little baby corner of the internet

Leaving a meeting for the student newspaper tonight I realized how different it feels to be where I am now as compared to where I was last fall, and the spring semester right before that.  It’s so obvious but I surprise myself each time in my ability to change without forcing myself to.  I ran into a friend on the way home who said she was going to study, and I said I was going to go home and read for class but what I really wanted, despite the snow softly falling tumbling around us that had already made the walkways Oregon-trail treacherous, was to go for a long walk.  She said I should, because she liked the weather right now, goddamnit.

I liked it too, and there was something beautiful in being alone in the blankness.  Geneseo isn’t a happening town on Tuesday nights, but the streets seemed especially empty, just my footprints making marks next to the footprints of a few minutes ago, a few hours ago, catprints making little colons in the snow (the punctuation colon, not the digestive system colon) alongside.  Other brilliant parts: Motion City Soundtrack’s “The Future Freaks Me Out,” coming on ipod shuffle, fitting because a) the title is correct and b) it made me somehow realize that I didn’t get everything wrong when I was fifteen, being alive and healthy enough to take a walk and being not scared enough to do it late at night in February, this that and the other thing that I thought up while walking and forgot now.  I examined the snow and tried to think of something poetic to compare to without sounding stupid, but all the sparkly flakes reminded me of were those Styrofoam balls people can buy at Christmastime from Target to decorate your table with so it looks festive, you know?  I couldn’t decide which image was more real.

in which i am once again overwhelmed and excited

the poetry slam was last night, and it was really incredible to see Geneseo’s slam team perform. my poems were little silly whispers compared to my peers and its humbling to see the talent in our little western new york place.  it was an honor to be on the same stage (knightspot dance floor?) with them and I guess all I can do now is keep growing and learning and it will be hard, probably, but it always is and that isn’t really a bad thing.  i feel like those small animals with big eyes who cling to the backs of greater things – a bush baby?  i am a bush baby on the arms of giants and i will learn to talk about poems and not simply divide them into “great” or “really great” or “absolutely incredible” and i’ll keep writing and i think it will be an okay ride.

lessons learned on the jersey shore

Like most of America with a television set and more than a few hours to kill, over my (last EVER. sob) winter break I became hooked on following the antics of seven people chosen by MTV to live, drink, and make mistakes in a shore house in Seaside Heights.  I was obsessed by the perfect storm created by their hair extensions, blowouts, hookups and their irrepressible “beating up the beat” style of dancing, watching episodes over and over just so I could hear Pauly D say once again, “The Situation’s makin’ out with his girl, I’m makin’ out with my girl…we’re gonna have sex.”  As trashy as the events that went down each episode were, and as much as I tried to distance myself from any resemblance of the gelled, tanned, supremely muscled cast, I couldn’t stop watching.

Especially during the latest episode, where Ronnie eventually goes to jail for knocking out some hecklers on the boardwalk who were criticizing the group.  I thought to myself, dang, as annoying-looking as they are, why do so many random strangers seem to have a problem with people who really aren’t trying to cause trouble?  I realized then that before watching this show, I too was a guido-heckler, albeit a private one, mocking the burnt-sienna-toned Ed-Hardy-wearers that Long Island (represent!) seems to spawn.  Maybe one thing we can learn from Snooki, The Situation, JWoww et al. is that beneath the Cadillac tattoos and the barely-there club apparel, we’re all the same, you know?  And after the many hours logged studying this particular set of the American people, I will promise not to judge anyone until we’ve sat down for Jager Bombs.  I’ve written too much about this show already, so I’m just going to stop now.

my dad at dinnertime

Dad Capewell and I circa october 2008 in my sister's Pittsburgh kitchen

me: I’m scared that after college, I’ll just do boring things and hate my life.

tom: Jill…welcome to my life.

dad: Life after college is lousy.

anne: Rich!  Don’t say that!

dad: …real lousy.

Maybe this exchange is only funny to me or in real time, hearing my dad’s gravelly NYC accent and seeing the weirdly serious look on his face as he shovels gravy-soaked corn and roast beef into his mouth, knowing he only went to college for about six weeks before dropping out and joining the union (I say this without judgment- college is not for everyone and if the idea of fixing cars, cutting hair, building houses, etc etc etc makes you more excited to wake up in the morning than writing papers and feeling uncertain about your future, then more power to you.  After a summer as a faux-lectrician, I briefly imagined my future as a tradeswoman.  I’m not ready to go in that direction now or ever, possibly, but anyway, I digress).

During this hilarious dinner, the fact that me and my siblings made my dad watch a few episodes of Jersey Shore around Christmastime was brought up, and my dad said something to the effect of, “Yeah, I’m a real -MTV-super-deluxe TV guy,” which also is less funny on a computer screen.  He also suggested flipping over the CD we were listening to several times even after being told you couldn’t flip CDs over, and then suggesting we play “Johnny Yuma and the Johnnys,” a musical group that does not exist.

there are just some places you don’t stop thinking about

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I worked here as a construction worker for about two months in the summer of 2009.  I got the job through a bizarre program with my dad’s union that gives high-paying jobs to the sons & daughters of union members at active work sites around the city.

I come from three generations of city electricians and after living with my dad for all of my life, I couldn’t see the family resemblance in myself until I took the train every day and sweat like the rest of them and discovered that I could be tough and taken care of at the same time.  It only lasted two months and I’ve spent most of the money I made already but something keeps me, will keep me, wondering what is happening on Kent Ave.

This is not the last thing I’ll be writing about last summer.

time is what you had, baby girl, i’m what you have

It’s kind of awkward to write an introductory post for a blog that will mostly be read by me.  Despite the futility of this experiment, there’s still a part of me that wants my internet soapbox, and still that part of me that wrote down a list of things I could potentially write about in a blog while flying from Tucson to New York yesterday.  Since I’m generally all about dreaming up exciting ideas and never actually bringing them to fruition, I guess this is the first step to change that.  Here’s lookin’ at you, 2010.