The Daily Durvy

My cat purrs while she is eating. It is amazing that a creature can get so excited over pre-formed foot pellets. That level of joy is

In the last 4 years at UC Davis, I have probably written close to 200 essays, not to mention a few short stories, countless journal entries/article response papers, and one really awful attempt at a poem that no one, not even the professor who assigned the poem assignment, cared to read. I would put this page count at an easy eight or nine hundred pages, and I am not a long-winded writer. If the assignment asks for five pages, I usually have to cheat to make my four pages stretch into a fifth, and if the assignment asks for more than five pages, I always end up with a “B” because I am constitutionally incapable of spewing my bullshit for more than 2000 or so words. I always write five pages. Or less, if I can get away with it.

My classes are chock full of tree-hugging, Anna Karenina-reading, bullshit-spewing English-double-major students that sneeze at my five pages of crap and call my bluff with their own eight-to-ten page masterpieces that the professor only half reads. If each of those students has written 200 or so essays in their college careers, we are talking about a FUCK TON OF PAGES. Pages upon pages of analysis, prose, God-awful poetry and sometimes, if you’re really lucky and in the right class, rants about the degeneration of American politics. I once wrote a rant about the degeneration of American politics. It was about my general dislike of Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin and pretty much every other American vice president in history.

That paper was four pages, thank you very much.

If we took all of these pages and lined them up, read them all, and then let our brains leak out of our ears, we would realize very quickly that there is not one original thought among them. There is nothing more than hundreds of thousands of pages of bull shit wrapped up in ribbon and shiny language. Some people are really good at it, and their ideas almost seem original, thoughtful and intelligent. And then you realize that they are just trying to get an “A” on this paper and have done nothing but parrot back what their professor lectured on. Because these professors, overworked and underpaid, only half read these papers and they like to see their own ideas rehashed on paper. It makes them feel good. Wouldn’t it make you feel good to see your words, printed on a page as evidence of human evolution? You would be the reason this paper was written, and that is fucking awesome.

So my question is this: is there such a thing as originality? Can we avoid cliches in our writing? Can a blog about my life really invent language or words or concepts that have not already been relayed for centuries? Can a picture actually be edgy and revolutionary? Does art ever capture a new emotion, or even an old emotion in a totally different way? Does Flannery O’ Conner’s narrative about obsession with a wooden leg translate into something new and original? Or is the most we can hope for that O’ Conner has given us a non-cliche, above the daily grind of tired phrases such as “eyes so green they sparkled like emeralds?” Does one war photo hit us harder than another?

Does my account of my life reshape the way the world sees twenty-something college students? Or am I just another voice int the crowd, throwing my three-to-five page long bullshit essays into the din in the hopes that it gets read and understood and turned into a cliche?

I should be so lucky. I would be honored to write in cliches, and I would be tickled pink to create new ones. I hope that my rather unoriginal (yet rather interesting) voice is heard, if not as a roar than as a whisper.

Yesterday, Alex and I adopted a cat. I am now acutely aware of how new moms and dads must feel, if to a lesser degree than true new parents of a flesh-and-blood child. Not only is my cat the cutest, smartest, most perfect kitten ever to have lived, but she is also the most curious, and the funniest and the most photogenic.

Today, she and I napped together. It was amazing, she just came right up to me, sat down on my chest and promptly fell asleep. As did I. About an hour later, I woke up and Maude (our perfect baby angel’s perfect baby angel name) was nowhere to be found. I freaked out in ways that I cannot adequately describe. I searched all over, and when I couldn’t find her, I pictured all sorts of grotesque things that might have happened. Had she gotten caught behind the book shelf? Did she squeeze through a crack in the front door? On the verge of tears, I called Alex, who told me to calm down and look under the bed. She was there. And I was so relieved. I picked her up and sternly said, “Don’t scare Mommy like that ever again!”

And then I realized that I had become that crazy woman.

When Alex came home, he had 3 bags of cat toys and treats. He had the a look of absolute joy on his face as he opened all her new presents. That’s when I realized that he had become that crazy man.

We keep discussing how this was the best decision we’ve ever made. We can’t stop looking at her and cuddling her and being crazy “parents” who worry and dote and are generally unglued.

Be prepared, Internet. We have already taken hundreds of pictures and we’ve had her for just under 24 hours. We have an entire Facebook album dedicated to her. Because we are slightly unglued and she is the cutest kitty baby angel to have ever lived.

Hopeless is a word I find myself using a lot. I mean, it’s kind of the definition of depression: hopeless drowning in the pain of, well, living. Today, in my comparative literature class, we were talking about this concept of the “pain of living.” Most writers in the Romantic Period dealt with this particular affliction. Then, it was considered art. Now, it’s considered a disease worthy of the heaviest weapon we can heave at it – psychiatric drugs.

Some days the so-called “pain of living” is unbearable, manifesting in cruel albeit mildly ironic ways. Some days my wrists hurt, my lower back aches like an old woman or my feet swell up such that I can’t wear my regular shoes. I’m not sure how much of this is mental and how much of it is sleeping in a bed that I find vaguely uncomfortable for no particular reason and how much if it is my body telling me that it wants in on this depression thing too.

Today, it’s my wrists and fingers. Sitting in class, I did my best to keep my hot coffee cup near where my pinkie meets my palm on my right hand. I clenched my teeth to keep from crying, and I almost couldn’t stop myself when I realized that what the class was talking about was either way too sophisticated for my quasi-analytical mind or I just didn’t really give a shit about the book we were talking about. It was probably a combination of both. It’s not that I’m stupid, I just don’t see why I’m spending my time talking about a book written 150 years ago. Moreover, I don’t know why I now need to write a 6-page paper comparing the 150-year-old book to a 600-year-old book about a completely different topic. Does this seem like a pointless exercise in futility to anyone else? Or is that the hopelessness talking again?

It seems unlikely that anything (especially long-winded drills in critical thinking) will ever spark my interest again. This is where I feel the most hopeless; I feel left behind while everyone around me finds joy and passion in their tasks. I simply do not find anything enjoyable anymore, and it is making me absolutely miserable.

I think I need to stop reading Oprah magazine. While it is a fabulous magazine for, say, super-chic working moms, 22-year old college students just end up wearing clothing that is totally age-inappropriate. Sometimes I will walk out of my bedroom all gussied up for going out and Alex will look at me and tell me that a full pantsuit with matte red lipstick is probably just a little bit sophisticated for a frat party. And then all I can do is look at him and go “BUT THIS IS WHAT OPRAH WOULD WEAR.”

So you can see where that might be a problem for me.

I read an article in this month’s Oprah Magazine about a woman who is committing the next 60 days to the Bikram Yoga Challenge. She basically goes to yoga everyday, and not just any yoga. No, that would be sane. This woman is going to HOT yoga. The studio is heated to 105 degrees or higher for optimal toxin flushing and facilitating flexibility. You basically drip sweat, and it is nasty.

I read this article, which chronicles this woman’s first 30 days of her challenge, and I made the wild, ridiculous decision to take the challenge as well. So today was Day 1, and it pretty much sucked. I’m not going to lie to you, it was hard, it smelled really bad and I came home looking like I took a swim, which is beyond gross.

I have always been a skeptic of the bullshit that surrounds yoga and meditation. “It’s so therapeutic” or “it’s so calming” or (my favorite) “Yes, you can loose weight with some sissy stretching” have always seemed like drink-the-koolaid behavior. However, as I was going through the poses something incredible happened. My constant inner voice was silent. Begrudgingly silent, like she had been hit upside the head and was stunned into an inarticulate pile of mush. And that was nice.

During the rest periods, you are supposed to lie in what is known as the “corpse pose” – on your back, silent, unmoving, just gazing up at the ceiling. What is noticed is that I felt very much alive (and beat up – maybe there’s something to this sissy stretching nonsense) in those moments. My heart was pounding, my breath was calm and the inner bitch was absent. Lying there, all I focused on was leaving the bitch out of this moment, and I did my best to take her criticisms floating around in my head and leave them in that hot, smelly room. It worked, if only for that moment, and suddenly the last 90 minutes of “toxin-flushing” was not in vain, but rather – dare I say it – therapeutic. But don’t tell my inner bitch I just said that because she thinks yoga is dumb.