Sparty

Sparty, an MD wanna B who likes to use his initials 'MDS' as a vague allusion to his brief stint as a med-school dropout, is a self-proclaimed 'professor' of Anatomy and Physiology at Wayne State University. In reality, he has fewer credentials to teach the class than the majority of the students taking it, but he was blessed with an overconfidence that makes even the dean cower away from the idea of questioning his authority.

From day one, I knew that having Sparty as a teacher was going to be a much different experience from the classical university learning situations I was accustomed to. When explaining a concept, he likes to contradict facts at random to keep us on our toes. After one student expressed concern over this method, Sparty clearly justified himself by explaining that he 'said it right at least as many times as he said it wrong'. All we have to do is Wikipedia it to figure out what he really meant.

Except one day, Wikipedia was down. There was a worldwide blackout to prove how important Wikipedia really was, and, needless to say, it worked. I may be paying over two thousand dollars to be hassled bi-weekly by Sparty, but everything I had to know was on the internet. When it was shut off, and Sparty claimed it was absolutley ridiculous that cytosol was occasionally used interchangably with the word cytoplasm, I felt compelled to consult him because the internet didn't have my back. And I had been using these two terms interchangeably since middle school. I ran up to the front after lecture, and was second in line. The girl who was first in line was fumbling through her notes, so I asked Sparty if I could ask him a quick question. "No, actually, she was in line first," he said, with a look on his face like I had just suggested killing a kitten. We both looked at her, and she, like a deer caught in the headlights, insisted that I ask my question. "OK, how quick is your question?" he asked me skeptically. Little did I know Wikipedia would be up and running the next day, or I would have walked away right then.

I had hoped I would never have to communicate with Sparty in person ever again. But that was wishful thinking. A few weeks later, Sparty announced we would have a quiz to a half-filled lecture hall, five minutes before lecture began. When I came into class on time, I would not have known there was a quiz except that my sister told me there was. (Note: A quiz consists of writing your name and ID number on a blank scantron. Nothing else.) With shaky hands, I frantically searched for my scantron form and ID in my backpack. By the time I had the thing filled out, Sparty was starting to verbally abuse the people who were turning in their quizzes for being 'late'. Based on a previous situation where Sparty derailed a student who was late for attempting to sit in the front half of the lecture hall, I decided to wait to turn it in until after class. But I had a gut feeling this would be a problem.

Again, I found myself running to the front of the lecture with my quiz and a written up challenge to what I thought was a faulty exam question. Someone beat me there. He was turning in a quiz late too. Sparty smelled trouble. "Why are you turning that in late?" he demanded. The student gave hims some type of reasonable response, but Sparty wasn't having any of it until he saw the mess of papers at his feet. "OK, if you arrange these papers into a nice neat pile, I will let you turn in your exam." The kid instantly dropped to his hands and knees and began sweeping the mess up with his hands. Then he turned to me, and saw the quiz in my hand. "Why didn't you turn YOURS in??!" he asked, the annoyance in his tone audibly escalating. "I didn't want to walk in front of you" I said. "I find that hard to believe" he said, and soon he was surrounded by a crowd of kids trying to turn in their quizzes. "OK, THAT'S IT. THERE ARE JUST TOO MANY OF YOU. I AM NOT ACCEPTING ANY MORE QUIZZES!" He was now just standing there watching the kid on his hands and knees like a hawk, making sure no one slipped their quiz in. I was just standing there watching my grade slip from an A to a B for no reason.

I was very mad, but I had my exam question to challenge so I stood my ground. Sparty was waiting for the quizzes to be cleaned up before he took any questions, and this process was taking an awkwardly long time. So I just stared right into his eyes to pass the time. He avoided my gaze. I took in a deep breath trying to regain my inner peace when he finally looked at me. "I can tell you are getting frustrated," he said, and I nodded, smiling. For once, we understood each other. "If you are so frustrated, maybe I cant answer your question. Maybe you should just leave."

I didn't just leave, but I wish I could have. I stood my ground and waited for him to accept my challenge, never breaking eye contact with that indifferent gaze.

WSU

There is one (and only one) thing that I love about Wayne State University: the graffiti. Specifically, the graffiti etched, paint-penned, sharpied, and penciled all over the inside stalls of the girls bathrooms. Where you might expect obscenities, ridicule, and just plain stupid stuff, at Wayne you find inspiration. Everything I have ever read on a stall on campus has been uplifting, hopeful, encouraging. One common tag, done in bubbly letters with a silver sharpie, reads "It Gets Better" with a little heart next to it. Sometimes people will affirm these statements or even add a bit to them, like "it really does, I promise!" and "you are amazing!" At first, I thought all of the inspiration was sort of over-done. It seemed to me that these young humanists were being dramatic. How tough could their lives really be?

As the weeks wore on, this attitude began to shift. With each passing day, things got harder. I started to mix up my vectors in physics and confuse bits of the skull in anatomy. I was slipping behind, even though I spent (nearly) every moment studying or dreaming about what I had studied. Despite my efforts, I was faced with the threat of failure, something that I rarely have the guts to challenge myself to come anywhere near.

I was reading the graffiti with less critique every day. After reading, I would think to myself, that's nice! in an "I'm not so sure if I am being sarcastic or genuine" sort of way. I was beginning to relate to the writers. On one particularly miserable day, I found myself hoping the silver-pen girl was telling the truth.

Sure, there are some downsides to going to school here. But there is a sort of solidarity that emanates from the bathroom stalls as people go in, downtrodden, and come out knowing that they are not alone in their struggle, and that someone out there cares enough to tell them so.

Digging deep

Yesterday, I found myself in a headfirst dive position at the bottom of the 'Five for a Dollar' book bin at the Salvation Army. Half of my body was submerged in the bin, my feet had left the ground, and ma was holding back an avalanche of books that would surely suffocate me or knock me out if she were to let go. We had both broken a sweat several minutes before. My arms were covered in bits of torn up book covers, and the mildewy book dust had my sinuses caught up in that uncomfortable limbo before a sneeze. I strained my left arm in an awkward twist under an old macroeconomics textbook and tried to free a promising-looking small book that was wedged under a heavy car repair manual from the 80's. I finally had the book freed; another romance novel (The Right Moves).

This all started when I was helping ma stuff six brand new used couch cushions into two shopping carts. The cushions happened to be next to the five for a dollar book bin, so I casually picked up an old orange hardback book. It was called 'To See the Word in A Grain of Sand,' and it was a collection of inspirational poems and sayings. This was just the type of thing I like to read to my dog after dinner, so I decided to get it. The next thing I new, ma was beside me, shuffling around the top layer of books. There was a copy of 'The Little Prince' in mint condition! And a Dictionary of American Slang! And a book of Polish Trivia! A field guide to tropical fruits! We were finding so many good books with so little effort. Before I knew it, the pile of books I had cradled in my arms was getting close to my chin. And ma didn't show any signs of stopping. Soon, it became apparent that she intended to dig all the way to the bottom.

Not many people have made it to the bottom of the five for a dollar bin. It is a physical and mental challenge, and should never be undertaken by the lone book-hunter. The bin itself is made of sturdy cardboard, five feet wide and about that deep, and is wrapped in burgundy paper. It probably once held watermelons at a fruit market. Now, it was full to the brim with books. The deeper you got into the bin, the more haggard the books became. Covers were missing, pages bent, some books were even torn in half. Because of our previous successes, our search was fueled by a sort of blind hope that the best book was still in there. But the reality was, the deeper we got, the worse the books became. Finds were fewer and farther between. When I came up from my last dive with 'The Right Moves' we both knew the search was coming to an end. Maybe we had to dig deep and find nothing just to realize that we had what we wanted all along.

fall buzz

Sheltered from the strong midday autumn sun, I stand under the old wooden pavillion by the bay and look at the large sunflower heads, baskets of homemade lavendar soap, pie pumpkins, spotted pears, and apples arranged on the picnic table before me. The market is humming with activity; nearby a baker trades a loaf of zuccinin bread for a pumpkin, and two figures huddle over the largest turnip I have ever seen, negociating a price.

Fishing around in the heavy bag slung over my left forearm, I come up with a ginger crisp apple. After the satisfying first chomp, the sweet juice runs down my wrist. Almost immediately, a bee is perched on my apple, hungrily lapping up the sugars in the exposed part that I bit. I do a little dance there, spinning and blowing and gently waving the apple about, hoping that this wild ride would make the bee less interested. But no, he was loving it. The more I danced, the more it seemed that he was relishing my apple.

I knew that this bee would not sting me. Even though my epi pen was over a mile away across the bay, I did not take any further measures to rid myself of this unwelcome companion.

Then I went home and thought about the situation and wrote this poem:

On the Contentedness of Bees in Autumn

in spring when there is nothing but the melting snow and the bare brown twigs and life ready to exhale

there is no flower for the bee to buzz in so he comes after me and I puff up

the summer makes them greedy with blooms to fight over and nests to gaurd and I tend to my own business

they sting me anyway for being and i puff up

summer days get shorter and blackberries ripen and i gather heavy friuts and the branches bounce back and there are the bees consumed in their work

this time i am stung only by thorns

finally autumn comes and i bite into that first crispy apple and juice runs down my wrist and my hands are sticky and sweet and bees come wildly swarming around me like a halo

and we are happily drunk with the joy of autumn together

My Crazyass Badass Aunt

"You know what really burns my ass?" This is one of the common curveballs thrown by Aunt Patty that gets us every time. "A flame, this high." and she signals with her hand that the flame would have to be about 2 and a half feet to burn her ass. She is a badass aunt, almost 60 years old still blowing through the country on a Harley, and a crazy-ass aunt who keeps things loud and wild wherever she goes. You never know what is going to be said or done when Aunt Patty is in the room, so you have to be ready for anything. Sometimes ridiculous, sometimes obscene, refreshingly random, and always genuine, Aunt Patty never passes up a chance to take a flame to the volatile.

Like the time David was sick, for example. This sickness of Davids could have passed like all of the others, him watching TV quietly and peacefully until he recovered. But everyone was busy with the preparations for Grandma Mancini's funeral, God rest her soul, and none of us could care for Davie. Aunt Patty had, however, just arrived and gracefully offered to babysit david (a high-school senior at this point). Aunt Laura had just delivered a forty sanwich tray of Mr. Pita to feed the funeral goers. As Aunt Patty was putting it into the fridge, the thin plastic tray carrying the mountain of pita rolls collapsed. The sanwiches went flying, splattering tomatoes and lettuce all over the floor. This did not phase her. "David, get me a mop and bucket" she said. David fetched her the mop and bucket. After mopping it up, she plunges five gallons of water into the sink with a drain of about 2" diameter. SHIT. water is everywhere. David didnt know what to do, he thinks she said dont tell your ma (nothing is a secret in this fambily). He dried up the cleaning job with a few large bath towels. It wasnt all hard for Davie, though. She made him about 7 oranges worth of hand squeezed orange juice, so he got better quite quickly.

Aunt Patty taught us to dance, I remember doing the mashed potato with her in the kitchen on Christmas. And I remember her saying that if someone had a messy room, they were interesting and probably quite intelligent. When she said that, I ran up to my room to scatter things around and ruffle up the bed I had made hours before. When I came back downstairs, I told her my room was pretty messy, would she like to come see. Then she told me that she meant messy as in a clutter of many differnt things that meant you were interested in everything and too busy to clean up before moving to the next thing. This explaination was the seed to the the clutter-philosophy I live by to this day.

Last year she and Uncle Barry came to the small town of Grayling, Michigan where I was living at the time. I had been waiting for them to arrive when I recieved a message on my phone from my aunt, proclaiming that they had arrived in Grayling. I called the number back and to my surprise, found myself talking to the waitstaff at BigBoys. "I am looking for my aunt," I say "I think she just called from your phone." The waitress was a bit confused for a minute and then remembered "Oh, does your aunt drive a motorcycle?" Hell, yeah. "She's in the parking lot."

Facebook has now made it possible to hear from Aunt Patty on a regular basis, and hear what is on her mind, whenever I want to. Her status updates are quite possibly my favorite quotes on the web, for some reason they always sound like poems to me:

"it is kind of strange, after hearing about my moms friend passing, I heard one of my dads best friends passed also... they are all sitting around with coffee cake and coffee, probably bitching about something"-PV

"this morning I found one of those chocolates wrapped in gold foil in my purse, and I have NO idea how it got there!"-PV

The stories are endless. Everyone who knows her has them. I will never tire of hearing them, and I look forward to the stories to come.

Happy birthday Aunt Patty. I know I have been telling you this every year on your birthday, but in the past, dad told me to say this. Now I can say, independently and for certain, that you really are older than most of the trees in our backyard. And we have a lot of shade back there.

Selected Poems

Ma took advantage of my presence this weekend and told me to sort through my junk. Amongst the birthday cards and photographs and school papers, I came across a few old poems, from the year that JD and I slammed almost every day.

Friends
I met a scraggly goose yesterday
it asked to be my friend
I tucked it up under my arm
and we were together until the end.
8-9-08

The old sock
I gave you my old sock
to wipe away the tears
to get over the year

You dabbed your nose
and said "dear friend
is this really the end?"
I brought you tea
I brought you soup
again another verbal loop
dear friend
dear friend
can this really be
the end
8-2-08

Superman
It's time to go
but I wanna move slow
I want to drag this moment on

I'll take a double scoop of superman
To the shore of Lake Michigan
Watch the blue green waves crash wildly
This is where I want to be

But it won't last because
Superman melts so damn fast

Poison Ivy
I'm itchy everywhere
but really I don't care
'cause the airs so sweet
and the cricket's song
won't last long
summer's
almost
gone.

Highway
concrete speed
white dash dash dash dash dash
signs read Jesus John 3:3
160 miles to cincinati
148 miles to cincinatti 150 miles to cincinatti
dash dash dash concrete concrete
I have lost my creativity the highway
has sucked it from me
i see only sterile ruins of what was once great and beautiful
but is now trash on the side of the road
void of spirit or character
Where am I? Who am I? What am I? What have we become? Why have we made life into such an inorganic jungle of cold fear desperation hollowness? Why have we destroyed what we were given and created a jail?
A mental physical jail where we have all become strangers. We are foreigners in our own land
we dont know where we came from we dont know where we are going
but we just keep going and going and going will the highway ever end? it won't because we will continue to build it faster than we can drive
faster than the fast food we eat along the way

Thaw misleadin' freeze

A winters-worth of oil flows down the alley, and I splash through rainbow puddles on my way to the beach. It is March 1st, and the snow is shining. The promise of spring has given me such energy that I ran to the top of the watershed and back, just high enough to see the south edge of Crystal Lake, the ice below looking thin and blue. I ran back down, against the wind, while the beech trees creaked and groaned in the wind and large branches that had fallen in gusts past threaten a splintered fate should I loiter too long, taking in the view of the backside of the Elberta dunes.

The elberta dune is covered in hardwood forest, naked for the winter. The hill is like the balding head of a young man or old woman, sparse hair can’t quite hide the scalp, though it strives to. So do the thin trees reveal the summer-hidden contours of the hill.

The sky glows pink and orange and purple all at once and the cedars lining the alley are finally giving off the green smells of spring.

One week later, IPR warns me of a winter storm before I am even awake, and in less than an hour I am back down to my 35 mph commute along the icy coastal highway, wipers squeaking against the wet snow. Until the next thaw, smells return to their frozen cloister in the cedar boughs.