate on our sensitivities, and we couldn’t help but brainstorm imaginative ways to remedy the situation. We could walk up to them and say, “Hope we’re not interrupting anything…but would you mind taking a picture for us?” Or walk by and discreetly cough, “Get a room! Ahem! Get a room!” Or surround them in a ring and sing the shomer negiah song. This last option was shortly ruled out, however, because of kol isha issues.

Eventually, we realized that it was getting late, and if we didn’t leave soon we’d miss the mad rush to dinner at the caf and be left utterly foodless, as we were two nights ago. Stern really needs to learn how to order food during finals. Having hundreds of burned-out-from-studying-Jewish-girls, who stagger into the caf hoping for sustenance to get them through another loooong night of memorizing obscure information, to find that the only remaining food is a few semi-stale bagels and low-fat kugels…well, let’s just say, I feared for my life. I’ve never seen so many people in such a collective bad mood. But I digress…

We picked up camp and walked through the park in the direction of the subway station. Those who have been to Central Park will know that lining the main walkway of the park lurk myriad caricature and portrait artists seeking customers. As testaments to their skills, they display samples of their work, depictions of celebrities of all sorts. (Never mind that they probably spent hours doing those, while the one they will draw of you will take 15 minutes, and therefore will not look remotely like the samples, nor in all likelihood, remotely like you. Trust me, I know from experience.)

As we walked, I was expressing, for the thousand and seventh time my desire to purchase ice cream from the ice cream trucks (I’m a sucker for ice cream, especially the chocolate kind, and especially from trucks), when an unexpected sight caught our collective eyes. There, staring back at us from an easel, was the face of Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, in color! A middle aged Asian man sat, intently using pastels to copy a picture of R’ Auerbach clipped to the easel. There was no way we were going to just walk on by, so we stopped to chat. We told him we that we really liked his picture. The man’s English was less than perfect, so we didn’t understand everything he said in response, but we think he told us that he’d been commissioned to do the portrait by someone. Then he asked us if we were from Brooklyn. That was funny. We said no. We asked if he knew the Rabbi’s name, and he said no, and offered us the picture to caption. My friend wrote “Rabbi Auerbach” beneath it. We snapped the artist’s picture, and went on our merry way, marveling at the things one finds in good old NYC.

We had a jolly walk back to the subway station, and I played my favorite game: the Notice Everything Game. As a writer, and a lover of life, this game is important to my very existence. Noticing the funny, touching, quirky, and beautiful things that I pass enhances my appreciation of life, and my ability to describe. One thing we noticed was an “interesting” window display, pictured below.

We sardined ourselves onto the packed subway and finally arrived at our destination—in time, you will be glad to hear, for me to procure a piece of slimy chicken, some mediocre french fries, and a cup of utterly flat cherry coke. Gotta love caf food. Anyway, that was my afternoon.

Wow, I can’t help but a feel a little bit like friend and fellow blogger, Chana, who can’t seem to restrain herself from writing incredibly lengthy posts, and who happened to record a slightly similar park experience just a few weeks ago. Hmm.

Other notes on life…

On the subway earlier this morning, a family (mom, dad, pre-pubescent son) sat down near me. The father was clad in a peach polo shirt and khaki shorts displaying hairy legs, and also sported a large gray mustache. These people were tourists. How do I know? When someone all the way across the subway car sneezed, I was abruptly awakened from my half-doze when the father said loudly, “Bless you!” My first thought was, “What? You just don’t do that. Who does that?” I mean, it was a little weird. The sneezer wasn’t even in our line of vision! But after that immediate reaction, I smiled to myself. Ah, how I love out-of-towners. And from now on, I resolve to bless subway sneezers!

And…graduations make me tear up—even if I’m not graduating, and even if I don’t know the people graduating. Something about seeing all the relatives there, beaming with pride, cameras in hand, makes me emotional. It’s nice, in a funny way. Though transitions from one stage to another are always interesting, achieving a goal is something to be proud of. It’s good to take some time simply to be glad before having to move on to whatever challenges lie ahead. So hooray for my grads, and mazal tov!

Now I should probably start studying for my final…

London Visit Boiled Down (to the tune of "London Bridge")

I've been back in school for a week now, and busy out of my mind. But it simply wouldn't be fair to ignore my trip to the other side of the pond, so for anyone who cares to see, here is a summary of my experience.

People/Places/Things I saw in London (by category):

Touristy:

• Tower of London (where lots of people were tortured and died, before which they carved some pretty depressing ancient graffiti on the walls)
• The Crown Jewels (talk about shiny…makes Stern girls’ engagement rings look paltry and cheap--and that’s saying something)
• Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace (during which, to my bafflement, the Royal Band, bearskin hats and all, played a medley of Gershwin—a good American composer)
• Covent Garden (upscale shopping area, where we also saw a pretty good string quartet playing famous classical pieces in an open square…while very adeptly guilt-tripping observers into giving money)
• Leicester Square (lots of theatres, yet nothing like Broadway)
• Trafalgar Square (which contains a lot of famous stuff, like huge stone lions and Nelson’s Column, about which my ever-useful friend knew absolutely no history—but at least I can say I’ve seen it, even if I don’t know why it’s important)
• The National Gallery (from the outside only)
• Camden Town (a little like Greenwich Village, English style)
• The Tate Modern Museum (which was hosting a really cool exhibit that consisted of huge twisty metal tube slides that came down from each of the 5 floors, and which visitors could ride for free! We went down the one from the fourth floor, and it was well worth the visit.)
• Waterloo Bridge (great view of the city)
• UCL (University College London—not really a tourist site, but I was there nevertheless, and even attended a statistics lab without being asked whether I was actually a student there or not)
• The Tube (aka the underground—Mind the Gap!)

Jewish:

• 2 high schools
• 2 shuls
• R’ Tatz
• R’ Sheinberg
• One women’s learning program (organized by my friend)
• Extensive tours of Hendon and Golders Green

Just Plain Fun:

• Wicked (with British accents, for half the price of tickets in NY—what could possibly have been better????)
• Kasamba (‘nuff said)
• My friends’ families (English people are lovely!)
• A clip of an Iraqi TV talk show with subtitles (I wish I knew the link…but take my word for it, it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my entire life)

Things to know before going to England:

• They drive on the other side of the road! (I knew this, but it wasn’t on my mind when I got there…so the taxi driver looked perplexed when I tried to get in on the wrong side, and I narrowly avoided getting hit by cars several times after not knowing which direction to look when crossing the street).
• When they speak about “green men” they are not referring to extraterrestrials, but to the lights at crosswalks. (That took me a while.)
• There are no hechshers on food there…so if you anticipate getting hungry, you better pick up a Kosher Food Guide first…or carry an English friend around with you wherever you go. Also, learn some terminology or you could be very confused (crisps, biscuits, etc.).
• Things are more expensive there. Period. In order to avoid extreme frustration, pretend the pounds are dollars.

And there you have it, folks: SJ's guide to London! Now in (sort of) the same vein, it's time for me to head back to good ol' Survey of English Lit reading...fun fun!

Tata and Cheerio!

Hello old Chaps! This fine, damp evening I am in high spirits, as I shall soon be departing to a far off location to whence I have never before hearkened! Can anyone guess where? And no, I don’t really think they speak like this there! That’s right, Poppets, I’m off to Jolly Old England! And I am quite excited about it too! (In case the overabundance of exclamation points didn’t tip you off already!)

What brings me to visit our stuffy old cousins over there, you ask? Well, first off, I will take great offense to your slanderous appellation—who says English people are stuffy? They have rollicking good fun over there! (I love Brits!) And then I will answer your question—I am going purely for pleasure, which, after all, is the only reason to go anywhere (how Oscar Wilde-ish of me). I have always wanted to pay it a visit, and now life (and my parents) have finally afforded me the opportunity to do so! Not to mention that two of my very favourite people in the world happen to hail from the neighborhood (and that’s not even including Kasamba, one of my very favourite bloggers out there, who, incidentally, is not originally from England anyway!). I shall be imposing upon the hospitality of these two wonderful lovely incredible young ladies, who I was privileged to meet during my (not so) long ago days in sem in the Holy Land, and shall be forcing them not only to endure my company, but to show me around their fair city! I can’t wait!

Of course, the thing that excites me most is the prospect of being entirely surrounded by people with fantastic accents! In fact, I plan to come back with one myself (a fantastic accent, not a person). After all, I’ve always considered myself English at heart…my English friends tell me that I certainly don’t sound like most of the other vulgar Americans with their horrid accents, and I am a fan of Oscar Wilde and P.G. Wodehouse, and I’m quite accustomed to gray, drizzly weather (though I wouldn’t eat Marmite if you paid me, and I don’t drink tea…but disregard those piddling facts for now).

So, you ask yourself, when is this girl going to stop blabbing and leave already? Ha! Well, I’m afraid you are not so lucky, my friend…I’m not leaving till Sunday night! All this is just preparation! Because I am psyched! And what else is a blog for but to vent one’s thoughts and feelings, hmmm?? So, with that deep philosophic question to ponder, I will bid you farewell for now, for I have visiting relatives shortly to descend upon the house. However, worry not, for I shall return!

Happy Chanukah! (Hannukah? Hanuka? Channuka? Hannoocuh?)

With things over here being so hectic, busy, chaotic, and all-around crazy, I still have not yet come up with my next brilliant blogging topic. But since I seem to be currently experiencing a blogging urge, I'm going to just start writing and see what comes out. I apologize in advance.

I went to my friend's house in Philly this shabbos and twas a lot of fun. I got 12 hours of sleep. That was fun. Plus, at lunch I poured a jug of water on myself. That was less fun, more wet. (No, it wasn't on purpose. I was pouring and the lid just fell off! And those who have comments about how klutzy I am may just keep them to themselves, thank you!)

The Donut Saga: Another friend who came for shabbos was taking a nap on Friday afternoon (she was getting a head start on sleep) and woke up before shabbos and told me that she had a dream that our hostess was offering us donuts (the kind with colored sprinkles on top!) and that I refused, saying "Dai, maspik (stop, enough)!" I asked her why I would say a silly thing like that. She didn't know. From the moment she told me about that dream, I began craving donuts. And there were no donuts in the house where I was staying. Which was sad. Then when we finally got back to NY (after missing several trains due to a very exciting adventure trying to find a chanukiah for a slightly irresponsible and adventure-prone friend), I begged my friends to keep their eyes open for the alleged kosher Krispy Kreme at Penn Station. Then (cue euphoric music)...we saw it! And just at that moment, the gate thing rolllled down, signifying that it was closed! Noooooo!!! So I was sad. So we walked back to school, and got together our chanukiot (both normal and makeshift) and oil and wicks and said brachot and lit and waited (fruitlessly) for boys to leave the lobby so that we could sing. And then various bunches of friends came in and we greeted them...and then some more friends came in and announced that they were going to get pizza, so I begged them to bring me back a donut, and they said they would see, and they left...and then a few minutes later, in came more friends--bearing homemade donuts that they made! And even though they looked more like little brown latkes than donuts, they were sufficiently oily and sufficiently sweet to satisfy my craving! And I ate four! (stop staring and shut your mouth--they were really small!) And then I went up to my room and shortly thereafter there was a rapping at my chamber door...and there stood friend-who-went-to-pizza-store, brown bag in hand, brown donut in brown bag! I thanked her profusely because it was sooo nice of her to get it for me...but I'm afraid that the donut is just going to have to wait patiently until breakfast tomorrow. I don't think I can handle any more oil right now.

Oh! Other really creepy story...we were walking back to school from Penn Station, and on the street was a card table, behind which an unshaven man wearing a santa hat was sitting, calling out loudly, "Help the homeless!" in a deep, raspy voice. As we passed, he suddenly said, without even changing his tone or skipping a beat, "Give tzedaka! It's a mitzvah! It will bring you bracha and hatzlacha! A freilachen Chanukah!" As we turned our heads and looked at him in astonishment, he rasped, "That's right girls, don't mind the hat," pointing at his Christmas chapeau. We were in a rush (and also a shtick weirded out) so we didn't stop to chat...but the experience was quite an interesting one. Anyone have any theories as to how the guy would have known those phrases (and whether we should have stopped and given him tzedaka?).

Ok, now it is quite late at night and I must go to sleep--I have a full day of procrastinating to do tomorrow! Happy Chanukah to all, and to all a good night!

Freedom of Choice?

I don’t know if everyone already saw this article, or if it’s already been thoroughly blogged about (I only read a select few blogs), so if this is repetitive, I apologize.

Yesterday, the NY Times reported that "New York Plans to Make Gender Personal Choice." I found this article so preposterous that it would almost be funny—if not for the fact that it is real. Instead, I would have to describe it as extremely scary.

Basically, the city’s Board of Health is considering implementing a rule that states that a person may change the gender documented on his/her/its birth certificate if he/she/it has statements from a doctor and a mental health professional supporting a gender switch. The person will have to have lived in the proposed gender for two years, but the rule gives no specific medical requirements. In other words, you would be able to change the sex on your birth certificate even if you still had all the biological traits of your birth gender!

According to the NY Times:
“The change would lead to many intriguing questions: For example, would a man who becomes a woman be able to marry another man? (Probably.) Would an adoption agency be able to uncover the original sex of a proposed parent? (Not without a court order.) Would a woman who becomes a man be able to fight in combat, or play in the National Football League? (These areas have yet to be explored.)”

Is anyone else baffled by the idea of a “freedom to choose” your gender??? This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “pro-choice.” It just shows how the concept of individual rights, if given no boundaries, can be taken to frightening extremes. Since when is it a basic human right to select one’s gender?

I am appalled by the depths to which our culture has sunk even to be taking such a thing seriously. Not only are we prepared to allow people to live their lives as a member of a different gender than the one in which God created them, but we are actually prepared to totally eliminate all trace of the fact that God “chose” a different sex for them than they did. Frankly, the whole thing seems slightly delusional. Secular people will label religious believers as closed-minded and willfully self-deceptive for attempting to reconcile science with religious dogma, yet some of the same people are prepared to accept this total denial of biological reality. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

“Joann Prinzivalli, 52, a lawyer for the New York Transgender Rights Organization, a man who has lived as a woman since 2000, without surgery, said, ‘It’s based on an arbitrary distinction that says there are two and only two sexes. In reality the diversity of nature is such that there are more than just two, and people who seem to belong to one of the designated sexes may really belong to the other.”

Really? That's news to me!
I’m sorry, but this seems simply bizarre!

Miscellany...

A friend remarked to me today that my blog looks incredibly frum--every post so far has been about something purely God-related. So, in order to bust that impression, I am now writing a post of a different sort. Actually, that's not why I'm writing this--I would love to have a supershtark blog. But I'm in a bit of a mood, so I decided to just talk a little, and let some of my often-strange personality shine through in an all-new blog post of randomness.

I am currently working on a short story for my creative writing class (as I have been and will be for the rest of the semester--my crazy teacher assigns a new story every week). I am having particular trouble with this one though. I have started about five different stories, but have yet to come up with an actual plot line for any of them. One of my various beginnings has even developed into the majority of a story, except that I am still lacking an ending. The only problem now is that a story without a good ending is not a story. It is a pet peeve of mine to read stories by amateurs which, though they may contain vivid description and characterization, often end in a vague or abrupt manner. Come on Dude, where's my ending? I want resolution! I want a feeling of completion, of satisfaction! I want a pint of ice cream! (Ok, I won't insist that you provide that last part.) I definitely relate to the temptation to trail off with a vague "And no one has heard of him since" or "And then she saw it, and knew that she would never be the same" or "He heard a thud, followed by a silence as eerie as the ending of this story" but I know that I do my readers a disservice if I don't provide them with a concrete, well thought out ending. So I keep thinking, and I keep coming up with new plot twists to lengthen the story, but still no clever conclusion crosses my cranium (I like alliteration, btw). Ah well, there is no rest for the striving artist.

I guess I just need to relax a little, to get the creative juices flowing...for some reason I feel like I didn't breathe much today. Though that might have had something to do with the dress I was wearing. True Story: I was sitting at my computer a few hours after I woke up, when I suddenly started getting sharp pains in my lower ribs. I thought it was rather weird, and didn't know what was going on--but then I figured it out. I untied the sash of the funky brown dress I was wearing and *poof* the pain disappeared and I found myself able to breathe again. Yeah, I know, how dumb am I? But really it was strange because I hadn't even tied it that tightly! Makes me really feel bad for my olden-day sisters--I can't even imagine what it was like to wear a corset. Ouch.

Last random thing: I was typing an email about how an engaged friend of my family is going to a fitting for her wedding dress and I looked up and realized that I had capitalized the word Wedding. As a grammar geek, I believe that the way we use words reveals a lot about who we are. It occurred to me that my typo accurately reflects the importance that all things marriage-related assume for an (almost) twenty year old girl in today's Orthodox Jewish society. But I really can justify having weddings (or Weddings) on the brain--my ex-roommate just got engaged yesterday. Mazal Tov!

Alright, time to call it quits for the evening. Over and out!