The Anthropomorphization of My Life

My car is named Dip. I pat it gently to urge it to continue carrying me on my travels down dark asphalt roads contributing to the environmental damage all cars cause on the surrounding flora and fauna we have managed to edge further and further towards the ends of the earth in our conquest of all that is tangible. But I digress. (And a filly flits across my television screen, proudly beamed into my home by my local PBS station, causing me to stop and think Awww. I just want to squeeze it with love! as the Montana symphony performs for the men and women of the US military. It is Memorial Day weekend, afterall) The book I am reading, Life of Pi (Excellent, by the way. It's going to be discussed on NPR's "The Diane Rheem Show" on June 18; I can't wait), features a boy, Pi (short for Piscine, which means, as my recent dive into French has taught me, "pool") whose dad runs a zoo in the Indian town in which they live. Pi talks about how his dad forever taught him and his siblings that animals are not to be anthropomorphized, they are dangerous creatures, and animals above all else. Tigers are not cuddly, even though they look like they have the sofest fur that would feel wonderful against a cold, rough patch of cheek on a windy night. Rhinos will not sit idly by if you try to ride the docile-looking beasts. So this got me to thinking about my own life, and the vast amount of objects/livingcreatures/things that I create personalities and emotions for.

There's Dip, who I think that if I'm kind enough to her (a pronoun for a car?! what does a car think is "kind"? how can a car even think!?), she'll see me through and get me to everywhere I need to be. Then there's Sandi, my cute seal of a ten-year-old puppy, who must be plaing psychological mind games with me because she wants attention when she sits demandingly by the patio door waiting to be let out, and then when the door is opened she lays down in a heap. Don't even get me started on how I talk to my computer (don't do this to me harddrive, you can pull through, you can turn on, don't die on me!!) or the myriad of other electronic devices I own (Just submit the quiz, Mr. WebCT. You know you want to. I said please!! Don't let your servers be down. Come on!!), or how I thought to myself when I saw a quick moving stream of water flow at an odd angle down my passenger-side window, what a cute stream of water, with the green lights reflecting so brightly and regally off the molecules, shining with all of science's might and beauty. me=weirdo, I'm certain.

There's lots that's been on my mind lately, I've just been too tired to sign on (aye, dial up is such a pain in the tukus) by the time I get home to write it all down, so I've amassed a wealth of random post-it notes with scribblings meant to jog my mind when I finally sat down to blog. And boy does it feel good :)

First, how awesome is the invention of the freezer? I'd just like to send out a speciall woot woot to this amazing cabinet of cold. My grandma made me some brownies last week and froze the ones I didn't eat, and now when I go to her house (twice a week!) I can eat an almost-fresh chocolatey treat! I just marvel at its power of preservation (if only there was a way to do that to the Everglades...ok, nevermind that's a little ridiculous).

I absolutely adore NPR and get to OD on it 4 days a week during my hour drive to and from school. Sweet, right? So on the Diane Rheem Show last week, Lois Lowry was interviewed (she's the author of The Giver and lots of other quality work) and she said something that made me go *huh* and think about how I see my childhood; she said that one of the reasons she writes such good young adult novels even though she's in her sixties is because she sees her childhood as if she's still in it, feeling the emotions as if they were happening to her just now; she doesn't see it as if she's watching a video and reminiscing about the good ol' days. Also, she said she's making the Giver into a trilogy; I don't know how I feel about that, since when the book ended so ambiguously I was left yearning for an answer, and in this yearning I was left to think about the consequences of what would have happened depending on how it might have ended, and while at the time I didn't like that the answer wasn't given to me smoothly and cleanly, as time passed, I really liked that I could make the story my own, interpret it in my own way, in such a way that would never be wrong; it built my creative muscles. Alas, at the same time I'm kind of excited to see where Ms. Lowry will decide to take it after all these years.

School. Wowsers. I have a physics teacher who's really good, but talks through his teeth, moving his lips but never quite getting the whole jaw into the action. And there's three guys (who I think are in high school) who sit in the front row every time, shout answers out trying to be louder than the other two, and worship pi (as in 3.14....). Worship as in, write on the board before the teacher gets there, "PI is King" and different graphs of functions with pi in them. Very, very strange. Very. It makes me greatful that Tech doesn't have those kind of people...I think our nerds are much cooler and normal than that. (or maybe the ones that are like that are just in their rooms playing Quake so much that you never see them. hum.) Anyway, health is a pretty exciting class (it's taught by the head of the FIU medical center, so it's pretty interesting and not just about sex drugs and rocknroll) and circuits is absolutely the most boring thing in the universe and that's all i have to say about that.

I'm getting tired, but I really want to write down this really strange dream I've been having for some time now. Every night it's relatively the same, with the basis of the dream centering on my fear of being "stolen"--killed, shot, taken from my bed out of my house into the great unknown, a giant roach flying into my face and eating me, raped. I wake up terrified, and don't fall asleep for hours (and only after idly watching sports center on ESPN to calm down - who could ever be scared, or stolen, when watching baseball stats? the intruder would be too bored and forget what he was there for. hehe). so i dont know what it means, if it mneans anything at all, if its supposed to...all i know is that i want a peaceful night's sleep without worrying about whether i will be alive the next morning. why am i so afraid?

My sprout left the country this morning, and for some reason, knowing that there's a national border (and one time zone) between us, makes me miss him more. Alas, hopefully I will get to go to the OLP concert in Julio and see him then.

Goodnight world, I'm tuckered out.