Tag Archives: writing

May 17 2012
33 Comments
Travelling, Two minute read

The Ethiopian Adventure Begins

I will get a baboon fang.

At 20:45 GMT on Wednesday, May 16th, an Egyptair flight left from Cairo, Egypt to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Both of these countries are in Africa, by the way. Why does this matter, you ask? Who’s asking, I ask. I am, you say. Big deal, I say. Well can you just tell me why, you ask? Yes, I say. It matters because yours truly was on that flight, probably.

And I probably landed in Ethiopia at the most comfortable hour of 1:30 am GMT, where I was greeted by a crowd of friendly Ethiopians before riding a giraffe named Dorothy to a flea-free safari lodge where I fell asleep. After hours of delicious slumber, I likely woke up to the most wonderful all-day breakfast spread I have ever seen. I may or may not have spent the whole day in the dining room, finally leaving only when I was forced to because Dorothy was getting impatient and we needed to begin the journey to Lalibela.

That was a paragraph of lies. The one true thing is that I am probably in Ethiopia right now, breathing in the sweet Addis Ababa and/or Lalibela air and counting down the hours to drinking my next coffee. I will be in this country for about a week and have left compy at home, making sure to set out some food and water for it and my blog. No, I will not be blogging during my Ethiopian adventure, but I do plan on harvesting a good crop of blog fodder that I will use for upcoming posts. This trip will be a much needed rotating of the mind crops.

There is a slight chance that I won’t return at all, due to kidnapping by the organized baboon gangs of the Simien mountain or because I will have willingly joined these gangs. I also might be overcome with the Simien madness and feel that I have become “one” with the landscape and refuse to leave, clinging to the neck of the mule that we have rented and annoying the mule handler with my incessant weeping.

But, if everything goes well, I should be coming back next Wednesday with a baboon tooth necklace, as few flea bites as possible, mild digestive problems, and priceless memories.

Expected highlights of the trip are:

1. Not being in Cairo.

2. Seeing churches carved out of the living rock in Lalibela.

3. Using the phrase “living rock” as much as possible.

4. Seeing castles in Gondar.

5. Making countless Lord of the Ring references to Gondor.

6. Trekking in the Simien mountains and seeing baboons.

7. Claiming to see family members in and among the baboon herds: “Mom? Is that you!?”

8. Eating in a country that doesn’t have an endless culinary winter.

It should be a good trip, and I’ll probably write stuff about it when I get back. As usual, it will be fact-poor and reveal very little about what I actually did. See you later!

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May 15 2012
15 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Three minute read

The Secret World of the Early Bird (With a Twist)

Glasses: Coming Soon!

As an greasy adolescent, I loved pop tarts and staying up late, savoring the hours between the famfam’s bedtime and first period, a time in which the house became my own and I could watch Conan O’Brien and throw things at the dog when she snored too loudly. Because of my bizarre sleep schedule, I was always exhausted yet I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I felt like there was something special and mysterious about the nighttime and it evaporated when the sun came up.

I continued in my nighttime ways in college for about two years but then, somewhere around my junior year, things began changing. I lost my night owl hoot and my predatory ability to spot small rodents hiding under ferns, exchanging them for a bright chirp and a pair of metaphorical study glasses, which is the standard uniform of early birds.

I actually began to enjoy the mornings and….

“Excuse me?”

….I would make myself breakfast, which was usually yoghurt and granola. I especially liked a local brand…

“Um….excuse me, Emily?”

…that was called Harvest Gold or something like that. I think it cost 3.99 a box but sometimes it was on sale for forty cents less and on those days I bought two of them…

“EXCUSE ME!”

“What? Yes? Can I help you? Actually, could you wait a second, I’m trying to write a blog post.”

“Yeah, I can see that. I just wanted to let you know that it’s a little boring. Like, so far all you’ve said is that you used to be a night owl but then you turned into an early bird. Big whoop. I used to wipe my butt with Charmin’ toilet paper but then I moved out of my parents’ house and had to buy generic. Is that interesting? No. That’s why I don’t blog about it. And when I stopped you, you were just going on and on about what kind of granola you used to get in college. I mean, really? Do you tell everyone about your breakfast fixations with such detail, or just the people want to torture?”

“…..well eventually I was going to get to a funny part about all of the other things that early birds get in addition to the worm. I was going to say that all of us high-five Obama and get morning massages and free lattes—isn’t that kind of creative? I mean, just picture a bunch of reading-glasses-wearing early birds high fiving Obama.”

“I’m not even going to comment on the syntax of the last sentence. And no, that’s not that funny. Besides, there’s no way those meager hahas outweigh the pain I had to endure when you were telling the whole world about your favorite collegiate granola. And do I even need to mention the fact that the concept of this entire blog post is quite similar to the post you did last week on how your blog became self-aware?”

“That’s true, but there are some pretty significant differences. For example, you’re clearly my better self and not the self-aware version of my blog.”

“And as your better self, it’s my job to tell you when you’re just doing your best, which is not nearly good enough. You’re welcome. Anyways, I’ve got to go. I’ve already worked out today but I’m just about to go run and buy some local produce to make a delicious, healthy meal for myself. I need to be in top shape for my job as a high flying writer thing.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“No, you don’t. But that’s okay. Maybe one day you will. Good luck with the post—here’s a tip: make it interesting and funny.”

“Gee, thanks.”

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May 10 2012
20 Comments
Humorous, One minute read

Cats Are Attacking My Mind

The keeper of the gate to hell.

I was going to write a blog post, but instead I spent three hours looking at pictures of cats licking their paws. For one hundred and eighty minutes I was spun through various levels of cat-lover-heaven, which is most other people’s hell, as I saw photo after photo of Patches delicately cleaning himself with all the poise and precision of the Mother Queen. It was terribly mesmerizing and I lost track of time and self.

But the saga doesn’t end there.

Hours later, I found myself waking up from some kind of stupor and realized that I was surrounded by horrible, bizarre, and altogether disturbing drawings of—what else?—cats licking their paws. It looked like a crazed zookeeper had escaped from a lifelong prison sentence and gone on a grotesque artistic binge.

The obvious, though terrifying, conclusion was that I had perpetrated these awful depictions, depictions that could only be used to cause human torment. I had been taken by cuteness-madness. What does this mean? Is my mind so fragile that something harmless like a few hours spent enjoying pictures of cats cleaning themselves could cause me to lose consciousness and perform acts of unspeakable horror?

Does this mean I’m unfit to live in this society? What if I’m walking through a park and see too many babies, puppies, or volleyball players and the madness takes me again? How will I explain my sickness to my family? How will I hide the monstrosity that is me?  I can only burn so many pictures before I start trying to sell them on the internet and then how will I explain myself? I certainly can’t blog about it.

Maybe I will find healing in twitter, and through tweeting the disfigured demons of my own creation to my small following I will be able to purge myself.

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May 08 2012
25 Comments
Modern Life, Three minute read

Why I Plan on Selling Out to the Man ASAP

Now ready for salaried work

I’m leaving Egypt for good in about three weeks. My Arabic program, and in fact my entire journey with Arabic, is finally coming to an end, having died a swift but not painless death here in Cairo. Currently, my plan is to go home and marry my sister, or rather, see her married, and then scrimp and save my frequent- flier miles, cushion change, and Chick-fil-A coupons in order to purchase a flight out to San Francisco where I want to “be a writer.”

I was eating dinner at the second-best Thai restaurant in Cairo with boyfriend, friend, and friend of friend, when post-Egypt plans came up in the conversation. I told the friend of a friend that I wanted to be a writer, and he asked what kind of writer, and I said I didn’t know, at which point he burst out laughing. And this is a man who has maintained a neutral face for 98% of his waking life. Apparently my ambitions are a gut-buster. He followed his chuckles with a question, “So when are you going to sell out to the man?”

The conversation turned away shortly after this comment and the rest of the evening was filled with heated yet useless discussion of American foreign policy in which no one admitted that I was obviously right.

At any rate, I pretty much forgot about the remark until this morning, when I was simultaneously looking for jobs and trying to think of something to blog about today. Suddenly, I was struck with my answer to his semi-rhetorical question: “As soon as possible. I will sell out to the man as soon as possible.”

The man has a bad reputation for being a soul-crusher and brilliance-suck, but he (or she) also has health insurance, a steady salary, after-work parties, socializing opportunities with kwards (short for awkward people), logoed shirts, networking possibilities, and buildings to wander through after hours.

He’s also not the only person I could sell out to. I could sell out to yuppies and become a full time babysitter that tries to write short stories at work while the young ones struggle through one of my custom-designed mazes. I could sell out to slightly older yuppies and become a tutor that teaches children to worship the god of standardized tests by sacrificing as many Saturdays as possible to the Great SAT. I could sell out to the coffee bean or tomato and become a barista or waitress, where I will be brainwashed to believe that dinners and lattes are of earth-shattering importance.

All the while, I could be typing furiously on my laptop when I return from work, quipping, editing, and submitting, until finally an obscure literary journal accepts me as an unpaid intern at which point I’ll finally have no time to blog.

So you see, sarcastic friend of a friend who thinks my hopes and dreams are ridiculous and that I need to wake up and smell the black coffee of reality, not only do I like drinking black coffee now (as long as it’s Nescafe Gold), but I also think that selling out to the man (or woman) is one of my better options.

I didn’t say I wanted to starve to death. I said I wanted to be a writer.

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May 04 2012
39 Comments
Two minute read

Can Naps Be Meaningful?

I’m having a nightmare about Arabic.

I love napping an unusual amount. When I think of high school and college, some of the sweetest memories that come rushing over me are of lazy afternoons when I came home to an empty house or apartment and threw myself into the soft arms of a delicious nap.

Even though I know better, I still tell the very un-riveting story of my best high school nap.

Class ended at 1:30 and by 1:35 I’d started the long walk across the parking lot to my car. Rain was on the way. During school I’d heard the thunder muttering and grumbling in the east. The sky was an angry color, turning the late afternoon into an other worldly something between night and day. Before I reached the car, I felt thick, warm drops on my face and soon it was dumping rain. I ran but it was too late and I was already soaked by the time I reached shelter inside my noble Ford Taurus.

In the pouring rain, I drove home as fast as I could and sprinted across the lawn into my empty house. Quickly, I changed into a long sleeved t-shirt and sweatpants, lay down on the couch, and fell into one of the best naps of my life. Something about the contrast between the warm interior and the harsh, wet exterior and the gentle darkness that filled my house and the feeling of shelter against nature’s wrath made it an important nap for me, one that I (obviously) still remember with fondness.

For me, the ideal interaction with nature is a nap. When I see majestic vistas, crystal waterfalls, or white desert landscapes filled with watery moonlight, I fantasize about curling up and falling asleep, embraced by nature itself. I imagine a soft green bed beneath a willow tree, the earth all dappled with late afternoon sunlight coming in from over the mountains. I would lay down in my sleep and become a part of the place itself and my being would meld with the trees and the earth and the light.

In my mind, the nap would take on a deeper meaning and become a spiritual experience. Yet I have found that no matter how deep I sleep and no matter how peaceful or well rested I feel upon awaking, my naps are just naps, little sleeps enriching my day before I enter the big sleep and then the biggest sleep. I believe the spiritual disciplines of trances and meditation have come from the deeply human desire for spiritual slumber. Perhaps one of these days I will try those methods, but until then I will keep on napping and never stop.

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