.
So there's a British guy in my British history class. I wish I could say that after a decade of obsessing over British TV, music and culture that I'd be immune to it, but I have to admit that everything that comes out of this guy's mouth seems like a brilliant idea. I mean, objectively speaking I know that the ideas coming out of his mouth are average, maybe good at best, but this doesn't seem to stop me and everyone else in the class (including the professor) from hanging on his every word. We girls are especially vulnerable to the Brit's unintentional charms, as on more than one occasion his contributions in class have been interrupted by a swooning sigh. Frankly, if this were still the era of corsets I think half of the class would be on the floor after a British-induced fainting spell.
I wonder if other English speaking countries (apart from the UK obviously) have this problem. Are Canadians as intrigued by British accents as we Americans are? Do South Africans think people with English accents are inherently smarter and better looking? I wish I could say we were discerning connoisseurs of British English, that the bonus in the perception of intelligence only applies to the Queen's English, but quite honestly I'm pretty sure we're drawn in even by Dick Van Dyke's rape of Cockney. Were we Americans to meet the real Bert I'm sure we'd think that, in spite of his filth-covered face, he's a brilliant looker.
For all I know my classmate is considered borderline retarded in his native England, and English women find him physically repulsive, but here in Illinois with his charming inability to correctly pronounce the letter "R," this guy is an Adonis who is one comment in British history class away from being nominated for a Nobel Prize. A Nobel Prize in what specifically, I'm not sure, but we Americans would find a way to create a category specially for this dude.
Now before anyone thinks I'm some sort of pervert, just know that I've had conversations about this with other girls in the class, and they've noticed it, too. One girl even admitted to spending most of class trying to compose English-flavored pickup lines to use on our classmate who is of the British persuasion...something about buttering crumpets. So there. Clearly there's at least one girl in class who is infinitely creepier than I am.
What I really find fascinating about this guy though is the fact that he seems completely bewildered. Much like someone who grew up in poverty only to win the lottery, it seems to me that he grew up in English schools, believing his was mediocre in both brains and looks, only to come to America and find that--for some reason completely beyond the scope of his English understanding--EVERYONE seems suddenly to be obsessed with his thoughts, opinions, and comments. The look in his eyes reminds me of the moment in Harry Potter when Harry finally learns that he's not a lame, scrawny kid with glasses, but rather a friggin' WIZARD. And I bet my classmate silently swears to himself that no one in England must ever know about the jackpot that is America, because an influx of Englishmen might diminish his new-found powers.
To be honest, I'm afraid the exact opposite is going to happen when (if) I go to England. Sort of like what being in Israel was like, except at least in Israel I had the language barrier to hide behind. But I mean, if we think the English sound intelligent, then that must mean they think we're idiots. Here in Illinois when I talk I seem reasonably intelligent, but next year in grad school in England (assuming I get in somewhere), when I share my opinion in my native American accent, will my classmates silently imagine a barefooted yokel playing a banjo?
On an rational level, surely they'll know I'm from the big, hippie city of Los Angeles, but I'm not so sure that'll stop them from imagining the song "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival" whenever I talk. Granted, they probably don't even know that song. Oh Jesus, why do I know that song?
Showing posts with label reflection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reflection. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Manic Impressive/Anthem for a Doomed Twinkie
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all? -
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
--"Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen
Knowing that the end is nigh, that my senior+ year of college has begun and that my days of sitting around and having Doctor Who marathons with the tacit approval of society are numbered, I feel that I should reflect. I came to this town an 18 year old, half excited to go off on this next adventure and half devastated that I didn't end up in England or Wales for school, and I'll be leaving a 23 year old finally on her way to school in England (hopefully) and who's had adventures that 18 year old me couldn't have possibly imagined--not that my life adventures were the stuff of legends or whatever, it's just that 18 year old me, given the opportunity, would have chosen to flee to England, and the possibility of going to Israel wouldn't have even dawned on her. And people who meet me and people who know me keep asking me if I regret my choices, whether coming to this school in the first place or whether dropping out to go to Israel. And that's a complicated question.
Okay, be fair, the nearing the end in itself didn't bring this on; rather, looking around my apartment brought this on. A lot of the stuff decorating my walls, residing in my music collection and sitting on my bookshelf are things that I brought with me to this town as an 18 year old. I still have my Liverpool FC sheets and soccer scarves, my Monty Python crap, and a few comforting books like "The Once and Future King," "Pride and Prejudice" and some Little House books. Not everything's the same though: now I have more versions of the Bible than I know what to do with, books in Hebrew, an Israeli flag hanging, and (more recently) enough Doctor Who DVDs to induce a "David Tennant is unbearably hot" coma. Also, most meaningfully, I now have an Israeli passport, ID and draft papers tucked away in a drawer.
What's striking to me is that, as I prepare to finally get my wish of going to school in England and not return to Israel, I've basically come full circle and returned to 18 year old me. The me that was such a passionate Anglophile that she could recite entire episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, that she made her own Beatles posters, that she forced herself to drink large quantities of tea until she could finally stand the taste, that she would go to pubs in the middle of the night or early in the morning simply to cheer on the English soccer team, that she was obsessed with the Round Table and that she spent an entire year claiming to be Anglican simply because it was English. That version of me wouldn't have recognized the girl who spent so much time at Hillel and (formerly) Chabad, who abandoned everything to live in Jerusalem, and who spent some time running around the Israeli wilderness in an IDF uniform with her face completely covered in mud. "No!" teenage me would have screamed, "If anything your face is supposed to be painted blue, like the Celts!"
Having said that, I am not exactly the same as I was at 18. For a start, I'm fatter. I like hummus now. I can speak Hebrew. I'm no longer an Anglophile, someone who likes things simply because they're English, and instead I simply like a lot of things, many of which just happen to be English or British. But more importantly, I'm less terrified of the world. Okay, that's not true. I'm still absolutely terrified of the world, but I'm better now at just sucking it up. Before I tell you how I coped during my freshman year of college, let me just tell you that it wouldn't have worked during the many times in Israel when I was surrounded by strangers and needed to make a support system for myself immediately.
While in Israel I learned to simply thrust myself into the company of strangers, but in freshman year of college terrified little Sammy carried around a copy of "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen," a young English soldier in the Great War who died in combat. Absolutely terrified of my new neighbors that I was expected to befriend and dine with, I instead spent mealtimes in the company of good ol' Wilfred. Part of me thought it was amusing to ironically compare my own struggles with strangers to Owen's struggles with gas attacks and deadly assaults, but a larger and more alarming part of me likened our struggles with a complete lack of irony. You can tell that one poem in particular, "Anthem for a Doomed Youth," really captivated me because this page lays flat more easily than all the others. If I remember correctly, I was particularly attached to the word "cattle" because that's exactly how I felt. I felt bitter that I had no choice, that I was being forced to go to school, in a country I didn't want to be in no less, when all I wanted to do (if I remember correctly) was to open a vegan bowling alley in Wales and roam the countryside of England like a gypsy (minus the whole house squatting thing). I was miserable and lonely and frustrated and bitter and I was blaming it on society and my parents for requiring an American college degree, and at 18 I was convinced that Wilfred Owen alone, that doomed youth sent by Mother England to die in a foreign land, he alone could understand what that felt like.
Now of course, as a wizened woman of 22, who was denied jobs in Israel for lack of a degree, who spent time away from the educational universe, now I understand what an idiotic little shit I was. And though I may have felt like I had no choice and that I was surrounded by terrifying soldiers, but I wasn't exactly facing enemy artillery fire. Even now I can barely stand to look at "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen," because on the front cover I now imagine Wilfred Owen holding back tears caused by my teenage insensitivity, and his picture on the back cover appears to be holding back a smirk caused by my teenage idiocy.
So to go back to the question of whether or not I regret any of my choices that brought me to this school or to Israel or back here..... No. Because without it, I don't know that I would have come full circle back to my true (but more mature) self. Yeah, I'm still a work in progress, but I no longer compare my struggles to those of World War I poets. I'm more prepared than ever to go forth and be awesome. And that's what I plan on doing.
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all? -
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
--"Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen
Knowing that the end is nigh, that my senior+ year of college has begun and that my days of sitting around and having Doctor Who marathons with the tacit approval of society are numbered, I feel that I should reflect. I came to this town an 18 year old, half excited to go off on this next adventure and half devastated that I didn't end up in England or Wales for school, and I'll be leaving a 23 year old finally on her way to school in England (hopefully) and who's had adventures that 18 year old me couldn't have possibly imagined--not that my life adventures were the stuff of legends or whatever, it's just that 18 year old me, given the opportunity, would have chosen to flee to England, and the possibility of going to Israel wouldn't have even dawned on her. And people who meet me and people who know me keep asking me if I regret my choices, whether coming to this school in the first place or whether dropping out to go to Israel. And that's a complicated question.
Okay, be fair, the nearing the end in itself didn't bring this on; rather, looking around my apartment brought this on. A lot of the stuff decorating my walls, residing in my music collection and sitting on my bookshelf are things that I brought with me to this town as an 18 year old. I still have my Liverpool FC sheets and soccer scarves, my Monty Python crap, and a few comforting books like "The Once and Future King," "Pride and Prejudice" and some Little House books. Not everything's the same though: now I have more versions of the Bible than I know what to do with, books in Hebrew, an Israeli flag hanging, and (more recently) enough Doctor Who DVDs to induce a "David Tennant is unbearably hot" coma. Also, most meaningfully, I now have an Israeli passport, ID and draft papers tucked away in a drawer.
What's striking to me is that, as I prepare to finally get my wish of going to school in England and not return to Israel, I've basically come full circle and returned to 18 year old me. The me that was such a passionate Anglophile that she could recite entire episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, that she made her own Beatles posters, that she forced herself to drink large quantities of tea until she could finally stand the taste, that she would go to pubs in the middle of the night or early in the morning simply to cheer on the English soccer team, that she was obsessed with the Round Table and that she spent an entire year claiming to be Anglican simply because it was English. That version of me wouldn't have recognized the girl who spent so much time at Hillel and (formerly) Chabad, who abandoned everything to live in Jerusalem, and who spent some time running around the Israeli wilderness in an IDF uniform with her face completely covered in mud. "No!" teenage me would have screamed, "If anything your face is supposed to be painted blue, like the Celts!"
Having said that, I am not exactly the same as I was at 18. For a start, I'm fatter. I like hummus now. I can speak Hebrew. I'm no longer an Anglophile, someone who likes things simply because they're English, and instead I simply like a lot of things, many of which just happen to be English or British. But more importantly, I'm less terrified of the world. Okay, that's not true. I'm still absolutely terrified of the world, but I'm better now at just sucking it up. Before I tell you how I coped during my freshman year of college, let me just tell you that it wouldn't have worked during the many times in Israel when I was surrounded by strangers and needed to make a support system for myself immediately.
While in Israel I learned to simply thrust myself into the company of strangers, but in freshman year of college terrified little Sammy carried around a copy of "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen," a young English soldier in the Great War who died in combat. Absolutely terrified of my new neighbors that I was expected to befriend and dine with, I instead spent mealtimes in the company of good ol' Wilfred. Part of me thought it was amusing to ironically compare my own struggles with strangers to Owen's struggles with gas attacks and deadly assaults, but a larger and more alarming part of me likened our struggles with a complete lack of irony. You can tell that one poem in particular, "Anthem for a Doomed Youth," really captivated me because this page lays flat more easily than all the others. If I remember correctly, I was particularly attached to the word "cattle" because that's exactly how I felt. I felt bitter that I had no choice, that I was being forced to go to school, in a country I didn't want to be in no less, when all I wanted to do (if I remember correctly) was to open a vegan bowling alley in Wales and roam the countryside of England like a gypsy (minus the whole house squatting thing). I was miserable and lonely and frustrated and bitter and I was blaming it on society and my parents for requiring an American college degree, and at 18 I was convinced that Wilfred Owen alone, that doomed youth sent by Mother England to die in a foreign land, he alone could understand what that felt like.
Now of course, as a wizened woman of 22, who was denied jobs in Israel for lack of a degree, who spent time away from the educational universe, now I understand what an idiotic little shit I was. And though I may have felt like I had no choice and that I was surrounded by terrifying soldiers, but I wasn't exactly facing enemy artillery fire. Even now I can barely stand to look at "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen," because on the front cover I now imagine Wilfred Owen holding back tears caused by my teenage insensitivity, and his picture on the back cover appears to be holding back a smirk caused by my teenage idiocy.
So to go back to the question of whether or not I regret any of my choices that brought me to this school or to Israel or back here..... No. Because without it, I don't know that I would have come full circle back to my true (but more mature) self. Yeah, I'm still a work in progress, but I no longer compare my struggles to those of World War I poets. I'm more prepared than ever to go forth and be awesome. And that's what I plan on doing.
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