My Eighteenth Birthday

February 2015

I celebrated my eighteenth birthday recently with five of my friends. Before my party started, I was worried that we would run out of stuff to do before it ended at eight. We had no such problem! The party didn't end until like 2:15 am! Judi and Eden had to leave at the normal time, but Benny, Mikaele and Kaylee stayed into the night. And guess what we spent hours doing?

We spent literally five hours just talking. We had a brilliant, terrific discussion that was rich, enlightening and intelligent. Later Dad would say we sounded like college students. We discussed such subjects as religion, feminism, the Iraq War on Terrorism, the death penalty, pedophilia, and pretty much every other political and social issue of our time. I love this group of people. We are all so different, and definitely had differing opinions, but we were capable of having a mature, respectful, rich discussion. Mikaele is a flute-playing extremely nerdy boy who loves literature, history, medicine and the military; Kaylee is an outgoing, extremely girly female wrestler who loves democratic politics, business, sports, fashion, and performance arts; Benny is bookworm who loves Lord of the Rings and nature, and is a Christian who ironically has a fascination with evolutionary biology; and I am a shy flute-playing, ballet-loving vegan cheerleader who is dedicated to ethical food systems.

But because we are eighteen- and seventeen-year-olds, we discussed these complex topics in the way we know how to, using what we knew. We referenced Disney movies like Brave or Frozen; or books we read in class throughout high school, like The Kite Runner, Things They Carried, and Crime and Punishment. This is because this is how we understand the world; this is our starting point.

It was one of those moments when I realize that these people sitting in front of me, WE ARE THE FUTURE. These are the leaders of tomorrow. I have the pleasure of witnessing the bud start to open up in front of me before we all get dispersed throughout the Northwest next year: I will be at Evergreen in Olympia, WA; Mikaele will hopefully be at University of Washington in Seattle, WA; Kaylee will be at Warner Pacific in Portland, OR; and Benny will be matriculating in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

This birthday was actually pretty magical. It dialed my vision of my life out into the big picture and I reflected contently. I am so happy, eager, and excited to graduate and start my new life.

"Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield

August 2014

"Miss Brill" is a short story of harsh disappointment and loneliness by Katherine Mansfield, and it is not modern pop culture like the last piece of literature I analyzed (the song "Team" by Lorde). It is true literature, for I read it for the first time in my AP literature class during my junior year of high school. It resonated with me because it was the only thing I've found that accurately describes my situation and feelings. These ideas are dear to me and are extremely difficult to put on paper, but I'll try my best to lay out the ideas expressed in this story.

"How she enjoyed it! It was like a play.... Even she had a part and came every Sunday. No doubt somebody would have noticed if she hadn't been there; she was part of the performance after all.... She thought of the old invalid gentleman to whom she read the newspaper four afternoons a week while he slept in the garden.... But suddenly he knew he was having the paper read to him by an actress! 'An actress!' The old head lifted; two points of light quivered in the old eyes. 'An actress - are ye?' And Miss Brill smoothed the newspaper as though it were the manuscript of her part and said gently; 'Yes, I have been an actress for a long time.'"

Miss Brill is an elderly lady who entertains herself by eavesdropping on strangers' conversations in the park every Sunday. In this paragraph, she enthusiastically describes a realization: she has had an important part in the dynamic of the park. She imagines the normally phlegmatic old man being impressed with her and she was proud. She naively fantasizes about being noticed and admired. The reader can conclude about this old man, though, that he would probably be indifferent as she is irrelevant to him: Miss Brill recognizes and cares for him but he carelessly sleeps through her efforts.

The reason for why I insisted on clinging to theater as a hobby was because being included was always guaranteed. Everyone had a part to play, and if someone had lines with me they had to talk to me; they couldn't choose to ignore me. I obliviously and blindly lived off of this false sociability for years until I was harshly informed of how unwanted and disliked I really was among theater people. I believe this is how Miss Brill feels.

No one notices nor cares if she is there or not, and this is the very thing Miss Brill is terrified to acknowledge.

"The day was so charming - didn't he agree? ...But he shook his head, lighted a cigarette, slowly breathed a great deep puff into her face, and even while she was still talking and laughing, flicked the match away and walked on."

This time Miss Brill observes a younger couple. The young woman acts happy but in vain because the man acts bitter, cold and rude to her, and even acts as though she doesn't exist.

"Just at that moment a boy and girl came and sat down where the old couple had been. They were beautifully dressed; they were in love. The hero and heroine, of course.... And still soundlessly singing, still with that trembling smile, Miss Brill prepared to listen.

'No, not now,' said the girl. 'Not here, I can't.'

'But why? Because of that stupid old thing at the end there?' asked the boy. 'Why does she come here at all - who wants her? Why doesn't she keep her silly old mug at home?'"

This is the part when Miss Brill finally gets hit, hard, in the face with the harsh truth. No one really wants her and she is in actuality not important to the others in the park.

There are theories that these people Miss Brill observes in the park aren't actually there, but rather flashbacks of her own life. After all, three groups of people get progressively older and more dysfunctional. the girl is the one who is mistreated.

"On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey-cake at the baker's. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. If there was an almond it was like carrying home a tiny present - a surprise - something that might very well not have been there. But to-day she passed the baker's by, climbed the stairs, went into the little dark room - her room like a cupboard. She sat there for a long time... she thought she heard something crying."

Miss Brill is so crushed that she can't risk another disappointment, even if it is a minuscule disappointment such as not getting an almond in her honey cake.

It is worth noting that cupboards are mentioned in the story - and a cupboard is a symbol of things being dormant until they are useful. This is a very important symbol in the story. Miss Brill is not useful in society. Mansfield mentions cupboards once earlier in the story: "They were odd, silent, nearly all old, and from the way they stared they looked as though they'd just come from dark little rooms or even - even cupboards!" This a creepy, almost gothic description of the other garden patrons. They have come out of their "cupboards:" they are important and noticed by others. But here, at the end of the story, Miss Brill retreats back to her "dark little room - her room like a cupboard" after her deception of herself is shattered by two harsh young people who deem her "stupid," "silly," and "old."

The last line is one of my favorites: it clicks with me. It was talking about her fur coat that she thought was a live pet keeping her company, but the reader can assume that it was Miss Brill who was actually crying. But the vagueness, surprise, and distance of "she thought she heard something crying" shows how little she was willing to admit her loneliness, and more importantly it implies that it is not her fault how miserable she is and she cannot simply choose not to feel this way. Instead of saying "Miss Brill cried," where she is the one doing the action, Miss Brill is the observer yet again - the observer of herself.

"Team" by Lorde

July 2014

"Call all the ladies out, they're in their finery
a hundred jewels on throats, a hundred jewels between teeth
Now bring my boys in, their skin in craters like the moon
the moon we love like a brother, while he glows through the room."

I was driving home one day listening to Lorde in the car and I began thinking about the meaning of this song "Team." What I've observed in this consumerism-based society that constantly tries to satisfy instant pleasure is that meanings or purposes of songs or movies or other forms of postmodern cheap culture are irrelevant, insignificant, and most of the time, nonexistant: when I google analysis of a popular song, all I get is a measly video or poorly-written sentence about how Royals is about the superficiality of wealth. But I believe Lorde is poetry: it demands to be contemplated. That is my goal in this post.

I thought about this first verse for about ten minutes and I realized a lot about it. The first thing that struck me was that the only thing she says about her boys is that they have "skin in craters like the moon" and my initial thought was that she means they smoke. Smoking often times causes cavities in the skin. But Lorde thinks smoking is admirable because she likens the smokers to the moon, which they "love like a brother."

Likewise, the ladies are described as decorated in "finery" and "jewels." But I noticed here that Lorde doesn't describe the ladies with the same admiration with which she does the boys. Words like "throat" evoke grotesque images. I don't get the vibe that Lorde believes that these ladies are truly beautiful when she says quite bluntly that they have jewels in between their teeth.* The boys are ugly but in a good way, and the ladies are pretty but in a bad way.

Then I started thinking about the connotations of the words. Even the simplest words give some meaning: for example, she calls the ladies "the" ladies and the boys "my" boys. This implies that she is on the side of the boys and is detached from the ladies. Also, she requests to "call all the ladies out" but to "bring [the] boys in." The setting is unknown, but wherever this takes place, she wants the ladies to leave and be replaced by the boys. One last obvious thing that perhaps should have been said first: the words with which Lorde references the demographics of people she is describing carry a clue. Lorde picks the word "ladies" to describe the first group, which has a formal connotation attached to it, as opposed to "girls" or even "women." Likewise, "boys" has the opposite--a quite casual meaning in comparison to "men," "lads" or "gentlemen."

What I have gathered so far is that she belongs to the group of boys who aren't pretty on the outside but are on the inside, and repudiates the idea of the ladies who may be beautiful on the outside but are bad on the inside. I don't know what the entire song's purpose is exactly, but I am one verse closer to finding it.

*This is when we assume that she means teeth as in the teeth in the mouth, but this is just one definition of teeth: the other is a projecting pointy object on an instrument such as a tool or a comb. This could very well have a double meaning, as Lorde references weapons and other morbid ideas in her writing (Glory and Gore is a perfect example). So naturally Lorde could have meant that the ladies have instruments of battle that are sugar-coated with "jewels." Or one could take a step further and say that these teeth and jewels are a metaphor for their corruption that is masked by beauty. They are beautiful on the outside but evil on the inside.