Author Archives: Luke Wasacz

Return from the Dead

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I’m back from the dead baby, this time with 110% as much existential angst and rotten poetry.

This is the final week of classes, and then next week is finals. Tensions are running high around Laf. The Library is mobbed, students are more burnt out than trashed cigarettes and hundreds of pages of reading lie unfinished, threatening our psyches. Final papers and Final exams are starting soon, everyone’s blood pressure is rising, and we’re running around like chickens with severed heads attending to each assignment.

In other words, things are pretty regular.

I’ve had a big crisis of person recently, but I feel its sort of resolved itself. Either that, or I stopped thinking about it. I won the Gilbert Prize, an award given to English majors who the department particularly likes. It comes with $700, honor, and the weight of expectations. I’m deeply honored, but struggle with the idea of me deserving it. Luckily Danny slapped some sense into me, but whatever. Now I’m just trying to clear my conscience by reading through the books I haven’t finished and not giving up. Fighting for what you love, or think you love, even when its hard, is admirable. Even more admirable is doing so without complaining quite as much as I do >_>

Maybe the blog platform isn’t for me – maybe these journal entries work as better therapy when they are in notebook form, because then they also contain my poetry and sketches and shit. Who knows. Everything’s been so crazy recently, I wanted to just journal again in some capacity to get my feelings out. Its helped in the past, so with any luck it’ll help in the now.

We’ll see. Maybe I’ll be back again tomorrow.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

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What’s the difference between sci-fi and fantasy?

It seems like an obvious question. Sci-fi is about technology, it happens in the future. Fantasy is about magic, it happens in the past.

But what is different about technology and magic? “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” said Arthur C. Clarke. In both genres they stretch the boundaries of what is humanly possible. Many Fantasy staples have simple sci-fi expy’s, and visa-versa. Swords become light sabers. Fireballs become laser guns. Flying carpets become hovercraft and dragons become death-stars. The difference is that the wondrous abilities of magic are explicitly unexplainable (or at least, unexplained) while sci-fi technology is presumed explainable – the better authors just often space us the gruesome details.

Perhaps the difference lies in how the two genres use their key elements. Fantasy uses magic to invoke wonder – to nostalgize over a lost, simpler past, to invoke a yearning for the ignorance of medieval kingdoms, to re-ignite in us the childhood wonder of appreciating something we don’t understand. It uses magic to make the world seem bigger than it is. Sci-fi uses technology to invoke wonder – but this wonder is intended to make us look forward, to excite ourselves for a future where the possibilities are endless, to invoke a desire for the new, to ignite in us an optimism for the future – or, as is the case with many sci-fi stories, to make us worry for the future, to make us doubt the value of “progress,” to complicate things and magnify the problems presented by the very technology they present. it uses technology to make the world seem smaller than it is.

Maybe it comes down to a difference in how we value time. A friend of my pointed out to me that in Fantasy, the oldest and most ancient things are the most powerful – millennial dragons, centenarian wizards and lost magics. It correlates power with experience, with age, with wisdom. The new is untested, inexperienced and likely to fail. In sci-fi, the newest and most advanced things are the most powerful – killer apps, faster guns, newer thrusters.  It correlates power with newness, with ingenuity, with youth. Old things are dangerous for the obsolescence and their irrelevance. Some sci-fi stories rather tactfully include human emotion in the category of obsolete things to make a point of the danger of progress.

Or maybe it’s a difference of ethos? Fantasy tends to paint the world in good and evil, while sci-fi tends to paint is as in differing shades of morality?

These are all generalizations, of course, but still, the question is an intriguing one.

She Got Drunk

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We made Quesadillas and invited friends over for dinner. They were made with sliced up honey-barbecue chicken and tasted candied sweet, like avocado, although we hadn’t used any avocado. A conversation broke out about our friend who just recently seriously considered suicide while sober then again while drunk on Saturday and had to go the hospital. The quesadillas only tasted sour after that.

This is a different friend from yesterday’s post.

She’s had major depressive episodes and chronic depression for a while now, and its really sad, because she is incredibly talented, dedicated and cheery when she’s not haunted by the specter of her depression. It really does haunt her, too: We’ve tried to dispel it multiple times with conversation, love, care, counseling, and every time it lifts its ghostly lantern and leads her away into the dark again. Every time she think about suicide, she comes one step closer to committing to it. Recently, she tried to overdose on pain reliever, but didn’t take enough. When she tries to actually commit the act, she usually texts someone. There’s still a shred of her left fighting in there, who doesn’t want to let go of this world. We have to find it and protect it.

It’s difficult though, trying to help friends and family with depression. Common affirmations of the value of life tend to ring hollow to them – “it gets better” or “other people have it worse” makes there (often unexplained and persistent) sadness feel trivial or surmountable, when it doesn’t feel like that at all to them. As someone whose been depressed in the past . . . the one thing I wanted was for someone to say something to me that was actually true, and not say more bullshit, more generic help, just say yeah, it really does suck huh, yeah fuck living. Eventually, someone did say that, and it made me feel a lot better. I’ve said that to my friend before, and its helped, but it only wads off the specter for so long.

What she really needs is antidepressants. When the ghost of depression holds you so closely that he’s possessed your body, that”s the only way to force him out.

Dem Hips Do’

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People are awesome.

Okay, so they suck, but really, they’re awesome. Seeing the bright warm smile of a friend you haven’t seen in months amid the whitewashed winter landscape brightened my day. I was trudging through the mushy brown snow when she emerged from her dorm, scarved, and wandered over. Her carefully combed golden hair looked like a lightbulb emerging from the pure white scarf.

“I left my phone charger in south,” she said.

“I’ll walk there with you,” I smiled. So we walked, up the stairs and over the ice and across the road and down into the basement and through the door and grabbed her phone charger. And we walked back through the door and up out of the basement and across the road and over the ice and down the stairs and up the elevator and into her dorm. It was warm, with thick white painted concrete walls. One wall was covered in sticky notes with quotes from the suite mates.

“No, you’re saying it wrong. The sound is more at the back of the throat” – Jen, on the pronunciation of the word “cock”

“Blue was a girl,” – Jen “Magenta was a boy,” – Shwacka “and periwinkle the cat was an abomination” – Tom

Her room was tidy, with a fuzzy black carpet and a few of her pencil sketches taped to the wall. In one sketch, a portrait, the left half of a girl’s face was exposed a skeleton, while the right half smiled subtly. The Bachelor was on in the living room. Two of her suite mates were watching it. She collapsed on the couch, then got up, changed into some sort of shorts (which looked kinda like underwear) and came back out. Her hips were on full display, but I assumed this was normal. I followed the curve of her leg from hip to toe. It was elegant, like a cosine, but more human than a graph, more real. And then she burped loudly in a German accent.

“I’m going to bed,” she said. I nodded and put on my coat. As I wandered out the door and closed it behind me, I realized I should’ve hugged her goodbye.

Damn it.

A New Semester

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Dorm rooms light up, the air fills with words and smiles, the snow slushes beneath my feet.

It’s a new semester, starting tomorrow, and damn if I’m not excited for it. My break my long, lazy and dreamlike. It was a stasis, a hibernation, a rejuvenation. I’m ready again for the ravages of a semester of schoolwork. But I can take it this time.

Everything is gonna be done right. The dishes will be spotless, my clothes will be clean and folded right on time, my schoolwork will be challenging but completed, and on time. My friends will laugh lightly, I’ll be able to take a breather, but I’ll keep up with the pace of the river. I won’t get caught in the current. And I’ll break the surface, if only for a moment, leaping.

 

Dreaming . . .

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A friend of mine just posted on her Facebook wall:

Tonight I made it to the final round again… I still cannot believe what happened tonight. All of the poets were amazing . . but somehow I won… — feeling amazed.

She’s sixteen. That’s been a goal I’ve been chasing since I was seventeen, and I haven’t got there. May never will.

This bugs me.

I’m happy for her success, and overjoyed that she’s gotten the recognition she deserves. She is a talented young poet and I’m sure she’s grown much since I last saw her. She is a beloved member of her community. She will go places, read big, important poems, make something of herself in Slam. She has a chance.

I have a chance, too. For sure.

But it hit me in a strange way when I read the status. I suddenly saw her breezing past me in the one thing I considered myself good at, leaping up the summit as I stay stalled on a ledge, shouting from the mountaintops of her ascendancy, all at a younger age than I was when I even first heard of poetry slam. Now college has made it so hard for me to participate. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel jealousy.

Maybe that jealousy is good.

Or maybe I’m just being a jerk.

Hell Froze Over, Part II: “I have no race . . . which is to say I have the option of silence”

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I saw some crazy, crazy, crazy good performances at Hell Froze Over.

So diverse, deep, though-provoking and powerful that I can’t handle them all at once, or even sequentially. This one’s been stuck in my mind for the past two days, and I feel like talking about it now.

The second though, I believe, had a stronger impact on me. It was a poetry program (a collection of poems memorized, spliced together, and performed on a common theme) about the “oppression of the white man,” centered on the self-immolation of an angry white man protesting something or other having to do with feminism. The poetry shocked by merely showcasing the twisted thinking that goes into this logic, and it ended on a powerful note: “I have no race . . . which is to say I have the option of silence.”

This line jammed its way up into the back of my brain and has been sitting there since. Does it make sense to say “I have no race” as a white person? Obviously not . . . because after all, there are characteristics/stereotypes/commonalities that do “define” white people – such as our wealth, racial unawareness, and awkward dance moves. But the line “I have no race” makes much more sense when thought of in context with the other half: “which is to say I have the option of silence”. Although I think you can interpret this phrase in a few different ways, I took it as white people not having to be “always conscious” about their race. A white man has “the option of silence” or the choice to have no race, to stand in a predominantly white society as a someone who isn’t defined primarily by his race, but rather by his quirks, interests, talents and failings as a person. Contrast with a black man or woman, who in any predominantly white social situation is not “John” or “Trevane” but instead “Black John” or “Guy with the Black Name”. It’s terrible.

I’m sure that no amount of writing on my part could convince anyone I understand, acknowledge or perceive my own racial consciousness and privilege entirely . . . which is good, because I don’t. I hope I haven’t offended here, and I might write about this much more in the future, since it’s a topic that interests me much. Tomorrow night: Either something totally different, or more HFO!

Hell Froze Over, Part I

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Everything is bigger in Texas, as the saying goes*, but I ate an incredibly tiny apple today at the University of Texas at Austin.

Hell really did freeze over.

I’m here with Lafayette College’s Speech and Debate team, competing in two back-to-back tournaments over two days named collectively “Hell Froze Over” – for what reason, I’m not sure. All the Speech and Debate names and faces are out here, and it’s good to see some of them again, including an old friend who graduated last year. I’m not too good at the competition (I don’t practice as much as I should), but it’s entertaining seeing some of the better speeches – for example, I saw a Program Oral Interpretation (POI) today from a very well-known competitor named Kaby Brown. In POI, a single speaker gives one 10 minute performance integrating any number of sources from prose, poetry, drama, articles, or other written material. Kaby spoke about the catharsis of giving voice to your inner turmoils through art . . . which is, surprisingly enough, an unusually complex topic for POI (and forensics in general), which have an unfortunate tendency to hit you over the head with their topics.

Texas is pleasant. It’s warm, at the very least, and there’s great, authentic-ish Mexican food to be had here. I’ve had more avocado over the past two days than the previous month. The outskirts of Austin are diffuse, separated by huge tracts of green. I passed a man wearing a cowboy hat and spurs yesterday. A woman in the airport said y’all to me while I was busy knocking over all the luggage while trying to get to mine. It was cloudy yesterday, but today the clouds parted and the sun actually shone on my skin and it was warm. I spent an hour or so standing on a bridge which overlooked the highway, feeling the light breeze and considering how strange it would be to jump off. And interspersed into my tender moments with this environment were my speeches, which came every two-hours or so, and I shook hands with people and learned their names and how long their flights took and how cold it is where they are. The warmth really does make people more polite.

And I’m gonna do it all again tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about more individual speeches. Goodnight!

 

*I believe this saying is from Spongebob.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

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I went to see the Daily Show!!

From the set.

From the set.

At the early hour of 11:00 a.m I awoke, showered, and joined the Wooten family for a train ride out of Metro Park into New York City. I wore two pairs of pants, tall boots, a thermal shirt, my winter jacket, a woolen cap, and gloves. Even with all that paraphernalia, the cold was biting and I constantly tried to cover my frigid lips and neck with the top of my jacket. Taking off one glove for just a brief second left my fingers numb even when shoved back inside my glove. My boots, worn in anticipation of snowfall, bit at my ankles and left my feet raw by the end of the day.

After a brief wait in line, the staff shepherded us into the studio, where the famed desk of John Stewart sat dead center in flurry of monitors, cameras, microphones and lights. The lady in charge of seating the audience in an orderly fashion came out when we were all seated and spoke to us. She wore jeans torn at the knee and a bulky red jacket.

“Normally by now you’d all have had a chance to go the bathroom . . . but we tried to get you inside as fast as we could because it’s fucking cold out there.” Then over the loudspeaker, Samantha Bee reminded us to turn off our cellphones and, if we were from 1987, our pagers. The monitors told us to turn off our own phones before assisting the elderly in turning off theirs. People seated around us joked about their favorite episodes, and about poker and smartphones and heckled each other.

A warm-up guy came out who made us shout and clap a whole bunch and chant for Jon, then we had to shout and clap more and shout and clap more and shout and clap again and then chant for Jon again and then shout and clap. My voice was sore.

“This lady’s been drinking,” he said to one woman who had shouted a lot, and was very enthusiastic. We were all so riled up that we couldn’t help but laugh. He called another a Jewish farmer. Then we shouted and clapped and laughed and chanted for john and clapped and he finally brought the guy out, Jon Stewart himself, all five foot six of him, and Jon Stewart was a riot. People fired Q&A at him:

“Are you upset over the packer’s loss?”

“I’m torn up over it. I had to tell my kids to put their cheese-heads away and go to bed.”

The air was electric. Every question fired, he shot a joke right back, something clever and cutting, like a knife.

“Medical Marijuana in New York?”

“Uh, yes I guess? Because I have a headache?”

We were doubling over in our seats. The mics were picking it up perfectly clear.

“What’s it like making a movie, Where’s the premier of your movie, and are we invited?”

“It’s a real touching true story – not without it’s artistic license of course, Shaq’s in this, and he plays a Geenie, but still . . .”

ITS RIGHT THERE, RIGHT ON TOP. NOW LAUGH, DAMMIT.

ITS RIGHT THERE, RIGHT ON TOP. NOW LAUGH, DAMMIT.

And then the show started and we stomped and clapped for him and laughed like high hell, and he made fun of corruption in New Jersey and pointed out the severed horse head that is a part of our state flag and my body shook and my smile widened. For all the time and effort and train rides and waiting and cold it took, it happened in a flash, like a brilliant, bright spark of electricity arcing off of a giant cold circuit breaker, but the spark was so bright and hot that it warmed up my cold, cold bones. And then, just like a spark, it was over, and we were out again in the blackness of the New York City streets, hailing a cab and descending into the subway.

I got home, removed my boots, and rubbed the puffy white blisters all over my toes and the ball of my foot. I hobbled over to the couch and collapsed, exhausted.

Worth it.