Super Hero Sewing Circle

I want to know two things, and by want to know, I mean please don’t answer either of the following questions because I couldn’t possibly care less:

1. Who the fuck are the Jonas Brothers and why does everyone care so damn much? I read something about one of them giving a promise ring to his girlfriend and threw up all over my computer. I hate America.

2. Seriously, does anyone else notice that “Twilight,” which is apparently some series of books about Mormon vampires and now the number one movie in the universe forever, came out of FUCKING NOWHERE? One minute I was enjoying my life, and the next Cedric Diggory is sitting on his giant pile of cash and monopolizing my issues of “Entertainment Weekly.” I worked in publishing for three years – 1.5 of those years in children’s publishing – and I hadn’t heard of this ridiculous nonsense until about 2 months ago.

3. Blerg! When I was your age, we had underaged Mouseketeers gyrating in a high school hallway wearing only a cardigan and a maxi pad! I guess now that Britney (who is my age) has had two kids, I’m officially decrepit. Now where’s my Metamucil?

Hey readers!

There are more of you than I ever really expected, and I think that’s awesome. I know most of you found me through the now-defunct LOLSecretz, or were sent here chasing a phantom Planned Parenthood post, or googled America’s Next Top Model and found my various amusements with Wikipedia. But now… all that is about to change.

I started this blog in April 2007 with a friend of mine who I maybe thought was fated to be a great, great friend, but instead we slowly slipped out of each other’s lives. We created superhero names and an entire concept for this blog that never really came to fruition – we each wrote a few posts in those personae, but then the pressure of creating and maintaining an alternate identity became too much for me, and I ended up writing in my own voice, but under the name Stella Kevlar. And he stopped writing altogether, meaning that our would-be collaboration de facto became my personal blog.

I’ve always been enamored of the idea of having a blog, or before the age of the online diary, of writing regularly, every day, with or without an audience (but really, with an audience because come on.) By now, it’s gotten to the point where I feel funny about writing as myself behind this sort of arbitrary identity — I don’t feel like a superhero, and I’m tripped up by being one-half of what this project was once meant to be.

So, I quit! As of today, there will be no more new posts here, at Superhero Sewing Circle. I will let the domain name lapse when it expires in April, but I guess the large graveyard that is the internet will forever hold my early writings at superherosewingcircle.wordpress.com.

But, good news! I’m actually making good on my promise to myself to write as myself, and more regularly. Starting now, please migrate with me to silentj.wordpress.com, a slightly less elaborate blog where I use my real name (Arija, pronounced like ‘aria’) and adopt a slightly less defensively snarky authorial voice (only slightly). I’ve really, really loved having a little cabal of readers, and I hope that doesn’t fade away. Update your RSS feeds, yo!

So! Thanks for reading thus far, and don’t be afraid to click right through… starting…… now.

Over the past year and a half that I’ve been living in Connecticut, I’ve gradually succumbed to being a commuter. That is, I essentially live in my car. It started with always leaving my gym bag — complete with sneakers, extra socks and underwear, gym clothes, set of regular clothes, extra headphones, shampoo and conditioner, and towel — in the backseat of my car. Then I started keeping extra water bottles around (okay, to be fair, I’ve always left empty water bottles around, but I just recently started refilling and keeping them available so I don’t have to leave the car to get more). I’ve started leaving my textbook and class notes in the car, removing them only to study at remote locations; just this week I’ve left the novel that I’m reading on the passenger seat, figuring it will be more likely to end up where I am if it’s not on my bedside table. Today I crossed an important threshhold – well, three important threshholds, actually: commuter culture escape velocity, middle age, and abject lameness. That’s right, I got a book on CD. From the public library.

Now, my feelings on audiobooks are complicated. On the one hand, I have fond memories of my dad (an extremely avid Book-on-Tape purveyor) listening to them on long car trips, figuring that since each of his three children were choosing the world inside their individual CD player headphones over forced family interaction, he may as well monopolize the car stereo to listen to a voice actor read him Clive Cussler novels. Okay, that’s maybe a bit heavy-handed on the sarcasm — I actually do have fond memories of those car trips, emerging from my angsty Tori Amos haze to listen to the end of a particular riveting chapter when we were wending through Pennsylvania backroads, still an interminable hour from my grandmother’s house. Furthermore, I have a wealth of extremely positive memories surrounding the act of being read to. My parents read to us as children, of course, but my dad and I actually read books together until I was almost twelve (i.e. too cool). He first read me what were to become some of my favorite books of all time (Watership Down, The Chronicles of Narnia). We read every single Hardy Boys book (a task, by the way, that proves that my dad loves me – have you ever read two of those books? One is exactly the same as the next, thrilling for an eight-year-old, torture for her post-doctorate-holding father.) And my family still gets a big kick out of the fact that he introduced me to some pretty heavy theology and philosophy before the idea that humans were fallible and corrupt was even a twinkle in my young sinner’s eye: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength (C.S. Lewis); Enchantress From the Stars (Sylvia Engdahl); and other religious and existential allegory disguised as sci-fi (my entire personality is starting to make sense now, you see.) I hope to share chapter books with my children the way they were shared with me, and I do believe that some stories are meant to be experienced as part of an oral tradition.

However, on the other hand, I love books. I say “books” and not “reading” because it’s more accurate – I love the visceral experience of reading a book: the choice of font, the weight of the paper, the kerning and spacing on the page; the smell of a new book, and how that smell is distinct from that of a decades-old library book; the weight of a book in my purse; the act of underlining and notating in margins (something I don’t do anymore but did regularly in high school.) Most of all, I love the act of choosing to read over any other activity. It’s such a luxury that I basically abandoned once I started college (though I’d read hungrily over the summers) and completely did away with once I started working full time – the only time I’d ever read was on the subway to and from work, and once I started working at a literary agency and reading for a living…forget it.

So in a way, listening to books on tape is kind of the ultimate “fuck you” to books: not only am I forgoing the tangible joys of the experience of reading, looking at and feeling the physical book, but I’m also going to divorce myself from the personal aspect of listening to a story told by someone I love; that is, I’m going to be read to by a nameless, faceless stranger, a disembodied voice, someone hired to read to me, if by me you mean anyone at all. Still, when I moved back home, I promised myself that I’d read more, and it’s a promise that I’ve largely failed to keep: I read in 30-minute spurts when I have downtime at the hospital and occasionally right before falling asleep. But — and this is one of the things I hate most about living in the suburbs again — my day-to-day life is largely spent in the car, commuting along the southern Connecticut shoreline (and into NYC on weekends). I want to take in more books, and this is a lot of time that I’m not doing anything else particularly valuable. I’m not so principled about the way in which I absorb this material not to at least try it out…so thus begins this little experiment!

The book I got, by the way, is Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, not because I’ve been dying to read (listen to?) it, but because it was literally the best option (aside from the novelization of The Phantom Menace, and Everything Nelson DeMille Has Ever Written, of course. I briefly considered getting the Harry Potter books read by Jim Dale, which I’ve heard are marvelous, actually, but I wanted to get something I hadn’t yet read [listened to?]). I’ve listened to disc 1 so far, and it’s been…weird, mostly to have to accept this voice actor’s interpretation of the text. I hated it through the whole first chapter, but now I’m settling into this particular speech act, and I’m actually enjoying myself. We’ll see how long this keeps up.

[Oh, and... as my brackets and parentheses indicate, am I still allowed to claim that I've "read" these books once I'm done listening to them? Is the act of reading -- sensory input through the eyes -- essential to the meaning of reading? And is that term, "reading," the same as listening to the book be read, or am I missing out on the authenticity of the book experience? Paging Walter Benjamin.]

Tears on my face.

Friends’ facebook statuses. (the protest posterboards of today).

This is the first time I’ve ever cared about something so fiercely that’s not immediately related to my own life, my own corporeal being.

I told Ryan on the phone tonight, my brain has no preconceived module for this kind of emotion. I keep thinking, “This is how I felt when Yale beat Harvard in football my freshman year!” That is literally the closest I can get to understanding my current exhilaration.

I’ve never been a “I’m moving to Canada” type person. I’ve always known that I would disagree with much of this country, or at least much of this country’s electorate. I’m wired to tend towards socialism (not that I believe that system could ever be viable in this country in this day and age.) But now I am excited to represent America. I feel, in my own unique idiom, how staunch conservatives must have felt eight years ago: elation, joy, hope. I don’t believe that God ordained Barack Obama to be president; I believe I helped make him that, and that means infinitely more to me than anything else.

I don’t have any interest in gloating. Look, country! We have a lot of work to do! Obama is not the Messiah, he is not the answer to all our problems, but he is a start, a real real real real real start. I lent my faith to the Democratic party this year, writing my name into their party ranks, believing that they could rise above their rigid barriers. Democratic Party, you do not operate outside of your ordinary constituents. WE are your engine, WE made you who you are today, we of hope, tempered by pragmatism, but circularly informed by hope.

I am so lucky to have experienced today, and I wish my sister could have been here to see it too (this is her first presidential election, and she lives in France.) On my first Presidential election, I was so excited to be an active part of the electoral process, and in return, I learned how little my vote (the popular vote) mattered. This is not redemption, this is not comeuppance. This is balance, this is the yang to eight years’ tragic yin. Remember the image of the 1984 electoral map — Mondale, the closest thing we’ve seen to Obama, running 25 years too early, carrying only his home state and D.C. — how our parents laughed at it, went to bed early, never gave him a second look, is the really the best the Democratic Party could do? Obama’s victory tonight is not a victory for the Democratic party, not really. It is a sign that the two-party system is changing, that our political communities and borders are not only imagined but ultimately detrimental, without the elevation of our very souls’ desires — hope, love, change we need.

Obama has been our muse. It’s our duty now not to deify him, but to hold him to every promise he has bestowed upon us. I cried tonight not because I feel we had been saved, but because someone like me is in the White House – ambitious, outspoken, complex, nuanced, difficult, torn. I love this country so much that I literally do not have the words to express it. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for proving me wrong.

Transcribed this today, in one of my many 1099-inducing projects, from a clip on turn-of-the-century American reform movements:

“We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Our homes are covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrated in the hands of capitalists.” — Ignatius Donnelley, 1892 (calling into order the first meeting of what was to become the Populist Party, an eventually-doomed rare third party in American politics.)

It’s comforting to know that literally a century can go by and these sad, dark statement can still be chillingly applicable today. Just replace “land” with “wealth.” Any idea what’s gonna happen next, America?

I do. As soon as this is all over, we’ll forget again. Just like every other time.

…because I’m assuming you don’t want me to post my 1,500-character “essays” (does 100 words really count as an essay?) about why I’m particularly well-suited for this or that medical school.

Two rejections so far!  One interview scheduled so far!

Now to the good stuff.  This picture shows a selection from my office’s deli:

(Underline added by me)

First of all, I want to comment on the very strange word choice here.  If in fact they do mean “discrete,” I’m impressed at the detail to craftsmanship.  Curious as to whether they actually would lay the sprouts, lettuce, tomato, etc, one at a time, separately, I ordered this sandwich.  As I watched them make it, I realized, duh, OF COURSE they put the ingredients on one at a time.  This is not only a dumb, ill-fitting word choice, but it’s one of those instances where fancy words dress up something that’s totally status quo.  “We make the best sandwiches, you guys!  Seriously!  Unlike all those other sandwich places, we do not grab handfuls of vegetables and attempt to lay them on your sandwich all at the same time.  We’re professional, not like those jerkoffs at Sandwich Depot.”

More amusing, and what I’m choosing to assume they meant, is if this is a spelling mistake.  In which case, this is now my favorite sandwich place ever.  “Hey guys, tired of your friends calling you a fag because you eat sprouts on your meat sandwich?  We’ll put all that healthy bullshit on for you, but no one has to know.  Unlike those assholes at Sandwich Depot, who fucking televise every goddamn grain of salt they put on your panini.” 

(The owners of this deli have anger management issues.)

I did my third NYC Century, which is a 100-mile loop around the four real boroughs of New York (sorry, Staten Island), beginning and ending at the top of Central Park. The first time I rode it two years ago, it was the most amazing experience of my life: I was on an aluminum frame hybrid that was in decent shape at the time, riding in sneakers, a wifebeater, and bike shorts. I hadn’t ridden more than 30 miles at a stretch before then, though I commuted 4.5 miles to work each way, every day. Adrenaline carried me 70 of those 100 miles, and the thought of crossing the finish line took care of the next 30. I’d never done anything quite like it before, and, suffice it to say, doing it the following year on the same bike (plus a year’s worth of wear and tear) was less exciting.

A friend who has gone skydiving hundreds of times in his life once told me about the first time he ever did it, and how afterwards he had an adrenaline headache for 4 days. These days when he goes up and jumps, he says he thinks about bills, what he’s doing later in the day. Obviously, it’s not the same, most basically because I wasn’t jumping out of a plane on my bike, but I began to understand what he meant. I rode my new bike this year, an all-carbon racing bike at whose wheels I’ve worshipped at other times on this blog. The speed and comfort increases were a vast improvement, but I was astounded at how my familiarity of the course — which changed very little over the three years I’ve ridden it — as well as the vast improvement in my physical endurance made the experience a little, well, boring. I got two flat tires right at the end of the course (in the same wheel, which was annoying and frustrating, and made me feel shitty for holding up my riding partners), and so I crossed the finish line in peak physical condition but with low morale. This was, I’ve decided, my final New York City century. Next year I’ll ride one in Connecticut (or wherever I happen to be living!) because I can happily, obnoxiously proclaim, “Oh, that 100-mile course around New York City? Meh.”

I’ve never been much of a team player. I didn’t participate in team sports as a kid, largely because I was busy doing other things, but also because though I was athletic (fast, lithe), I tended (okay, still tend) towards clumsy. Also, I had a pretty thin skin as a kid and would cry or get unduly frustrated every time a coach or fellow teammate called me out for doing something wrong. My team sports experiences ended in 8th grade, after I won Most Improved Player on my basketball team…for the second year in a row. I’ve always been sort of a loner / why-trust-anyone-else-to-do-it-when-I-know-I-can-do-it-better-myself-type person, at varying times to my success as well as my detriment. I like competing against myself; I do NOT like competing against other people.

Cycling has been something, then, that dovetails nicely with my affinity for self-challenge, as well as the undeniable thrill I, as a generally gregarious person, feel when doing something with a group of people. I imagine it’s different on an actual cycling team, but riding with a pack affords you the ability to push your own limits and commune with yourself, as well as existing as a part of a larger whole for small pockets of time. The kinetic energy of the pack is exciting and addictive, and part of the thrill of participating in such a large event is that there is the potential to cycle with several different groups over the course of the ride. You make jokes with your fellow riders, you engage in small talk. You can hear each other’s breathing. You create a symphony of shifting chains, pedal clips, “clear!” It’s wonderful, and I’m so glad I’ve discovered it.

Stella is disgusted at how the camera keeps going wide to the shots of towerless NYC every time Giuliani says the word “terrorism.”

Stella asks who was the woman that was escorted out of the RNC?

Stella really? this country still doesn’t understand how taxes work?

Stella (and finally) loves how Sarah Palin is allowed to changer her opinion about the Bridge to Nowhere but Obama’s apparently not allowed to change his ideas about anything.

Stella hates how everyone’s down with this woman’s brand of ball-busting but Hillary was somehow a shrew, and she wasn’t even a Hillary supporter.

Stella is part of a family of a special needs child, Sarah. If your support means rolling back the rights

I don’t think often about getting older. In fact, most of the time, I feel younger than I actually am. I routinely get mistaken for being younger than my sister (in fact, I’m 8 years older). I always get carded at new bars and liquor stores, and most of my patients at the hospital think I’m between 20 and 23. (I’m actually 26.) So, yeah, I’m young at heart and in face. Until this week.

I was at the hospital yesterday, eating lunch in the cafeteria. At the table next to me were a group of first year medical students (either UConn or Yale students, but judging from the level of Asianness and general immature exuberance, I’m guessing Yale.) They were a) so loud and b) so in awe of everything. It’s hard to describe; it’s not like they were standing up yelling, “OMG I am so the Meredith and you are SO the Cristina,” but it was close. I sat there silently judging them and enjoying my private smirks and eye-rolls until I realized, wow, these are going to be my classmates next year. Oh, wait, no. Their year-younger siblings are going to be my classmates next year. Ugh.

Part two: there’s one medical school that sent me an email in early August, saying that in late August I could expect an email link to their secondary application. I haven’t received it yet, so I decided to Google to see if anyone had posted information about this application. I ended up on a message board site designed for pre-medical students. And it was, to put it bluntly, the worst possible thing I could have read. Here, a taste:

——————————————————————————–
Person #1: ah, how cruel. anyone know when it’s coming out?

Person #2: The e-mail I got said it’d be available by the end of August.

Person #3: I just called to ask if the questions were the same as last year. The lady said they will be “similar” and said it would “probably be available at the end of this week.” Hmm…interesting.

Person #4: Does someone have/know of last year’s secondary prompts that I can look at, at least? Last year’s thread doesn’t have an actual link to the prompt.

Person #1: [posts last year's questions]

Person #3: Crazy. Hopefully the questions are the same as last year so I can submit it ASAP…letters are already sent!

Person #4: Most of these questions seem pretty repetitive of what should already be on the AMCAS — especially C. I hate it when they do that.

These questions seem pretty easy, which is good and bad. Low effort, but less opportunity to shine.

Person #2: You freaked me out. I thought that the [School] Secondary had been released…

Person #3: Well I’m just making sure that it didn’t slip underneath my radar.

Person #1: it is now august 30th. the month is officially over. call me an ******* but where’s the application? i need just a little bit of closure in my life.

Person #4: Well, we won’t hear anything from them on Monday since it’s a holiday.

Does anyone know the reason for the delay? At this rate, their first interview dates will be in late October/early November.

Person #2: yeah its crazy how long [school] has postponed their secondary. it was initially at the top of my list but at this point, i can’t afford to invest any more $ into secondaries since interview season is starting and i am completely burned out from writing all those essays. seems like they may lose a few applicants to this.

Person #4: I hope they are not screening this message board’s members!

Person #3: Judging by your MCAT scores, I would highly appreciate it if it worked to weed you out!

Person #2: He’s MD/PhD so he’s not competing with the seat that I’m trying to get.

Person #3: Oh yes. You’re right

Person #4: Oh thank God!
and so on and so on. I literally felt sick to my stomach as I kept reading and stupidly looked at the “stats” pages of some of these people – near perfect MCAT score and GPAs, the kids who go to rural China to cure cancer because it will look good on their applications, the kids whose parents whispered their future career plans as doctors into their ears from the cradle onward. I know that those kinds of people can be very transparent in interviews or essays, but they are also old pros. They know how to play the game — as if applying to medical school is nothing but a game! — and the fact of the matter is I don’t. I am old and weathered by the real world, and that’s how I’ve been approaching this whole process so far: straightforward and honest. I have weak spots in my application (damn you, physical sciences section!) and strong spots (thank you, genetic influences on congeniality in new situations!), but I’ve been approaching everything writing honestly. Why do you want to attend Columbia, they ask? Should I bullshit and list things from Columbia’s website that appear impressive? Maybe a little, but the most striking thing I wrote was “I loved living in New York, and I want to move back.” How have you dealt with adversity? “I worked for an insane boss for 3 years and therefore have infinite patience. Oh, and I lived in Brooklyn on a publishing salary. And I currently work three jobs because my parents don’t pay for anything. I don’t have health insurance.” What makes you special? “I went to Latvian camp for 18 years? I can fit my fist in my mouth? I actually want to be a doctor?” These crazies are going to be my classmates, these people who will graduate to their residencies at the age I am now, having never had a real job, having never balanced a budget, having never questioned their path, having never backtracked. If I were a medical school, I’d love me…but despite their emphasis on diversity, how loud do numbers actually speak?

I’m typing this while watching the inaugural episode of America’s Next Top Model and can’t help comparing this whole process to the casting for a reality show. Will the producers pick me? I’m not the most beautiful, but I’m from Bumblefuck, Alaska! I’m a vegan! I’m a tranny! I don’t want to have a hook. I want to age gracefully and have all of those lines, those wrinkles figure into my application, to add depth and perspective, to tell a real story that has evolved and grown, backtracked and jumped ahead. I’m not perfectly polished, snipped-together pieces of other stories to create an impressive resume with no discernible author.

I could have been those crazies on the message board, but I took a step back and threw myself into real life for a little while, the same real life that is full of people without insurance, who work multiple jobs, who’ll give those overachieving applicants a sense of satisfaction when they believed they’ve saved them, and who will scare the shit out of all of those pre-programmed robodoctors. People who live in the real world. People who are like me.

Blogamendation? I feel that would necessitate a long “o,” when what I’m going for is “blahg-amendation.” Like a recommendation one finds on a blog, such as this one: don’t clunkily put two words together anymore, Stella.

Anyway, I found this little gem on my friend Caitlin’s blog, and immediately fell in love. Why? How many much time do you have. 1. This was my first favorite track on the Fleet Foxes album. 2. They are sisters harmonizing. 3. They are wearing flannel shirts and sitting in the forest. 4. They are genuinely talented, beautiful singers. 5. “Eet’s a leetle geeft from us.” Oh, you Swedes!

Listen for yourself:

They are called First Aid Kit, and they’ve been signed to the same label as Swedish technopop group The Knife. I downloaded their album last night — no small deal, consider I’ve paid for maybe 3 albums in the past 5 years. This is the best song from it, which could easily be a B-side from Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins’ “Rabbit Furcoat”:

The lyrics are a little bit funny considering that they are 15 and 17 years old, but also consider that they are fifteen and seventeen years old. What were you doing at 15? My answer: wearing checkered skirts and ridiculous ska haircuts, making out with several members of my group of friends, and deciding I was going to be a vegetarian and a Taoist. In other words, being completely insufferable.

If you want to download, check go here. It’s only $6.55 for the EP! The songs are simple with simple but gorgeous harmonies; this is truly a group that will improve with time, and I hope they’re around for a while so I can watch that evolution.