The Story of Adana
For a long time, I've been intending to record the Story of Adana and haven't, you know, gotten around to it. As it seems that I'm not blogging about my life much lately, I think it might be time tell Adana's story. The thing is, it's a long, winding tale, that's going to take a long time to tell. The other thing is, it's all true. But it's a fantastic kind of true that makes it nearly unbelievable.
The Story of Adana is one that I've been connected to for over 10 years, and it has just taken a turn that reminds me that it needs to be written. So, I'll start it here, in bite-sized chunks, and we'll see where it goes.
As I am writing this, the Story of Adana is taking place in real time. The characters are probably sleeping at the moment, as most of them are in a time zone 6 hours behind the one I'm writing in. To start near the end-most point then, I'll step onto the yellow path thusly...
Her email read "It's been a while and there is something I'd like to speak to you about. Something I'd rather not tell you in an email. Can you call me"?
I hadn't spoken to Adana in nearly a year, although we had exchanged a few emails around our birthdays. Auspiciously, these said 'Happy Birthday', but they really said things like "we're still friends, you and I, even though we agree that we can't be friends right now". So, when I got this email from her, I knew something significant had happened, and I wondered what her news could be. All I knew for certain is that it would not be boring. Adana never disappointed. And so I dialed the 14 digits, marking that I still knew them by heart even though I hadn't called in over a year and that I still have to look up my sister's number. As the call rang through, I thought about meeting Adana 10 years ago in graduate school.
When we met, Adana and I were both doctoral students in the Psychology Department at York University in Ontario. As a new student, I was a "first year". Adana had been there a year and was a "2nd year". In York's grad departement, there is very little fraternizing between the years. First year students like myself are too busy trying to settle in and pretend they aren't secretly terrified of being publicly exposed as the stupidest person in the department. The "2nd years", like Adana, have already figured out that there is at least one person stupider than them so they can relax and throw themselves into their research (as a side note, the "3rd years" are either gunning to finish their research and get the fuck out of grad school, or smoking pot and coasting knowing that they won't... and the "4th years" are either madly preparing to defend their thesis, or smoking pot and lying to their parents about why the department 'needs' them to stay on another year. Or two. Or, infamously, in Steve Callaghan's case, 10). So for the 1st 4 months after I arrived, Adana's and my worlds never intersected. I was dating someone in my class and spending most of my time in my lab which was on the same floor as Adana's. As her lab was at the end of the hall, I became vaguely aware of her existence only because she had to walk past my door.
The guy I was dating, Alex, was in a lab 1 floor up and had a notoriously noxious labmate named William who was in Adana's 2nd year class. William had two purposes in life: 1) to finish his thesis in record time and secure an academic position with a top US school and 2) to cause as much social destruction amongst the graduate students as possible. His primary weapons in the latter regard were a genius IQ, a breathtakingly cruel sense of humor, super-human verbal prowess, and an uncanny ability to seek and simultaneously destroy a person's achilles heel, and the rug underneath their feet. When you were a William Myers target, you were done for. He was almost without exception, feared and loathed by every student in the department. How I developed a certain regard and admiration for him still baffles. I feel that it can only be explained by my curiosity of human nature. I'd not, before or since, encountered a specimin like William. I found him fascinating and I started, tentatively, to try to become his friend. This is, of course, the social equivalent of befriending a hive of wasps. For a moment you might think all is well, but you always end up getting stung badly. But that's a tale for another time.
Over time, William and I did become friends. I suspect this happened partly because he regarded the lab I was in as the most scientifically useless lab in the department and was, therefore, no threat to him. It was also in part due to the regard he had for Alex who, being a very gentle and kind person, was his complete antithesis. One day Alex and I were having lunch together and William grabbed a chair, pushed it between us and started talking about the department. More specifally, he began to systematically cut through his classmates, describing in detail their weaknesses and explaining with military precision how each was inferior to himself. When I asked about Adana who he had excluded from his analysis, he paused and all he said was "oh, she's ok". He caught the look that passed between Alex and I at this high compliment, and quickly said "of course she's a complete introverted, anorexic weirdo in a lab that hasn't published a relevant paper since 1956 and is wasting her time on a line of research that will have exactly no impact on fucking anybody anywhere, but yeah, she's ok".
The next day, Adana walked past my lab. I jumped up, stood in the hallway behind her and called out 'hey'. She stopped and turned around. I introduced myself and asked if she wanted to come into my lab for a tea. She did, and that's how I found out that her name wasn't always Adana, that she was a former ballerina, and that her family and mine are from the same backwater town in Ontario and that we were both planning to drive there for visits that weekend. And so it was decided that we would meet up on Saturday morning and drive together.
It didn't quite work out as I imagined.
(to be continued...)
For a long time, I've been intending to record the Story of Adana and haven't, you know, gotten around to it. As it seems that I'm not blogging about my life much lately, I think it might be time tell Adana's story. The thing is, it's a long, winding tale, that's going to take a long time to tell. The other thing is, it's all true. But it's a fantastic kind of true that makes it nearly unbelievable.
The Story of Adana is one that I've been connected to for over 10 years, and it has just taken a turn that reminds me that it needs to be written. So, I'll start it here, in bite-sized chunks, and we'll see where it goes.
As I am writing this, the Story of Adana is taking place in real time. The characters are probably sleeping at the moment, as most of them are in a time zone 6 hours behind the one I'm writing in. To start near the end-most point then, I'll step onto the yellow path thusly...
Her email read "It's been a while and there is something I'd like to speak to you about. Something I'd rather not tell you in an email. Can you call me"?
I hadn't spoken to Adana in nearly a year, although we had exchanged a few emails around our birthdays. Auspiciously, these said 'Happy Birthday', but they really said things like "we're still friends, you and I, even though we agree that we can't be friends right now". So, when I got this email from her, I knew something significant had happened, and I wondered what her news could be. All I knew for certain is that it would not be boring. Adana never disappointed. And so I dialed the 14 digits, marking that I still knew them by heart even though I hadn't called in over a year and that I still have to look up my sister's number. As the call rang through, I thought about meeting Adana 10 years ago in graduate school.
When we met, Adana and I were both doctoral students in the Psychology Department at York University in Ontario. As a new student, I was a "first year". Adana had been there a year and was a "2nd year". In York's grad departement, there is very little fraternizing between the years. First year students like myself are too busy trying to settle in and pretend they aren't secretly terrified of being publicly exposed as the stupidest person in the department. The "2nd years", like Adana, have already figured out that there is at least one person stupider than them so they can relax and throw themselves into their research (as a side note, the "3rd years" are either gunning to finish their research and get the fuck out of grad school, or smoking pot and coasting knowing that they won't... and the "4th years" are either madly preparing to defend their thesis, or smoking pot and lying to their parents about why the department 'needs' them to stay on another year. Or two. Or, infamously, in Steve Callaghan's case, 10). So for the 1st 4 months after I arrived, Adana's and my worlds never intersected. I was dating someone in my class and spending most of my time in my lab which was on the same floor as Adana's. As her lab was at the end of the hall, I became vaguely aware of her existence only because she had to walk past my door.
The guy I was dating, Alex, was in a lab 1 floor up and had a notoriously noxious labmate named William who was in Adana's 2nd year class. William had two purposes in life: 1) to finish his thesis in record time and secure an academic position with a top US school and 2) to cause as much social destruction amongst the graduate students as possible. His primary weapons in the latter regard were a genius IQ, a breathtakingly cruel sense of humor, super-human verbal prowess, and an uncanny ability to seek and simultaneously destroy a person's achilles heel, and the rug underneath their feet. When you were a William Myers target, you were done for. He was almost without exception, feared and loathed by every student in the department. How I developed a certain regard and admiration for him still baffles. I feel that it can only be explained by my curiosity of human nature. I'd not, before or since, encountered a specimin like William. I found him fascinating and I started, tentatively, to try to become his friend. This is, of course, the social equivalent of befriending a hive of wasps. For a moment you might think all is well, but you always end up getting stung badly. But that's a tale for another time.
Over time, William and I did become friends. I suspect this happened partly because he regarded the lab I was in as the most scientifically useless lab in the department and was, therefore, no threat to him. It was also in part due to the regard he had for Alex who, being a very gentle and kind person, was his complete antithesis. One day Alex and I were having lunch together and William grabbed a chair, pushed it between us and started talking about the department. More specifally, he began to systematically cut through his classmates, describing in detail their weaknesses and explaining with military precision how each was inferior to himself. When I asked about Adana who he had excluded from his analysis, he paused and all he said was "oh, she's ok". He caught the look that passed between Alex and I at this high compliment, and quickly said "of course she's a complete introverted, anorexic weirdo in a lab that hasn't published a relevant paper since 1956 and is wasting her time on a line of research that will have exactly no impact on fucking anybody anywhere, but yeah, she's ok".
The next day, Adana walked past my lab. I jumped up, stood in the hallway behind her and called out 'hey'. She stopped and turned around. I introduced myself and asked if she wanted to come into my lab for a tea. She did, and that's how I found out that her name wasn't always Adana, that she was a former ballerina, and that her family and mine are from the same backwater town in Ontario and that we were both planning to drive there for visits that weekend. And so it was decided that we would meet up on Saturday morning and drive together.
It didn't quite work out as I imagined.
(to be continued...)
posted by Penless Artist at 10:28 a.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home