c-conner-run

i have a new position this year. unfortunately this only lasted two weeks.

my summer in pictures

no. this will not be a post with an endless stream of photos, as some really good websites can do. instead, i will offer the candid commentary of which i am most capable and witty.

ahhh, the refreshing sight of the city i love, the city i research - ohhh, how it's air quality makes me sigh on 100 degree days

i have always loved the above image. one of my favorite reasons for going into the city was to see this view driving on 20th, the mountain climbing, rock falling cliff, twisty narrow road suburbanites used singularly for over fifty years to enter the city. i used to see this and say, "see, birmingham is a city," to all those naysayers who said otherwise. its skyscrapers, its bigness, its beauty in smog. tainted and soiled yet important and complex.


surprisingly stately staid suburbia















in my mind, the two homes i split my childhood in are vastly different. the one on the left was a house of opulence. the entrance was once covered by grass and trees; in my day, you entered the house at its belly down the end a steep, downward sloping driveway. i don't have many fond memories of this house. i entered it with hope and left it with pain. the one on the right was a house of struggle. the house, sitting high on a hill, was once surrounded by trees and thicket, and to enter the driveway you had to pass two leaning and towering trees extremely close together. but once you made it there, inside was warm, messy, beat-up, and lived. now, thanks to bland suburban landscaping, home-depot add-ons, and paint jobs and an awareness of the relative privilege i once lived in, they look the same.

sunset tans in the east village

i usually am not too fond of pictures of myself. i am always too bothered by the forced meeting of images between what i think what i look like and what the camera's reality tells me i look like. but i like this image for one simple and funny reason: i, an american, have the same coloring as he, a venuzuelan, does. what's more, i have been to the beach twice this summer (one early on, the other the day before this picture was taken), whereas he's been every weekend since they opened. so, yes, the rumor you heard about me is quite true - i am the golden goddess of summer.

prom, thirteen years later





















i was seventeen years old when i realized being single and acting like it doesn't bother you isn't that hard to do. my fellow classmates at old MBHS all congratulated me for showing up to senior prom alone and without a date! i laughed. i thought, "i decorated it, you fuckers, so why shouldn't i be here?" yet still! how traumatized i was and have been by crushing singledom. to know you are the golden goddess, so beautiful, so charming, so sharp, so surrounded by guys, and be single! so when i met this striking young man from alabama in new york city, and when we both discovered neither of us had been to the prom, our lifelong heartaches ended.

park life

traveling, to me, is freedom. i haven't done it in five years, and a lot has changed about me. so when i couldn't trek through new york city on the first day of its summer heat wave, when i sweated so much i was perpetually drenched, and when i nearly passed out after exiting the subway station, i didn't feel particularly free. the conditions in which i visited my favorite city were, indeed, not ideal. but when i got my first chance to be alone, to explore, and to go the pace of a thirty-year old woman, i found this fountain. why i love traveling is that you find the unexpected if you go off the map.

mi bella belle

the last full week before school my beloved niece belle visited me. for ten days i had her humorous and touching company. i completely fell in love again with her. it's quite easy to do. many friends and visitors commented on how cute and well-behaved she was. every time i was away for more than two hours i worried. she looks like you're killing her when you put on her bark collar or tell her to go to the crate/bathroom. i would rush home or send the party my way. and throughout this time i kept waiting for the real thing.

it's almost the end of my summer. i've been away from home longer than i've been at home. so you'd think i would have an outstanding summer. well, we academics-in-training really never have those three-month summers all you non-academics dream we have. if only.

but, nonetheless, my top ten events of summer in no particular order that put a smile on my face:

1) having a friend tell me i have a great ass

2) singing "free" at witch's gap on the blue ridge parkway, overlooking mountains, valleys, and trees, with no one around

3) getting to know my oldest friends' little ones

4) making out - pure and simple

5) my yoga instructor of four weeks smiled at me when i held a shoulder stand for longer than five seconds - for the first time

6) living with my older sister

7)

8) getting my ipod, putting music on my computer, and listening to a shuffle of 2777 songs

9) reading harry potter and the deathly hallows

10) celebrating my mom's 60th birthday with my family

since the academic year let out, i have been reading the harry potter series to prepare for the seventh installment. in true geek fashion, i have taken notes on my readings. after finally completing the series, i have two major theories for the seventh book, harry potter and the deathly hallows, based on long-held-when-the-freak-are-you-going-to-tell-me-jk-rowling!-mysteries.

so, you thought after reading book 6, who is this RAB person? well, it is no other than regulus black, sirius' brother. read me out:

sirius tells harry in order of the phoenix that regulus was killed by voldemort. sure, he says, perhaps on voldmort's orders than voldemort himself, but sirius thinks so little of his brother that he thinks the dark lord thought the same. the story sirius gathered was that regulus was wanted out. he "panicked about what he was being asked to do and tried to back out (112)."

in half-blood prince, harry opens what he thought was the slytherin locket-horcrux but finds a small piece of parchment signed by RAB. it says "to the dark lord, i know i will be dead long before you read this but i want you to know that it is i who discovered your secret. i have stolen the real horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as i can. i face death in the hope that you will meet your match, you will be mortal once more (609)."

when dumbledore and harry approach the cave, dumbledore remarks that the magic protecting the cave is crude. while there is no visible sign that another person has tried to enter the cave, RAB obviously has. what if he, not voldemort, cast the spell to the cave's entrance? if RAB made the potion in the cauldron? and what if the potion is meant to make the drinker recite the last words of its maker? as dumbledore drinks the potion, he says the following phrases: "please don't make me," "let me go," "it's all my fault," "i know i did wrong," "don't hurt them," "hurt me instead," "make it stop," and "kill me" (571-3).

could they be the last words of regulus black? who he did not want to hurt or what he did not want to do, i haven't an idea. unless it was the potters. but this is perhaps my least formed theory, so don't go betting your wages on it.

and where could this horcrux be? well, what about 12 grimmauld place? in book 5, kreacher continually knicked precious black family items when sirius attempted to rid the house of them. he also casually mentions that kreacker would have preferred if regulus instead of sirius was his master. under regulus' order, kreacher has been protecting the horcrux.

another age-old mystery is why dumbledore trusts snape. well, i think i know why.

in order of the phoenix, dumbledore shares his memory of the prophecy to harry. he tells his young charge that there was a man who was caught eavesdropping outside the door during trelawney's trance. "consequently, he could not warn his master than to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you - again marking you as his equal. so voldermort never knew there was a danger in attacking you" (843).

and who was that man caught eavesdropping? none other than our greasy-faced friend severus snape. snape was also in the hog's head inn that night for he, too, was applying for a job at hogwarts. trelawney tells harry that there was a "commotion" outside the door, and she suspects that snape wanted to overhear to gain some interviewing tips (half-blood prince 545).

but, we know from prisoner of azkaban that trelawney is unaware when she enters a trance and gives a prophecy. dumbledore says the eavesdropper was caught during the middle of trelawney's prophecy. but if that is so, how can trelawney know that there is a commotion outside the door and that snape is responsible? if, that is, she can't remember giving prophecies or what transpires during them?

now i haven't been able to figure out when snape switched sides, but we all know it was before voldemort's downfall. i think it might have either been the night the prophecy was told or immediately afterwards. dumbledore knew snape heard the entire prophecy. what if, on the very night the prophecy was made, dumbledore convinced snape to switch sides? and what if they conspired together in voldemort's downfall? snape reported back to voldemort, but he only told him half the prophecy. snape, by withholding information on dumbledore's request, directly led to the dark lord's near fatal mistake in attacking harry potter. this act - withholding all he knew about the prophecy - and its consequence cemented dumbledore's trust in snape.

why, yes, i have other theories, but you'll just have to beg me for more.

earlier this morning i plucked a small gray hair from my chin.

age is officially upon me.