Things Jelani and I Talk About

A few months ago, Rebecca Makkai gave a reading on campus as part of the English department's Visiting Writer Series. The selections she read to us were very good, and her responses during the Q&A session were really interesting (her characters were so thoroughly three dimensional, as it seemed from the snippets she read to us, and good character development is something I really admire).

As usual during these sorts of events, I sat with my good friend, Jelani*. Every once and awhile, he will lean over to tell me something about whatever it is we're watching or listening to, or something he finds interesting. During Rebecca Makkai's reading, Jelani made a noise of recognition. I looked at him, curious. He paused, and I offered my notebook to him.**

Humbert is the name of the, uh, main character in Lolita, he wrote along the long side of the page.

Ah. Well. I responded. A minute or so went by, and then I added, I need to read that book. I haven't yet. 

make sure it's the annotated version. the footnotes really enhance the experience.

In a good way or bad way?

very very good. you will need the novel in your right hand, a dictionary in your left in order to make it through that book, btw

Coolbeans. Noted. Will do. 

it's perversely one of the best books ever written. 

Then, later, when Makkai confirmed that she slipped many literary allusions, including Humber from Lolita, in to her book, The Borrower, I gave him a nudge, and pushed my notebook over toward him.

Yay you! 


*He leaves bits of brilliance and intellectualism on The Hype Weekly, and bleeds genius and, on occasion, whimsy, on his personal blog. I also owe him about a billion Poetry Nights at Auntie Mae's. I should probably get on that.

**We have had a lot of conversations over the years, and while most are verbal, there have been a few that have taken place on paper.

Journaling Through Time

My sophomore English teacher required us to journal at the beginning of nearly every class period. He'd write a question in the corner of the marker board, and we'd write for five minutes exactly. The question must be answered, but we were allowed to talk about other things, if we so wished.

When I was home over the weekend, I came across the very Blue Books I'd written in for that semester and a half. Heidi and I took turns reading them before dinner yesterday. 

Me (when she picked up the other off my lap): You do know you are reading my personal, private journal that I wrote in class when I was fifteen? The one that only I (and Mr. Cook) know the contents of? 

Heidi: Yes. 

Heidi (later, jokingly): EW. You are rude: "My sister keeps telling me that she's planning something special for my b-day, but I figure that if she is, she'll probably forget. She does things like that." Well, now I know what you think of me. 

Reading the journals made me embarrassed not only for myself, but for my English teacher, who, I'm sure, had to read many of these hormone-ridden sob-fests over the years. (I'm sorry, Mr. Cook. I wish I'd written something more philosophical and interesting for you to read.) But mostly, I was intrigued, because I learned some important things. 

1. I repeatedly mentioned how I wished everyone would understand that my writing wasn't to gain vengeance on my classmates. (I wonder if I was paranoid.)
2. I tried (and failed) writing HP fanfic at 15. 
3. For the first chunk of journal, I mention the first two HP movies, but never by name. I can bet you fifty bucks that everyone (including my teacher) knew exactly what they were. 
4. There is a lot of this: "...THAT I AM NORMAL!! Well, kind of...maybe. I don't know" and this: "I can be an okay person if people would give me the time of day. Oh, and another reason I enjoy writing is because Heather has no social life, so she spends her time making up fantasy social lives so that she doesn't go insane with boredom." This is some of the most honest bits of the journal; I remember feeling this way every day. 
5. Above everything else, what I valued most in others (and prayed, in turn, others would value in me) was a good heart and good mind as opposed to a pretty face and hot bod. 
6. I talk a LOT about Prisoner of Azkaban movie (which, at the time, was to come out after that school year ended), Daniel Radcliffe, and Return of the King. 
7. The above, I realized, was because I needed a distraction to everything that was happening that year. And that year, truly, was a nightmare. I kept a lot of my feelings to myself. My emotions (and the events that affected them) were not safe in those blue booklets. 
8. As soon as my grandmother passed away that year, the entries spent a lot of time agonizing about how unfair life was. Her passing shattered everything. 
9. I was lonely. It becomes more evident as the journal progresses toward my 16th birthday, the age my parents told me I was allowed to begin dating. In relation to that, I was naive enough to think that there would be people lined up, waiting to date me. I don't think the loneliness was limited to romance, however. I mention my sister and my best friend, but I don't mention any of the other people I knew I hung out with in school. 

Out of curiosity, I pulled out the diary I kept for most of that year, just to compare the two. My real, private diary is a little more honest, but I know I kept things from it, too. The real diary contains better writing (at the beginning, before the entries become distracted with talk about crushes and movie stars). But there are correlations. Small ones, at that, but they're there. 

"God, I was such a drama queen," I declared as soon as I finished reading both booklets. Dad chuckled a little, and five minutes later, Mom let us know that dinner was ready.

A drama queen, yes. And yet the things I want to respond with: You will change your opinion of Buffy, though you technically won't see much more of the show than you have at this point. You will still be afraid of death, though you will fervently admire Emily Dickinson's view on the subject. Wait till you see DH parts 1 and 2 (and you will still love the HP books like there's no tomorrow, appreciating it more and more as you get older, for many reasons). For goodness sake, read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. And you will certainly meet some beautiful, wonderful human beings who love you, and whom you will love in return; these people will stick themselves to you like glue. 

And so on. There are, of course, a few other things I'd add, but I would probably keep them to myself. Because I have to learn things, and grow.