killing trees, bloated with glee

Nobody told me how nice the gym at my school is. Nobody pulled me asside and said, "hey new student who's starting in the middle of the year, in this cold dreary crampy city in the winter. You can beat those winter blues, you can give yourself a reason to get out of bed before 3pm. You can go work out in a luxurious fully-equipped gym! You can swim in an olympic-sized pool! We have saunas and whirlpools for you, and you can use our towels and showers and lockers. And if you are hungry after burning up all those calories, feel free to refuel at our smoothie bar."

No, nobody said that to me at all. But after reading 25 pages about birds in the Apalachians in winter, and after a class about short stories I had no real interest in talking about, I took that new student ID of mine and went to the gym to see just what the inside looked like.

Two hours later, I emerged into the cold snowy Victorian-era campus, elated. I sat elated in the school's cafe and read 50 more pages about birds in the Apalachians in winter. I got a cup of coffee and walked home a mile and a half in a mini skirt and fishnets and leg warmers, in the snow, grinning my little reddened face off. People on the sidewalks even tried to talk to me, saying what I think could have been something like, "Hey Babydoll, you look so happy," and other things that were not quite so positive. But my headphones were turned up high enough that I could just smile and say hello and ignore the rest, I could listen to the Malcolm X soundtrack and breeze down those frosty sidewalks to my new home.

I want to document this now, this feeling of complete joy, so when it comes February and I am again wondering what it feels like to be so merry, I can look back to not a month earlier and see it is possible. It is mid-late January and I am broke, I have not started my new job and they have not yet asked me to. I have too much schoolwork to manage and have not yet remembered how to manage my time efficiently. I am very shaky and slightly skeptical about certain social and personal issues. It's fucking freezing out all the time, and will only get colder. But still, I am walking and it's snowing outside and it's beautiful, it's cold and I'm happy, I'm busy and I'm OK, and I'm walking down the street smiling like an idiot, skipping down the crosswalk, tip-toeing through icy-smooth patches and I'm happy. I'm young and healthy and busy and happy and no matter what I still have those things. Regardless of men or boys, school or work, flat tires or cold legs. I am happy and life is good and things are going to be just fine.

That said...I am keeping my weary eye in the wind, but my soft shoulder is leaning into someone very nice and cute as pie. And I am getting my schoolwork done as dilligently as possible.

Oh, also.

I killed trees on Saturday. I went into Schenley Park with my Craft of Nature and Environmental Writing class, met with some guy I had met a few nights earlier at the Bloomsfield Bridge Tavern, and learned how to affectively kill trees. You take a tool that is sort of like a cheese slicer, and cut two complete circles around the trunk. You take all the bark off in those slices, peeling down to the orange meat of the tree. In the winter the plant is dormant and can't sap over the wound, so it scabs and in the summer when it tries to feed it can't. The roots are cut off from the rest of the plant and it dies in about two years. Sad. But it has to be done for population control. Because Norway Maples are taking over and the native plants can't thrive as they'd like.

Afterwards I went to the Eugenics and Euthanasia exhibit at the Warhol Museum and felt a strange and uncomfortable connection with my actions that morning and the actions of Germans and Americans in the first half of this century. I did not sterilize anything, I did not torture. But I did kill babies. I did kill adults. I did choose those who were not of native blood, who did not have a local geneology stemming back 16 generations. I did play God.

It puts even the ghastliest notions of history into perspective once you take the actions themselves out of context and into theory. Which is a very scary and dangerous thing, but also an interesting and (perhaps overly) open-minded way of looking at the actions of individuals and the movements of peoples.

I have another 25 pages about birds in the Apalachians in winter to read before I can let myself go to bed. So that's all for tonight.

More advice column questions coming soon. Keep 'em coming! email carolyne.mistake@gmail.com for help sorting out your degenerate existence.