Snapshot of Grandpa Bruce upon reading A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

The very old man with enormous wings reminds me of him. He too was very old and had a certain light of which only a glimmer remained. He would never allow us to watch television at night and instead read to us while we sat comfortably on his bony, fragile lap. His lips were purple and the skin looked so thin I thought it might break if I poked it with my finger. He drank warm beer and fed his dog, Ben, bland oatmeal on saltine crackers.

Once, my dog, Cinder got hold of a squirrel after it had eaten bait. Cinder went mad. I could hear him howling, a sound worse than coyotes fighting, worse than a woman screaming as her baby crowns and worse than anything I have heard since. I lay, hysterical in Grandpa Bruce’s lap while he stroked my hair and sang me songs from his youth with messages that did not make sense to my generation but had a soothing tone to them.

Snapshot of the girl who is in all of my literature classes

Used to be she had about shoulder length dyed a darker brown than her natural color hair. The style was an attempt at a rockabilly / Betty Paige 'do that never quite seemed in place, always a bit too mussed, needing to be brushed into place. These days her hair is cut short and she resembles Mary Badham who played Scout in the movie rendition of To Kill a Mockingbird; except her head is more round which has the effect of making it look like a ball atop her head if I squint hard enough or imagine it in my mind.

She wears those 1950's cat-eyed glasses that Chandra used to wear back in the Oregon days. I'm not even sure she needs them. (aside: does anyone remember when I wore those glasses, but without the lenses?) I don't want to give you the impression that this chick is hip because she's not. She has all of the outfittings of a hipster - the straight legged jeans, the cardigans, all that Salvation Army stuff), but something is always a bit off and the effort fails (her ass is too big for the jeans, . So, like I was saying, her glasses. I'm not sure why she does this, but she looks down her nose at people. I mean literally, she tilts her head back and lowers her eyes when speaking. Sometimes she commits the ultimate act of narcissism and closes her eyes while speaking. And she does a lot of speaking. I get the feeling that she's a feminist, but is only one because she considers it to be hip. I get the feeling that she isn't really as smart as she lets on she is because really smart people don't throw their intelligence in a person's face. Real intelligence is quiet and it definitely would never name drop. Last night she schmoozed our teacher, "I saw this play, that was like, so interesting (because that's her favorite word, interesting. Everything's interesting. I purposely avoid using the word because of it). It was called the Glass Cord and just the way it was written and acted out was so interesting. There was this very seductive, very ethnic interpretive dancing in the beginning that I just found fascinating, but everyone else didn't. I thought it was very interesting." And what has she really said? Nothing. She talks to hear her own voice, I think.

On the subject of her voice: last night after reading aloud Endgame, I realized her interpretations were spoken in a very high pitched, very nasal monotone. I mean, it's almost Fran Drescher. And she has a sort of underbite, is what it must be. The lower part of her jaw juts out past her top teeth and this, combined with her tendency to talk down her nose makes me wonder if she can't see past her chin.

snapshot of that damn hippie

i am torn between loving her for her lust for life and hating her for her inability to be loyal to anyone but herself or fun, or the moment. people like her, her spit at life and get rewarded for it make me physically ill. their hapiness astounds me. touring about the world, smoking pot, pullin' up stakes as soon as the wind shifts... what sort of life is that? and friends? who has friends with a life like that? that's what i mean about the lack of loyalty.

snapshot of judith

english isn't her first language, yet she's an english major. not that i feel her first language should impact her ability to interpret literature or write in english, but it does. tonight she ranted on and on about the fact that our teacher refered to Virginia Woolf's essay, "A Room of Ones Own" as a feminist manifesto. in her (unswayable) opinion, that is an insult. she feels as if Woolf's words do not speak for all women. when i tried to point out that they may have been profound at the time they were written, she retorted that there must have been other, better fiminist manifesto writers at that time. ...
she constantly asks for explanations of seemingly simple things like the meaning of sentimental.
she is passive agressive.
she wears her bangs cut straight across her forhead
she constantly reminds us that she is 30
she tries to bring christianity into every facet of conversation, literary or otherwise

Evil incarnate.

 
Cameron was a guy that I knew back in the Oregon days. I still remember how my cheeks would get hot from embarassment everytime I would walk into the 2nd Street Beanery with that day's sandwiches and he and Chandra would sing out, "Sandwich Girl Barbie." I wanted to die. I felt like I was in high school all over again. I think I even told my boss that I wouldn't deliver the sandwiches anymore because they called me "Sandwich Girl Barbie", that's how much it affected me.
Stupid Cameron. One time, Ashley spit on him and wanted to fight him because he was her boyfriend at the time, but really, he's gay (but that's not why she wanted to fight him, it was most probably because he's such a woman, and sometimes a bitch needs hittin') and he just layed down on the ground, crying. I didn't actually see this happen, but Ashley told me the story so now I feel like I can relay it.
Anyway, this picture was taken during my Polaroid phase and it came out exactly like this. Scary. 

Snapshot of the girl who was in both my humanities class and my english composition class

Always aloof; she was. Unaffected, to be precise. She took to sitting next to me, mid-term, after one's seating was already a given. She would bring Cosmo to our english comp class, so I would ask to read it in an effort to spark conversation. We would comment on this article, and that half-naked boy, but our conversation never went outside that box. She started to annoy me the second week after her seating coup, when she refused to contribute to a brainstorm the class was having on paper topics. She had a good idea, she whispered it below her breath, I heard her whisper. I said, say it. She refused. She said, you say it. No. I couldn't even look at her after that.

snapshot of phil
phil likes guns. phil has a whole aresenal back in washington. phil packs heat wherever he goes. the nra passes out buttons that say "phil for life". when phil becomes president, he will change the title to, "el presidente por vida". phils speaches will never begin with "my fellow americans..." , rather phil will stand at the podium, shotgun in hand, and say, "'sup?". one of the first things on el presidentes' to do list is to nuke michigan, specifically detroit. while some hippies may say this is a bit harsh, phil believes it neccessary. nothing good comes out of detroit anymore, not even cars. next on his agenda is making puerto rico a state, whether they like it or not. after puerto rico, cuba is next on his takeover list- watch your back fidel. once the us has aquired all the mangos, cigars, and marijuana resources of our new states, el presidente will set forth to help the world as a whole. step one is to invade the tiny island known as great britain and liberate its inhabitants from the tyrannic rien of the evil queen mother. millions of toothbrushes and the ada will be dropped by the navy as reenforcements. another worldwide justice phil will initiate is the immidiate cease and desist of the use of the word "aboot" by all canadians. militant english classes will be instructed by the most elite of navy seals.
phils world would undoubtedly be a better world. when phils name appears on the ballot, my check mark will go next to it, how 'bout yours?

adam
once upon a time, in a land two oceans away, there happened a great romance. adam and i started dating shortly before he was due to transfer to norfolk. it was an easy relationship, one that required little effort, it just clicked. he moved away, and we planned for me to transfer to norfolk when i was due, a year later. i ended up deciding to tranfer to california for several reasons: 1. i will never, ever go to norfolk for duty. 2. his job would require him to be gone a lot. 3. i was going to sea duty and didn't want to be "that girl" who followed her boyfriend to a place that she didn't want to be, and put my goals on the back burner 4. where was the guarantee that it would work?
essentially, after i decided not to go, adam went on deployment and it crumbled from there. we planned to reunite in San Diego when we both transfered again (oct 2004), but i just don't know. i still write him e-mails, and once in a blue moon, he'll write me a one sentence cliche, but mostly my efforts go unrequited. i still love him, compare men to him, and hope for a fairytale ending. will it happen? who knows. do i regeret my decision. sometimes.

a departing rebel

adrian is a misogynist. i didn't know it at first, and in fact, it is still sometimes hard to tell. i enjoyed my conversations with adrian and even started to give in to some of his propaganda. his callousness is catching. adrian bucked the system, won, and is now getting the fuck out. bz adrian. keep spreading your propaganda, and practicing celebacy. i wish you godspeed in all your endeavors.

snapshot of chef

almost 0415: omelette time. The man who matt dubbed the "omelette architect", is really named roland. even though he works in the galley on a aircraft carrier, in the worlds finest navy, he acts like he is the head chef at a five star restaurant. he knows my order by heart (veggie and cheese omelette) and makes sure to have matts ready at the same time so there is never a lull in our conversation. once, when matt was bullied by the guys ahead of us into getting our omelettes from the "other girl", roland got jealous. the day after the incident with "other girl", he pretended to forget our orders, and almost couldn't look at us. it took about half a week for him to forgive us. roland is a fine example of how having passion for ones job leads to loyalism. matt says that if he were a millionare, he would get up at the crack of dawn and fly his private jet to the uss carl vinson on a daily basis, just to partake in rolands delicacies.thank god for roland and all the rolands out there. and thank god matt is not a millionare because he would never be able to fly a private jet onto the flight deck, no matter how rich he was.

snapshot of a crush

he is a force to be reckoned with, one of those people who evokes clint eastwood in some spaghetti western. his eys are clear blue pools his mouth the end of cupids' arrow.

i see him often, my crush, and each time i am rendered immobile.

we glance at each other across a crowded room, never speaking. the night ends and we leave seperately, my crush and i.