2011.08.20 — Miss Me, Jann Arden & a fushigi*

The other day — August 18th, to be precise — I visited my friend Miss Me's blog. She'd finally posted something new — she is a bit of an intermittent blogger — and so it was with anticipation that I began to read School and the Gapsers.

MM with colour and eloquence shares her feelings and concerns about going to college:

…School isn't exactly tailored to the spirited. I want to be running and jumping through life, constantly in motion even if it's just mentally. Some would see school as this, and I even did a long time ago. But the changes that have come over me are difficult to tailor back into a major and a minor, humanities courses, math and psychology.

And so I wrote a quite long response, in part because the way MM expressed herself reminded me of something I'd just read about how school saw a girl as touched when in reality she was a dancer. (I've been wracking my brain to remember where I read that. I wonder if it was in the Globe & Mail?)      P.S. 2011.08.28 It was a TED lecture by Sir Kenneth Robinson. Very funny, but to the point: the purpose of school is to kill imagination and creativity.

So, typical of the quietest fushigis, not too exciting so far. However, when next I comment she is excited because I'd recommended that she give Jann Arden a try: Jann's CD came up in my wife's car,

and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Good Mother and most of her other songs. And I immediately thought of MM.

But what got her excited was not just that she loved JA, but that the week previous she began watching for the first time via Netflix the old TV series Dawson's Creek, a show I've never watched, but which features a Jann Arden song in the opening credits!

Until last week MM had never heard nor heard of JA. (This exchange took place on the 18th.)

And that certainly warrants it being a nice little fushigi, but that is really just an hors d'oeuvres, because it began to get even a bit weirder. In the Goodead's group Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company the topic of the week posted 2011.08.19 is [alarum) "College Life". Hmmm. Okay, both the moderator, Alex, and MM are college age, but still. Certainly fushigi-ish. Note: I've not seen MM post in the WSS group, nor has she mentioned such a group; nor has Alex mentioned MM in the time I've been there.

But now it gets truly weird.

MM and I continue our exchange. I comment on the fushigi-ishness and ask if MM would allow me to blog this. She gladly agreed, and then added (on the 20th):

Not at all, please do!! I know how much you love these fushigis, it truly is wondrous. I also bought Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung just a week or so ago, but that's because I know how highly you recommend him and have wanted to read him for awhile now. :) Not really a fushigi except that you commented on my blog...

So, the final straw, the one that got me to write this thing, was that I'd just finished writing a poem for WSS about 'College Life". It ends with me dreaming I'm a bookish butterfly. Here's what i wrote:

Flutters By Books

I used to think I was unlucky,
sitting alone,
     reading alone,
          thinking alone
while all around me there sounded
the high walled, open quad's reverberating voices
of excited echoed learning
amidst the musty scent of gym bags and hormones enraptured by,
     lost in,
          the mysterious other that was disguised — almost!
by the breaking out of inky scented
     newly printed
          pre-bought
               pre-digested
ideas
and their naïve promise of understanding,
     purpose,
          meaning,
               pelf.

Not wisdom.
How to teach that to the arrogance of youth?

It took ten years
to shake from my mind
the schooled limits I selflessly embraced.
And I was one of the lucky ones.
Many around me seem —
are asleep
     in their thoughts
as they blithely allow learned
     inertia
          to carry them forward
                    into something
other than what they
     think
          they
               are.

Sometimes I dream that I am a bookish butterfly,
fluttering freely
     from leaf
          to leaf of
               ancient texts
                    and an increasingly empty wallet.
When I wake,
I wonder
     Am I
          still
               asleep?

And truly, how do I know — how can I know that I am not now in a dream, from which I (or someone else) will awaken, and proceed to forget.

An entertaining fushigi.