Corrina Lee – Page 5

Snow Fall

February 12, 2018February 12, 2018 Corrina Lee Leave a comment

Snow falls from the heavens like a thousand discarded angels. Snow falls to land on grey pavements and yellowed winter grass and disappear in a few short-lived moments. Snow falls, feather-like, onto my face and leaves gentle scrapes of coldness on my skin. I breathe out. My revenge melts some of my tiny antagonists. But still snow falls. They are drawn in an ever downward spiral. I am no longer sure where they come from. The invisible grey sky is secretive and perhaps, more importantly, I no longer care. I only want to keep walking through the blowing sheets of falling whiteness until I finally reach my destination. But even that has become unclear. Snow falls, making distances and time stretch longer into infinity.

Somewhere, I sense other beings, bravely traversing the winter storm, with faces tucked into warm coat collars. They make no sound, other than the muffled crunch of boots on fresh powder. No one dares to exchange words as we hurry past each other. The snow is deafening in its silence. The great University and its students are cowed by the weather. The distinguished brick buildings are thrust underneath fluffy caps, transforming them into childish caricatures of their normal selves. They surely cannot withstand the impact of a thousand icy cuts. Soon, they must fracture and crack. Their pipes becoming brittle and bursting. I imagine the world around me exploding silently, unseen as I walk by. Perhaps there will be no warm haven awaiting me. Perhaps it, too, has already been broken and absorbed. My imagination strives against the cold that numbly urges me to stop. Snow falls ignorantly past me. Sometimes, I spot footprints where they should not be, in four-foot-deep drifts. I also spot cars where they should not be, making slow progress through greying slush. The machines do not belong here, in this natural world of cold crystal and hot, humid breaths. Those passengers watch the snow from behind a barrier, separated from this pure battle between woman and Earth.

It is usually so easy to ignore or at least compromise with the weather with t-shirts when it becomes too hot or umbrellas when it rains. But when the snow begins to fall in earnest, it exploits every vulnerable chink of our armor. Every minute in the snowy air becomes another reminder of all that we have built as protection, and how useless it all proves. The plows push futilely, only able to move snow from place to place. Its presence accumulates. It comes and leaves of its own accord, gradually melting from existence. Ashes to ashes, water to water. We treck through this ethereal gift with heavy boots and track it into the soggy carpets. We kick it to the side and ignore it. But as I take a final look upwards, at the snow, falling, a ridiculous wonder fills me. Snow falls as I enter the building. Snow falls eternally on unseen spinning tracks. Snow falls, and I wish I could fall with it.

In the Aftermath of a Super Bowl

February 5, 2018February 5, 2018 Corrina Lee Leave a comment

It’s a strange thing to watch a Super Bowl when your team is at home. It is not an unfamiliar feeling, though. Only two teams make the Super Bowl, and for the past seventeen years, the Patriots have dominated the Eastern Conference spot. They have played in the Conference Championships eleven times since 2001 and made it all the way to the biggest game of the year, eight times, in the same period. Their record is impeccable. Their ascent, inevitable. Sometimes, I fear that our robot overlords have seemingly already arrived, in the form of an ageless Tom Brady and the emotionless Bill Belichick. It is an unbearable dominance, worsened by the Patriots’ air of smug duplicity.

Yet, for all my endless rants, I tuned in, along with millions of others, to watch the Super Bowl this year. I sat in a crowded room, ate wings, and watched the full four hour-long broadcast. I watched despite the Seahawks, my team, having been eliminated weeks ago. I watched despite the homework sitting undone in my dorm room. I watched, hypocritically, for the Patriots. The team’s domination of the sport has created something rare indeed: unity. Unity among the fans of the thirty one other teams who have watched helplessly from the sidelines as the Patriots have collected ring after ring. Fans that have had trophies ripped from their grasp by another Patriots comeback, another Patriots miracle. This is the special anger, engendered only by sports; one that feels both overwhelmingly important and staggeringly petty. Perhaps it is a hateful kind of unity, but it’ll have to do in times like these. Only the Patriots could make me feel this way. Only the Patriots inspire such passion. The Jacksonville Jaguars were four points away from playing the Eagles in the Super Bowl. I would have abandoned that game at halftime. But to watch the Patriots play, to root for them to lose, is obligatory viewing. To watch a Patriots game is a gamble with high risk and higher reward. It is dreadful for most of the four quarters because one is always on the lookout for the next freakish Brady third-down conversion or well-timed interception. Belichick ensures that his teams run like clockwork, infuriating in their precision and competency. There are brief moments of hope, such as when the Falcons held a twenty five point lead midway through the third quarter of Super Bowl Fifty One. But even then, there was trepidation in even believing that a blow-out of this proportion could occur against this team of well-oiled cyborgs.

Yet, in the moments after the Eagles clinched Super Bowl Fifty Two, there was also an unbelievable happiness. All of that fear suddenly became joy, all doubts suddenly vanquished. That is the power of a Patriots loss. A power that could only be borne from repeated championships and utter greatness. It pains me to admit it, but I’m happy the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl. I’m even happier that they lost.

A Moment of One’s Own

January 29, 2018January 29, 2018 Corrina Lee Leave a comment

This is an article that I didn’t want to write. Perhaps it was some lingering sense of shame. Probably because it felt all too natural to me and abhorrent to everyone else. But most of all, I didn’t want to write something about myself. To explain oneself, after all, is an impossibility. Getting even half of my meaning across without nervousness or embarrassment trapping the words in my throat is a miracle. It’s a good thing that I am writing this, then. Now I have approximately five hundred words to get my point across. Which after a meandering one hundred words is that, I like to be alone. That is not the world-consuming revelation that you came here for. It is not even the mildly-interesting tidbit that you may have glanced for. But it is what you are going to get (if you stay, of course). The best part of being alone is that you have the chance to get away from the endless hubbub, the meaningless chitchat. Not that I don’t appreciate the more-than-occasional bout of jibber jabber. I can certainly jabber on with the best of them, especially if it concerns my current obsession on television. Sometimes though, after a day, or a week, of being talked at by professors or buzzing around with friends, it is nice to simply be in a room without anyone else. To sit, unobserved and unneeded. To move, unencumbered by the personal needs of someone else. To have the environment around you, the sights, the sounds, be entirely your own. Maybe it’s selfish. But it’s a ‘mine’ that I need to have. To be alone, at least to me, is also resisting the allure of the GroupMe notification, the newest Facebook update. These are unnecessary connections to the outside world, at least temporarily. They are the nagging voices, urging me to return to the loud place, but given digital shape as birthday reminders and life updates. They are distractions posing as something meaningful. I know that. But they are also act as admonitions. The smiling friends and memes show me lives where being alone does not exist. Instead, there appears to be constant social entanglements happening all around me, even as I sit in a room, alone. The pressure permeates through every aspect of the college experience. This expectation of having the best years of your life, right here, on campus drives students to late-night parties and dinner with friends. One feels the need to spend every second of those four, short years in the company of others. Others that may soon be lost to new jobs in new places. But lost in the deafening, striving progress is the need to not be needed. I am free to pursue my own creativity only when I no longer have to fulfill any outside demands. In these moments, completely alone, I don’t need to answer to anyone or anything else other than that strange, instinctive hunger to write. I can explain myself without having to get the words out in time or even express the words semi-cleverly. Perhaps that is why I found this article so difficult to write. Perhaps that is why I needed to write it.

Beyond the Marquee

January 14, 2018January 14, 2018 Corrina Lee Leave a comment

I grew up watching movies everywhere. At first, I consumed them mostly at home, begging my Dad until he popped in the VHS tape of The Sound of Music or Babe in the City. As I slowly learned the ways of the DVD and then, the Blu-ray player, I spent even more time watching my favorite flicks repeatedly. Outside of the home, our family weekend trips consisted of traveling to the IMAX theatre to watch the latest nature documentary on a screen that was twenty times the size of our television’s. But I didn’t care about the increased visual or sound quality. I just wanted more. I’ve watched movies on computers, on iPads, on phones. I’ve watched them on planes, on trains, and automobiles. Trips to the theatre became special occasions for certain types of movies, such as the latest superhero extravaganza or Star Wars film. For one, the explosions of red fire and blue lasers always looked impressively large on the screen. It also became a race to avoid being spoiled by overzealous pop culture sites and YouTube channels, all who obsessively covered these blockbuster films and little else. For a student with limited means, $14 movie tickets had to be carefully rationed throughout the year. Any other films were added to my growing list on Netflix.

Recently though, I have questioned my assumption that some movies were destined to be watched on the small screen. It may come with a thousand little annoyances, but there is something irreplaceable about the theatre experience. When the lights dim, I allow myself to sink away from reality. I let my grip on my own ego slip away and become a puppet of the movie and its director. The darkness is crucial. It allows me to feel without reservation, cry and laugh without worrying about the judgmental glare of the light. My connection with the outside world is severed in other ways also. With my phone stashed away in a pocket and with a safe distance established between myself and my homework, I can stop thinking about such mundane worries as school or text messages. This is sadly lacking when I watch movies from home. Tempted by the sudden vibration of my phone, I will pause and start a movie like an overworked engine. I will stop for a snack break or a stretch, actions unimaginable in the darkened atmosphere of a theatre. I write this piece because 2017 had the lowest ticket sales since 1992. I write it because I hear my classmates talk excitedly about the newest season of Black Mirror or Stranger Things 2, but not even mention Lady Bird or The Shape of Water. The latter two aren’t available outside of theatres, the former ones are readily accessible to anyone with Wifi and a Netflix account. It worries me that in a town with two theatres and student discounted tickets, that most haven’t found their way past the brightly lit marquees. Most of all, I worry that the bubbling anticipation in my heart as I settle into a theatre seat, will be left lost and unshared.

Unsaid

January 7, 2018January 7, 2018 Corrina Lee 2 Comments

I have been thinking recently about all the words that we leave unsaid. All the thoughts that we don’t dare give voice to because they are too strange, too embarrassing, too true. We say other things instead that are less burdened by meaning. We say things that may only half-convey all that we are feeling, especially to those we feel the most about. Perhaps I have always assumed that those who love me, who know me don’t need the affirmation of mere words. My parents must know that I love them. My sister must know that I miss her. So, I don’t say these things as I leave them standing behind those flimsy elastic barriers at the airport. But I remember that moment later, when I’m on the plane, on the bus to Ann Arbor. Of course, I will have the chance to tell my parents that I miss them, that I love them, that I will return in a few months. I am lucky because I have technologies within arm’s reach that would be impossible to imagine even fifty years ago.

There are so many moments to come. But I am so afraid that I will ever be able to express what they mean to me. I haven’t told them about that one grey morning last semester, when I woke up aching for the aura of security and comfort that I feel when they are nearby. I haven’t told them about all the late nights, when I have wished myself back home. This was my decision, after all. To come to college more than two thousand miles away. To plant myself in a new land and prove that I could grow independent and strong. But there must be some weakness within me, for I cannot find the words to say.

My parents don’t know how to find this blog. Yet more words that will be left unheard. I imagine their silent, inky forms floating all around us. Their weight pulling down elevators of reticent passengers. Their shapes clogging the air between two strangers sitting side by side, for hours without paying the barest attention to the other. And other times, words come all too easily. They turn the air red with their anger. Those are to be regretted too, in time. Either said or unsaid, words haunt me with their subtle power, their dangerous potential. And they urge me to speak.

Desperation Writing

December 10, 2017December 10, 2017 Corrina Lee Leave a comment

Keyboards click, are you listening,

In the Diag, snow is glistening

A beautiful sight,

We’re studying tonight,

Avoiding the winter wonderland.

It is that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about Christmas. Everyone at the University, professors, and students alike, have only one thing on their mind. Its finals season and suddenly, many things have decreased in importance. Food is eaten at faster rates and lesser frequencies. If we could change human anatomy to accommodate even fewer hours of sleep, we would. If we could stop the Earth’s rotation, so that the next day of tests and deadlines would never come, we would. Even the strongest force in the universe could not tear us away from our laptops, our math notes, our unfinished papers. We are racing toward the finish line of another year and more crucially, another semester. New classes loom ominously on the horizon, but the only future that matters now is the next due date. We finish one assignment only to start the next. And there are so many assignments.

Perhaps that is what makes it both the best and worst time to be a writer. Everyone has some paper that needs to be written, meaning at least, there is a great quantity of writing is being done. The quality, however, can be questionable, when one is frantically typing to meet a word or page-count. There is simply no time to carefully consider structure or tone when one has another test at the end of the week. Although I finally get to write at this time of year, I also find myself without words. I realize that I have spewed them all out over the course of endless reflections and short essays for classes over the year. My brain only returns old ideas gone sour and dusty math equations. Writing out of desperation instead of inspiration turns the experience into some new and strange torture. The process of writing, already frustrating at times, now transforms into a slow march toward an unseen destination. I type out words only to be disgusted at their inanity, their pompousness. I usually delete everything. That is why I always dally over every paper, shelve my English assignments. I want to enjoy this process, no matter how tedious it may seem. Every forward step through that flood of reluctance and impatience is a triumph. Writing during finals seems like cheating instead. I am not doing the necessary work. Instead, I rush my thoughts onto paper without reflection. Turning in a rushed paper is cutting the conversation midway before anything of importance has even been said. Perhaps it is not the appropriate time to be reflecting on the writing process. Sometimes, things just must be accomplished. It is better to have something written then nothing at all. Yet, I worry that this is teaching us all the wrong things about writing. Writing is not quick and easy. It is not some frozen dinner, to be popped in to the microwave for five minutes, and popped out, perfectly done. Writing is agonizingly slow. And I love it.