Going Over the Top (or, Ari Graduates in [WWI] Style)

This might require some explanation…

So I graduated from college about three weeks ago. As part of my university’s commencement weekend activities, there’s a tradition where the seniors all wear crazy/cool/interesting hats during the Class Day exercises (yes, we do wear the mortar boards too—just on a different day). I hadn’t given any thought to the matter until one afternoon during finals when I was talking to my parents about graduation logistics:

Me: “Oh my God. I just realized…I need to get a hat! What am I going to wear for Class Day??”

Parents: [without missing a beat] “A WWI helmet, of course.”

Me: “Oh…” o.O “Of course.”

My parents aren’t particularly WWI-savvy (apart from what they pick up from my ramblings), but they were conversant enough to help me rule out a pickelhaube or an Adrian helmet. “You’re British to the bone,” they said. (Even before my WWI interest, it was a truth universally acknowledged [within my family] that I was born on the wrong side of the Pond.)

But where do I get a WWI-style Brodie helmet?

I put out the call on Facebook and Tumblr, looking for suggestions (of which there were many) and promising photographic evidence of the helmet if/when it happened. I considered everything from making one myself from papier-mâché to purchasing a legit WWI Brodie on Ebay. Finally, I hit upon something that worked with my time, resources, and finances.

So AT LAST, as promised: me, with my WWI-style Brodie helmet, in front of my university’s WWI memorial (Photo 1).*

Also, when I was walking around campus in my full Class Day getup (i.e. this + black graduation gown), an elderly man in a wheelchair noticed my helmet and got very excited. “You need a _______!” he called out (last word unintelligible) before he was wheeled away. (I wish I’d heard what he’d said. He was old enough to be a WWII veteran, so I’m guessing he couldn’t see the leather chinstrap and thought it was a WWII Brodie. But maybe not?)

Anyhow, thank you to everyone who helped with Operation Repping WWI Soldiers at [redacted] University’s Class Day—#ProjectBrodieHelmet was a success, and it’s all because of you!

Photos 2-4: Some close-ups. The original helmet, when it arrived, was a WWII-style plastic Brodie replica. I altered it in several ways:

1. Removed the nylon chinstrap and replaced it with a leather one (which I made by cutting up an old leather belt I had—worked out very well!).
2. Following the directions of my friend Asya (who works at the U.S. WWI Museum), I sprayed the helmet with a coat of paint and then, before it was dry, sprinkled it with sand and added another coat of paint. Repeated this until I was satisfied with the texturing (to reduce reflectivity; can’t be too careful about those Class Day snipers).
3. Added a newspaper-and-duct-tape liner that actually works pretty darn well, all things considered (I’m crafts-y enough that I could probably come up with a more authentic one, but as a college student, I was kind of limited to what I had in my room).

Photo 5: Now that I’m home, I’ve taken to wearing the helmet around the house for no real reason. Because everything (even cleaning your room, as pictured here) feels more badass in a Brodie.***

* Photo artistically blurred to protect the innocent. Or whatever. Also, I’m doing the British salute** because that’s literally the only kind I know how to do.

** (minus the left-hand-aligned-with-trouser-seam thing because…no trousers…)

*** Yes, that’s Edmund Blunden’s Undertones of War in my hand, in case you’re wondering.

Return of the Mango! (or, Late-Night Tea with Ari and Fred)

*Frederick the Regency Raptor sits reading in his fireside armchair, wearing his dressing gown and sipping a cup of tea. A tentative knock at the door nearly makes him drop the cup. Tea sloshes onto the corner of the chair and gown.*

Fred Regency Raptor: *expletive censored*

Ari Fuzzy Mango: Helloooo…? Anyone home? *knocks on the door again*

FRR: Good lord! Miss Mango? Is that you?

AFM: Fred! Sorry, am I interr—

FRR: No, not at all! I’ve just been…I mean, I didn’t expect…*slips book facedown onto the armchair*…what I mean to say is that this is…all rather sudden. Where on earth have you BEEN?

AFM: I know, I’m sorry! I did say I was coming back, though. And now school’s out and I’ve…graduated. (Holy crap what.) So, er, here I am!

FRR: Yes, but…didn’t you have that…trip…y…thing you did?

AFM: Oh, yes! The choir tour!

FRR: Where was it you went again?

AFM: China and Hong Kong, for two weeks. I only just got back, so my time zones are a little screwed up, and…yeah. *gestures sheepishly at the clock reading 3:15 AM* But I’m home now! And trying to work out precisely what I’m going to be doing with my life this summer (slash this year slash the next few years).

FRR: But…if you’ll pardon my frankness, are you well and truly back? Are we to expect that you’ll go gallivanting off for goodness knows how long at the—

AFM: No! No. What I mean to say is that, for the foreseeable future, I’m back to blogging on a regular basis.

FRR: *cocks an eyebrow* *stares*

AFM: No, honestly! I am!

FRR: *continues to stare*

AFM: Really!

FRR: *raises both eyebrows* *picks up tea and takes a sip*

AFM: Soooo… *casts about the room* What’s this you’re reading? *takes a step towards the chair and the familiar-looking novel*

FRR: *snatching up the book* Oh, just some light fiction…you know, for the insomnia…

AFM: It’s Twilight, isn’t it?

FRR: NO! *splutters* No! How…what kind of a…

AFM: *raises eyebrows and grins* Dude, it’s fine. No shame! I read them too. John Green read them. They’re just fluff—

FRR: How could you THINK that of me??

AFM: Fred. Tell me honestly: how many books have black covers with a pair of hands holding a red apple on the front?

FRR: …

AFM: …

FRR: …

AFM: …

FRR: Lots!

AFM: *grinning* Riiight. Well then, I’m off to bed. Enjoy the literary junk food. That’s what it’s for, after all—enjoying. In the meantime, I’m going to try to get off Beijing time, if I can. Sooo…

FRR: So…

AFM: *stands awkwardly in the doorway* Well…g’night, I guess. *exits*

FRR: *waits a moment* *calls out* Miss Mango!

AFM: *pops head back around the corner* Mmm?

FRR: It’s…er…

AFM: …yes?

FRR: …well, it’s…uh…nice. To have you back.

AFM: Awww, Fred! *dashes back into room* *pounces on Fred and hugs him* *tea goes everywhere* Did you miss me?

FRR: Well, I—

AFM: Oh, I missed you too!

FRR: *sighs* *mutters under his breath* Mammals.

On Writing and AWOLing and Commencing

Hi!

This is another one of those I’m-not-dead-I-swear kinds of posts, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Because it’s not just this blog that I’ve neglected—in the past few months, my extracurricular writing has basically ground to a standstill. Several reasons for this:

• I’m taking a creative writing class that requires me to write approximately 300 words per day. For a NaNo vet, this seems like a trivial number (I can do 300 words in <5 minutes if I have to)—but unlike NaNoWriMo, these can’t be word-vomit. They have to be carefully-crafted 300 words, each piece in response to a given prompt. Doing that takes 1-2 hours out of every day. So I’m writing, and writing creatively, but not working on my longer projects.
• The First World War. I read about it. I write about it. I think about it. I’m looking at postgraduate study for it. And all of that takes time.
• It’s my last semester of college. My final weeks on campus, spending time with my friends and enjoying all the amazing things my school has to offer. So that even when I have a free evening (as I do tonight), I’m opting to go to a friend’s poetry slam rather than snag some writing time. Because pretty soon, I won’t be able to attend this friend’s poetry slams—but I’ll have plenty of writing time.

All of that said, I miss blogging, and I particularly miss my novels (I’m itching to get back to editing them). I spent last night brainstorming several sticky plot points with friends, and another couple of friends helped me out a few weeks ago when I was desperate to work out some worldbuilding logistics. So I do what I can when I can.

Anyhow, the upshot is: you probably won’t be seeing all that much of me on the interwebz in the next month or two, but it’s just because I’m trying to squeeze every last drop out of my undergraduate experience and not freak out too much as Commencement approaches. So never fear, dear readers and raptors—I shall return anon!

Much love,

Ari

I can’t quite believe I’m saying this…

…but I think I want to go to graduate school.

Hoooolllllyyyyyy crap.

This is a big about-face for me. I had thought I was done with academia. Last year in particular, the way forward seemed so clear: I liked studying English, but not enough to major in it, and a graduate creative writing degree didn’t seem necessary; I liked studying psychology, enough to major in it, but not enough to pursue it beyond a bachelor’s degree. I was going to intern in publishing, and then join the publishing industry right out of college, and the only real hitch in this plan was my complete lack of desire to be an inhabitant of New York City.

And then this WWI obsession happened. In my final semester of undergraduate study, I have shaped my course schedule around the Great War and, as of last week, have successfully managed to tie all of my non-war courses to this topic (whether that means reading a book about shellshock/PTSD for my Abnormal Psychology course or analyzing data about the correspondence of the European Powers between June 28th 1914 and August 6th, 1914 for my Statistics course). And a little voice in the back of my mind keeps whispering,

You know, you could keep doing this.

You could do this for another year.

Maybe another few years.

When I was a kid, I always assumed I would go to grad school. It seemed so obvious: that was what you did when you were smart and liked learning. All the way up through high school, even during that period of my life where I thought I wanted to be an actor, grad school seemed like a no-brainer. Of course I would. Why wouldn’t I?

Then I actually got to college and experienced the great existential angst of choosing a major. I also came to realize that there were a number of things about academia that bothered me (last spring in particular, I remember telling one of my suitemates that I was just “so done” with academia). It’s not that I didn’t love talking about books, or pondering the ways that people think. I just didn’t love them as academic subjects in and of themselves.

But my interest in WWI isn’t like that. It isn’t like any interest I’ve ever had before. And when I consider my minimal personal investment in my psychology senior project research, it draws such a sharp contrast with the deeply personal investment I feel vis-à-vis my extracurricular First World War research. Academia would be a completely different experience with that kind of commitment and drive. Get me talking about WWI stuff and I light up like someone flipped a switch.

So, when you’re so passionately interested in the British treatment of shellshock and the writings/experiences of British soldiers, isn’t it…well, isn’t it obvious where you ought to be studying?

Like the title says: I can’t quite believe I’m saying this. I also can’t quite believe I’m saying it on this blog. I could just keep it all to myself. I’m very tempted to.

But

I’m

not

going

to.

So,

Let Operation Study Abroad in 2014 in the UK

(codename: Operation Bulldog 2.0)

commence.

A Moment of Everyday Magic (or, Getting the Right Notebook)

I’m taking a creative writing course this semester. It’s cool in some respects, but not cool in others, and the not cool part for me is the fact that every week we have an hour and a half lecture during which I learn approximately nothing.

Seriously.

To be fair, this is not entirely the fault of the professor/class. I’ve taken a fair few creative writing courses in my college career. I also started writing when I was five. I also spend/have spent a lot of time talking to writers and publishing industry people about writing. So while I’m sure that for people with different experiences, this lecture is engaging and productive, for me it means 90 minutes of spacing out, writing notes to myself, and staring blankly at the weekly handout while my equally-bored friend doodles on her notebook beside me.

(Sometimes we pass each other snarky notes, but that’s beside the point.)

Recently, I decided I needed to take matters into my own hands. This is my last semester of college, dammit. I want to get something out of this. I talked the matter over with my creative writing tutor (whom I very much like); she was sympathetic and suggested a few ways I could maybe make use of the lecture period, but also acknowledged I might just have to suck it up the rest of the time. I appreciated the input, but it was still a pretty bleak outlook. I thanked her for her suggestions.

And as soon as my meeting with her was over, I went to Barnes & Noble to buy myself a freaking writing notebook.

It makes me sad that I need to do this. At the same time, it’s really the only solution I can find that gives me any sense of satisfaction. If I have to sit in that lecture hall listening to professorial pontifications for an hour and a half each week, at least I’ll spend that time writing. Writing fiction. Writing something that I might actually be able to use.

But purchasing a writing notebook isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. I didn’t know what I was looking for, exactly. I had envisioned grabbing a simple, spiral-bound notebook, but every such notebook I found in the bookstore looked so…flimsy. And the sturdier ones were pointlessly pricier. I didn’t need one with my college’s name embossed on it. I didn’t need one for five subjects. I didn’t need one with graph paper.

Then I saw it.

You know how it happens: You’re in a store (usually a bookstore) and something just leaps off the shelf at you and cries, “ME! You came here to get ME, didn’t you?” In my case, the leaping object was a “Decomposition Notebook”—based on the old composition notebook style, but made from recycled paper, its charming cover printed with bees and honeycomb. There were lots of other composition notebooks like it, but this was the one. My notebook. It was so obvious.

Except…

I frowned at the price tag. Did I really need to pay $6 for this thing when I could easily get a comparable notebook for less than half that price? It wasn’t like $6 was going to break my bank account or anything, but still, that was two cups of chai right there. Why did this notebook need to be special anyways? Wasn’t I just going to scribble all over it?

I hemmed and hawed, but time was running out, and I had to get to class. Deciding that it didn’t really matter what notebook I had and that I could spend the extra $3 on chai, I put down my notebook and picked up one of the flimsy spiral-bound ones. I trotted up to the counter, fumbling in my bag for my debit card.

“Sorry, can you move to the next window down?” the cashier said, just as I’d pulled out my wallet and opened it.

“Oh. Uh, sure.” I started to close up my wallet again when my attention was snagged by the pocket I use to keep gift cards. And what should I see but a Barnes & Noble gift card, on which I happened to have about $8 remaining.

Fate. Providence. The Universe loves me. I spun about, dashed down the stairs, swapped out the flimsy thing for my notebook, and bounded back up, gift card in hand. I was going to get that notebook AND have chai to go with it.

And thus it was that I got the perfect writing notebook to use in my not-so-perfect writing class. I’m breaking it in today by picking up my 2012 NaNovel where I left off. Hopefully, I’ll get something new and interesting on the page.

Boo freaking yeah.