As summer begins to wane and I log onto my fall semester, I’m thinking about all of the things that I need to do for school and all of the things that I didn’t do over the summer. In order to improve my mind, I wanted to read feminist novels, listen to podcasts, and watch international films, a few of which I did.

I listened to “guilt and shame,” a British podcast recommended by my girl Phoebe Waller-Bridge, in which three friends discuss the things that people typically feel guilty and shameful about, and for when I was feeling more serious, I listened to “Rabbit Hole,” by the New York Times and “The West Wing Weekly.” I finally watched “Parasite” and then subsequently wondered where it’d been all my life. It’s one of those films that you want to go back over and study in forensic-detail. My mother and I watched “Killing Eve,” a female-anti-hero show that was also created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, because I’d follow that woman to the ends of the earth.

I wanted to spend the summer watching all of Jane Fonda’s most famous movies, starting with her Oscar nominated films, but since streaming services make you pay for them and my DVD player is now busted, it wasn’t in the cards for me. Instead, I watched M.A.S.H, in search of some nuanced takes on the consequences of warfare and out of a desire to see why this show still has the world record for most watched finale. I’ve also been working on works of art that I’ve become quite proud of, or as Jane Austen would put it “I’ve been more agreeably engaged.”

At night, I lulled myself to sleep with my meditation “calm” app’s “sleep stories,” where Harry Styles reads soothing poetry sotto-voce in his crisp, sultry diction. The app encourages me to fall in love with the voice of Harry Styles and to think and dream about him as I fall asleep, as if I haven’t been doing that for years. Just as Harry Styles whispers sweet nothings to me to help me fall asleep, some days, I consult my horoscope app “Co-star” so that it can give me a nondescript assessment of how I’m fairing. I’m pleased to report that there’s nothing out of the ordinary for yours truly, just your run of the mill “you might be conflicted this week” or better yet “you will be receiving strength from an unlikely source this week.”

Every few days, I picked a new mystery tea flavor from the collection of tea that my aunt sends me from Asia. It’s worth mentioning though that they are only mystery flavors to me, because, alas, I do not speak Mandarin. 

I told myself that because I spent last summer reading classics: The Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple, The Great Gatsby, and The Awakening, that I would spend this summer reading more modern novels. I then proceeded to read “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen.

Having previously read “Mansfield Park” for a literature class, I decided that now would be a good time to start sticking it to the man with “Pride and Prejudice.” I know that it must seem cliche to have a young female writer resonate with Elizabeth Bennett and be swept away by Mr. Darcy, but I believe that “Pride and Prejudice” is one of those rare novels that ages incredibly well. Despite the fact that it is over two hundred years old it might even be more relevant today than it was when it first came out. Mr. Darcy is a selfish and entitled man who exudes toxic masculinity, having never been talked down to or not given what he wants in his whole life. He gets called out for his toxic behavior by a woman that he greatly admires, and instead of getting haughty or pissy, he rectifies his behavior by amending the things that troubled her in the first place and by handling a predator that he let walk free for the past few years. 

Another thing that I don’t think that people recognize enough about this novel is the fact that it is in large part a story about familial love. Lizzy turns down a marriage proposal from the most eligible man possible, in large part out of solidarity with her sister. Mr. Darcy, on the other hand, falls deeper in love with Elizabeth when he sees the relationship his sister has with her. The way to both their hearts is through their sisters. 

I bought “Emma” and “Sense and Sensibility” to read next but decided instead to actually try to read modern novels. That way I wouldn’t walk around using big words like “felicity” and “countenance,” as if my name were in the book of the landed gentry. I bought “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng and “Normal People” by Sally Rooney. Despite being brand new, these novels were by no means frivolous. “Little Fires Everywhere” probes the ideas of privilege and family dynamics, as well as motherhood and pregnancy, although not in a warm and fuzzy way. Next, I read “Normal People” by Sally Rooney, which I have heard jokingly referred to as “Call-Me-By-Your-Name-but-for-straight-people.” “Normal People” seems to be one of those novels that was supposed to be a love story, but nothing remotely romantic happens to them. 

It is a will-they-won’t-they story, about a couple that has an on-again-off-again, yet I never understood why they had to tease out the drama by being estranged from one another. Despite my best efforts to stay clear of 19th century realist novels, this novel opens with a quotation from George Elliot about how every person meets one person who touches their life in a perfect way. From the opening epithet to the last page, the novel clings to the idea that every person out in the world has someone to complete them. In other words, I was biased against it from the start, because I have never subscribed to the notion that you are incomplete until you’ve met the right person. 

The way I see it, you are nothing if not alone in this world. From the moment you enter crying to the moment you lay dying you have nothing but your own thoughts and your own actions, regardless of how many people you surround yourself with. 

Though I was assured that I would read it all in one sitting, I couldn’t bring myself to read this large-print 270 page book in under a week. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to read this book. Whenever I don’t read more than 10 pages in a single sitting, I feel like a dilettante who can’t sit down with a good book. I wanted to read “The Summer I Turned Pretty” by Jenny Han before school started up again, but I guess I’ll just have to wait, now that my days will be filled with reading and writing original short stories and plowing through some ancient Greek literature.

More on that later.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel 

I have no idea how people spent their summers, especially this summer of all summers, but I put a good chunk of it to good use. This is my way of saying: I got a job. Throughout high school I subsisted mostly on part time jobs, helping my grandmother with her sugared pepper business and writing several articles in local magazines as a freelance journalist. The place I work at now is an art gallery, marrying my passion for art with my passion for having money. Unlike my brother, who is currently collecting unemployment on the dole and practically rolling in the Benjamins, I am making $9 an hour at one of my town’s greatest cultural epicenters. I worked here previously, a few summers ago, and it’s great to be back. 

I don’t know what working girls do exactly, aside from kidnapping their bosses and/or toplessly cleaning their houses to Carly Simon. Everything I’ve ever learned about the workforce, I’ve learned from “Mad Men,” “The West Wing,” and those five episodes of “The Office” that I watched that one time in that hotel room. I am, however, looking forward to answering phones in a professional voice and manning the desk Devil-Wears-Prada-style.

I finally have a job for the first time in ages, I just moved into a new house, I am making the most of where I am currently living, I get to admire great art as I work, and I’m dressing in such upscale casual styles that when I appear in public in my work clothes I get called ma’am by kids my own age. In other words, my stock is currently up.

This spurt of winning at life gives me hope that I will one day be doing it in a rent controlled, one-bedroom overlooking the park. Ideally, I’ll be bustling through the halls of “Simon and Schuster,” one day, carrying stacks of loose paper, as part of a paid internship. This whole recent jolt of job searching, job obtaining, and then job performing, has gotten me thinking about my career path. 

Now that summer is waning and school will soon be starting back up, I am still going to continue to work and balance my school work. 

As I power-dress for the job that I go to once a week, I will also be logging onto zoom calls while still in my pajamas. Wishing everyone equal luck in their job search, from your Mary Tyler Moore next door.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: If you want to see great works of local art, come by and see the Annette Howell Turner Center for the arts. You might even see me working there. 

Right, so before she retires, Anna Wintour needs to do a vogue photoshoot with my friend and me. 

I nearly burnt down my house earlier in the day in an attempt to make peach lemonade, whilst watching episodes of M.A.S.H., which might be why the boiling of the peaches went so awry. I therefore decided to reward myself for my day of inadequacy with a bit of modeling with a friend. As an exercise in vanity, my best friend Mary Catherine and I decided to have our own Vogue cover shoot. Set to a flawless playlist, made by yours truly, we emulated a few of our favorite looks and incorporated some of our favorite themes. 

In a few of them, I came out looking like a European woman from one of the Bond films my mom couldn’t stop watching when I was a little kid, incredibly tanned from vacation, wearing a minimal amount of makeup, and having extremely long hair. In a few other ones I came out looking tired and depressed with a look of disgust on my face, but those photos were promptly deleted, as I’m sure you can understand. Depending on the angle we either looked like Aphrodite, the goddess of femininity, sexuality, and love, or we looked like Medusa with mint-green skin and snake hair in tow. 

Our first theme was fire and ice. I was fire and Mary Catherine was ice. While I was wearing a dress that’s too big for me, that I intentionally wore backwards, Mary Catherine wore my mother’s t-shirt, the only remotely light blue shirt I had in my house. 

Then I had a bit of flower power, wearing my mod sixties costume dress from my middle school production of “Hairspray,” with sunflowers that Mary Catherine painted on my face. Using some white acrylic paint mixed with my magenta nail polish, I gave Mary Catherine hot pink streaks across her clavicle, proving once and for all that if you don’t think we’re industrious, then you’re wrong. 

We also didn’t have any makeup (because why would that possibly be important for modelling) so we made do with the highlight and lipstick that we had. There were a few miscellaneous photos that we took as well, just to finish off our photo sesh.

While we were doing this, Mary Catherine and I commented on how we hadn’t grown out of our childhood fantasies in which we ran across my house, pulling every dress I owned out of my costume box and making it look like a tornado hit. Occasionally, I wondered why we were still doing this, and why our obsession with wearing bizarre clothes and taking photos of ourselves endured over the years. I stumbled upon the only answer that is justification for anything: self-love. I do not believe that there is anything wrong with telling yourself that you look good everyday, whenever you do. You’re supposed to show yourself a little love. And whenever you see a young woman getting pictures taken of herself out in public, it can be powerful because she is presumably showing herself the appropriate amount of self-love.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Last week, my family drove two hours to Amelia Island, a small beach town off the coast of Florida, on the Atlantic coast. It was my family’s quasi-annual beach trip. I say quasi-annual because, even though we’re supposed to do it every year, we’ve fallen off a few times. This year’s beach trip was going to be particularly special due to the fact that I’ve been dutifully home quarantining from New York since March inside for the months leading up to this. The idea was to finish off the summer with a small vacation to our favorite beach spot. A casual paradise so nice that John Grisham decided to set up camp there by buying up some prime beachfront property. 

I had mixed feelings about going to a beach in Florida around this time, with its COVID-ridden atmosphere and the state’s skyrocketing case count, but I decided that if I just kept my distance from everyone, then I’d have nothing to worry about. In Chipiona, Spain, beachgoers practiced social distancing by sitting a minimum of six feet apart under their umbrellas, satisfying their country’s ordinances. I decided that I’d see for myself if social-isolation was possible on a beach.

Overall, the place was pretty much abandoned, with clear beaches and little to no foot traffic in town. People were wearing masks everywhere you looked and everyone seemed happy to comply with social distancing. 

The ocean was bathwater temperature, so inviting that you could just walk straight into it. One of the amazing things about this stretch of the ocean  is how close the animals get to you. While you might see the occasional small  shark off shore, schools of fish will jump out of the water a foot away from you, Pelicans will dive straight into the water beside you, and everyday around the same time a pod of dolphins will swim across the same spot in front of our condos. 

There are fun things to do in the area, such as bike trails under vast canopies of trees, but we mostly stuck to the independent bookstore, ice cream shop, bakery, tourist traps, and antique stores (masks on of course). We got burgers from Tasty’s, a burger joint that lives up to its name, nursed a few sunburns, unsuccessfully searched for shark teeth, and watched a movie or two as we lounged around. 

That quick week of ocean air brushed away some of the ennui brought on by my endless Spring Break. I hope that everyone was able to experience some form of blissful relaxation throughout this summer from hell.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

The other day, my friends and I treated ourselves to a bit of night swimming, whilst watching a movie on my projector screen. The idea was for us to watch “Jaws,” but when that didn’t pan out due to my lack of being able to attach a DvD player to my projector and the total lack of streaming services offering it for free, we watched “Double Jeopardy” instead. The film consists of several boat scenes and a truly nail-bitingly suspenseful underwater action scene. It was a new experience, but one that I’d dreamt up a while ago. I had a perfect set-up, with me and my friends in my lukewarm pool, in the dark, watching a movie being projected onto my pool house. I showed the film to my two friends Anna and Mary Catherine, after we ate the paella I made for dinner.

Speaking of making dinner, for the past few days, I’ve been inhaling some of the most glorious foods that I have ever eaten. My brother and one of his best friends, Jonathan, came over to cook us a few Italian dishes, and by that I mean more-or-less change our lives. First we were treated to my brother Bobby’s penne alla vodka, which was just as flawless as I remembered it. I scarfed down half the pan, but still left room for the second course, which had to have been some of the best ravioli I have ever eaten. 

After three hours of other people’s labor, the ravioli was ready, with ten pieces for each person. Ravioli is an immaculate creation. It’s carbohydrates stuffed and doused with cheese and butter. What’s not to love? I then washed it all down with a slice of red velvet cake, because when you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound. Or in this case an extra 15 pounds. The ravioli wasn’t just glazed in butter, it was glazed in homemade sage butter, topped with delicious fried sage. I could die right now with no regrets. Whoever the inventor of ravioli was (he or she now resides in heaven) would be brought to tears over the pasta I was served a few nights ago. It was bursting with flavor and ended with me licking the plate.

To top it all off, there was some extra dough, which I put to good use the very next day. I spent the day slinging around homemade dough that was so long that I could drape it across my whole body. My brother and I used it to make homemade fettuccine. Together we made a new family favorite: cacio e pepe, only with homemade pasta for the first time. I came out of it stuffed to the gills, which is the most fun you can have while in quarantine. 
In other news, I’ve been nursing away my corner-of-the-mouth-zits, brought on by my incessant mask-wearing. The internet has cleverly dubbed this phenomenon “maskne.” I’ve been trying to read and write more because I fell into the inevitable slog of “if you skip one day you won’t do it for a week.” I look forward to the next couple of days, which hopefully will consist of more good food, more movies, and much more swimming. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

I am sitting at the island in my new house, as I write this. Having between 4 to 5 grown adults under one roof squeezed the life out of my parents and their solution to quarantine was finding a new place to live. I don’t mean this to sound bougie. We’ve been house-hunting for the past 7 years and now, after all that time, we finally have something to show for it. 

Moving has been incredibly hectic and crazy, with me misplacing almost everything I need and everybody collapsing in bed at the end of the day from exhaustion. I’ve always loved looking at houses, particularly those that I cannot afford. So when my parents asked me to come check out a house, not too far from our current house, I was eager to walk through it and judge whether or not I felt like I could live there. 

After spending 13 years in a house that we outgrew in about 6 months, we were eager to move, and being on top of each other during quarantine helped jumpstart us into a house-hunting frenzy. We made extensive changes to our house and made it ready to sell, which it did within 21 hours of being on the market. 

My brother and his friends helped us move our stuff into our new house, becoming sweat-drenched and exhausted, lifting boxes in and out of stuffy houses, along with the moving company, “GTFO.” Technically, for these guys, “GTFO” stands for “get that furniture out,” since this is south Georgia, but I think we all know what they really mean. The day was a brisk 93 degrees, which never fails to make heavy-lifting so much easier. 

I’ve spent the last couple of days unloading my family’s oversized book collection into what we now call “the book nook” as well as helping organize the kitchen, since those are the two jobs that we deemed my spindly arms capable of doing. 

The house has copious amounts of character and a style that fits my family just right. I’m going to miss the old place because I have so many fond memories there. One time I took a garden hoe and started axing a tree in my backyard in order to make it thinner, because my imaginary friend, Lucky, had her parents visiting and they were allergic to fat trees. 

The tree still has a long line down the middle of it to this day. 

There was also the small bust that my parents had in the hallway that I would makeout with on occasion, as a child, but mostly only to shock my friends. A friend and I once dressed my dog, Lady, up in my old “Beauty and the Beast” dress, which prompted her to run-away for the 9th time, on the spot, while my mom tried to take a picture.

I had two pets while living there, both of which died over the course of living at that house. I started off at a private, Catholic elementary school and graduated from the local public high school in that house. I learned how to tie my shoes, learned that I had gotten accepted into college, and endured most of my speech therapy in that house. While I have made better strides in my quest at being a friend to the environment and to small animals, I had been on a very steep learning curve whilst living in that house, but now I’m happy to move on to other things.

I’m looking at my new house as an opportunity to put all of my stuff into different and interesting places. I will, for instance, have to figure out where to put my 3’x4’  framed poster of Marilyn Monroe and my full-scale, Shawshank Redemption Raquel Welsh poster that borders on old school soft porn.

We have a pool at our new house, which I have practically been living in, perfectly in line with my swimming-loving, water-sign self. I’d love to have more guests over when we are no longer at risk of COVID, but right now I’m letting my friends come by so long as they socially distance with masks. 

I’m here for the long haul, most-likely doing my second year of SLC from the deep south, via zoom call for the next semester and thankfully will be in my new house. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Cancer season is upon us and as a board certified cancer, I would just like to tell everybody welcome to the most wonderful time of the year.

Also:

You’re on my time now. 

I was born at the end of June, making me an “end-of-June-cancer,” notorious for our moodiness. We’re inscrutable. 

According to Co-Star, the bible of astrology-related apps, I have power in my non-existent social life, pressure in my spirituality, and trouble with routine, thinking & creativity, and self. I am also prone to blaming people for my own discomfort and I’m in need of some variety (aren’t we all). 

As much as I hate to say it, that couldn’t be closer to the truth. 

I have writer’s block, painter’s block (if that’s a thing), and a whole smattering of other things that are inhibiting the creative electricity that usually lights up this bulb. All of my possessions were shipped from school recently and I couldn’t find my copy of “Fear of Flying,” the one thing that I wanted to find. I also drove through the Wendy’s drive thru today in search of adventure, and scarfed down a double cheeseburger, just to feel something. 

While I might be less than prosaic at the moment, I’m still looking forward to this season, seeing as how my birthday is within spitting distance. My original plan for my birthday, which I made back in January, was to take a day trip to Savannah’s downtown historic district. I would be perusing their consignment shops and collecting costume jewelry, but to say that life had different plans for all of us is an understatement. I’m not going to Savannah because I will be socially distancing like a responsible adult. Instead I will probably spend my birthday much like I’ve spent the last few days of summer: sitting on the couch, binge-watching Cheers. 

Being a cancer, I am sensitive and dramatic. Please hold back your shock. 

Crab-themed memorabilia is what we live and die by, with it being our zodiac symbol. Whenever I become a proper adult, I will hopefully be spending my end-of-June-birthday by throwing a party with cream puffs in the shape of crabs. I also hope to one day be able to afford all of the expensive, crab-themed, gold-plated jewelry that I want. 

For now however, all I want for my 19th birthday is a movie projector, so that I can watch movies in the most obnoxious way possible, and to find my copy of “Fear of Flying.”

Your favorite cancer,

Raquel Goddard

It took me longer than I care to admit to process the fact that I was done being up at Sarah Lawrence for the remainder of the semester and that my first year, as I knew it, was over. The separation has had me appreciating things that I took for granted while I was up there. I’m not going to miss the willfully ignorant Bernie Bros who start sentences by saying things like “Bernie Sanders should not have brought up Castro, but he actually made a really good point…” or the people who shamelessly air bomb the communal bathrooms as they watch youtube videos on the toilet. I won’t miss the copious amounts of work or the discomforts of dorm life, but I will miss many things, starting, of course, with the people. The level of character in the school and in the people is outstanding. But aside from them, there were many things that made my first year away from home really special. 

• The TeaHaus for keeping me warm through the winter

The Teahaus is an on-campus landmark known for it’s hot tea and for looking like Hagrid’s Hut in Harry Potter. Most of the time, I’d just grab lemon tea from the Barbara Walters Student Campus Center but the Teahaus is a cozy little hub where one can drink obnoxiously large mugs of tea. When it’s not there serving the students their tea it is serving up looks as one of the most aesthetically pleasing parts of campus.

• Sunsets like these

Some days the sunset would add in a pop of color at the end of the day and I still don’t know why the sky had to flex so hard by looking like a fresco.

• That transcendent swimming pool

While it might be overly-chlorinated, this pool can really hit the spot over the weekend whenever I felt like swimming. There’s not much else to say, except that I love taking laps in this uncrowded and criminally underused pool.  

• All of Bronxville  

For me, “Dumpling and Noodle” was that restaurant down the street that you could pop over to at any time, whenever you were sick of school food. “Slave to the Grind” was the altar for which many coffee addicts bowed in worship, though for me it was the place with the greatest chai tea in the world. “Topps Bakery” started my addiction to black and white cookies, thanks to a friend. “Taco project” has a healthy but still fast approach to Mexican food. “Bronxville Diner” is the place where I have gone for brunch and dinner with my friends, but I mostly only go for their patty melts and shakes. In other words, Bronxville has all the food a girl needs.

• The proximity to the city

It’s the next best thing to being there. I didn’t want to live directly in the city the first year I moved away, not wanting to have a baptism by fire. Thankfully, I have ample opportunities to enter into the city at will. The school provides shuttles from the local train station, into Grand Central. On weekends, the school has a bus that takes you to The Met and being a student in New York, you get in for free. 

• The immaculate winters  

Growing up in a sub-tropical climate, I was so looking forward to that satisfying crunch beneath your feet whenever you trek through the snow and this winter did not disappoint. I quickly learned that bright, glistening snow turns to sludge in a matter of days. Sometimes, however, when it really snows, the entire campus gets caked in ice and it looks like everything is sealed under glass, like in a museum. I was fed-ex’d a “Lands End” parka and snow boots by my dad, who knew that my fashion-forward, but ultimately thin coats, were not going to successfully keep me warm.

• Spring days on campus

Granted, I didn’t get to see many of these. Basically, on days when it’s really sunny, everybody gets the same idea. It seems like everybody on campus is lounging around on a blanket on the lawn, throwing a frisbee, having class outside, skateboarding, or even serenading people on the guitar. It looks as though someone put a beauty filter on the campus. People are playing soccer all over campus and sometimes even in the streets. These also are the days when the ice cream man decides to pull up curbside and feed us starving college kids. 

In summary and in summation, my first year at college was a success, thanks to these things and more. While I will forever wish I had been able to finish my first year on campus, I finished my work at home in Valdosta and will be looking forward to my next semester. I will however miss the cafeteria in the Barbara Walters Student Center where I ate the same things every day, so much so that the lady at the salad bar memorized my order. I’ll also miss the library where I went almost everyday for Italian class, and where I’d choke out Italian words that sounded exceedingly less romantic when I said them.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel