Humor

To 21-year old Ashley, Love 24-year old Ashley

/ Ashley / 17 Comments

I started writing a post last night, but then I remembered the vice presidential debate was on, so I felt obligated to watch it. I watched for about ten minutes before I figured I had enough of Joe Biden’s goofy grin and Paul Ryan’s kindergarten hair. Then I decided to read my xanga. You know, like a sane, self-actualized person would do.

I would post a link to my old xanga, but I’d rather not invite further embarrassment.

I read a lot of posts from my 20-21ish years. My middle years of college, when I was dating Jon. Here I thought I had lost a big chunk of time because I couldn’t find (or remember) any journals from that time. But I did actually journal. On my xanga.

This is not shameless twitter self-promotion

That pretty much sums it up.

Since I can’t go back in time and slap myself across the face, I decided to write notes to myself. Because 21-year old me reading these notes is more plausible than 24-year old me slapping 21-year old me.

Also, I’m on nyquil. Well, not nyquil. Generic nyquil that I took from my dad. I’m not drinking it recreationally, you prudes. I’m sick. I’m on my couch in sweatpants with Netflix (Mike Birbiglia’s special) playing in the background.

Yeah, Ashley. I guess that’s one way to spend a Friday night.

I thought of a few of these things at work while I was impressing my new coworkers with the volume of my snot-expulsion, but most of them I’m coming up with off the top of my head. Yeah, I’m just riffing, people. I’m funny. Why don’t you follow me on twitter? Retweet me or something.

Anyway.

Taking out the nose ring you got the second week of college does not make you mature. It just makes you employable. 

You don’t have to put up with that asshole boyfriend. Seriously. Just dump his ass. What do you see in him? He constantly makes you feel inadequate and insecure. Don’t be a moron and mistake constant inner dissonance for passion. It’s not passion – it’s letting someone treat you like garbage. So stop that, seriously. And don’t tell me everything was sunshine and roses, because I have proof, in all of your PRIVATE and PROTECTED posts on xanga, that you were frequently miserable. Yeah. You documented that shit. And thanks for that, it’ll make writing about about that period a hell of a lot easier. 

You know how you really like Sutter Home’s white zin? You’ll get sick of it. Yeah. I know. It’s really unbelievable, but eventually you’ll get to a point where you walk past the $5 bottles and go to the (shock!) $8 and $9 bottles, and you’ll have much better evenings. 

Stop bingeing on Radiohead. “Why is Thom Yorke so good?!” you ask. Because he has unnecessary letters in both of his names, that’s why. And he’s not that great. He’s okay. You’re really moved by some of his songs (I know, I know, How to Disappear Completely brings you to a weird sort of teary nausea), but it will pass and you’ll find there is better music out there, so don’t go around preaching the Radiohead gospel. 

Save a pack of cherry cloves for me, will ya? Eventually Barack Obama will be president and you’ll blame him without knowing if he’s actually responsible for making the flavored ones illegal. You’ll still be able to buy the black ones, but you’ll never really like those, even if you try to tell yourself clove cigarettes are to cigarettes the way chai is to coffee. 

On that note, save your damn money. Seriously. Don’t spend all that extra loan money. You don’t need a Nintendo DS and you certainly don’t need to buy the 007 game just because the character sort of looks like Daniel Craig. You’ll never get past the second level, either. You’re just not a gamer. You know what you really need? A CAR. I cannot stress this enough. YOU NEED A DECENT CAR. 

Take advantage of those cute writers in  your English classes. I don’t mean like rape them, just get out of your shell and say hi. What is the guy gonna do? Seriously. He’ll probably talk and compliment your work, then you can have him over to drink some white zin because you’re a classy broad. 

Actually do your homework. Study. Learn things. Don’t just breeze through college. Really experience it and take advantage of EVERYTHING on campus, including the planetarium. 

Good job working out. Seriously. You were dedicated for a while there. You’ve inspired me to get back to the gym. 

Stop eating bagels.

In the near future, you’ll have a professor tell the class, “You will never be prettier or skinnier than you are right now.” I know, he stole it from Gossip Girl (which is an entirely different issue), but he’s right. At least as far as I can tell. You’ll gain a little of that weight back and your skin will start do weird things like be irritated for no apparent reason (the inside of your left elbow will itch, inexplicably, ALL THE TIME, and your eyelids are sometimes dry and red), and you’ll feel like your body is falling apart at 24. Hopefully 28-year old us will be able to shed some light on this. 

You should somehow display that one letter from your friend when he told you “Love hard. Dance with grace. And don’t forget about the little black dresses.” Interpret it however you wish, instead of being constantly aware of the fact that you’d feel more confident in an LBD than in your sloppy barista uniform (lol, I still can’t believe you worked at a coffee shop that had uniforms) the university makes you wear. 

I’m starting to lose concentration (because I had to be really focused to write this post) and I’ve spent the last two minutes yawning, so I’m going to call it a night.

Edit: After (very briefly) reviewing this before publishing, I just want to note that it took me several tries to spell “presidential” before the little red zigzag disappeared. Also, it’s kind of weird that there are two ps in disappeared. Not sure why I called you guys prudes in the nyquil paragraph. Am I calling you prudes for being shocked by the idea of drinking nyquil recreationally? Because that insinuates that I drink nyquil recreationally, and I don’t. I said “seriously” a lot. Don’t really care.

…and then I hung out with some of the world’s best musicians.

/ Ashley / 9 Comments

I was going to stay home last night. I had a somewhat uneventful day at work and after teaching a violin lesson, I thought it would be nice to go home, put on some sweats, and try to write something. This would have turned into me being on Facebook for about an hour, then watching The Colbert Report.

But I had received a Facebook invite to see the Philharmonia Quartett Berlin perform at UW-Oshkosh. At first, I was like, “Meh. Quartet music. It’s too far to drive and I just bought new tea. I’ll youtube the program.” But something kept tugging at me – a comment that one of my friends posted: “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see some of the best musicians in the world.”

So I felt obligated. I knew I would kick myself if I didn’t.

I AM SO GLAD I WENT.

It was a fantastic reminder that I can’t expect my  life to be fun, exciting, or inspiring if I sit in my apartment alone. First off, I was welcomed by the sight of the building in which I spent the most while in college. I never thought I would be so comforted by the hideous architecture. I didn’t realize it at the time, but many of my most tumultuous and memorable moments happened in the Arts and Communications building.  That building witnessed the disintegration of my two most serious romantic relationships, the beginning of one of them, several crying spells (over boys, over finances, and over studies), a tipsy rehearsal (for what ensemble? I’ll never tell), and plenty of others I would rather not post on the internet. My point is that it was like walking back to a home – even if it was a stressful and oddly moist atmosphere.

I was able to see many of the people that made my time in the music department fun. It also made me really miss being there. At times, I hated how small the music department was – it was small, a little cliquey, and surprisingly gossipy at times. It sometimes reminded me of high school. But regardless, it was a community. There’s a sense of comradery among music students. We complain about how other majors only take four or five classes a semester while we’re taking seven or eight. We complain about the stinky practice rooms, and how the hall is either steamy or freezing. We complain about practicing piano or ear-training. We all have to trudge through the same classes. I would say it’s exactly what happens to men on the battlefield, just with reeds, spit valves, mallets, and rosin.

The concert was incredible. It inspired me to both play my violin and sell it – because why bother? I’ll never be as good as them. It was a pretty traditional program – two fantastic quartets book-ending a modern piece that everyone pretends to understand and really love. Mozart, Lutoslawski, and Beethoven.

The thing about music like Mozart or Beethoven is that it has a distinct grace and natural air to it. I’m too clumsy of a violinist to play Mozart properly, and I certainly haven’t played enough in the last six months to do Wolfgang or Ludwig any justice. I’m envious of violinists whose pianissimos are as powerful as their fortissimos. The four musicians tonight made it look so damn easy. It was hard to imagine any of them being an amateur. It sounded like they had been rosining their bows in the womb and perfecting arpeggios and three octave harmonic minor scales on the other side of the canal.

The Lutoslawski was completely different. It was sort of like they got up there and said, “Hey! Look at all the sounds we can make with these things!”

It was powerful to watch, but in the same sort of way I felt about The Master. I could appreciate its complexity and the strength of an ensemble that plays the piece, but I didn’t connect with it.

Afterward, I was planning on going home and reading some more Infinite Jest when I caught wind that one of the musicians had asked (in a perfectly charming German accent) where to get beer. A few of my friends jumped at the chance to take them downtown to Oblio’s. I wavered for a moment and then remembered: a once in a lifetime opportunity.

When else would I be able to say that I saw the world’s best string quartet (for free) and then had a few beers with them?

NEVER. That’s when.

So I went.

I spent most of the time talking to the cellist (who I thought was handsome in a mature-foreign-world-class-musician sort of way) and the violist. The cellist said he enjoyed Wisconsin and was glad that our beer had improved. We ended up talking about the Lutoslawski piece for about twenty minutes, with the violist talking and half-singing the thing while we followed the score (which looked INSANE, by the way). As I guessed, the piece wasn’t exactly measured – the bars are more of suggestions. Phrases are repeated and ended by cues and rests are counted in seconds (not beats). Basically, the musicians have to function as a single unit (which, I realize, all ensembles truly have to do) in order to achieve a successful performance.

But when I told them I was glad they ended with the Beethoven, they both laughed their hearty German laughs and asked if I wanted another beer.

It was a great night. And while I love blogging and writing, I’m so glad I didn’t stay home in front of my computer.

I love to eat dutch babies.

/ Ashley / 13 Comments

In sixth grade, my language arts teacher asked us to name a favorite dish our families made. Since my name lies in the middle of the alphabet, I’ve always been  able to listen to my peers and make a comfortably boring response. I must have been daydreaming about buying my first Abercrombie t-shirt, because as my classmates named things like roast beef and french bread pizza, there was a pause before I answered.

“Ashley?” Mrs. Hertz said.

“Dutch babies.”

Cue my classmates’ laughter. Cue my mortification. Cue my red face. Cue the urge to crawl into the hallway.

I remember thinking that I wanted to give a different response. I wanted mine to stick out of the crowd. This surprises me to this day. From what I recall, middle school was not a time when I wanted to be an individual. Like every awkward adolescent, I wanted to bring as little attention to myself as possible. So of course saying my favorite dish is dutch babies makes perfect sense.

My teacher was puzzled and probably stifled her own laughter. “Dutch babies?”

I began the furious scrambling of embarrassment. “It’s like a cross between pancakes and french toast.”

“How do you make them?”

I was eleven years old. How the hell was I suppose to know? “Umm. I don’t know. You bake them?”

“Okay, when do you eat dutch babies?”

Until that moment, it never occurred to me what it sounded like. It sounded like I enjoyed eating infants from The Netherlands.

“At breakfast. My mom makes them on the weekends sometimes.”

“Oh okay,” she said. Luckily, she moved onto the next person, because I was probably on the verge of tears or something.

Unwittingly, I had given a boy, Andy, more ammunition. A few weeks earlier, he had started to tease me for reading too much. I remember passing him on stairs towards lunch, and he would taunt me: “How many books did you read today, Ashley? Twenty?”

His point wasn’t that I always had my nose in a book, his point was that I read because I didn’t have friends. Or at least that’s how I interpreted it, and why it hurt. Looking back, that wasn’t true. I had friends. we might have been a little on the dorky side since we bonded over orchestra rehearsals, but we were still friends.

But now he got to make fun of me for being a cannibal.

It wasn’t that I was ruthlessly teased. It was just one of those stupid middle school things – he was cool, and I was somewhere lost in the middle of the crowd.  It felt like he said these things out of a compulsion to make noise. I think he held the responsibility of entertaining his friends, so every time a punchline presented itself, he was obligated to take advantage.

So now he asked, “Eaten any dutch babies lately, Ashley?”

He was so creative.

Anyway, I guess I haven’t changed much, because this morning I found myself being a bookworm cannibal while reading Infinite Jest and eating dutch babies.

And you know what, Andy? IT WAS AWESOME.

By the way, if you’d like to try my 11 year old self’s favorite dish, here’s the recipe:

4 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup flour

5tbsp butter.

Preheat oven to 375. Blend eggs, milk, and flour. Melt butter separately and pour into a 9×13 pan. Pour egg mixture into pan. Bake for 30min. It will bubble up and be lightly crispy. Serve with warm syrup.

This morning, I put a little vanilla in the egg mixture, sprinkled some cinnamon before baking, and then served it with sliced bananas.

Welcome to my bed-desk.

/ Ashley / 2 Comments

Before I got out of bed this morning, I felt like creating something. This often happens on Saturday mornings. I open my eyes and I have a craving to write something beautiful and insightful in a way that challenges things I previously held true to my heart. I want to edit old manuscripts. I want to turn all of my literary lists into lilting essays with just the right blend of story and musing.

So what do I do? I get out of bed. I make coffee. I make breakfast. I take my computer to the patio. I decide to see what’s going on in the blogosphere where I read and comment on twenty different blogs. Then I become distracted and end up not even touching my blog, my manuscripts, my literary lists, or a blank document.

I wanted to avoid distraction this morning, so I just reheated coffee from yesterday morning (classy, I know), made myself a bowl of oatmeal, and got back into bed. So far it’s going quite well. I’ve written three new paragraphs.

My bed is getting so much action this morning, you guys.

Now four.

Last night I went to a double feature with my friend Leo, who is an aspiring movie critic (check out his blog here). We saw The Master and Sleepwalk with Me. Both movies were great in their own right. The Master was a two-hour epic that was apparently an allegory for Scientology. I wasn’t aware of that while watching it. I saw that it was about a man returning from WWII, struggling with post-traumatic stress, alcoholism, and a tendency to drink paint thinner, who meets a charismatic man who with an adoring and wife (played by Amy Adams) and cultish following. He also enjoys making the vet walk back and forth touching a wall and window (didn’t really understand that part). It was a fascinating movie and I kept watching, waiting for some crumb of insight to fall, something that would enlighten me and give me direction and a new mantra. But it never happened. It was a great movie. But I wasn’t really sure why.

Yes. The music was great (the incidental violin solos throughout the movie made me want to pick my own up and regain my vibrato). The shots were beautiful and often breathtaking. The characters were compelling (though I was often distracted by the way Joaquin Phoenix made his skeleton look like it was made from wire clothes hangers). The story was twisted and combined with just enough dramatic tension and sexual undertones to keep me engaged. All of these combined to make a fantastic film. But at the end, I was still left thinking “What the fuck was that?”

I don’t know a ton about movies, but I’m pretty sure all the movies that critics rave about are the same films that leave me scratching my head, wondering what I just spent the last two hours watching.

But I’m not a movie watcher, and I admit that freely. Most of my ex-boyfriends will vouch that I can barely make it through any movie without falling asleep, so the fact that I saw two movies in a single night is absurd. But we traveled about two hours to Madison to the Sundance theater, a place that would  probably make even a Madagascar movie seem charmingly pretentious. It was a great experience.

I loved Sleepwalk with Me. It was charming. It was endearing. It was just what I had hoped for when I saw the previews weeks earlier. I have a very special place in my heart for Mike Birbiglia. He’s my favorite comedian. I have an adoring sort of possession over anything he does because I’ve watched his comedy progress, deepen, and become more honest from Two Drink Mike to Sleepwalk with Me.

Sleepwalk with Me is the story of the disintegration of a romantic relationship, a burgeoning comedy career (which, incidentally, made me sort of want to be a comedian), and a sleep disorder. It was sad and beautiful in a way that made me feel like he was a close friend who kept knowingly making bad choices. The movie is based on Mike’s story that aired on This American Life and The Moth (both excellent podcasts, subscribe NOW), was developed into a full comedy album and book. I’m sure he’s sick of the story, but it doesn’t make it any less compelling.

I’m not really sure what else to say about it other than you should really go watch the movie. If it’s not playing in your city, it’s worth a two-hour drive to the nearest independent theater.  Also, how could you not love a guy who wrestles with Ira Glass?

Anyway, I’m going to get to work on some serious writing. I apologize that my posts have been somewhat lacking in the last week or two. My life has been uneventful, uninspiring, and underwhelming. Just know that I’m working on it.