3
Just Hanging Out
(Between pages 44 - 48)
Emily
Today must have been the first Sunday in years that I haven't spent at least half the day studying and after my meltdown last night, what have I been doing all day that has been more important?
Car maintenance!
Not on my own car of course – thanks to Rumisiel I'm too young! - I helped Ash work on her car. Besides I haven't touched a car engine since the time I topped up the engine oil... well it seemed logical to me that "topped up" meant up to the top!
It came close to not happening though. I turn up on her doorstep a broken mess, spend the night, cook her breakfast and what do I get?
"I know there are probably places you'd rather be."
I honestly wondered at that point whether the real Ash was a male or a moron!
That was when it really drove home to me how screwed up Ash really was! She said it herself when she said just afterward, "Can't you just keep your insecurities bottled up until you just have to whup the stuffing out of someone like guys do?"
I may not know many guys, but I doubt that any of them would go through what had happened to Ash then just work on their car instead of working on a way to solve their problem!
Or maybe they would?
Ash is like a walking, talking sociology experiment, a chance to see male characteristics played out on a girl, but is she over-compensating? Was she really like this before her umm, change? Sure, she might look like a girl of roughly my age - pretty, nice figure, too – but you only have to be around her for ten minutes to realize that she isn't just pretending to be a guy: she's a guy's guy!
From the long stride and slouching posture to the way she talks, her mannerisms and attitudes... its kinda funny in a cute way sometimes and a bit gross and annoying at other times. Watching her eat breakfast for example was like watching a train wreck in progress and the way she crosses her legs, with the ankle on the knee, makes me think that she mustn't have a modest bone in her body!
In fact, she has none of a girls self-awareness. You know, that girl thing of not just doing something well but wanting to look good whilst you're doing it? Its just not there! She went the whole day today, working on her car, without one look at the oil under her nails, the dirt in her hair from crawling under the car or the state of her clothes.
Or maybe she's going to have to learn some modesty? She worked out pretty fast why wearing a bra was a good idea!
Maybe we both learned something? I'm not going to say that bottling up emotions is a good idea but maybe there is something to be said for just "chilling out"? I feel a lot calmer tonight, as if the tinkering on the car has put some distance between the trauma of yesterday and whatever problems tomorrow will bring.
Zen and the art of motor maintenance? Hah! Nothing so self-examining. Perhaps the exact opposite – relaxation from tension, concentrating on a practical problem, focusing your awareness on the moment, a suspension of critical thought whilst maintaining an awareness of what you were doing?
Or just hanging out with a friend?
Whatever it was it worked.
.
Prof. Dunsany
The despair of Emily's previous entry is gone from this more positive tract. If we work on the premise that her real life situation was mirrored in some way in her fictional account, she seems to have found some way of handling it.
I must admit to a considerable admiration for this young lady's powers of observation and analysis. Her questioning of Ash's indifference and her thesis on 'chilling out' as a form of meditation is sociologically sound and shows a certain awakening to her problem.
What compounds the problem though is that Lt Swain tells me that Emily had been academically bright in the years leading up to this, but had not been forced to study an inordinate amount. Her mother says that at the date of this and the earlier entry, she had only just started putting pressure on her to perform well.
Not only this but she only started taking sociology the following year, so her knowledge of sociological principles and texts, like "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", is an unsettling anomaly.