Good Grief

I guess this is what I get for not paying attention to literature, because apparently everyone is writing grief memoirs.
I don't know if I particularly care or mind that it's all about grief right now. I've tried writing about grief; it's hard. It usually requires a certain amount of backstory to make the readers understand it. And it's so easy to slip into ridiculous language and metaphors. Really, I would wish people would write about difficult subjects more often.
Otherwise, I really liked this article because I learned some things. I had no idea who had founded the five stages of grief, for example. (This woman also insisted that grief must be told to be healed, an idea I also really like.) I also loved the term "writing meat" that Muriel Spark used. Seems like a really wonderful term. And apparently T.S. Eliot used the image of "shoring these fragments against our ruin," which I also really like.

Tea with Mark

Went out for tea with Mark.  He had finished a class in the early afternoon, and I figured that he would have another one in the late afternoon or early evening, but he didn't, so we talked about about four and a half hours.  There are so few people in my life I can talk to for such long periods of time, and Mark is definitely one of them. 
As usual, Mark and I spent a ton of time talking about poetry.  He and some other mutual friends are all right now into Ann Carson, and Mark showed me one of her books.  I had heard of her before, but I had never actually seen any of her poetry.  And I could see why he was showing it to me.  There was something very prosy about it, but also something inherently intellectual and academic.  They were tight little pieces.  He had borrowed the book from a friend, and we both admired her handwriting, which decorated the margins. 
We also talked about book design.  There's this one cover for a poetry book that we both thing is miserably bad.  I told him my idea for an alternative cover, one that did a better job of displaying the title poem and looked prettier. 
"Well, do you ever think about what you'd want your poetry books to look like?" he asked. 
Oh, of course.  I fantasize about it all the time.  I don't think I'm silly enough to believe I'll ever publish a book of poetry, but I think about it. 
"I usually think of the art for the book as being highly related to the content.  So, I'm working on some science-related poems, and I'd like the book to be decorated with old school science drawings, the kind you see in old textbooks." 
Thinking of it, I'd really like to see some of Mark's poetry.  It's been a while since I looked at anything of his, though, the more I think about what I saw, the more impressed I am by it. 
We also reminisced about classes we took.  I confessed that Emily was sort of turned off by the way he use to talk, which maybe I shouldn't have told him.  I followed it up with "But I defended you because you had just changed your major and we're probably still finding your feet," which was how I felt at the time.  Plus, I honestly felt like Emily was being a tad persnickety.  I love Emily, but this was one of the few times I disagreed with her.  Mark wasn't that hard to understand.  
I might have also admitted my momentary annoyance with Mark.  When we first met, I didn't really have any thoughts on him either way, because I didn't know him.  Then he started always sitting with me in class, and because I had lots of friends in this class I found myself wishing he didn't.  But after a week or two I realized I really liked him and that he was my friend.
This this weird tendency around here for things to be super intense super quickly.  Natalie once described this happening to her and Mike.  They met and BAM!  They were best friends.  This was what happened to Mark.  We spent very little time between acquaintance and mutual adoration. 
It was mostly quiet in the tea house, but this punk guy sat down near us for a while, while I probably talked poor Mark's ear off.  
Mark told me a little about his upcoming trip to Germany.  He told me that he had wanted to go to London, but because of the price of hotels, he decided not to.  Instead, he's going to live in a tiny town near the French border.  What exactly he's doing academically, I'm not sure.  He apparently speaks very good German, so I'm hoping that in addition to the usual fun travel stuff (getting to know a new place, meeting new people, speaking the local language) maybe he'll be studying German literature.  There's a lot of important work that was done in both German romanticism and expressionism. 
While we were sitting there, Justin's roommate, came in and said hi.  He recognized me because I had met him recently.
"Are you two dating?" he asked. 
It seems like Mark and I have been getting that one a lot lately.  Mark said no. 
"We're more like work partners," I said, thinking about how frequently we worked on various projects together.  An idea occurred to me.  "We're more like partners in crime," I said.  Justin's roommate sort of chuckled at us for saying that. 
Eventually, I had to cut our chat to an end because I was meeting Gary for sushi down the street.  When Mark had originally asked me for tea, I thought that I would have plenty of time in between tea and sushi.  I was going to go lock myself in a study room and try to write.  But clearly, Mark and I were having so much fun, I almost lost track of time. 
Gary wasn't going to let me though.  About ten minutes before my sushi date, he texted me that he was going to be two minutes late.  That's right: two minutes.  I found this weirdly funny, because I can't think of anyone who texts to say two minutes.  I don't even know if it's necessary to text if it's five, because it seems like everyone I know runs on a minimum five minute late schedule of some kind or another. 
Mark thought this was funny too. 
Three minutes later, Gary texted again to tell me he was going to be on time, and Mark and I both found this funny. 
"He's like that.  One day you'll have to meet him," I said.  I had already told him tons about Jimmy. 

Night of the Zoos

I have been exhausted lately, so I tried to take a power nap.  I didn't really fall asleep, but I did feel slightly better.  Then I took a shower.  I was super annoyed with myself because my complexion has been great all holiday break, and today I woke up with a pimple forming (not quite) on my forehead.  It looks super stupid, but I scrubbed it as hard and as long as I could and then put four different medications on it and then makeup. 
I had agreed to go out to dinner with Lisa and Tori (and maybe Ashley?  Ashley's so hard to pin down these days so I didn't know if she was coming.)  I was scheduling things back to back so maybe I wouldn't have time to go home to fix myself up, so I was doing the fixing before hand, before I went out with the girls. 
I'm not good at timing.  I had an extra half hour before Tori and Lisa wanted to meet, so I sat down at my laptop and tried to take care of some extra things.  I made sure my MP3 player was recharging, I caught up on some reading, I worked on some paperwork.
I noticed that it was ten minutes past when they were meant to show up.  Ashley has a tendency to be late to things, so I thought maybe they were waiting on her.  If so, Tori would already be annoyed, so I decided to wait it out.  I worked on a short piece I'm writing, trying to edit it down so it's shorter. 
Around twenty after, I got a text from Lisa.  "Where are you?"  Uh-oh. 
I texted her back that no one had said where we were going.  Last week, Tori just swung by my house and picked me up.  I had no idea where we were going until we got there, and I frankly was too busy talking to ask.  I had assumed, since no one had said anything about where it was, just had given me a time, that we were having dinner then. 
I finally got there, almost an hour late.  The place was packed.  There were tons of children around, and it vaguely reminded me of what people say when they say something is a zoo. 
I finally found both of them in the back.  They had politely waited, ordering an appetizer but not food.  They apologized. 
Tori was telling me about how she had gotten an email by a professor over how angry Tori was with this guy.  He had mispronounced her name for months, or something.  (It was hard to hear over the zoo animals.)  She had replied back that she was going to torture him in this class. 
"What are you going to do?" Lisa asked. 
"I'm going to sit in front and talk to him the entire time."
"You're going to get tired," I said.  I can't imagine talking like that in class.  When I'm in a lecture, it's all I can do to get all the information down in my notebook. 
Lisa showed me pictures of her new apartment, which is possibly the nicest looking college apartment I've ever seen.  The bed spread matches the shower curtain that matches the couch that matches the lights in the dining room.  Tori teased her for having so many stuffed animals on her bed. 
"They come off when we sleep there," she said.  I honestly don't think six stuffed animals are that many, and anyway, they're all smaller.
We headed over to the grocery store.  Tori had seen this thing about chocolate beer.  I told her how I had chocolate wine once, and it was seriously disgusting.  It took us a while, just because Lisa got herself lost and then ran into someone and then called Tori and I asking where we were. 
"We told you, we're in the booze aisle," Tori said. 
"Tell her it's the large aisle." 
We looked around for this chocolate beer, but couldn't find it.  We looked through lots of other things, and I was struck by how much I wanted to try certain things.
No luck.  After combing the area we gave up.  Tori and Lisa decided to keep looking.  Tori thought that maybe the grocery store was the wrong idea; we needed to look at an actual "booze-booze store." 
"Booze-booze?" I asked, in reference to her choice of words. 
As we were driving, I got a text from Philip, asking me to meet him.  I had agreed to meet him yesterday, before this whole dinner with Lisa and Tori thing, before the alcohol hunt began. 
"I'll drop you off," Tori said. 
When I got out of the car, I thanked her, calling her Mom.  I went inside. 
Again: a zoo.  I'd never been here and it not be a zoo, so okay. 
"Are you looking for someone?" a waitress asked. 
"Yeah, he..." I trailed off.  I was about to say his name but I was stumbling for how to describe him. 
"Is he tall, dark and handsome?"
"He...he's handsome."  I guess.  He's not that much taller than me and he's got darkness inside, but it's something he doesn't show people willingly.  He barely likes showing me. 
She pointed, and he looked up and saw me.  Okay, looking at him again, I thought, he was handsome.  He has a nice haircut, the kind I tried Chris to get for years. 
He hugged me and I sat down.  Another waitress approached us and we ordered. 
Philip told me all about what he's been up to lately.  He's working on his master's.  He is trying to find a job, and although he's interviewed for some, there haven't been any offers yet.  He said he had just broken up with a girl about a month before. 
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. 
"Don't worry; it wasn't meant to be." 
What does that even mean?  It wasn't meant to be implies that there is a certain amount of fate involved in relationships, and I'm wary of fate as a philosophical concept.  It strikes me as intellectually lazy, like not believing in evolution or saying that someone is overanalyzing a piece of literature. 

Afrobeat

Why couldn't I have taken a music appreciation class in college? We had a second music day in my African history class, and it was a blast. Today, we concentrated on Afrobeat music while talking about Nigeria.

Basically, Afrobeat was developed by Fela (1938-1997), the "king" of Afrobeat." He was from a prominent family. His grandfather was J.J. Ransome Kuti (1855-1930), an early Christian convert and church leader. Kuti was a notorious pain in the ass to British authorities, using religion as a way to keep Nigeria's colonizers honest. Fela's father was Ransome Kuti, who founded the Nigerian Union of Teachers in 1931, arguing that people need more access to education. After the second World War, Fela's father was recruited to join a London commission on higher education in Africa. His mother was a leading feminist activist and nationalist. In the 1940s, she organized 20,000 women to protest taxes and abuse by chiefs, who were notorious for stealing property.

While in London, Fela began playing gigs, then enrolled in the Trinity School of Music. Fela began playing African jazz, then blended Nigerian highlife and Juju music. He was also influenced by the awesomeness that was Bob Marley, Bruce Lee and Miles Davis. He sang it what is called a pidgin language, meaning it blended several different languages. This particular pidgin is the lingua franca in West Africa. Fela started his own clubs in Laos, then the capital of Nigeria, where he would play all night long. All of his music is political, and he clearly saw his music as a way to educate people and encourage them to be proud of their African identities. While in the U.S., he interacted with the Black Panther Movement and Sandra Isidore, who introduced him to radical literature.

Once again, the only thing I don't like is that Fela wasn't much for feminism or women, even though his mother was a leading feminist. I keep hoping as I learn about Africa, that some great women and men will promote women, but it's been few and far between. I guess this just means I'm going to have to love those few who do even more.
I'm a huge fan of American jazz and funk, so this is totally my style. I don't like every song of Fela's I've heard, but I've posted some of my favorites here. I actually think that I like him better when he doesn't sing. I would love to see music videos or this kind of music used in movies, because there's something lovely about it. It's impossible to listen to and not want to dance to, even if it's just a little swaying here and there. Of course, the lyrics are important since they articulate Fela's political beliefs and are the primary education tool.