TIME, TRAVEL
kristin wells, graphic design student, boston, 21.
italian, dutch, libra.
supersad, superhappy, supersuper
kristin wells, graphic design student, boston, 21.
italian, dutch, libra.
supersad, superhappy, supersuper
1. Do not take a sleeping pill in the shower if you’re the type of person who takes 45 minute showers.
2. Do not get ridiculously drunk in a guy’s house. This is not going where you think it’s going, it’s going here: your lifelong fascination with electric razors will be realized when you decide to shave your wrists in his bathroom while you wait for your friend, who’s washing her hands.
3. On Halloween, do not wear a black leather cat suit if you plan on breathing, avoiding hot flashes, moving at a reasonable pace, or doing anything that would characterize you as “alive”.
4. Do not ever go to a tanning salon with your friends if it’s run by a middle aged Sopranos character named Dean who wears a pinky ring and films y’all and is seemingly the ONLY employee who works there ever.
5. When you tell people that you accidentally hit a pedestrian with your car one night even though he was high and wearing black and walked right in front of your car out of nowhere, preface it by saying that he’s okay and walked off laughing, still smoking a blunt.
6. Do not pack all your underwear in your car the day before you leave for winter break because the only pair you’ll have left in your dorm room are the ones with jingle bells - actual jingle bells - that you got from VS, and when you take your exams, everyone will hear you jingling as you hand in your test and leave.
7. Do not mix cheap rum with cheap daiquiri mix because it will taste cheap. Then do not let a tipsy Paige put a whole apple in the Magic Bullet and dump the apple chunks in the daiquiri. And then do not try to drink said concoction through a straw.
8. Whenever discussing the death of rap moguls, pull over your car to address the seriousness of the matter.
9. Do not take 3 flaming shots on the eve of your 21st birthday because you will wake up the next day at 4pm in a pile of lettuce and a dead phone with a trillion texts from friends and family wondering where you are and you will also realize that you missed your interview for a suicide hotline volunteer job and you will feel like a failure and you can’t even eat the lettuce you’re in because it’s gross.
10. Always send sassy emails to Charlie because Bill will get mad.
11. At night, do not watch Tom Hanks romantic comedies while trying to sober up because it won’t work and also you will start crying a little.
12. Still can’t decide if it’s a Do or Don’t: blow kisses and wink at college cops.
13. Always steal gloves from the emergency room at New Bedford with Sam and Paige so that later that week you can put alcohol in them and use them like udders. But actually follow through with it. Also follow through with wearing the Unicorn horns you carved, painted, and bedazzled.
14. Leave a party early to watch Lindsay Lohan’s crowning achievement, I Know Who Killed Me.
15. Let your three year old sister do your makeup on Thanksgiving, and thank her every time she turns you to look at yourself in the mirror and says, “How beautiful!”
16. Go to an Alanis Morisette concert with Michaela and let people assume you’re an attractive couple.
17. To make it to all your 9 am classes, stay up all night then take a lethal amount of adderall, because there are only ever good consequences.
18. Invest $20 in rub-on tattoos, then decorate your whole body with various sea life. Garnish your friend’s boyfriend’s nips with a ring of dolphins.
19. Dole out the cole. And afterwards, write to Animal Control to save a lonely shark at a hookah bar.
20. Adopt teen bride Courtney Stodden and her creepy 54 year old husband, Doug Hutchison as your deities ironically, even though within a week it won’t feel ironic anymore, and you’ll start to wonder if you ever meant it ironically in the first place. Also pray frequently to the gigantic cardboard monument of a viking on Route 6, our pagan god, Bruce Lief Erikson Lee, because every time you do you are blessed with good fortune.
21. Tweet racy pictures of yourself to Senator Scott Brown’s official twitter page.
22. Remember to delete said racy pics off phone before selling it back to Verizon to get an iPhone.
boys: Theo, Roman, Rhys, Emile
girls: Isobel, Bijou, Sofie, Renée
It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined.
In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.
That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity.
Where brittle blondes with lipstick and hairstyles rigid with spray seduced androids and defended their sexual empires.
But worst of all, he carried inside him the memory of a young man with an old man’s mouth.
It was the kind of time in the life of a family when something happens to nudge its hidden morality from its resting place and make it bubble to the surface and float for a while.
For the time being they had no surname because Ammu was considering reverting to her maiden name, though she said that choosing between her husband’s name and her father’s name didn’t give a woman much of a choice.
Chacko had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and was permitted excesses and eccentricities nobody else was.
And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.
The twins were too young to know that these were only history’s henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues that broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear-civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness.
Ammu wiuldnt admit to it. Because, according to Baby Kochamma, that would amount to destroying herself and her children. Forever. But Baby Kochamma hadn’t taken into account the Unsafe Edge in Ammunition. The Unmixable Mix - the infinite tenderness of motherhood, the reckless rage of a suicide bomber.
Once he was inside of her, fear was derailed and biology took over. The cost of living climbed to unaffordable heights; though later Baby Kochamma would say it was a Small Price To Pay.
From Chapter 4, Abhilash Talkies, a real character development takes place for Estha. Although the obvious event is molestation in a movie theater between him and an older male employee, the more subtle but (at least I think) more critical moment was the comparison between 2 passages; one that came directly before and directly after the moment of molestation. This is because they illustrate how Estha views himself, and it’s important draw comparisons between who he was before and who he was after the traumatizing event.
Firstly, as Ammu, Rahel, Baby Kochamma, and Estha enter the theater, the three females enter a female bathroom, and Estha enters the male bathroom, labeled in the book as HERS and HIS. It is not only a defining moment for Estha because it is essentially the first time the twins don’t view themselves as a single entity, but also the idea of gender, sexuality, and an idea of manhood make themselves present in Estha’s mind; he must go in alone because Chacko his Uncle stayed at the hotel that day. Roy draws allusions to a separate male identity: “Estha waited in the dirty marble lobby with the lonely, watching mirrors till the red door took his sister away. Then he turned and padded off to HIS.” (pg. 90, Chapter 4).
The lonely watching mirrors signify that Estha is looking at himself, only himself, as his sister walks off with other females. He is not with his “Siamese Twin”, someone who, throughout the book, he shares an almost supernatural connection with. To further draw a separation between them, his sexuality and gender is addressed when he enters HIS. They are no longer one entity, and instead Estha is an adolescent male. This is further exemplified when he’s in the bathroom, HIS, doing something on his own, gaining his independence. He is referred to as “Estha Alone… Like a Man…” (92)
The quote after the molestation directly corresponds to Estha’s aforementioned HIS experience. During the molestation, Estha feels nothing. He understands something is off, but responds neutrally, drinking his drink, responding to the man’s questions. It’s only when he returns to the theater with his family that he feels a guilt. He will not bring his hand close to his body, or relax it for that matter. He starts comparing himself to Sophie Mol and white children, who are clean and lovable by “Aristocrats” like Baron von Trapp, and concludes that he is not, especially because of what had just happened. He feels nauseous, and tells Ammu he thinks he’s about to vomit, where “[he] was already retching. Ammu moonwalked him to the Princess Circle bathroom. HERS.” (pg. 103 Chapter 4).
The series of events within roughly an hour and a half was so significant. In this short span of time, Estha gained his independence, identified his sexuality, and had it all taken away instantly. His first trip to HIS signifies so much, gives him a sense of power and identity. The molestation not only takes that away instantly, but gives him a sense of guilt and fear that he is impure, less lovable. Finally, Ammu’s taking him to HERS is a harsh blow to this newfound identity, and perhaps plants the seed for his silence, softness, barely there quality that so strongly defines him for his adult life. After all, the boy Estha that was illustrated in the novel seemed healthy enough; a little eccentric, but not in any way as timid as adult Estha became. I think it irrevocably changed his mindset, and had these events not taken place, the whole outcome of the novel, and Estha in general, would be drastically different.
