Keep My Words

Years after Tuffy died, we got another cat.  Her name was Crackers, or Muffins the Attack Cat according to my brother.

My cousin had found Crackers along with another female kitten in a field in New Orleans.  He named the other cat Ritz, and she lived across the river with my Aunt Emily.

When my parents finally moved out of New Orleans in 2002, they didn’t take Crackers with them.

“What did you guys do with Crackers?” I asked my mother.

“Well, we gave her to your Aunt Emily, but not long after, she died,” my mother told me.  “We think she died of a broken heart.”

I wonder if it’s possible.

Maybe Crackers felt so discarded that her heart just couldn’t maintain.  One day, she was in a loving home that she knew so well, and the next day she was taken away from it, never to return.  Days passed with her expecting to see us, the people she believed had love for her.  (This was a reasonable faith, as we had never done anything to prove otherwise.  Quite the contrary – we showed her nothing but affection.)

After a while, Crackers realized we were never coming back.  With no phone calls attempted or letters received, she was left to wonder if she was actually alone the entire time she was with us.

Some people never experience this kind of heartbreak.  I pity them, really.  It’s very bittersweet.  The hurt is so great because it is bred from something amazing.  And the more incredible it is, the more pain it causes.

Really, it physically hurts.

In 2007, an 18-year old girl entered the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.  She told specialists that for five months she had been experiencing pain and swelling in her abdomen.  Additional complaints included vomiting after eating and an unexplainable loss of 40 pounds.

X-rays revealed a large, dark mass in the woman’s stomach.  Concerned doctors then lowered a scope through her esophagus for further investigation.  What they found was a large ball of swallowed, foreign material nearly filling the woman’s entire abdominal region.  Doctors scheduled an operation to remove it.

When the woman underwent surgery, the foreign material proved to be a 10-pound hairball.  It was 15 inches in length and measured 7 inches across by 7 inches deep.

Upon questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years – a condition called trichophagia.  Trichophagia is the compulsive eating of hair, usually chewed while still attached to the head and then swallowed.  The hair eventually collects in the gastrointestinal tract causing symptoms such as indigestion and stomach pain.

Five days after the mass of black, curly hair was removed, the woman began eating normally and was sent home.  Supposedly, she has stopped consuming her hair.

For my vacation next week, I think I’ll be curly-haired-Ashleigh.  However, I will be sure to not dine on my hair, but at the greatest restaurant know to humanity – Chick-fil-A.

The (disgusting) hairball (below)

1. Eat Smurf-Berry Crunch Cereal. In 1983, Post introduced Smurf-Berry Crunch cereal.  Smurf-Berry Crunch was a “fruity sweetened corn, oat & wheat cereal fortified with 10 essential vitamins and minerals”.  On the box, Smurfette and two other Smurfs picked smurfberries off of a smurfberry tree while Papa Smurf ate Smurf-Berry Crunch from a bowl.  In proportion to Papa Smurf, the bowl was rather large.  If I concentrate hard enough, I can almost smell the delicious smurfberries.  Oh, what I would give to enjoy some right now.  Unfortunately, Post no longer manufactures Smurf-Berry Crunch.
2. Eat Dunkin’ Donuts Cereal. A related, unsatisfiable desire is to consume Dunkin’ Donuts Cereal.  This delicious treat was unveiled in 1988 by the Ralston Company.  The cereal came in two varieties: glazed and chocolate.  (I would happily accept either one.) The box described the cereal as “crunchy little donuts with a great big taste!”  When I meditate over the flavor of those tiny circles, I can recall the savoriness quite accurately.  They too have been discontinued, torn from my life for reasons unbeknownst to me.
3. Talk to my Grandma. My Grandpa passed away when I was two years old, but the family has told me stories of how Grandma and Grandpa would fight.  There are tales of them screaming at each other, at times even throwing appliances.  It would interest me to ask my grandmother what fueled these intense arguments, and if through it all they truly loved each other.  Supposing they did, maybe Grandma could explain to me why people hurt the ones they care about.

I’ve been busy.

Last week I finally booked my flights for New Orleans and Bonnaroo.  As usual, the seat selection process was quite distressing.

Okay, I thought, open seats are blue, unavailable seats are grey.  I want to be close to the front so I can make a speedy exit after landing, but I want to be close to an exit row in case we crash.  Also, I want a window seat because (a) I find it easier to sleep when I can rest my head against the wall, and (b) if violent turbulence causes the overhead compartments to come open, I don’t want someone’s luggage to fall out and knock me unconscious.  Seat 7A is open, and so is seat 14A… But what if the plane crashes and the person in 7A lives but the person in 14A dies?  This choice is clearly a matter of life and death…

I decided to research the safest place to sit on a plane.  Popular Mechanics claims that the back of the airbus is best, while researchers from the University of Greenwich say that a seat up to five rows from an exit offers a better chance of escaping if there’s a fire.  They go on to say that “when seated six or more rows from an exit… the chances of perishing far outweigh those of surviving.”  However, Independent Traveler writes that there’s no clear answer about where you should sit in order to fare best in a plane crash.  They even cite the two previously mentioned studies and discuss how they contradict each other.

Causing further worry was the fact the my mother suggested I fly AirTran, but instead I booked on JetBlue.  What if the JetBlue flight crashes and the AirTran one doesn’t? I internally debated.  As the plane is going down my last thoughts will be that I should have listened to my mom…

Unsure of what to do, I went ahead and checked 7A for my flight out of New York and 14A for my returning flight.

Assuming I survive the flight to New Orleans, this vacation is going to be fantastic.  The day I arrive, we are going tubing on the Bogue Chitto River.  The following day we are driving to Tennessee for Bonnaroo.  After camping there for four days, it’s back to New Orleans to visit with friends and family.

In unrelated news, I picked up my cap and gown the other day.  I arrived at the Graduate Center extremely hungover and late to meet Rona for lunch.

“I’m here to pick up my cap and gown,” I said without removing my sunglasses.  “Last name Walker, first name Ashleigh.”

The woman shuffled through boxes.  I was half expecting her to say there was a problem, like I was actually a few credits shy of graduating or that I failed to fill out some necessary paperwork.  But she didn’t.  She handed me my cap and gown.

“See you next Monday,” she said and smiled.

It hit me.  Holy shit, I’m finally graduating. “Yes, yes you will,” I replied.  “I’m looking forward to it.”

That’s an understatement really.  I’m looking forward to a lot of things…

(Diagram provided by the UK’s Mail Online)

It was midday on July 14th, 1518, when Frau Troffea began dancing in the streets of Strasbourg, France.

A crowd gathered to watch as she danced into the night, until finally collapsing to sleep.

When Frau awoke the next day, she began her dance again, and once more, she did not stop.

This behavior continued.  Her feet became a mess of purple bruises and bloody sores, but still she danced.

After six days, 34 people had joined in Frau’s dance.  Three weeks later, there were 400 townspeople dancing.

Authorities, per the advice of local physicians, prescribed “more dancing”.  Musicians were hired, halls cleared and professional dancers commissioned to keep the afflicted on their feet.  By the end of the summer, dozens had died from starvation, exhaustion, heart attacks, and strokes.  Those remaining were herded aboard wagons and taken to a healing shrine.

The dancing epidemic did not subside until September.

Although the cause of this plague is still unknown, it has been suggested that the town experienced stress-induced psychosis. Having suffered severely from famine, and in many cases wiped out and reduced to begging, the region was in an ongoing crisis. The area was riddled with diseases, including smallpox, leprosy, and syphilis.  It is theorized that the stress was so intolerable, a mass psychological illness resulted.

Or perhaps everyone just loved to dance.

A friend of mine has an extra ticket to LCD Soundsystem tomorrow night.  I’m going to go, and I’m going to dance.  Maybe I’ll never stop.

Dorothy: But it wasn’t a dream, it was a place.  And you, and you, and you, and you were there.  But you couldn’t have been, could you?

Aunt Em: Oh, we dream lots of silly things when we-

Dorothy: No Aunt Em.  This was a real, truly live place.  And I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice… but most of it was beautiful.  But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody was, I want to go home.  And they sent me home.  Doesn’t anybody believe me?

I’d been in Oz for months.

Some of it wasn’t very nice, but most of it was beautiful.  Like Dorothy, I thought it was real.  A part of me still believes.  This may be a testament to my foolishness, as I have recently viewed evidence indicating that Oz is nonexistent.

At first, I was enraged with the harshness of this revelation.  Its delivery was brutal, and it evoked in me the filthiest of emotions.  These feelings wanted to inflict as much pain as the heartbreak from which they were produced, so they became alive through graceless acts and piercing words.  It felt like I was led to Oz with gentle affection, only to be notified of its fictitiousness with reckless abandon.

I was also furious with myself for believing such a place did exist.  Although I saw it, many people did not.  Still I assured them that Oz was not imaginary, and I supported this certainty with tales of my time there.  I trusted in it; Oz made me feel safe.  Now faced with the possibility that it was all in my mind, silencing the self-resentment seems impossible.

As this anger bred from adoration is exiled from my body, I am left with a familiar sadness.  It’s just so terribly disheartening, the whole situation.  It pains me to think that none of it was real.

Honestly, I need to find my ruby slippers and get the fuck out of this town for a while.  Otherwise, I might end up like Dorothy in Return to Oz.  (If you haven’t seen it, the poor girl was committed to a psychiatric hospital because of her dreams.  And I have a lot of dreams.)

Actually, I much prefer Return to Oz over Wizard of Oz, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.

“Dude, why are you slacking on the postings?” Justin asked.  “Whenever I’m feeling depressed, I read one and it picks me up.”

“I’m writing one now!” I replied.  “I’ve been busy with school.  I’m hoping to post one today and one tomorrow.”

“Cool,” he said.

I continued.  “Today being less personal, tomorrow being more typical Ashleigh-wah-my-life.”

He was disappointed.  “I hate your less personal ones.  It’s like you’re trying to get into the New Yorker or something, which is dumb.  But the wah-my-life ones make me feel like things could get a lot worse, so I may as well not feel so bad about my shitty life.”

I laughed.  “I’m glad my misery cheers you up,” I told him.

“Well, at least it serves some purpose other than you using us, the public, for your own self-medication,” he finished.

…

On the evening of November 30, 1948, a man and his wife were walking through Somerton beach in Adelaide, Australia.  Across the way, there was a man lying slumped over in the sand with his head against the seawall and feet pointing toward the water.  They saw the man make a movement with his right hand, as though he were trying to smoke a cigarette, and then drop his arm limply.

The couple assumed the man was drunk, and they continued walking.

Later that night, a young girl and her boyfriend were strolling along the promenade at the top of the seawall.  The stopped to have a seat near the steps leading down to the beach.  From their resting spot, the girl saw a man’s left hand lying motionless beside his body.  They commented between themselves that he may be dead because he was not reacting to the mosquitoes.  The lovers remained for about thirty minutes, during which the man did not move.  They concluded that he was drunk or asleep, and thus did not investigate further.

The next morning, the husband from earlier in the previous evening went back to the beach for a swim.  He noticed that the same man was still propped up against the seawall in the same position as the night before.  The police were notified.

Upon arrival at the scene, an officer examined the body and found no signs of disturbance.  The left arm was lying beside the body and the right arm was double bent. An unlit cigarette was behind his ear, and a half-smoked cigarette was lying on the right collar of his coat.

There was nothing unusual about a man dying in a public place, so it was assumed that someone would soon come forward to claim him.

Two days later a post-mortem examination was conducted. Until then it was thought that the man had died from natural causes. Now, however, a mystery began to emerge: despite numerous tests, no cause of death could be discovered.

The body was found to be that of a tall 45-year-old European man in excellent physical condition. Consistent with poisoning, his stomach was found to be highly congested with blood, and his heart had failed.  However, tests did not reveal any poison.

All labels on his clothes were missing, and he had no hat, which was unusual for 1948, especially so for someone wearing a suit.  He was clean-shaven, had no distinguishing marks, and carried no identification.

The police began extensive enquiries to establish the man’s identity. Photographs, fingerprints, and dental records were circulated throughout Australia, New Zealand and all English-speaking countries.  No record of the man could be found.  It was like he had never existed.

A search of his pockets revealed the following items:

• a used bus ticket from the city to St. Leonards in Glenelg
• an unused second-class rail ticket from the city to Henley Beach
• an aluminum comb, manufactured in America
• a half pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum
• an Army Club cigarette packet containing Kensitas cigarettes (a different brand)
• a quarter full box of matches

In January 1949, staff at the Adelaide Railway Station found an unclaimed suitcase in the cloakroom with the luggage label removed. It had been checked in after 11a.m. on November 30th, 1948.  Clothing in the case matched that worn by the man, with identification marks removed. The entire contents of the suitcase were:

• a red checked dressing gown
• a pair of size seven red felt slippers
• four pairs of underpants
• pajamas
• shaving products
• a pair of light brown trousers with sand in the cuffs
• an electrician’s screwdriver
• a stenciling brush
• a table knife cut down into a short, sharp instrument
• a pair of scissors as used on merchant ships for stenciling cargo
• a thread card of Barbour brand orange waxed thread, the same as that used to repair lining in a pocket of the trousers the dead man was wearing

And so the mystery deepened. Numerous people went to view the embalmed body.  Some even claimed that they knew him, but ultimately an identity was not established.

Three months later, further examination of clothing found on the body revealed a secret pocket within one of the trouser pockets.  Inside was a piece of paper with the words “Taman Shud” printed on it.  Public library officials found that the words came from the last page of a collection of poems written 900 years ago by a Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, called The Rubaiyat.

The theme of the poem was that one should live life to the fullest and have no regrets when it ended. The words Taman Shud mean “the end” or “the finish”.

A photograph of the scrap of paper was sent to interstate police and released to the public, leading a random person to admit he had found a very rare first edition copy of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat in the back seat of his unlocked car in Glenelg on the night of November 30, 1948.  The book was missing the words “Taman Shud” on the last page, and tests indicated that the piece of paper was torn from the book.

In the back of the book were faint pencil markings of five lines written in all capital letters, with the second struck out. The strike out is now considered significant with its similarity to the fourth line, possibly indicating a mistake, and therefore likely proof the letters are code:

MRGOABABD
MLIAOI
MTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB

Code experts were called in at the time to decipher the lines but were unsuccessful.

When the code was analyzed by the Australian Department of Defense in 1978, they made the following statements:

There are insufficient symbols to provide a pattern.
The symbols could be a complex substitute code or the meaningless response to a disturbed mind.
It is not possible to provide a satisfactory answer.

More recent attempts to solve the case suggest that the letters aren’t random, just some mysterious cipher with which no one is familiar.

The identity of the deceased man and cause of death remain unsolved to this day.

Police photo of the dead body (above), the dead man’s code from the back of The Rubaiyat (below)

I went to see the Reverend last night. Afterward, still highly intoxicated, I arrived home and sat on my sofa, legs uncrossed and arms at my sides.

I felt like I was falling apart. I wanted to cry, but I stopped myself in fear of waking up with eyes swollen and incriminating. So I slept.

My alarm thrust me out of a peculiar dream in which my kitchen sink was clogged with meat. The meat looked like dog food, and dream-me was disgusted by it. As I shoveled it out, it kept seeping up through the holes in the sink strainer.

I immediately pressed the snooze button and listened to my inner monologue. It was distorted, robotic and demonic. The words turned to barking. This frightened me.

When my alarm went off the second time, I hit the snooze button again. I thought about my friend who had checked himself into a mental hospital years ago. I considered this option for myself, but decided against it. They would likely want to medicate me, and I am not a fan of such things. I want to learn to control my emotions; I want to teach myself discipline. Maybe I can never stop caring, but to appear as though I don’t care would suffice.

(On Friday night I drunk-texted the above mentioned friend: I want to beat my head against the wall til it’s bloody but I won’t. I won’t. The text produced no response, yet I know he understood.)

Once more the alarm and the snooze button. This time in my half-slumber I contemplated running away to a place that no one knows. There I would curl up into a ball and die, only to be found 1,000 years later by a team of archaeologists.  They would never be able to see how crazy I had been.  They would only see the bones of an average girl in her late twenties, who had seemingly lived a life of normal mental capacity.

Nine more minutes passed, and a final execution of the snooze button carried me closer to sleep and further from reality. I saw a whale, a giant whale in outer space. The beast was bigger than the entire solar system, and it slithered like a snake through the stars. When it got to earth’s moon, it opened its enormous jaws and swallowed the moon whole. Then it turned towards the sun. I knew for sure it would eat her up next, and everything would be dark forever.

But I awoke. About forty minutes later I was on the L train, mulling over my sanity (as I so often do). The more I convince myself that I’m crazy the crazier I feel, but isn’t that in itself crazy?  And if I’m falling apart, I can just get some glue and slap on a smile and go face the world.  If that means I’m trying to prove something to myself, like that I can control my emotions and have a good time, then so be it.  Still I don’t know what the right choice is and I never know what to do.  I’m pretty sure that all of this pain and sadness is my fault because I am letting it happen, so I am doing this to myself.  And even if I am being tortured does that make me a victim or a masochist or a fool?  But I’m in too deep now so it doesn’t matter…

Currently I am working to keep what I have deemed my “crazy switch” turned to an off position. To do this, I need to determine what activates it. An early theory suggests it is the consumption of extensive amounts of booze, followed by someone’s actions or words that my drunk-mind interprets as cruelty unto my person.

Once the switch is flipped, the dam in my mind gives way and I become vicious and unrelenting, and ultimately sorrowful and crying, disappointed in myself and my actions. The next day I apologize when appropriate. If I determine that my actions are justified, i.e., someone had actually been callous to me, I still acknowledge the situation.  (Not acknowledging it only allows it to be a plague on my subconscious, an often unnecessary affliction since things are always worse in one’s own mind than in actuality.)

In any case, I just wish I could control myself.

I simply want to be a nice person.  Always.

(It looks as though I’ll have to write about snow globes another time.)

In other news, I saw a dead bird today. Maybe a change is coming.

I still feel as though I am going insane.

Sometimes I think we’re all flakes of plastic trapped in a snow globe.  Shaken.  Settled.  And shaken again.

I’ll elaborate tomorrow.  Hopefully.

Much like Mrs. Simmonson, the excitement of the journey seems to wear upon me…

“How ’bout you come home with your own fucking panties on, aye?”

“It doesn’t matter.  And it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t matter.”

“If I was going on a date with Miss America I might have my balls waxed.”

“I don’t have any healthy relationship reference.”

“Sometimes I think you kiss me back because you’re just too nice to not kiss me.”

“Rivaling labia.  Rwar.”

“I think I’m going to open a strip club and call it No Expectations.”

“I want to be a stripper and carry the no-tip gong.”

“Low quality hip-hop is like mother’s milk.”

“I pooped an Applebee.”

“I hope [she] doesn’t get drunk and go home with [him] because that would be like giving a puppy a treat when it poops on your floor.”

“Monuments never change.”

“I hope I’m fucking a goat.”

“You rocketed me right up there.”

“Try and fist me.  I’ll probably fucking flinch.”

“If I like beat boxing, does that mean I’m a lesbian?”

“I can’t stop thinking about that pee that I took.”

“Eric Clapton’s son fell out of a window?  What an idiot.”

“I just don’t want to navigate all those folds of skin.”

“That’s good camel toe.”

“I feel like slobbery people are slobbery.”

“Be a good friend and graze it.  Smell my armpit.”

“Are you guys playing a game or something?”
“No, we’re looking at Jesus’s twitter.”

“You need to stop banging yourself with a wroughty piece of wood that will give you slivers in your vagina.  And by wroughty piece of wood, I mean men that are emotionally unavailable.”