My thighs and back are sore, and I'm walking around looking (and sounding) like an elderly woman.Without notice, last night I decided (while blasting Lil Wayne on my way back from a Mystery Mansion escapade in Delaware at a historical mansion, during which I failed to guess the killer) that I wanted to go out. I called my sister, my usual partner in crime, and by the time I made it to Jersey I knew what I was going to wear and where we were going. I hadn't been out in a while, and I hadn't danced in a while, but when I got there it was like riding a bicycle. That's a silly idiom isn't it? Never quite understand why we say some of the things we do. Rest assured foreign students don't understand either. But I digress. What I mean is that it was so easy to relax, to dance my nicely shaped behind (hey..so I've been told...) off, to smile and enjoy myself that I began to wonder why I didn't do this more often. Then I remembered school. In any case, my thighs and back are sore.

What I've also determined after going out last night is that my flirting skills involve quite a bit of sarcastic repartee. There are so many ways to bat ones eyelashes at a man, metaphorically and literally, and I'm most certainly not a literal eyelash batter, which is mostly due to the fact that my eyelashes seem unusually short, and that they're typically behind my glasses, which are undoubtedly sexy glasses, but which shield my eyes and which prevent easy access to a view of my eyelashes. And that was a really long sentence. But I'm digressing again. As a result of this lack of literal eyelash batting, I've acquired a skill for what many would call witty banter. It's almost like the equivalent of grade school boys shoving and pushing innocent little girls because deep down they like them (if, by the way, you've seen He's Just Not That Into You you'd probably agree that that belief is the most ridiculous load of...something that's been circulating for a while). 

I, in effect, am a grade school boy, however (if we're going ahead with that illustration). If I make fun of your jacket I probably think you look cute in it. Unless, of course, your jacket showcases sequins and little gemstones, the sort one finds in a bedazzler set. Then it's more likely that I'm just making fun of you. If I make fun of the way you laugh chances are I think your laughter is rather pleasant. Unless, of course, you snort. Well, actually that could be slightly cute too. You get the picture. All in all, a successful flirty encounter for me involves some light mockery and the occasional comic book/cartoon reference. Throw in some knowledge of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or, I don't know, Grey's Anatomy, and I might ask you to marry me.

We could head to Vegas. I promise not to laugh at you when you say "I do".

There's something about spending the entire day alone at home with no particular schedule to speak of that can make a person exceptionally aware of...everything. Like the quiet, and then the intermittent base booming through the walls courtesy of the next door neighbor's adult son, an avid fan of thrasher-murder-people's-eardrums sort of music. And the drowsiness I feel, despite having made a valiant attempt at getting to bed before 4am and making it at 2am (affording me a whopping 7 hours of sleep). The slight despair at having to read or reread some of the list of books/plays/poems in preparation for retaking a portion of my exam, despite not quite knowing when the do over is supposed  to happen. And the odd way the light filters into a room, the way it mingles with the memories of naptime dreams.

Even being outside, while in my car trying to decide whether I wanted ice-cream, a bottle of dessert wine or some decadent chocolate cake...or all three, brought me cause to think. I set out, mistaking a tall whitish street lamp for the moon, scowling without realizing it as I drove. As I drove though, I noticed the real moon, pale and beautiful. And reproaching. It occurred to me then. I was being sullen. For no good reason.

Eventually I got an ice-cream cone from Baskin Robbins, coffee flavored with a cake cone (the only way to eat ice-cream, mind you), mindless of ruining my appetite. I am learning to be content. I am back home again for a few months, I'm settling in and learning to be content. I am in transition, and it feels sort of good.

Exceptional really.

Students/tutees are always asking me how old I am. Maybe I should start telling people I'm a child prodigy and that I'm only 16.

Whenever I step foot into someone's office or into someone's home for the first time I begin to formulate who they are as a person. We present ourselves in various ways in person and otherwise, but what we display in the places we spend copious amounts of time is always revelatory (is that a word? I didn't just make that up did I?) I've spent the last three days sleeping on the couch of a friend of mine to avoid driving back and forth between New Jersey and Delaware for work for the next week, and while she's been away at work I've been learning a little about her. I know that just makes it sound like I've been rifling through her underwear drawer, but truthfully all I really have to do is walk around and look at the things she's chosen to use to represent herself.

There is, for instance, a large stuffed orange M&M sitting on her love seat, and the dusty keyboard sitting prominently in one corner of her living room with the desk chair on wheels. On one wall there is a framed poster of van Gogh's Starry Night (a poster I had in college, and which is now probably lost somewhere in a box among my Buffy the Vampire Slayer posters and Harry Potter calendars). On another, a painting boasting a beach framed by coconut trees. A black lacquered Jamaican shaped clock ticks away in a far corner, and on an end table are miniature Eiffel towers, bells and plush toys with the names of a variety of countries and cities. Her refrigerator door is littered with pictures of people I've never met, and pictures of herself dancing and smiling. Her bookshelf sits in a corner, and books like Austen's Pride and Prejudice and The Art of Mingling share space with massive photo books and frames. I didn't go into her master bedroom, but I imagine some of the most telling things are in there, the things she probably overlooks because she sees them every day, touches them and thinks nothing about what they mean. They're all part of her story.

A part of me always wondered why people stared so when they came into my apartment, why my magazines seemed so interesting and why anyone cared to see what my kitchen looked like. I wonder what they thought while looking at some of the books on my shelves, Anansi Boys, Epic of Gilgamesh, The Ramayana, Beowulf, Alice in Wonderland, Lord Deverill's Heir ( a rousing and entertaining romance novel involving a man named Lord Deverill...and his heir). My immediate family members were on my walls, and under my coffee table was a very large stack of Elle, Essence and Lucky magazines. Bits and pieces of me.

I like mythical creatures. My dreams are littered with them. I like some more than others, however. I plan on getting a nifty dragon tattoo on my back once I graduate in May (I've held off on getting it until I have a very special occasion to commemorate).   I like dragons because they represent so many different things to so many different cultures, but mostly I think they represent the possibilities of imagination.

I also have a thing for wolves. Not entirely certain why, and it is evolving as time goes on. I had a dream once, one the very vivid ones where it's like I'm somewhere else, but very conscious. This is what I wrote because of that dream. It was written a while ago, and I may have posted it to xanga before (if I have and you've already read it...err..hopefully you liked it. If not, I suppose you'll have to read it anyway). Enjoy

Canines and Felines...

The thing about having nine lives is that you have to know how to use them. Iodine lay on his side, his neck at an odd angle. The blood from the large gash in his neck had clotted and turned cold. His large amber eyes were open and motionless. He had been dead for at least two hours, and his legs and tail were now stiff. He lay in the middle of a forest long after the sun set. Now a pale half moon shone through the leaves of the trees. As he lay he thought about those trees.

They rustled and whispered in their secret ways. They told each other the latest news, bounced gossip around like a beach ball at a graduation. "Sssilver hasss been here," they rustled. "Wassss in a hurry. Sssshouldn't get in hissss way. Cat got in the way and look at him now..." They twisted and turned, branches creaking and groaning as though they were trying to get a better look at the large feline sprawled beneath them. Iodine frowned inwardly while his body lay still. What a predicament, what a great night to be forgetful, said the voice in his head. His mind was awake and his brain worked furiously to remember how to get to his other lives. He had only died twice before, once when he had drowned in a river as a kitten (he had been coached back to life by his mother), and again when he was little more than a teenager after a particularly stupid dare by his then good friend Mervyn, a hyena with a bad sense of humor. Both experiences were so far removed from Iodine's memory that he no longer recalled the steps to make himself un-dead.

Silver was an extremely large wolf whose fur shone with a sort of iridescent silverish color. Rumor had it that he was of mixed breed, a wolf with ancient ancestors whose claws and fangs were so long they scared off much larger predators upon sight. They say his eyes, the color of liquid metal, glow like the full moon when he is moved to anger. Iodine didn't think his eyes glowed at all. In fact, he thought, his eyes weren't so much silver as a watery gray. Furthermore, his fur was more white than silver. He wouldn't be surprised if the wolf was simply old. Truthfully, no one knew exactly when Silver was born or even where he came from before he began trolling this forest.

Iodine had been looking for his dinner earlier that evening when he'd heard Silver's approach. The wolf was running quickly and barely made any noise at all but Iodine, being the cat that he was, had heard him coming long before he saw him, teeth bared and silver-white fur flying. He knew him immediately from all the descriptions he'd heard, and was more than mildly curious. Iodine stepped into the way of the oncoming wolf and intended to ask him where the fire was. He opened his mouth to speak, but a yowl of pain escaped instead. Silver had swerved slightly to the left of Iodine and, without slowing, twisted his head to tear a large part of Iodine’s flesh away from his neck. He kept running as Iodine fell, his momentum unaltered.

So there lay Iodine, unmoving hours after his blood had left him in large spurts. A small rodent was crawling over his tail now, emboldened by the fact that the large cat seemed unable to move and strike. Iodine growled in the depths of his head, his frustration at his situation mounting. "Perhaps I'll lie here forever then," he thought, and could almost see his decaying body as the flesh fell off of it. "Perhaps my nine lives were all a lie. Maybe I've only got three." He would have whimpered then, had there been air left in his lungs. He hadn't done anything particularly spectacular with any of his lives just yet, and had taken it for granted that he'd have time to do so later on. He thought bitterly of all the things he'd have liked to have done, the places he still wanted very much to see. He lamented those hours he spent under the shadows of trees, lazily flicking his tail as he dozed. He cursed his inability to finish those things he started. He wished, without any shadow of hope, that he could get a second chance to be able to leave some mark on the world.

His chest swelled just then, and a pain like a small fire erupted where his heart was. His throat burned, particularly in the spot where Silver's fangs had been a few hours earlier. There was a roaring in his ears, and his large yellow eyes moistened and teared up. Then suddenly, slowly, Iodine started to move his tail...

The last time I cried in my car for academic reasons I had just transferred from the Linguistics department. I knew that, despite my interest in languages, Linguistics graduate study was not for me. So I applied mid year to another department and was blessed to get in. But that first semester was rough. I'm an intelligent person. I know that. Still. after a few classes that semester my confidence in my intelligence wavered. I felt like the work I was doing was sub-par. I felt stupid. Every day for a while (maybe a two to four week period) I would leave class utterly exhausted mentally. I would get into my car, shut the door and cry. There were deep sobs of woe, complete with dripping hot, wet tears. I had no shame. I felt horrible. Then I got over it, regained my confidence. Knew myself better.

Today, I got into my car again and cried for the first time in two years. The tears blocked my vision as I drove to work, and my sobs filled the silence of the car. I didn't care. I had no shame. I found out today that I didn't do very well on the second half of my Master's exam (which I had suspected directly after taking the thing). It's a comprehensive exam that took 6 hours. After the first half I felt good (I passed that part), but by the second half I was tired and nervous and really just wanted it all to end. I left doubting how well I did. For good reason apparently.

I'm so disappointed. I have another chance to take it clearly, before getting my degree (hopefully!) in May. I just had/have so many things on my mind. So much to do. I'm so disappointed and so very sad, but I know that I have another opportunity, and that I am inordinately blessed. Things always tend to work out in my favor.

Eventually I dried my tears, got out of my car and walked to work. No more tears.

I slipped in and out of my dreams last night. I usually do; there's always a point when I realize that the things I am seeing and touching and feeling exist somewhere else than the place I wake up to. But I've never thought that they weren't real. Things happen in my dreams that are as real wherever they take place as the things that occur when I am "awake".  I've written stories based on my dreams, and to be perfectly honest I'm not convinced that they were just images, just the imagination of my brain. There are, afterall, things about the world we don't understand. We are not simply flesh and bone.

I slipped in and out of my dreams last night, where I met an old love of mine. It wasn't a memory because he didn't look the same. In my dream he looked older, taller, broader. He looked much more like a man, much different than the person with boyish features playing about his face. Different than I remember. I met him in my dream while walking uphill. He was walking downhill, and when he saw me he smiled widely and moved closer to me. My heart felt light. Our relationship had not exactly ended on the best of terms. He was wearing a yellow sweater and a pair of black glasses. I had seen him wear neither during my waking hours, years ago. His hair was a bit longer and curlier, darker even than I remember. We got close and he was still smiling that smile I remember. The smile hadn't changed. He was talking now and I could hear him say "I was looking for you!" He hugged me tight. I smiled. He was looking for me. I wasn't forgotten. I'm certain I woke up then, slipped away from him for a few minutes, minutes where I considered what had just happened. Then I slipped back and the setting was different and I knew things had changed. We weren't alone anymore, and something was wrong. The dream ended with me running away from his house through the woods at night, and it felt different than when I first met him in the yellow sweater with that big smile. When he touched me. This part was a dream certainly. Maybe a nightmare, but that first part was...different. We had met again, said we were sorry without words. Touched.

I wonder what really happens when we dream...

He smelled kinda nice as he walked by  and sat in the chair next to me. Without thinking about it, I told him so. Kevin, my fellow tutor and likable pot head, chuckled as he walked by and said "She likes you man. She wants to date you." My Saudi Arabian student either hadn't heard him or had ignored his comment. He (the Saudi Arabian student, not the likable pot head) was sort of cute, in a young European-Saudi-Arabian-Fabio kind of way. He often tossed his long, dark hair out of his face, and his brown eyes were framed by long, dark eyelashes. He had a mouth full of very straight, very white teeth. And he knew he was attractive. He looked at me with those brown eyes as he faltered over his grammar homework, pencil hovering, looked at me as if to say "Come on woman, look at me. I am beautiful. This English grammar is silliness, and I am wanting the answer. You must give, yes?" I'd chuckle, and cajole him into using his pretty head to think. "Remember, the format is a form of the verb "go" + verb/ing right? So what do people do in sailboats?" He looked down and thought, and hemmed and hawed and finally, in English tinged with his Saudi Arabian accent he said "Go sailing?" I smiled. "Very good I said", and he smiled a self-congratulatory smile. And for a second I was transfixed, by the smile, by the smell (what was that smell?!) and I thought 'If only you weren't born in 1990...', shuddered, shook it off and went on about the business of tutoring.

I cannot date younger men. My baby cousin, who is now not so much a baby as a very tall and handsome nineteen year old man but who I will continue to refer to as my baby cousin because I remember when he was four and couldn't say the word sheep correctly, was born in the same year as my tutee. Something about that is slightly icky. But that's not all. I think  I sometimes hesitate to consider dating a man when I find out that he is my age or even a little younger. One of my sister's male friends recently hit on me.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have dated him anyway (I mean, no hard feelings or anything), but then I facebook stalked him...er...found out that he was born in 1985 it was pretty much a wrap.

I know I'm not all that old. I mean, 25 isn't like the 50 year old spinster down the street with 6 cats and a library full of deliciously old and well read books. Still, and no offense men, but it takes a minute for a man's maturity level to catch up to his age. I don't want to stereotype, and I know that there are tons of men (and women) who are wise beyond their age, and that age ain't nothing but a number (and a number of other trite statements regarding the nature of age) but sometimes you want someone who doesn't still chuckle at the word penis. Ok...fine I still chuckle at the word penis, but it's a funny word. All I'm saying is, there's a difference between someone in his early twenties and someone who has passed the ripe (not old) age of thirty. I've got to admit it. I have a thing for old men.

At first I thought it was just a thing for old-er men. My ex was 3 years my elder, and when I met him I'd constantly make fun of him for robbing the cradle. I was 19. 22 seemed a tad old then. When I was in middle school I has a serious crush on my Math teacher, and I'm pretty sure he was old enough to be my father. Fast forward to high school when I discovered Mel Gibson (though, admittedly I'd seen him during his younger years in Mad Max and Lethal Weapon 1 and 2) and fell madly in love. When my ex discovered my crushes he told me I had a thing for old men. Not just older men, but old men. Men with gray hair. And pacemakers. Well, that last part was his exaggeration. I told him Mel Gibson was still fit and probably didn't need a pacemaker yet. But I do like a sprinkling of gray hair. It makes a man look sophisticated and well read, or at the very least like he spent some time in a library. That is a specious assumption, I know. After all, Rogue had whitish, gray hair, and we don't necessarily know how bright she was (though she did have a thing for Gambit so she must have been bright...mmm...loved the way he said "mon cherie"). Where was I? Oh. Old men. Yes, I kinda have a thing for them, except I've since stopped loving Mel Gibson (the apparent antisemitism and the extra oldness has combined to make him unattractive). I also have no idea where my middle school Math teacher is now, and I stopped liking him after I got that C. Math never was my strong suit.

In any case, I have sort of dated an older man and found nothing amiss with the situation (I'm sure he didn't mind it one bit either) and though nothing on this earth will convince me to share that story, I will add that we didn't work out not because he was in his 30's but because of his insistence on being annoying.  The whole dating situation is still a bit of a mystery to me, but there are so many interesting things to learn as you go along.

Irony? The fact that I'm technically the relationship expert for the magazine I write for. I can't link to it for some reason, so go read (if you dare) at http://www.obaasema.com/intercultural_dating.html  

I can't remember what it was like to be 18. I suppose I vaguely remember the year, 2001. My freshman year of college. I turned 18 in October, 2 months after meeting new people and living in a dorm in an urban setting. Prior to that year I'd only ever walked around in Philly, hung out on South Street  and then promptly headed back to New Jersey via the Patco train because neither I nor my friends drove. I turned 18 and my new roommate and my floor mates baked me a cake, made me a sign that said Happy Birthday! and stuck it to my dorm room door. I turned 18 and felt important and loved and....free.

But I don't remember what it was like to be 18. I don't know that girl. I can't remember what it was she thought about on a regular basis, the inner monologue, the worries, the little crushes. I can't relate to her morals, to her political point of view. I don't know how she felt about abortion, about poverty. I can't recall who she admired or why. I can't quite put my finger on how she felt about every day things. I can't remember when she stopped hating snow, and yellow school buses. I can't remember when she stopped yearning for 'home' and realized that this was it. I really do feel like a different person, like me at 18 and me now wouldn't get along, could never relate.We would, at the very least, exchange some snarky conversation. If she is anything like 18 year old me, I imagine my teenage daughter will relish my presence.

And yet our youth lives in all of us. I still eat Cocoa Pebbles almost religiously (it might be an addiction, much like the one I have to chapstick...dear God, someone get me an intervention...). After years of hiatus I still love Nicholas Brendon and James Marsden from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Actually, I still love Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV show, not the movie), cheesy season 1 and all. I still get tingly when I see Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 1 (and 2 a little). I still squeal like a little piglet when something is cute beyond reason. I still adore Wawa (unless you live on the east coast somewhere near the tri-state area you'll never understand why Wawa is better than 7-11, though visiting both results in oddly smelling clothing). I am a bit like that girl, still.

And I do remember some of the bigger things. I remember love, realizing that I was in it without having paid attention to it at all, and arriving at that conclusion a little astonishingly. I remember the sweetness of it, the tickle, the burning. And I remember the ache. I remember some pains too, heavy and purple colored, and oh so consuming.But these memories have no words, no thoughts. I remember them all almost independently of the girl who felt them. I remember them, enshrine them. They'll remain for years. But I think the girl is sort of diminished. Not in a bad way really; I did not forget her on purpose. But I am different. I am not her. Not really.

But because of her I am me.