Unless I’m actually finding more than one other person, she’s a middle-aged woman who writes fan fic for Sailor Moon, Harry Potter, Stargate, and Angel, draws pictures that look like Elf’s did in middle school, and belongs to a message board for singles who love motorcycles. Just barely enough similarity of interest to be confusing.

After finding this person who may or may not be a single person, I continued to google. The University of Hawaii at Hilo and California University of Pennsylvania (located in California, PA, of course) are “The Vulcans,” which makes their women’s sports teams the “Lady Vulcans.” I also came up with some ’80s movie called A Hazard of Hearts in which one character is called “Lady Harriet Vulcan,” which amuses me. A synopses suggests that she’s not a nice character, but the part was played by none other than Diana Rigg, so at least that’s a comfort.

In other strange and fascinating news, there was a man near me on the T last night with a bicycle and a sketchbook. It looked like he was drawing some of the people around him on the train and I got a glimpse as I passed him to get off. One figure seemed to have the strap of a messenger bag across her chest, glasses, and wisps of hair falling out of her braid. Which would be me…

I miss watching all my artist friends in action. Love you girls.

My roommate and spent the middle of March apartment hunting, under the impression that we would have to move when our lease ran out on June 1. Our current building is gradually being rennovated and sold as condos, but as it turns out, that process is going more slowly than the owners anticipated (as I understand it, real estate is a buyer’s market right now), so they’re letting us renew the lease for another year. So that means I don’t get to be rid of our stained carpets, stained countertops, and finicky shower, but I am very glad to not have to move. Besides, I love the area around us, so I’m glad not to leave just yet.

School is almost finished for the spring — my last class is next Tuesday. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Research Paper Land, Group Presentation Land, and Final Project Land, but the end is in sight. Of course, there’s still a last paper, project revisions, and poetry revisions to do in the next week, but still — light, tunnel, yeah.

Funny little story involving the denim bag with the Cherokee alphabet that my cousin made for me. It was sitting behind me in class last week when my classmate, A., looks at it and says, “Is that the Cherokee alphabet?” I say yes it is — but looking at it, the top (where it says what it is) is hidden in a fold of cloth. “How did you know?!” I ask. Apparently he studied linguistics in college. Impressive!

Baseball season has started, which is a big deal up here! I don’t pay much attention, and I still know more about what’s going on in baseball than I ever have.

While we’re on sports, the Boston Marathon was just over a week ago. The weather was dreadful, but not quite dreadful enough to call it off. I was at school all day and the marathon ends very near here, so when I went wandering around 2:30, it was just ending and there were lots of runners everywhere, each with a support group of friends and family as well as a bright orange Adidas bag and a silver mylar blanket (looks like aluminum foil for humans, invented for the space program, I think?)

Since then, it’s warmed up and finally feels like spring! It was so strange to think that school was about to end when I was still wearing my wool coat every day.

Despite being swamped, I did finally finish season 3 of Babylon 5, so I’m in great suspense about how Sheridan will get out of that pit! Triumph over a Balrog, perhaps? I just know that he does, because (refrain) I’ve seen season 5… But the series makes it pretty clear that the outcome is never the point (we know from the first episode that Londo and G’Kar die at each other’s hands); what matters is how we get there.

I highly recommend Radioland Murders, which is kind of a cross between Clue and A Prarie Home Companion. Good fun! I’m half way through The Emperor and the Assassin — it’s moving very slowly, and I’m not sure how the two plots are going to come together…with luck I’ll have a chance to finish it tomorrow night. And then I’ve saved Twelfth Night for last, so maybe Friday or later in the weekend, and then Liz will actually get her DVDs back! They’re coming, I promise.

In between, I’ve also discovered (after the clip I linked to here has made me curiouser and curiouser) that lots and lots of Doctor Who can be found on YouTube…

The big excitement of last weekend was the Loreena McKennitt concert I went to on Saturday! Fabulous…but I think it needs a post of its own!

This particular poem is a description (of sorts) of a night at Furman when I was walking to my apartment one evening, probably going home at ten from a CCLC shift. It was a foggy night and I came around the corner into a slightly wooded area around the apartments and a little way ahead of me was this girl who was practicing for a kickline or something — literally taking three steps and then throwing a leg up over her head, three steps, kick, three steps, kick.

Well, strange thing that my brain is, it comes up with the Saggy Baggy Elephant, who goes around the jungle dancing one, two, three, kick! one, two, three, kick! Is this ringing a bell to anybody?

Saggy Baggy’s nothing new — the story is copyright 1942 and has probably been in print ever since. I grew up with it…my parents grew up with it…but apparently most of my poetry class did not.

Apparently my perception of things every American child is familiar with is way off, because they weren’t getting my nursery rhyme reference either. I had titled the poem “A Misty, Moisty Evening,” playing off (do I really have to explain this?) “One Misty Moisty Morning.” It didn’t come up in discussion, but when everyone gave me the copies of the poem that they had marked up and critiqued for me there were all manner of “Moist is such a scary word, is that really what you want?” and “You’ve said misty, do you need to have moist there too?” The best anyone could do was my professor, who asked as we started to discuss the poem, whether I was playing off the title of a Steeleye Span (who the hell?) song that apparently used the lyrics of an old English song — which must be where the nursery rhyme came from in the first place.

Really, people! What happened to Mother Goose? Do my poems suddenly require footnotes? I’m not T.S. Eliot, damn it, and this isn’t The Waste Land! Will somebody tell me that this roomful of poets was an anomaly?

…

I would like to give the class the credit they deserve, though. They were really helpful with the last poem I turned in and, despite the above, I got a lot of useful feedback last night, too. But I’m a little worried. I know that I come up with really obscure references sometimes, but I thought I had a better perception of what is and is not obscure.

And while I’m speaking of the poetry class, the classmate who came out and said “I’m glad someone else read The Saggy Baggy Elephant,” is also my bag story #5. I had it on the table as I was putting my coat on a week or two ago and when he asked, he got the full story because he’s a nice guy.

Calmer now and looking at the lyrics to the Steeleye Span song — they’re the same as the Schooner Fare version I’ve known for a long time (It was my brother B’s favorite song when he was very little, which was cute). It fits into Schooner Fare’s repetoire — they’re folk singers. But how do you suppose a British rock band does it? Curious. Of course, one of Simon and Garfunkel’s big hits was “Scarborough Fair,” so maybe it’s not so hard to imagine.

Two more incidents, bringing me up to a total of four:

#3. Last December, on the street, leaving school. A guy right behind me gets my attention — he’s probably from my college; he fits the profile — and asks about the bag. I start to babble, but he cuts me off. “Wait,” he says. “I don’t understand.” I am flustered and want to get home. “It’s about honeycombs,” I say.

#4. This afternoon in a Starbucks near school. A well-dressed middle-aged business man. I’m starting to have a spiel and I rattle it off as my friend stands by, bemused. Businessman seems honestly curious and interested and is very polite with an acute sense of how strange it is to stop me as I walk by, on my way out with my “wild orange herbal tea” (quite nice, by the way).

All that is a long introduction to say that the question has finally been asked — and answered — twice in a week and a half.

The first time was in the elevator last week. Having a college in downtown Boston means that all our buildings are at least ten stories high, so elevators are a major commodity and there is a huge rush on them right before classes start. I was trying to get up to the lucky 13th floor for work as 2:00 classes were starting, but by the time we got up to the 9th floor or so, it had emptied out to me and a man who is probably a professor. “I can’t help noticing your bag,” he said. “Can I ask what it means?”

Well, the sad truth is that, as usual, I’m not nearly as quick and witty as I might like. I think I stammered something about how it comes from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and how random it is and (somehow remembering that the question was what it meant), that I thought it had something to do intuitively know how to do something. Ding! Thirteenth floor.

This afternoon, I was on the escalator coming up from the subway when a businessman coming up from behind me asked what “as bees, geometry” meant.
“It has to do with intuitively knowing how to do something,” I said.
He caught right on. “So you know how to make the little hexagonal honeycombs intuitively?”
“Right,” I said, adding, “It’s slightly metaphorical.”
“I like it,” he said as we parted ways.
So yay. Approval from Random Escalator Guy.

Which at least was better than the “what’s up with my sweaters” phenomena that’s starting to worry me.

Incident number one was around Thanksgiving and I was wearing a purple and black sweater that I’ve had for ever and ever — it was a hand-me-down from my cousins and I know for sure that I was wearing it in middle school. I adore this sweater.

So it was late November and reasonably warm, because I wasn’t wearing a jacket, just the sweater. And I was literally just walking down the street when I pass a nice, normal, nondescript looking man. Our eyes meet for a split second and the words out of his mouth are not “Hi,” but “Nice sweater.”

Perhaps for that one my reaction should not be “What’s wrong with it? Eek!” but it is…

Incident number two was last night, near school, and involved this sweater. I was waiting for the crosswalk light when I realized that a random guy to my left was looking at me. When I noticed him, he said, “You’re wearing a Cosby sweater.”

What the hell? Do you mean that my sweater is twenty years out of date and would look better on a man my father’s age? Granted I’ve had this one a while too — junior year of high school, maybe, and it was new! But that’s not even the 90’s, much less the 80’s. The hell?

Since I like Bill Cosby and I love this sweater, I just said “I’m glad you like it,” and crossed the street.

Coming shortly: Last Sunday’s Harry Potter Experience

Classes ended Wednesday, and two of my four classes are completely finished. Since I was auditing the Shakespeare class, I don’t have to take the final — auditing is the best thing ever, I get to have all the fun, but all I have to do is keep up with the reading, no tests, no papers. I’m also done with the voice class I was in this term: we had a brief written final on Wednesday and I did my final evaluation of all the songs I’d been working on later that morning. The only things left now are to revise stories for my fiction class and turn in my portfolio on Saturday, and to take part three of my medieval history test on Monday. My prof is leaving for Turkey as soon as he turns in grades, so he wants to get them done quickly! We already did the two essay sections on the last two days of class, and now he’s just throwing the short answer/ multiple choice??? at us on Monday. Then I sit on my hands and pack for the rest of the week; graduation is Saturday the 3rd.

Tonight was the end of year party for the CCLC staff — Jane had us over and we brought things for tacos, which was yummy. Jean presented all the superlatives we’d come up with; I am “Most likely to face varying levels of success in my attempts to create a living dragon. Those poor bats and lizards…” Sounds a bit like Carmen’s IB senior superlative, tee hee! I was a bum and forgot to print off Jean’s; must remember to do so tomorrow. Better late than never? Eep.

The senior gifts that Jean and Jane came up with are really cool — they have ordered each of us a black messenger bag with random-yet-appropriate mottos on them, mostly Latin ones with English translations, though Chris’s is a Shakespeare quote from Julius Caesar. Mine — can you guess? — is tonight’s title line, ut apes, geometriam. “As bees, geometry.”

Confused? This might help; it’s from a Victor Hugo novel called The Hunchback of Notre Dame. You might have heard of it.
“I possess philosophy by instinct, by nature, ut apes geometriam.”

Having a verb helps, doesn’t it? But see, Jen, it does refer to hexagonal-shaped honeycombs! At least, that’s the link between bees and geometry. There also seems to be an implication about some quality I innately possess, so I’m going to make the leap and consider it a compliment. It also appeals to my appreciation of things interdisciplinary: no subject can exist in isolation. Geometry can be found in the natural world and music is mathematical. Etcetera, a thousand times etcetera.

Hell, if nothing else, I’m going to enjoy tossing off obtuse explanations about why I carry a bag with some Latin quip about bees and geometry. Ha! And I think Jane and Jean were counting on that, too.