To Clear the Rumors

The guy in the library who fell and hurt himself during primal scream will be alright. So far all I know is he is a senior and a great guy, and probably just had a very bad shoulder injury, but is conscious.

Just a reminder to everybody out there to be careful and take care of yourselves. Good luck on finals.

~Rad

I've Been Lightly Drinking, and a Little Heavy on the Thinking

Few people know her name, but this sexy gal from San Diego just released a killer album. Tristan Prettyman is a former model turned singer-songwriter (and also Jason Mraz's former girlfriend), but don't let that turn you off: she's got a lot of talent and it shines through every inch of this sophomore album. The sound is sort of folksy and upbeat, and the lyrics are just really simple, direct, and honest. Her voice is soft and lovely and very pure. Also, those of you who know Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens), he's featured on one of the tracks. Badass. You should check her out!!

My favorite tracks on Hello...X are Hello, Echo, Handshake, and In Bloom. The title track especially is ridiculously awesome.

love,
Rad

I'm Your Tangerine, Babe!

Campfire. Sunshine. Barbecue. Summer! Summer!! Summer!!! (well, almost)

What I love most about this time of year are the smells. I love the smell of sunscreen, and how it takes so long to get absorbed into my skin. It makes me think of lying on the beach with my skin getting warm and that sunscreen scent floating up over the entire coastline, hovering like fog, drifting into the doors of coffee shops and ice cream parlors and bars as bare feet carry sand indoors. I love the smell of coals and burning wood at night, and feeling my eyes sting just a little when the wind pushes the smoke my way. I miss how cool night are just north of where I live, by Mendocino and Humboldt Bay, and how it gets dark faster in the forest, where the giant trees almost block out the entire sky. It gets so quiet there you can hear the ocean. Aaaargh I can't wait to go hoooome!

Those of you who didn't go out in the quad today for the hip-hop/speakers/yummy BBQ, you don't know what you're missing. Homework? Psh. Save it for tomorrow. Get yo stunna shades on and cut up those old blue jeans. It's time to play!

~Rad

I'm Minoring In Your Mom (So I Can Do Her Well When I Graduate)

This morning, walking to my dorm entrance, what did I find but an (unused) red condom, lying on the stairs, baking happily in the sun.

Oh, Lathrop.

~Rad

Two Doors and Candy Apple Walls

**WARNING: THIS POST CLOCKS IN AT MORE THAN 400 WORDS.**
(For the record, the Blog9 Admin thinks that this is a BEAUTIFUL post.)

We checked out the apartment yesterday. It borders the graveyard on the opposite side of Noyes, with an entrance through two doors leading back to back and opening onto each other in opposite directions. Then there is a narrow staircase up into three small bedrooms, a living room, and a tiny kitchen with a balcony. My room is light blue and looks over the playground. It's rockin'.

This whole living off-campus thing was a decision that required about as much deliberation as two people who are mutually attracted to each other partake in when locked up together in a dark closet, naked, and with a bottle of Bacardi: it just kind of happened. I had my heart dead set on becoming a student fellow; then I didn't get it. Instead I got the blue bedroom, and maybe a pair of Lovebirds to keep me company. Not to mention two incredible roommates to share it all with. (And cable. Baaaaaaller.)

And I'm thinking, it's funny how things work out so well. Most of my life ends up being this high-speed emotional Rollerblade chase involving laser beams and highly flammable slinkies being thrown all over the place, terrifying innocent bystanders. I stay up in the dark, staring at the piping along the walls, wondering whether or not the water is carrying me down the right stream. Because don't we all want to end up somewhere safe, to wake up in the places our minds have visited, places we think we know well? And then I remember that the beauty of living is tied up with this tendency of everything to strive towards certain balance. Think about it: we exist solely because of this motion of things towards equilibrium. It is in our very cells, it is a part of every process necessary for our survival, it is what allows us to exist as individual beings separate from our environment. It is so important. And I believe this osmosis of sorts happens on a greater scale as well, involving me, and you, and everything within and without us. I believe that when something doesn't work out the way we planned, it is just a sign that there is something else out there for us, something good that we're missing. And because of this selective permeability of life, I really do think we should be taking it easy, that we should not be thinking too far ahead, that we should learn to take things as they come and go. So get low with the flow if you know what's good for you. Take a breath. Take a break. Take your time.

I'm yours,
Rad

Love Letter

Dear ACDC,

I just want to let you know that your Vegan Tomato Soup re-established my faith in humanity. Will you please make it for me every day for the rest of my life?

Much obliged,
Rad


(No, really. This is the best thing I've tasted on campus all year. Yum. Go try it.)

...And a Kind of Native Flavoring

Every time I talk to my friends from back home, their first questions to me is: "So, Rad, how is your love life?" My answer? "Nonexistent. I go to Vassar." "Uhuh," they commiserate and then the conversation promptly turns to their girlfriend/boyfriend/sex buddy(ies) and what nice hands/eyes/toenails he/she/they have and what they gave them for their four-and-three-quarter-month anniversary. Oh god. Spare me.

Some days it feels like I am the only person from my high school who is uninvolved. I don't do the whole hooking-up thing: that's not my style. The only thing that has been exiled from my room thus far is a cockroach. I live a quiet life but often wonder if there is anything wrong with me--stopping before a mirror, trying to understand if the problem is merely skin-deep, or if there is something darker and uglier within me, hidden. Sometimes I'm ashamed to tell people that I still have never had a first kiss.

Saturday night at the TAs, however, talking to my friend after a few (entirely non-alcoholic...) drinks, I realized something. "I'm not upset that I am not in love," I told her "I'm upset that everyone expects me to be." I'm upset because I'm supposed to be out "getting the guy," because I'm supposed to flirt, because I'm expected to somehow magically stand out from the other ten beautiful girls who want him and win him over. That's not love. That's The Bachelor, Season 1, Vassar edition. The right person I won't have to try to impress. To the right person, I will be irreplaceable. And this intuition to wait it out is an inhibition I don't want to overcome.

So next time my friends call, I won't take their sympathy. Instead, I'm going to interrupt their sugary-sweet stories with tales of my own, stories about last night, about how I sat on the roof at 1AM with a bunch of sweet people, about how we huddled under blankets and sang songs to my guitar and watched our voices float away like smoke up to the stars: so real, so full, so living. I'm going to live my life until love is found.

Take it easy, sluggers.

Radish

Oatstanding... Right?

One morning towards the very end of spring break I woke up and decided that the thing I really wanted right now was a nice warm cup of oatmeal with delicious de-frosted blueberries from the Retreat. I checked my watch. 8:30. I wasn't sure what I was doing up this early, but the good news was, the Retreat had just opened, so I put on my jeans and coat and headed out into the miserable and dreary morning.

Life at the Retreat was in full swing, but alas, the pot of gooey, steamy oatmeal was not yet in its place. It'll be about five minutes, the lady behind the counter informed me. No problem, I replied and went over to examine the yoghurt flavors. Five minutes later I made my way back over to the oatmeal stand. It's almost ready, just five more minutes. Okay, no big deal.

Fifteen minutes and five-and-a-half New York Times articles later, I was still standing by the empty heating pad, waiting for my oatmeal, when a few key members of the Vassar administration joined me. There were maybe five or six of them, greeting each other, chattering away. When is this oatmeal going to be done? Five minutes, came a voice from the kitchen. Don't trust them, I said half-jokingly. I've been here for over fifteen. This oatmeal better be fabulous. They laughed.

Five minutes later someone came out of the kitchen with the pot of oatmeal. It smelled wonderful--not that watery, kind-of-oatmeal smell but the full-bodied, hearty odor of grains boiled just right. My cup was already prepared, one quarter full of blueberries, a few raisins thrown in for flavor and just a touch of honey. My stomach grumbled hungrily at the sight of the steaming pot...

Why, there's hardly anything in here! one of the admin ladies said, helping herself to it, There's maybe about five scoops total of oatmeal in this pot! Well, I'm glad I got here early, said the other lady behind her, and I'm glad I'm second in line.

So, I watched them all go in front of me. In the end, there was just a little bit left at the bottom, and I managed to fill my cup about three quarters of the way. Still, I walked away thinking, if the administration of our school can't even play fair in the oatmeal line, how fair are they playing with the $49,250/year my family is turning over into their hands?

Just a thought.

~Radish

Confessions of an Almost-19-Year-Old

I made spaghetti the other day. The health-store kind, "Made with Jerusalem Artichoke Flour!", whatever that is, with lots of marinara sauce on top, the kind with the mushrooms in it. I ate it out of a mug because that's the only dish I had thought to bring with me to Noyes. It was a sunny day and in the kitchen it was very warm because none of the windows opened. I drank my food down with wine I had gotten in Spain, which I sipped right out of the bottle, because the only dish I had thought to bring with me into Noyes was at the moment full of artichoke flour spaghetti.

I love dorm life but I miss having a house. There is something about having to do the dishes, needing to buy the groceries and wipe off the counter-tops and vacuum the living-room floor that makes you feel like a full person, instead of just a limb living in room 362. It's like building a sand castle where the waves can't reach it. No matter what else is happening around you, you have walls, and a front door, and you can choose who you let inside.

The best days are those where you do something differently and it works. This whole life thing works best if you jump into the pool before you're quite ready, or if you change your mind twenty times before you make it up and then forget what you decided the first chance you get. Practicality belongs on somebody else's doorstep, like a puppy or a bouquet of roses or an illegitimate child. It's best to silence that voice of reason in your head or else it will ring all of a sudden like a cell phone in the middle of the movie and then everyone else in the theatre will turn and look at you while you wrestle with your purse in the darkness. Lately I can't go a day without doing something out of the ordinary. It's like I simply can't exist without creating something that might be completely stupid and useless: I don't care. I'm tired of being asked to do new things the old way. New things should be done the new way, otherwise they're just echoes of the emptiness someone else felt, and will never suffice to fill our own. Why do we try? Why do we listen when we should be singing?

I resolve to take back absolutely everything I said I was, so you won't know what to think of me, and that would be okay. I'm so bored. Let's do this over again.

...because all the cool kids were crazy anyhow.

Indiscriminately yours,
Radish

Into the Land of the Tea Kettle

Through the slit of the half-shut shades, I can see a sort of pale, iron-colored light sifting through the windows, filling up all the spaces left uninhabited by 7am. I pull back the tangle of blankets that has made its living between my knees and throw my weight over the edge of the mattress where my warm feet thump clumsily on the cold wood, and the blood rushes to my head, and I feel my hair rise with the static as it parts with the pillow. My world is iron-colored and it spins. My bare feet pick their way through the labyrinth of dirty t-shirts and dust bunnies that dwell on last-semester's syllabi and a few scattered newspapers and my roommate's copy of As I Lay Dying until at last I reach my dresser and fumble for the orange box of DayQuil. Finding it, I drink it down with cold Chamomile tea from last night, then put the kettle on to boil, intending to make myself some Udon soup from UpC, reach for my philosophy reading on my night table, but instead fall asleep as soon as cheek meets pillow, finger still stuck in between the pages.

Radish

Conversations on Lathropia

The best part of living where I live in Lathrop is the number of guys who continually meander down my hall wearing glasses. By daylight, Lathrop boys lead ordinary lives: going to class, dining at the DC, chilling with the bros; basically doing all the things Lathrop boys normally do. But by night, the transformation is truly extraordinary. Off come the transparent contact lenses and collared shirts, the tight jeans and the preppy white sneakers (well, not all of them have these things, but you know what I mean)...make way for the sweatpants and the faded t-shirts from some band they saw six years ago, the messy hair, the fuzzy green slippers, and the GLASSES. They look ready to get down. To their 11-page philosophy papers--but still.

I just can't help it--I think eyewear is so sexy. It just gives off this aura of intellectual prowess that nothing else can replicate. When a guy walks into my room sporting a set of stunning frames, something's gotta come off: his glasses or his clothing. That's just the way it works.

I have tried many a time to uncover the source of this unfathomable attraction. Glasses unquestionably make you look smarter, in the sense that they make you look like you’re ready to get down to work, full of drive and imagination. They create a sense of separation between you and the rest of the world; a barrier, a transparent shield, a source of mystery and allure. Like you’re fighting the chaotic forces of the world with sheer brainpower, and the lenses serve to focus and direct the force of your thought, like mirrors on laser beams. Glasses emphasize your complexion, and there’s something about the right pair that can make a guy’s face look so handsome. And then there’s the argument from identity: so much of our social interaction revolves around the need to somehow conceal our faults. We constantly hide behind blemish remover and expensive face wash, contact lenses and Rogaine and brand-name clothing. We do. We wrap these around us like a heavy coat in February. I'm not saying that any of these things are necessarily bad: that would be hypocritical. I just want to point out that sometimes, the most attractive things about us are our imperfections, and, in our plight to diminish them, we diminish ourselves. This is why it’s so sexy when a guy wears glasses: it’s just a small way of showing that he embraces his own imperfections. And if he can embrace his, then I think that maybe he can learn to embrace mine as well.

But anyway.

Okay, so you know that soap opera where a middle-aged suburban housewife dreams of meeting her strapping young handyman, who will roll up his sleeves for her (revealing a set of perfectly-tanned biceps), and say, "don't worry, ma'am, I'll fix your kitchen faucet?" Well, perhaps you are unfamiliar with this epic bit of television history. However, if I could have a movie made about my dream man, my be-speckled prince…he would stroll conscientiously and maybe a little shyly into my room one cool fine night. Then, sitting on my bed, he would take out his little black glasses case, and, wiping the lens, adjust the metal bridge over his nose in a nonchalant way; like it was nothing, like he was so comfortable with this and everything else about himself. Then, he would look me reassuringly in the eye, take my warm hand in his, and say, softly: "Don't worry, I'll help you with your multivariate calculus problem set."

Why yes, you may analyze my curves.

Yours,
Radish

That's Totally Rad(ish)... in Lathrop

From the room above

Suspicious noises emerge…

Use protection, kids!

The SparkNotes: Lathrop, Blog9, Radish (that’s me). We correspond. Like angles. Absorb our wisdom like your poor feet did last Wednesday’s puddles.

Yours,

Radish