Fab Feb

I began February with a luxury I hadn’t enjoyed since sophomore year of college: probable knowledge of where I’d be in a year. I keep a quote at my desk at work that says, “The ability manage uncertainty is what separates those who prosper both in business and in spirit.” Of this I must remind myself often, because I’ll be the first so admit I don’t do so well without “a plan.” And after an up-in-the-air January spent fretting about whether I’d be moving Washington DC, February was filled with blissful assurance that my fate was decided—in Philly I would stay, and teach. I could finally stop worrying and start doing.

But in order to teach English in my beloved keystone state, I learned that, logically, I’d have to earn six math credits—something I gloated about never having to bother with in college. (Last laugh awarded to math gods.) It’s been a humbling experience, filled with freshman who can calculate circles around me, and re-memorizing such imperative life information as the quadratic equation (negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four a c all over two a, if you had, unthinkably, forgotten). Math had never been a friend to me, and from this revisitation I’ve learned that at age 16, 26, or 86 it will always bring me back to the same frustrated place. I know, theoretically, how to do the problem. I just didn’t get the answer in the back of the book. I probably just added something wrong or screwed up Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. I don’t want to go back and check my work. The problem was boring the first time and I still have 12 of the same kind to go. And in the end, what do I have to show for it? The same answer everyone else got. I trust your calculations, math book creators. Instead of proving you right I would much rather talk/think/write about all the reasons I hate math. Four weeks of this down, ten to go.

While my weeknights were spent calculating, weekends included quality time with Wikipedia.com, which, consequently, gets my vote for invention of the decade. Its clickable timeline of significant literary movements served as my trusty study source for the Praxis II: English Language, Literature and Composition. And where math brought back only long-lost feelings of exasperation, my literary review made me realize how much I have actually read over the years, and how much I have liked it all. Rappaccini and his daughter, William Blake’s chimney sweep, J. Alfred Prufrock and his coffee spoons, and even Kurtz from my most loathed Heart of Darkness seemed like old friends whose stories I had conquered, and reminded me as much of the teachers who taught them as of the literary purposes they served. Surprisingly most of the material I reviewed was from high school, and unlike the quadratic formula, it seemed as fresh in my mind as anything I learned in the last year or two. So thanks Mrs. Gregorio, Allwein, and Chronister. May I someday be as memorable as you.

I am never content for long though, and by the 26th day, I was antsy. Could I just hurry up and take this test and see if I passed? When was I going to have to leave my job? Where would I be living come summer, and with whom? I didn’t even know if the dormitory where I’d be staying for six weeks had air conditioning! So thanks February, it’s been fun spending you appreciating what I didn’t have last month. But there’s much more uncertainty on the horizon for me, so I’d better get fretting.

By Jill

February 2006

When I was a high school girl obsessed with Pearl Jam, I read an interview Eddie Vedder gave to Spin or Rolling Stone in which he said that he hated the kind of people who regard music as only a soundtrack to their lives. He believed that music is something to be really listened to and felt. I held onto that quote, and applied it to my life. Everything I listened to I loved and treasured. I must still believe this idea to be significant, or else I wouldn't have remembered it for these past eleven years.

So, one recent morning, I woke to find that my stereo and every last one of my cds had been stolen from my car in the night. This gave me pause. I didn't feel violated or angry; I figured it was all a part of the karmic balance of life. It was some kind of sign that my dislike and fear of mp3's were unfounded. It was time to jump on the bandwagon and depend on my computer for my music needs.

In the meantime, my life is now filled with silence. I drive to work every morning without some upbeat songs to start my day off right. While cleaning the kitchen or sewing, there are no 60's girl group jams to keep me company.

Those examples are just inconveniences, though. I'm starting to miss my songs like lost lovers or friends. And I long for the feeling of nostalgia that comes over me when I hear a certain favorite hook or phrase.

Liz Phair's 'Exile in Guyville' and 'Whipsmart' will always remind me of riding the bus to high school. The bus would come up over this one hill and the sun would suddenly be in my eyes and shining orange & gold across the farms on the horizon

The dark days of winter always seem just right for Fiona's 'When the Pawn'. I had this in my car's cd player for three months straight. The angry lyrics and moody instrumentation mingle so well with road-salt-covered cars and early sunset.

Any Belle & Sebastian record is perfect on breezy, sunny afternoons. They bring me back to the first mix Joe ever made for me. And the time when he learned the chords and I the lyrics for 'String Bean Jean'. We nervously sang/played it from opposite sides of his living room. It almost felt a little bit like we were a band, for a minute.

A happy day just isn't complete unless I can blast Ben Folds Five's 'Whatever and Ever Amen'. I used to race home from singing lessons listening to that album, each song's silliness making me more and more giddy as the moonlight guided me home.

Are my memories less vivid now that their musical accompaniment is gone? I feel as if with that aural component, I was blessed with a kind of bargain bin synesthesia. Now, the movies of my life have no sound.

Two dimensional remembrances might not be all bad, though. I once heard someone say that television is the least imaginative medium of entertainment because the story, picture and sound are all presented to the watcher in one easy pill. Radio (in its heyday and now on programs like ‘This American Life’) is more engaging because the sound is there, but the visual cues are not, forcing the listener to create his own detailed landscape for the tale. And reading is the most involved medium of them all. The reader invents an entire world around the plot, complete with neon backdrops and crashing sound effects.

Maybe the less I have to work with, the better off I am. I can add all the songs back to the film reel of my life, but with more flourishes and crescendos. I’ve got the job of composer and sound editor.

Come to think of it, I’m in the director’s chair, too. Isn’t that what we all do? We keep the bare bones of the special moments in our lives and let our minds fill in each one of the details that we can no longer recall. When you think about that process, don’t our memories seem all the richer for it?

By Anna