Happy Birthday, Andy

Andy, you are great. You are my oldest friend and always will be. Some of my favorite things about you are the following: your bass fingers, your chocolate recipes, your predilection for very soft shirts, your rendition of "I'll Follow You Into the Dark", and the care with which you plan camping trips. Some of my other favorite things about you are secrets.

Last year, your birthday was the first day of college that felt totally and completely impossible. And do I mean impossible. I didn't want to bring you down on your big day, so I called Kendra wailing like a banshee. It made no sense to be across the country when we'd been together for so many birthdays. This year I am still sad not to be at dinner with you and the people we love, but the time we've spent apart has confirmed the fact that we're more or less always gonna be together. I'm excited to see what your 20th year holds!

Your Indiana birthday is almost over, though I hope it'll carry over into your whole week. At any rate, you have a belated card in the mail and your birthday isn't over in California for another two hours. Thanks for being my brother, and I'm sorry for referring to you as Wombat Guy for eight straight months when we were seven. Won't happen again. I love you.

the blood in my veins

The beginning is, I have had really prominent varicose veins on the back of my left leg since I was nine or ten. I don't really remember which. Ten makes more sense than nine, but neither is a very typical age for this sort of vascular irregularity. I don't know how old my paternal grandmother was when she got hers, but I bet it was before she left Michigan for U-Chicago. I wish I looked more like both of my beautiful grandmothers (shout out to Nana), but I like that Rae's in my veins.

The middle is that the back of my left leg started hurting really badly a few days ago. I could tell it was the veins. The doctor at the health center said it was probably superficial and nothing advil wouldn't cure in a few days, but that just in case I had to head to the hospital immediately. "Get yourself there," is what she said.

Took a taxi on my mom's advice. Taxis never occur to me. I'm not bragging about my frugality; frappuccinos occur to me all the time. Anyway, it turns out the taxi driver had checked into Alta Bates hospital in 2004. He had five heart attacks in one hour and went into a coma for nine days. He now has the heart of a 27 year old. I got his number so if you come to visit, he's picking you up from the airport.

After an uncomfortable ultrasound, the vascular technician decided that I do have some superficial blood clots that aren't dangerous and will clear up in a few days. But when I come home for winter break, I'm gonna get them surgically removed so this doesn't happen again. Bloomingtonians, get ready to show an invalid some love.

Middlesex

I have finally completed the book Middlesex. This is pretty good news, I am sure you will agree, as I have been reading it since the last weekend of July. I'm kind of a slow reader, in that sense.

The problematic thing about Middlesex is that I found the first 350 pages or so to be pretty slow. I wasn't that emotional about any of the zany symbolic things that occurred to the immigrant family of the intersex protagonist. Then Jeff Eugenides really turned it around with the final chapters. It ended extremely well. Which is more than will be said for this blog entry.

Sunday morning ramble.

What I really need to do is ready forty pages of Chandra Talpade Mohanty's "Feminism without Borders" chapter entitled "Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism". But that is just not happening. Even though the distractingly talented pianist just stopped playing in Nabalom. Now she's politely listening to the musical anecdotes of a few old men who want to write her name down. She does not let them buy her a coffee.

It would be probably pretty fun to be this piano player at least 15% of the time. Not this part in which she awkwardly gropes in a narrow-necked glass vase to collect the thirteen or so one dollar bills and fold them with a paper clip. But the parts in which she plays "California" by Joni Mitchell in colorful Elmwood bakeries and we all put our highlighters down and to listen and find out where we are. And probably it is great to be her at parties at which you just want to be listened to and don't want to listen.

Today I am going to Dolores Park in the city with Eliya and Sivana. Then the VMAs are on. Hopefully, feminism will not encounter any borders and the girls will sweep up. A third man is harassing the piano player. She should get out of here. I guess she could if she wanted to. Maybe she feels like listening more than I do right now.

Against my better judgment

I am starting up my blog again. Jenna has a tumblr. Carolyn asked about it tonight. And it just seems like a good venue for some of my ridiculous summertime photos.

Tonight I am going to blog about Whoopi Goldberg. Josephine's internet research reveals that her mother encouraged her to change her surname from Johnson to Goldberg because the former was "not Jewish enough to make her a star". The funny thing about this story is that there are many instances in the history of Hollywood of names being changed because they are too Jewish. Come to think of it, is that why Robert Zimmerman changed his name to Bob Dylan? That would be a shame. I think it also had something to do with the fact that he likes Dylan Thomas.

Speaking of which, I am reading a lot of poems for Comp Lit by Paul Celan. Dorothy, his poem Deathfugue is the best poem ever, but I like this Hamburger translation better than the more popular Felstiner. Paul Celan did change his name, but most (all?) of his works are about being Jewish and reconciling his Jewish and Germany identities after the Holocaust. Understanding them is arduous, but feeling them is not.

Ebert tweeted about Steak and Shake tonight, confirming its existence to dubious West Coast teenagers who tweet. This unfortunately does not include Josephine, Jenna, or Carolyn.

More news about Whoopi Goldberg later.