Author: Eric Attica

Categories
Random

“Don’t Just Sit There, Prophesy!” (Quotes)

Me and Brandon. Photo credit: Myself. Contents credit: Our respective parents, particularly our mothers.

I like to say that my greatest talent is having the coolest friends. And what better way to judge the quality of your friends than the ludicrousness of the quotes you share together?

Please enjoy this selection of quotes, exquisitely curated from the Fall 2023 semester and before.

Music People

People who don’t date me are preliterate societies. –Brandon

Yo check me out with my Gucci greaves bro, and my Prada shoulder pauldrons. –Sam Craven on the future of fashion

Use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer, babe. –Melissa on George Orwell

I just need to like get really good at the piano in one day. Or drop out of school and play the accordion on a farm in Sweden. Those are my two options. –Em

I’ll go months without listening to a metronome in my sleep. –Michael

Hatsune Miku is like the Spongebob Squarepants of the anime community. –Camryn

It’s like wearing a tie with nothing else, except not as hot. –Camryn

[watching Princess Mononoke]
Matt Heslop: Did that impala become more feminine looking?
Brandon: Are you saying you find it more attractive?

Em: Cereal tastes good out of a tupperware.
Dana: Does it taste different?
Em: It does! In a metaphysical sort of way.

Emma: Yeah Emily, what’s your interpretation?
Brandon: Yeah, don’t just sit there. Prophesy.

Anonymous BYU Professors

Yes I taught you that! And now I’m trying to disabuse you of that because it’s wrong!

I’m seriously going to pass out, this marker is so strong. Let’s pass this around! Let’s talk about how we’re gonna build community!

If I say I’ve been crying all day, she will feel bad for me, because she’s socially obligated to.

We have ‘discuss,’ we have ‘discussion.’ ‘Discussive’ feels…disgusting.

It’s a ham sandwich with a brioche bun! Let’s not be ridiculous.

You’re like a ditransitive verb because you need a lot of compliments.

Other

I found a Van Gogh calendar in the dumpster and I was like, ‘This is a waste.’ –George

I feel like a lawyer is a very basic thing to have…. Aren’t your parents old, aren’t they about to die? –Girl in my apartment complex

Resident: Those kids were always at the back of the bus!
Asher: That’s why I dealt drugs at the front of the bus.

Erica would murder you in your sleep and then write a love novel about it. –Emily M. (from the Japanese house) on my laptop Erica

Have your ever read the Book of Mormon? First book they cut someone’s head off! –Overheard in the Wilkinson Center

Not only did I enjoy that kiss last night, I was awed by the efficiency of it. –To Catch a Thief (an old Cary Grant movie) ∎

Categories
Personal Update

Christmas Card 2023

This photo represents objective reality and has by no means been altered from its original appearance. /s

Dear Auna and Ben,

I don’t know about you guys, but the older I get, the more elusive the Christmas spirit becomes. As a kid, it was always automatic; Christmas morning was the most exciting day of the year by default. Now I have to work for it. I put in my best effort this year, though. Sure, there was rain instead of snow, but there were also Christmas lights in downtown Provo, Christmas concerts and choirs, Bible readings, gingerbread houses, parties with friends new and old, gift deliveries to neighbors, and cozy hours with family. A picturesque holiday, all things considered. Young adulthood is weird.

Okay, but have you seen the movie Klaus? I recognize that I’m four years behind the times on this one. My friends were all saying “This is the best Christmas movie ever made,” and they finally sat me down to watch it. And you know what? It is the best Christmas movie ever made.

2023 felt like four years packed into one. Maybe I need to start counting the seasons instead of the years. I can hardly even remember this January. Spotify tells me I was listening to lots of The Killers and The Airborne Toxic Event at the start of the year, so that’s the main thing, I guess. I took plenty of linguistics classes during the winter semester, survived some drama with an ex-girlfriend and the Celtic folk band, and went through all-around character development. Emotionally, I’m definitely in a better place than last year.

The big flashy highlight of the year was my summer travel to Tonga and then to France. I’ve done summer school every year since I started school, so I finally gave myself a break. Tonga was for some ethnographic research with anthropological researchers from the University of Utah (I wrote a little about it in this essay), and France was to play at some folk music festivals in the southeast (you can read about my nap in Charles de Gaulle here). It reminded me of how much I love traveling. So if I vanish next year, just assume I’ll turn up as an Irish sheepherder sometime in 2030.

What else did I accomplish this year? I asked out a really cute Walmart cashier (!) and we went on a date (!!). I found two new favorite books from opposite sides of the genre spectrum: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli and the Wolf Hall series by Hilary Mantel. My Japanese got good enough that I can finally read simple texts (and more importantly, play Fire Emblem: Three Houses in Japanese). I bought jewelry and subscribed to journalism for the first time. My old crush told me that I’m fun at concerts. I got a lot better at singing! I took a creative writing class and got a lot better at that too, and I started writing a novel (!!!) that I promise I’m actually going to finish. No, seriously. Hold me to it.

I’m serious about watching Klaus. It’s a fantastic movie. Let me know your recommendations, too. I’m always in the market for good movies and music.

Love you guys. Keep in touch,

Eric

Categories
Short Fiction

Why He Looked Back

(Image credit: 何颖 on Pexels)

The fire danced to the tune of the boy’s guitar. He was only a boy, it was true, if you measured him in years. The sounds he played were much older. They were ancient songs with ancient suspensions and ancient resolutions. It is true that there are no new harmonies.
    “Why did you look back?” you asked.
    The boy, Orpheus, stopped playing. He repeated your question. “Why did I look back?” The fire crackled. You felt ashamed for having asked.
    But he seemed willing to speak. It was almost like he’d been waiting for someone to mention the story.
    “Did you ever meet my wife, Eurydice? She was beautiful. The kind of beauty that makes you look once, and when you look away, you have to look again to make sure that your mind didn’t make her up. When she died, I thought I would never look at her again. I thought I would have to keep making her up every morning. I was in love with a ghost, those days.”
    He closed his eyes as he spoke.
    “I tried to look past her. There are many other women in the world. ‘Look around,’ I told myself. But although many women were charmed by my music, the music stopped the moment I looked at anyone else. Eurydice was fate, and I was bound. She was the sun to my waxen moth’s wings. I could not look away.
    “I think the wind became weary of my mournful songs. It must have thought, ‘What a pitiful man! Other men have accepted that their lovers may die. Most have found new love. Some have killed their own love on purpose.’ But I refused. ‘Is there no way to see her again?’ I asked it.
    “‘You could die,’ the wind suggested. The wind can be quite blunt.
    “‘Is there no other way?’ I asked.
    “And the wind said, ‘You could walk.’
    “Before I left to travel to the underworld, I did not look back to see the world of the living. I set sail, and the farther and deeper I got on my journey, the less I could remember. It was like I had never once seen the world. If you had asked me to name how many points are on a maple leaf, I could not have. Nor which direction the grain runs on my piano stool. Nor the differences in color between the coals in a fire that still glow and the ones that have gone out. Shut your eyes! Can you remember what they look like without looking? If you cannot, then look and remember now. You will not see them again in the land of the dead. I myself had forgotten everything. I had expected them to be immortalized in my memory, but there was no such thing.
    “So I reached the underworld. I played my songs about what I could no longer see. I brought the maple leaves and the grains of wood and the coals of fire and my beloved. And though they were not quite true anymore, they were new to the god of death, and they pierced his heart with life and passion, and he realized that neither I nor Eurydice could remain with him.
    “I was told that I could leave the underworld with Eurydice, on the condition that she walk behind me. If I looked back to make sure she was following me, she would not be allowed to leave. She would die a second time.”
    He ended the story there, and you did not need to hear him repeat what happened. It seemed cruel to speak, so you waited.
    “Have you ever acted in spite of yourself? You promised yourself that you would change for good this time. But a week passed, and you found that you were the same person. Or you buried a grudge, and it stayed buried until you saw your enemy, and you found that he was still your enemy.
    “I went to death and back, and I was still the same person. I don’t believe death ever changed a person. Childrens’ diaries are not so different from their grandfathers’, or their grandfathers’ grandfathers’. But I wanted to change. I wanted to remember the leaves and the wood and the fire and the fish and the deer and the buildings and towns I’d left behind and the face of my Eurydice and make it immortal. The most precious things, you want them forever.
    “I was afraid. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who doesn’t look back.”
    He played an arpeggio, hammer-on, pull-off, something minor or Mixolydian. He was looking back. You were too. ∎