Surrealist poetry

I am beginning a collection of surrealist poems, this is the first one and is still a work in progress. Most of my favorite paintings are surrealism and i wanted to try and capture the feeling of one through poetry. I chose the picture after the fact lol so it doesn't match exactly but i think it conveys the feeling

surrealism#1

the walls wax and wane

spinning thoughts and words and scenes

you reach out to smudge the paint

your fingers tangled in my dreams

We watched the world slip away

In shocks of orange blue and gold

Pictures knotted

Sounds frayed

And time stood still

We stare too hard

the picture fades away

Our hands left empty

grasping memories

returning with air

Where my Head is Lately

I am still studying for the mcat and my test is in exactly 1WEEK!!!!! so please send lots of positive thoughts and prayers my way :). I also managed to convince my friend tanya to come up with me for the drive to syracuse and the hotel stay the night before. (it only takes one attack story of a single female traveling alone to make you paranoid lol so i am really grateful. I will also be in desperate need of a post mcat party buddy to hit up all the bars afterward so her presence is an added bonus!!!!.

Besides studying, I have also been putting the finishing touches on my primary application to medical school!!! for those of you unfamiliar with the process, it has two (technically 3 steps) the primary application begins in June and it is basically your background/ transcript/resume/ personal statement-why i want to be a doctor. I am applying to about 22 schools (a lot right lol but apparently it is better to have your options very open) this will set me back about 820 dollars- practically extortion right. After your primary application is approved and sent to yours schools of choice, they will send out their secondary application, mostly essays and the like detailing exactly why their school is the best fit for you (this will also set me back in price lol). If they like your secondaries then they will ask for an interview. If you do not get an interview (and only a small percent of applicants do) you do not get into the school period, and even then only about half of the people who get interviews actually get in. So hopefully i will get lots of interviews and lots of acceptances.

on another note, i have purchased my ticket to Europe! i will leave the 10th for frankfurt to spend the week with my boyfriend who is doing research there over the summer. I have never been to Germany before so i am really excited, and frankfurt just seems like such a cool and urban setting.

From frankfurt I will take a train to paris where i will spend a week with my sister and her husband. I have been to paris before when i was in the 10th grade but it was a school trip and very touristy. Although i did get to experience all the big museums and sites in rapid yet thorough succession, this time around i want a more in depth experience of actual parisian life. I especially can't wait to explore all the fashion houses. My obsession of the week is the summer 09 collection of Matthew Williamson, it's so bright and shiny yet undeniably sophisticated and sleek.

i especially love this suit

If my stars align right i will also be making a stop in London to see Wicked :) i read the book when i was in the eighth grade and still have not gotten to see it on broadway despite being in love with the soundtrack for so long. It is also something my sister and i have wanted to see together for ages. I am so excited for this trip, it is the only thing getting me through my relentless studying for the mcat.

As for my free time, last weekend i made the 8hr trek home for fathers day and to pick up valerie who will be spending the week with me (Hooray) and my car. It was really nice, i went to church with my family, we had a barbecue watched some soccer and just spent lots of great time together. It is never the same as when all of my sisters are home (one is in paris, the other in peru) but two out of four is not bad.

I even got to see the proposal, which was sooooooo cute and funny, and reaffirmed my soft spot for all things sandra bullock and ryan reynolds. I have not seen such a well executed romcom in ages so this movie was very refreshing. My sister and i also agree that ms. bullock made the movie. Her character script-wise could have come off as very offensive, cold and abrasive but bullock just managed to carry it with such charm and vulnerability that you couldn't even begin to hate her and could completely understand why reynolds' character falls for her in the end (please like you didn't see that one coming, definitely not a spoiler).

this weeks guilty pleasures have been, NYC Prep, and the real housewives of new jersey lol why is bravo so addicting and neurotic personalities so enticing. I never could look away from a train wreck.

Movie Binge

I saw The hangover yesterday, with my friend Happy Tanya who is visiting for a few days. It was definitely just as funny as I expected, if not more. I went to Vegas for the first time last spring break and it was a blast, so I definitely appreciated all the references and witty dings the movie made about the casino culture. What I liked most about the movie was that it was crazy but didn’t push the limits of credibility too hard. It would have been very easy for this film to fall into a pit of sloppy shtick and shock valueless humor but the characters were very likable and realistic and the ridiculous elements were tied neatly and cohesively into the story.

I love reading and I love films, yes I am a total escapist buff lol but even for me I have watched a lot of films this week. The first three films that stand out had a shocking trend of pedophilia (I am told by the friend who rented them that this was purely coincidence, but I have my doubts …) The Reader, Old Boy, and Doubt.

The most disturbing of the three, would definitely be Old Boy, a Korean film about a man who wakes up from a drunken stupor to find his wife and daughter have been murdered and is then kidnapped and secretly imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years. The rest of the film is him trying to figure out who had him imprisoned and why, and him seeking his revenge. This movie was done very well but I had a lot of trouble sleeping afterwards because of all the darker psychological elements. It definitely makes you think and forces you to question modern paradigms of love and sacrifice.

(Stop reading now if you don’t want spoilers)

ok so in the movie, after he is imprisoned the main guy Dei Sui meets this beautiful young women who is instantly intrigued by him and offers to help him in his search. In the end you find out that his captor is a kid from his high school who Dei Sui caught fooling around with a girl that turned out to be the captors sister –eww incest right- to punish him for spreading rumors about his sister that ultimately led to her suicide, the captor tricked Dei Sui into falling in love and sleeping with his own daughter!!!

Ok so here is where I get caught up, Dei Sui is obviously distraught that he slept with his daughter and insists that she never find out they are related. Instead of just stopping it there though he is determined to keep their relationship alive! He finds a hypnotist to erase the knowledge that he is her father from his memory so that he no longer feels any guilt and they can live happily ever after. What I want to know is why didn’t he just get the hypnotist to erase both their memories of having slept with each other and of being in love (they were hypnotized to fall in love with each other in the first place). That seems like the obvious solution to me, but I guess he wasn’t willing to sacrifice their love. I can’t imagine being so in love with someone that I would sacrifice my moral integrity like that, even if I knew that I would never know that I had.

(start reading now if you skipped the spoiler)

The Reader was also very good but sad. I enjoyed trying to understand the character’s motives, and it is always refreshing to see a movie that doesn’t romanticize the uglier and more damaging parts of love. All I can say about doubt is, he did it, of course he did it, he was so defensive and guilty the whole movie if you really want to know why I am so convinced you can ask lol but I feel like the movie was designed as a question and this is my answer :)

I also watched the movie Choke this week. Fight Club is probably one of my favorite movies of all time, so I obviously had to give this movie a chance, and though no where near as amazing as fight club, this film had the same dark and witty humor so I enjoyed it very much.

On a happier note I had a girly sleepover last night with Tanya and our friend Marcy where we drank dry Riesling and watched Audrey Tautou movies, He Loves Me He Loves Me Not, and Priceless until 3am. It was oddly appropriate since we all took French together and yet still needed to rely on subtitles for the most part. Miss Tautou creeped the heck out of me in the first movie, but was absolutely perfect in the second. If it had been anyone else I probably would have hated the character Irene but she just made the character’s ruthlessness seem eerily charming and attractive. And the clothes!!!! When she first steps into the elevator in that beautiful Azzaro dress that just screams simple elegance and luxury it was perfect.

I think I will take a break from movies for a while now lol and hopefully go out tonight but now I have to stop procrastinating and get back to studying :)

-Nessa Rose

Summering In Ithaca

What can I say about summering in ithaca ... last summer was probably one of the best summers i have had in a while, I remember sunning by the gorges, making ham and hash-browns for breakfast, staying in weekends till three watching the first three seasons of weeds and the bachelor :) not to mention karaoke, group therapy and darts till 1 am before sweat boxing it until 4am ... sigh. This summer will not be like that, i will be holed up in the library studying an obscene amount of material for the mcat in an obscenely little amount of time. I will be missing my friends and my boyfriend, and trying desperately not to procrastinate lol. I am also in the ongoing process of packing up my room and applying for medical school HOORAY! Hopefully by mid july i will be touring europe and germany and have infinitely more exciting things to blog about, but for now i will keep you updated on the few and far between things i might do to amuse myself that do not involve staring endlessly at a computer screen taking practice tests. So until next blog 

MWAH

Nessa Rose