Hello + Joyce Carol Oates + A Geology Classroom

My maiden blog post! The stakes are high. Actually, I don't think the stakes exist yet; I'm in the midst of building all of this and I'm close to losing my mind with the whole web design/layout process. People go to school for this for good reason. I thought I'd take a break and write a little something here. Contemplated an introduction, but that's on another tab, so it's over there if you're interested. All of this feels incredibly self-indulgent and boastful, with the reviews and resume and whatnot, which I swear is unlike me, but hey! I'm trying to market my skills. Can you blame a freelancer? On this blog tab, though, I promise to ease up on the gloating and just share what's on my mind. I would like to accept guest posts as well, if there happens to be interest—email me if you want. I'd be so thrilled to discuss any type of writing with you.

A few days ago I randomly checked out Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates, unaware of its unpopularity. I just wanted to swipe something off a shelf and get out of the library: one of those days. Took it to a park and read it all in one sitting. I felt my focus waning, but I have commitment issues in the sense I need to finish something, no matter if I physically have the ability to stop.

The premise is interesting. A seventeen-year-old girl in the year 2039 lives in a dystopian North America, in which speech is scarily limited and everyone suspects each other of being spies. Kind of a Sovietization of our society. She gets arrested upon high school graduation because her grades were suspiciously high (?) and her valedictorian speech was a series of incendiary questions about their society; somehow, she was completely surprised to face any punishment. She ends up "exiled" to 1950s America and has to adjust to life in rural Wisconsin as a college student—things somewhat escalate from there, but not really. I don't know why going back to a more peaceful time and receiving an education is a damning sentence, but maybe that's just me. I also don't know if it was either a parody of sci-fi tropes or dead-serious, which isn't something you want a reader to be unsure on. I give it a generous three stars. I'm sure this is just an unfortunate anomaly in JCO's long line of work, because I hear Blonde is one of the best celebrity autobiographies, ever. She's 83 and still at it—wow!

I had a much better experience the day following the mediocre read, having been invited to spend an afternoon with my friend at her science lab. More specifically, a geology lab, with hunks of dusty rock on counters and topographical maps of mountains plastered all over the basement walls. The air was cool and earthy down there, an academic cave. (I reflected on my hot upper-story classrooms with some retroactive jealousy.) Her labmates cobbled together a cozy "tea corner" well-stocked with tea bags and kitschy mugs, and I could only imagine the comraderie of young scientists in the room, sipping tea and doing equations, or looking at rocks with magnifying glasses, or whatever they really do that would go over my liberal-arts head. We sat there for a few hours after everyone left; my friend laughed, informing me it was the beginning of fall break, and all the sane people went to go enjoy it while we still had noses stuck to laptop screens. I got a few things done, then we predictably gave into conversation and broke our promises of dedicated work time, as friends do. Here's a photo of us enjoying the autumn air. Now, I gotta get back to trying to fathom how on earth Wix works. Toodles!