Kayla Rachlin Small

all I want for Christmas

are t-shirts.

Like this one, from the site I Heart Guts

An Easter Story

Bitter with Baggage seeks Same.

Bitter with Baggage finds Same.

Same grows cepacia.

Bitter with Baggage begins to wish that Same were like Sheldon, the "Garfield and Friends" character who never finished hatching. Then Bitter with Baggage could be near Same without the danger.

Girl of the Day #2: Thisbe

[I don't plan to go with the separated lovers theme forever, but it's very apt for now. Girl of the Day is also a good way to make fun of myself by showing that what I wrote for Modern Love has been written a million times before. Oldest in the book.]

If you've read A Midsummer Night's Dream, you may remember the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. When we read that play in 7th grade, my English teacher pointed out the forbidden love and double suicide (prompted by one thinking the other is dead) and then spelled it out for us: "Hey kids, sound familiar? Romeo and Juliet ain't the first!"

Pyramus and Thisbe (like R&J, and Tony and Maria, and the rest) were kept apart by their parents. They were neighbors, and there was a convenient crack in the wall between their houses. So Pyramus and Thisbe would talk. Eventurally bad stuff ensued. This we all know.

In Metamorphoses Ovid told the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as follows:

They conversed by signs and glances, and the fire burned more intensely for being covered up. In the wall that parted the two houses there was a crack, caused by some fault in the structure. No one had remarked it before, but the lovers discovered it. What will not love discover! It afforded a passage to the voice; and tender messages used to pass backward and forward through the gap. As they stood, Pyramus on this side, Thisbe on that, their breaths would mingle. “Cruel wall,” they said, “why do you keep two lovers apart? But we will not be ungrateful. We owe you, we confess, the privilege of transmitting loving words to willing ears.” Such words they uttered on different sides of the wall; and when night came and they must say farewell, they pressed their lips upon the wall, she on her side, he on his, as they could come no nearer.

What can I say. The mingling breath makes me a little jealous.

This might be another nail in the coffin of this blog's annoying wannabe-intellectualness, but now I've got to mention the Decameron (by Boccaccio). I went to Columbia; they make us read these things. The Decameron itself is a story of disease and seclusion. The frame for the stories told within the Decameron is that the Black Death is on a rampage, and a handful of unaffected people quarantine themselves out in the country, where they tell stories to pass the time. One of the stories takes off from Pyramus and Thisbe: a woman whose husband has confined her to their house wants to make said husband jealous, so she starts flirting with her young male neighbor via the crack in her wall that looks into his bedroom.

Another story told in the Decameron is that of Friar Cipolla. Cipolla is the Italian word for onion. There is more than one reason this name is fitting: he's a man with many layers and not much core, and he's also from the town of Certaldo, which at the time was known for its onions. Why is this relevant? The word "cipolla" gives up the word "cepacia." Cepacia means "of or like an onion." Rotting onions are the number one home of this f*cking mean bacteria.

My friend has a theory that for this reason, cystics do not like onions. I'm the exception to her "rule." I like onions as much as the Aussie guy in Outback commericals. And when there's one in my fridge (a fresh one, thank you), it makes me think of a certain someone. Bittersweet.

you can stand under my umbrella

I've been thinking a lot about cultural symbols of proximity. At one point when working with the Modern Love editor on my piece, I revised a sentence in which I'd originally, lazily, talked about feeling T. breathe. The editor changed it back to "I felt him breathe," so I had to explain my reasoning: in the lung disease universe, breath is the obvious metaphor. It's in every slogan. Using it felt cheap. "I can feel you breathe"--it gets the point of closeness across, but it lacks originality.

When two people aren't allowed to be within three feet of each other, the obvious impeded act is sex. But what about all the other things we can't do, things that are less obviously intimate and perhaps only acquire their intimacy after they've been taken from you? I want to ride in an elevator with T. I want to ride a rollercoaster together. I want to tell him "scooch" and then sit down next to him on a bench. I want to hand him lightbulbs or nails as he stands on a ladder.

So I've been thinking about the ways in which we represent shared space. A bicycle built for two. A girl wearing her boyfriend's varsity jacket.

My favorite, however, is the umbrella. Rihanna's song (written by Terius Nash, Christopher Stewart, Thaddis Harrell and Jay-Z) is genius. Not only does it use an object previously untouched by the music industry (unlike the motorcycle, the bed, the shoe), but it uses one that is not historically sexual (some might say that there's always been a phallic element to the umbrella, but I'd argue that Rihanna is singlehandedly responsible for making it sexy).

"Umbrella's" message may be similar to that of "I'll Stand By You" or a dozen other songs, but it gets out of the abstract. Incorporation of a concrete object, however, is not the guarantor of an exceptional song. Imagine the song "You can have my house key (house key, house key, eee, eee, eee..)"

Why is "Umbrella" more effective? Because it's about being within inches of another person. It's a situation that's not blatant foreplay, that's likely to end when you reach the stairs of the subway station.

So compare the Friends themesong ("I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour...") with "Umbrella," and you'll see why the latter is pure brilliance.

girl of the day #1

The Proust questionnaire asks, "Which historical figure do you most identify with?" Sometimes, my pick is this girl:

In the X-Men comics, Rogue has the power to absorb the abilities of any other mutant, meaning that when she touches another person, she sucks the lifesource out of them. If she touches them for too long, they can't bounce back. In other words, Rogue cannot touch her boyfriend without killing him.

She can, however, be physically close to someone, as long as they don't make actual contact. Plus, with gloves on, she can hold hands. Lucky.

(The image is from the film X-3: The Last Stand. It's a doodle done by one of Rogue's little mutant classmates.)

Poison Girls Club

A good story should always be illustrated.