2015 was too much bread on too little butter, and I'm the butter.
no. I don't want to talk about it.
I was going to do this warm, fuzzy little bulletin of what all happened over this past year, but I really don't want to (and already ran through the year anyway). some years are really good, and it's fun to go back over them in your mind and relive the happinesses, and that's great. it can give you a happy sigh and a good night's sleep.
don't get me wrong, there were some very, very good things about this year, and I'm so glad I got to experience and enjoy them; but the truth is, the hard things hit hard and december 2015 has been particularly difficult and I just don't feel warm and fuzzy right now.
and then I was like, well, what if I make a list of what 2016 might look like? two wishful things immediately jumped to mind, 1: scholarship money and 2: smooth semester.
like always, just keepin' it trill.
seriously, there is more than that, but so much more I can't even go into all of it. from comfort for grieving families to more sleep, it's too huge when I try to compass all those hopes in my head. joy, peace, and happiness, for pete's sake, and while I'm dreaming, I want a pony.
let's let 2015 go -- to bury its dead. isn't it marvelous that tomorrow begins a whole new year with no mistakes in it yet? and even more incredible the great faithfulness that will renew every morning, with mercy upon mercy and no shadow of turning.
the end. except now we all go in for the rousing chorus.
for a-auld la-ang syne, my dear,
for a-auld la-ang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet
FO-OR A-A-AULD LA-A-ANG SYYYYYYYYYYYNE!
you sing it like that. don't lie to me.
26 December 2015
:: notebook art, part 1 ::
white chalk marker, black notebook.
'he wishes for the cloths of heaven' by w. b. yeats.
17 December 2015
:: climbing higher ::
2015, in two words: hill difficulty.
for those of you unfamiliar with the pilgrim's progress, a comparable three words would be 'an upward struggle'. it's been one heck of a year.
in january I began the second semester of my freshman year: applied to the university honors program, applied to my major, applied for an internship, and was accepted into all three positions. I also got a job at karen's book barn downtown, which included chalking the signs. these things continued through april, when I finished my freshman year. yay.
I feel like something happened in may, but I actually don't think anything did.* I started interning on campus this month.
in june I flew out for my best friend's wedding (haha, not the movie) and it was a delightful week. california forever, world without end, may I live a thousand years and never hunt again, amen.
july and august brought me this subtle change in thinking -- about myself, about the world. I am starting to lose that rose-colored-glasses thing, starting to see the difference between romance and reality. in some ways this breaks my romantic heart, but I also am seeing the need to be more down-to-earth. it's a balance; I'll get there. without losing all my optim- and idealisms.
in late august, school started and I got really stressed.
september, and I continued stressed. looking over my school notes and to-dos and planner and journal all I find are reminders to not worry, reminders that everything will be okay, reminders to sleep and eat and DON'T FORGET THIS IS DUE IN TOO LITTLE TIME.
october 7: "halfway through the semester. one day until the weekend. only a few projects to work on. only 8 more viking classes to get through. I sing with gloria 'I will survive'."
during the last week of october, my computer's hard drive failed and I lost everything I'd stored there for the previous two years, and that meant all my design portfolio as well as the entire semester's schoolwork -- completed and in-process projects. like a 7-page research paper for my vikings seminar that was completely lost along with its sources. kill. me. now.
the next week, november began.
november was a really tough month. all my classes had big final projects and that meant late nights, early mornings, and stress. a week before finals I had to take a day off because I got an ugly stomach bug; I just couldn't take any more time off after that. I came into my last weekend of school ready to throw all I had into finishing my final design pieces and we got the news that a dear friend of ours was killed in a car accident. she was one of the most lovely people I know and the tragedy of her death and of her poor bereaved family -- it's something we'll all deal with for a long time. I'm afraid that contributed to my poor final grade.
so now it's december. over this year, I've had to make some really hard relationship choices. I've been shown some very dark things about myself. I am forever learning about trust and grace and patience. one sweet friend married; another dear friend has passed on to better things. a young man I know has been battling brain cancer for 11 months now, and avenues of hope are slowly closing -- though that's for 2016 to tell. I'm halfway through my sophomore year, almost halfway through college. the future is becoming simultaneously nearer and more exciting, more immediate and terrifying.
but I've come this far; to quote pilgrim's progress again, I will walk in the strength of the Lord God!
*edit: YES something happened in may. I FREAKING WENT HANG GLIDING!!! AAH! best. decision. ever.
- - -
hang a shining star upon the highest bough
and have yourself a merry little christmas now
for those of you unfamiliar with the pilgrim's progress, a comparable three words would be 'an upward struggle'. it's been one heck of a year.
in january I began the second semester of my freshman year: applied to the university honors program, applied to my major, applied for an internship, and was accepted into all three positions. I also got a job at karen's book barn downtown, which included chalking the signs. these things continued through april, when I finished my freshman year. yay.
I feel like something happened in may, but I actually don't think anything did.* I started interning on campus this month.
in june I flew out for my best friend's wedding (haha, not the movie) and it was a delightful week. california forever, world without end, may I live a thousand years and never hunt again, amen.
july and august brought me this subtle change in thinking -- about myself, about the world. I am starting to lose that rose-colored-glasses thing, starting to see the difference between romance and reality. in some ways this breaks my romantic heart, but I also am seeing the need to be more down-to-earth. it's a balance; I'll get there. without losing all my optim- and idealisms.
in late august, school started and I got really stressed.
september, and I continued stressed. looking over my school notes and to-dos and planner and journal all I find are reminders to not worry, reminders that everything will be okay, reminders to sleep and eat and DON'T FORGET THIS IS DUE IN TOO LITTLE TIME.
october 7: "halfway through the semester. one day until the weekend. only a few projects to work on. only 8 more viking classes to get through. I sing with gloria 'I will survive'."
during the last week of october, my computer's hard drive failed and I lost everything I'd stored there for the previous two years, and that meant all my design portfolio as well as the entire semester's schoolwork -- completed and in-process projects. like a 7-page research paper for my vikings seminar that was completely lost along with its sources. kill. me. now.
the next week, november began.
november was a really tough month. all my classes had big final projects and that meant late nights, early mornings, and stress. a week before finals I had to take a day off because I got an ugly stomach bug; I just couldn't take any more time off after that. I came into my last weekend of school ready to throw all I had into finishing my final design pieces and we got the news that a dear friend of ours was killed in a car accident. she was one of the most lovely people I know and the tragedy of her death and of her poor bereaved family -- it's something we'll all deal with for a long time. I'm afraid that contributed to my poor final grade.
so now it's december. over this year, I've had to make some really hard relationship choices. I've been shown some very dark things about myself. I am forever learning about trust and grace and patience. one sweet friend married; another dear friend has passed on to better things. a young man I know has been battling brain cancer for 11 months now, and avenues of hope are slowly closing -- though that's for 2016 to tell. I'm halfway through my sophomore year, almost halfway through college. the future is becoming simultaneously nearer and more exciting, more immediate and terrifying.
but I've come this far; to quote pilgrim's progress again, I will walk in the strength of the Lord God!
*edit: YES something happened in may. I FREAKING WENT HANG GLIDING!!! AAH! best. decision. ever.
- - -
hang a shining star upon the highest bough
and have yourself a merry little christmas now
16 December 2015
:: work in progress ::
this is an evolving present for a sweet friend who loves paris and I'm hoping she doesn't read this blog because she'd know what she's getting. (I'm really excited about this project.)
working on year wrap-up posts and trying to figure out how to summarize and address some big things that have happened since I thought I was through the struggles, last post... yes. well. life goes on. happy hols.
working on year wrap-up posts and trying to figure out how to summarize and address some big things that have happened since I thought I was through the struggles, last post... yes. well. life goes on. happy hols.
26 November 2015
:: giving thanks ::
whoo.
^that was a relieved exhale.
thanksgiving: I am definitely grateful for this break. I got much work done yesterday, so I'm able to relax today and tomorrow (christmas TREEEEEEEE) and I'll polish off some more on saturday.
after that, one week and one day of school -- 5 days total and then I'm completely done with this semester, hallelujah!
what am I thankful for? NOT in order of importance :)
school. honestly. it's a great opportunity and I do love it, when I don't hate it.
friends. I have gotten so many "thinking of you!" texts and emails and I have felt so much love from the wonderful people around me, I cannot express to each of you how much I am thankful for that.
food. I can smell the turkey at this moment and my stomach is making ugly noises. dude, I'm starving and I am so blessed to live in a country where I have an abundance all the time.
my awesome family. they make me food and show me funny videos and read books with me and laugh and cry with me and give me hugs and love and correction when I do something wrong. thank you, guys! I LOVE YOU!
church. this is a combination of friends and family, essentially -- these are people who love me and put me first and care about me, from the older men and women to the little kids. it's incredible: I know people from every decade and can call them my friends, and they love me. they seek me out to find out how I'm doing; they pray for me; they encourage me; they really care. and I can't believe I get to be a part of this.
design. because good design is a treasure, and I get to look at it and practice it all week long. I am learning SO MUCH and I love it SO MUCH it's really worth all the stress. YAY DESIGN and YAY JAN TSCHICHOLD, my current design hero :D
afternoons off. *bliss*
thanksgiving. I enjoy all it stands for: gratitude, relaxation, good food, the holidays, warmth and love and fuzzies. gotta love it.
a healthy body. dude, I am by no means the skinny minnie I used to be. oh well. I am young and relatively healthy -- I don't have arthritis, I don't have a cold or allergies, my mind is whole, I am comfortable and can still run up stairs two at a time. I am young and healthy and I don't want to take that for granted!
electronic communication. because it can be used for good. I've tried to use it to bless others, and I've definitely been blessed by it :)
music. andrew mcmahon; rogue valley; michael bublé; passenger; mat kearney; george ezra; take that; hey ocean; coldplay; one direction; hadley fraser; walk off the earth; mary black; capercaillie; prince of spain; yann tiersen; all that good stuff depending on how I feel at the moment. ahh, love it.
this semester. yeah, it was rough. but now that I'm pretty much done, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I have grown and learned and with everything behind me, I'm glad I went through it.
and to whom am I thankful? to my God, who has supplied all my need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
^that was a relieved exhale.
thanksgiving: I am definitely grateful for this break. I got much work done yesterday, so I'm able to relax today and tomorrow (christmas TREEEEEEEE) and I'll polish off some more on saturday.
after that, one week and one day of school -- 5 days total and then I'm completely done with this semester, hallelujah!
what am I thankful for? NOT in order of importance :)
school. honestly. it's a great opportunity and I do love it, when I don't hate it.
friends. I have gotten so many "thinking of you!" texts and emails and I have felt so much love from the wonderful people around me, I cannot express to each of you how much I am thankful for that.
food. I can smell the turkey at this moment and my stomach is making ugly noises. dude, I'm starving and I am so blessed to live in a country where I have an abundance all the time.
my awesome family. they make me food and show me funny videos and read books with me and laugh and cry with me and give me hugs and love and correction when I do something wrong. thank you, guys! I LOVE YOU!
church. this is a combination of friends and family, essentially -- these are people who love me and put me first and care about me, from the older men and women to the little kids. it's incredible: I know people from every decade and can call them my friends, and they love me. they seek me out to find out how I'm doing; they pray for me; they encourage me; they really care. and I can't believe I get to be a part of this.
design. because good design is a treasure, and I get to look at it and practice it all week long. I am learning SO MUCH and I love it SO MUCH it's really worth all the stress. YAY DESIGN and YAY JAN TSCHICHOLD, my current design hero :D
afternoons off. *bliss*
thanksgiving. I enjoy all it stands for: gratitude, relaxation, good food, the holidays, warmth and love and fuzzies. gotta love it.
a healthy body. dude, I am by no means the skinny minnie I used to be. oh well. I am young and relatively healthy -- I don't have arthritis, I don't have a cold or allergies, my mind is whole, I am comfortable and can still run up stairs two at a time. I am young and healthy and I don't want to take that for granted!
electronic communication. because it can be used for good. I've tried to use it to bless others, and I've definitely been blessed by it :)
music. andrew mcmahon; rogue valley; michael bublé; passenger; mat kearney; george ezra; take that; hey ocean; coldplay; one direction; hadley fraser; walk off the earth; mary black; capercaillie; prince of spain; yann tiersen; all that good stuff depending on how I feel at the moment. ahh, love it.
this semester. yeah, it was rough. but now that I'm pretty much done, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I have grown and learned and with everything behind me, I'm glad I went through it.
and to whom am I thankful? to my God, who has supplied all my need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
09 November 2015
:: I'm almost there ::
parked outside the house we used to live
staring down the green roof and the walls
the balcony, the hills, the pain
the years of hope, the months of rain
now that we're outside it
I guess we survived it after all
I heard andrew mcmahon's 'cecelia and the satellite' on the radio back in august and immediately fell in love with it. I got home and looked up the artist and have listened his latest album 'andrew mcmahon in the wilderness' to death since then. it's incredible.
andrew mcmahon has that great ability to combine the most fabulous lyrics with the best tunes. they just blend perfectly together, and that happy marriage is not something I've come across often.
I will admit that this one, 'maps for the getaway', took some time to grow on me; but one rainy thursday night I was walking to my last class of the week, so ready to go home and be dry and warm, and the last little part of that verse popped into my head: the years of hope, the months of rain / now that we're outside it / I guess we've survived it after all
for some crazy reason, it made me feel immeasurably better. I was almost done with the week, and it was (it IS oh hallelujah) almost the end of the semester, and I do love rain. it was just this amazing realization that this too shall pass; I can make it through, and when I'm through, I will have accomplished something -- if only my own survival!
it sounds dumb, written out. but I really love this song. he has great evocative combinations of lyrics and melody. 'black and white movies' is another wonderful example, one that I was sure would destroy all my tune expectations ("the music cannot be as fantastic as those words. ...whaaaaaaaaano way. I am going to cry"). it's such a california song, and this weather -- all the leaves being brown, all the sky being grey -- puts me in dreaming of it again.
as the summer came and left with the rain
pushing shadows down the road
in this old beach town when the sun goes down
all the grey turns into gold
got no plans, just a feeling
I'm no architect at all
there's a fan on the ceiling
and a telephone that you should call
are you home tonight
are you laying in bed watching black and white movies
are you home tonight
do you ever rewind to the summer you knew me
happy tears, G. happy tears.
staring down the green roof and the walls
the balcony, the hills, the pain
the years of hope, the months of rain
now that we're outside it
I guess we survived it after all
I heard andrew mcmahon's 'cecelia and the satellite' on the radio back in august and immediately fell in love with it. I got home and looked up the artist and have listened his latest album 'andrew mcmahon in the wilderness' to death since then. it's incredible.
andrew mcmahon has that great ability to combine the most fabulous lyrics with the best tunes. they just blend perfectly together, and that happy marriage is not something I've come across often.
I will admit that this one, 'maps for the getaway', took some time to grow on me; but one rainy thursday night I was walking to my last class of the week, so ready to go home and be dry and warm, and the last little part of that verse popped into my head: the years of hope, the months of rain / now that we're outside it / I guess we've survived it after all
for some crazy reason, it made me feel immeasurably better. I was almost done with the week, and it was (it IS oh hallelujah) almost the end of the semester, and I do love rain. it was just this amazing realization that this too shall pass; I can make it through, and when I'm through, I will have accomplished something -- if only my own survival!
it sounds dumb, written out. but I really love this song. he has great evocative combinations of lyrics and melody. 'black and white movies' is another wonderful example, one that I was sure would destroy all my tune expectations ("the music cannot be as fantastic as those words. ...whaaaaaaaaano way. I am going to cry"). it's such a california song, and this weather -- all the leaves being brown, all the sky being grey -- puts me in dreaming of it again.
as the summer came and left with the rain
pushing shadows down the road
in this old beach town when the sun goes down
all the grey turns into gold
got no plans, just a feeling
I'm no architect at all
there's a fan on the ceiling
and a telephone that you should call
are you home tonight
are you laying in bed watching black and white movies
are you home tonight
do you ever rewind to the summer you knew me
happy tears, G. happy tears.
02 November 2015
:: gasping for breath ::
life can feel like this enormous ice bath sometimes. have you ever tried swimming in late september, or in lake michigan on a cool summer day? it's so cold you gasp for breath, but if you're diving underwater, you can't breathe in and a lot of times you end up choking and thrashing-- and standing up and feeling all tingly and then you get used to it and it's all good, but it's bad until you stand up out of the water.
right now, life is like that ice bath and I cannot stand up if my life depended on it, which in light of my little allegory there, it does.
many of you know, my mac crashed saturday before last and I didn't have the information backed up, so I lost two years of my life. all my design assignments and projects and portfolio; all my pictures, all my music, my creative suite; my current resume, my old school assignments, my completed and ready-to-be-printed school assignments, and my in-progress school assignments.
I lost a lot.
unfortunately, many people like to respond, "well, you can redo your portfolio--make it better!" and I nod and smile and run away and cry because
NO. no, it doesn't work like that.
1. I had hundreds of documents on my computer. I don't remember them all even if I wanted to recreate them.
2. I could remake them better, but then they wouldn't be the same, would they?
3. it's the history of me that I lost. I can't get it back: not my first endeavors in illustrator or my little pine tree logo or my typography haikus. it's not that I need the content as much as I want to see the progress.
4. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY HUNDREDS OF HOURS THAT WOULD TAKE. seriously, I might as well make brand-new stuff than remake old, tired, bad ideas that weren't worth much in the first place (I'm not kidding myself. I just had warm fuzzies, that's all).
so I'm in a really discouraged place right now. I have 3.5 weeks of the semester left, which is not a lot in which to complete all the projects I couldn't do last week (and whose progress I lost on top). I'm super thankful to be nearing a rest, but the hurdles I have to jump to get there are daunting to me.
also I applied to an incredible travel program to Italy over winter break and didn't get accepted :(
OH WELL. oh well. I have so much to be thankful for. the computer was not my life, and my life is still rich and good (PUMPKIN BREAD AND ENGLISH MUFFINS). school will end and my work will get done. I have learned a lesson; the weather has been beautiful; I get a winter break. and I have no finals :D
anyway, that's what's been up with me and why I've been absent. I'm planning on being absent until christmastime, too, because time is a commodity I am woefully short on. (...on which I am woefully short?)
right now, life is like that ice bath and I cannot stand up if my life depended on it, which in light of my little allegory there, it does.
many of you know, my mac crashed saturday before last and I didn't have the information backed up, so I lost two years of my life. all my design assignments and projects and portfolio; all my pictures, all my music, my creative suite; my current resume, my old school assignments, my completed and ready-to-be-printed school assignments, and my in-progress school assignments.
I lost a lot.
unfortunately, many people like to respond, "well, you can redo your portfolio--make it better!" and I nod and smile and run away and cry because
NO. no, it doesn't work like that.
1. I had hundreds of documents on my computer. I don't remember them all even if I wanted to recreate them.
2. I could remake them better, but then they wouldn't be the same, would they?
3. it's the history of me that I lost. I can't get it back: not my first endeavors in illustrator or my little pine tree logo or my typography haikus. it's not that I need the content as much as I want to see the progress.
4. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY HUNDREDS OF HOURS THAT WOULD TAKE. seriously, I might as well make brand-new stuff than remake old, tired, bad ideas that weren't worth much in the first place (I'm not kidding myself. I just had warm fuzzies, that's all).
so I'm in a really discouraged place right now. I have 3.5 weeks of the semester left, which is not a lot in which to complete all the projects I couldn't do last week (and whose progress I lost on top). I'm super thankful to be nearing a rest, but the hurdles I have to jump to get there are daunting to me.
also I applied to an incredible travel program to Italy over winter break and didn't get accepted :(
OH WELL. oh well. I have so much to be thankful for. the computer was not my life, and my life is still rich and good (PUMPKIN BREAD AND ENGLISH MUFFINS). school will end and my work will get done. I have learned a lesson; the weather has been beautiful; I get a winter break. and I have no finals :D
anyway, that's what's been up with me and why I've been absent. I'm planning on being absent until christmastime, too, because time is a commodity I am woefully short on. (...on which I am woefully short?)
07 October 2015
:: well hey ::
it's been a while, huh? blogging is just not on my list of priorities right now.
to be honest, I probably could find something else to do with my time now, too, but I have 40 minutes until my next class and I am just tired of always being productive. or at least trying to be productive, because let's face it, sometimes you just have to catch up on kalamatea. one can't always be working (as markham would probably put it).
I definitely try to be productive, almost always. the problem with watching kalamatea is that when you've finished the latest super-emotive episode, you have accomplished nothing and you're unmotivated to accomplish that something you just didn't, like your viking reading and summary.
yeah, about that.
my viking seminar is awesome, really, it is. I was thrilled to be taking it; I'm possibly a little less thrilled now that I'm halfway into the semester (halfway. COME ON GIRL YOU CAN DO IT), but I still enjoy the class. my problem is with the the time-consuming nature of the work attached -- like most honors seminars, it requires a ton of out-of-class commitment, and that is killing me. basically, we always have to read ~150 pages a week and write 750 words on those pages (300 in summary, 250 in at least 3 questions based on the text, 200 in at least 3 issues we want to discuss in class). that's every week, period; over the course of the semester, we also have a 20-minute class presentation, two 7-page research essays, and an oral exam.
believe it or not, I'm not complaining about the work itself. I enjoy the reading, and I've fortunately always been a fast reader, and while the questions + issues part takes a while to come up with, it's forcing me to dig more deeply into the reading and I'm getting a lot out of it. my problem comes in with the time, because I just don't have a lot of it and anthropology is not my major. my schedule is dominated by vikings and that's really hard when I want to be focusing on designing webpages and words and neat things.
design is going fantastically, though. 371, my foundation design course, is exhilarating. I am so, so blessed to be here and I am so, so excited to be doing this, and against all my fears, it energizes me. I have design from 9-11.55 am on mondays and wednesdays, and I leave it pumped, wanting to create more. which is really encouraging, obviously :)
art history 501 is okay; I'm interested in the history of graphic design but somewhat frustrated with my teacher (incidentally, he also teaches 371, so I'll have to get used to him. HA HA). despite being halfway done, I'll still have to see how this one pans out.
art history 270 is great right now because we just had a test last week and I think I did well. but I don't have another test for some weeks so that's just peachy. this teacher requires VERY MUCH by way of memorization: title of work, artist name, location of piece (if original), exact dates (from gardner's), and the freaking medium because she wants us to know which are fresco. for the test she sent out a study "guide" of 72 pieces "we should memorize"... 10 days before the test.
yeah.
a friend of mine got married that saturday and I literally practiced my terms while waiting for the processional to start.
BUT I got them all done, and we'll have to see how it went. I don't have my grade back yet; maybe tomorrow night (last class period was cancelled).
385 is super-fun: we make books. literally make literally books. it's a blast and I love the tactile nature of, well, making books. the paper and the thread and the glue and the patterns and the sewing and the beautiful objects that open and close! it's a very social art, as well. think quilting, only books :) I'm enjoying this studio quite a lot.
that's an overview of my semester. I also just came off fall break, during which I got sick and also tried to get ahead on viking reading and a ridiculous art h 270 paper -- I got very little done and it was pretty discouraging because then I'd spent all this time not getting a lot done but not enjoying my break, either. we did go apple picking on monday, and that was incredible (as were the fritters we had when we got home, YUSSS).
the days are long but short -- I'm up at 6.15 every morning because jess has an 8 am calc or engineering class monday-friday, but my classes go until 6 on average, so we're on campus for 10-12 hours a day (on tuesday nights we don't get home until 9.15 pm. vikings, what else). but the day is full of classes and it's hard for me to get work done in the small gaps between, and getting home that late is not conducive to productivity, either! it's teaching me a lot about time management and diligence. and being extra-nice to jessa, who has to wait for hours for me sometimes. yyyyyeah. (she recently told me, "next semester, NO NIGHT CLASSES." and I was like, "YESSIR. BELIEVE ME.")
it's meaning some hard things, though: I'm tired and not used to having to stretch myself this much. it makes personal devotions harder to do, and of course right when I need it! I don't see my family much; I really don't see my friends; it makes my internship stressful ("I have all this work that I need to do!!"); I'm always tired and not eating well at all. it's unhealthy on the emotional, physical, and spiritual levels for me, right now, and I'm trying to figure out how to stay out of this same problem in the future. one thing I think I'll have to do is drop out of honors, and I'm sad about that, but I can't justify the time sink. and the classes have just not been that incredible. neat opportunities, but too much work for someone this in love with her major.
things will get better, though, I know this. and there is always coffee.
to be honest, I probably could find something else to do with my time now, too, but I have 40 minutes until my next class and I am just tired of always being productive. or at least trying to be productive, because let's face it, sometimes you just have to catch up on kalamatea. one can't always be working (as markham would probably put it).
I definitely try to be productive, almost always. the problem with watching kalamatea is that when you've finished the latest super-emotive episode, you have accomplished nothing and you're unmotivated to accomplish that something you just didn't, like your viking reading and summary.
yeah, about that.
my viking seminar is awesome, really, it is. I was thrilled to be taking it; I'm possibly a little less thrilled now that I'm halfway into the semester (halfway. COME ON GIRL YOU CAN DO IT), but I still enjoy the class. my problem is with the the time-consuming nature of the work attached -- like most honors seminars, it requires a ton of out-of-class commitment, and that is killing me. basically, we always have to read ~150 pages a week and write 750 words on those pages (300 in summary, 250 in at least 3 questions based on the text, 200 in at least 3 issues we want to discuss in class). that's every week, period; over the course of the semester, we also have a 20-minute class presentation, two 7-page research essays, and an oral exam.
believe it or not, I'm not complaining about the work itself. I enjoy the reading, and I've fortunately always been a fast reader, and while the questions + issues part takes a while to come up with, it's forcing me to dig more deeply into the reading and I'm getting a lot out of it. my problem comes in with the time, because I just don't have a lot of it and anthropology is not my major. my schedule is dominated by vikings and that's really hard when I want to be focusing on designing webpages and words and neat things.
design is going fantastically, though. 371, my foundation design course, is exhilarating. I am so, so blessed to be here and I am so, so excited to be doing this, and against all my fears, it energizes me. I have design from 9-11.55 am on mondays and wednesdays, and I leave it pumped, wanting to create more. which is really encouraging, obviously :)
art history 501 is okay; I'm interested in the history of graphic design but somewhat frustrated with my teacher (incidentally, he also teaches 371, so I'll have to get used to him. HA HA). despite being halfway done, I'll still have to see how this one pans out.
art history 270 is great right now because we just had a test last week and I think I did well. but I don't have another test for some weeks so that's just peachy. this teacher requires VERY MUCH by way of memorization: title of work, artist name, location of piece (if original), exact dates (from gardner's), and the freaking medium because she wants us to know which are fresco. for the test she sent out a study "guide" of 72 pieces "we should memorize"... 10 days before the test.
yeah.
a friend of mine got married that saturday and I literally practiced my terms while waiting for the processional to start.
BUT I got them all done, and we'll have to see how it went. I don't have my grade back yet; maybe tomorrow night (last class period was cancelled).
385 is super-fun: we make books. literally make literally books. it's a blast and I love the tactile nature of, well, making books. the paper and the thread and the glue and the patterns and the sewing and the beautiful objects that open and close! it's a very social art, as well. think quilting, only books :) I'm enjoying this studio quite a lot.
that's an overview of my semester. I also just came off fall break, during which I got sick and also tried to get ahead on viking reading and a ridiculous art h 270 paper -- I got very little done and it was pretty discouraging because then I'd spent all this time not getting a lot done but not enjoying my break, either. we did go apple picking on monday, and that was incredible (as were the fritters we had when we got home, YUSSS).
the days are long but short -- I'm up at 6.15 every morning because jess has an 8 am calc or engineering class monday-friday, but my classes go until 6 on average, so we're on campus for 10-12 hours a day (on tuesday nights we don't get home until 9.15 pm. vikings, what else). but the day is full of classes and it's hard for me to get work done in the small gaps between, and getting home that late is not conducive to productivity, either! it's teaching me a lot about time management and diligence. and being extra-nice to jessa, who has to wait for hours for me sometimes. yyyyyeah. (she recently told me, "next semester, NO NIGHT CLASSES." and I was like, "YESSIR. BELIEVE ME.")
it's meaning some hard things, though: I'm tired and not used to having to stretch myself this much. it makes personal devotions harder to do, and of course right when I need it! I don't see my family much; I really don't see my friends; it makes my internship stressful ("I have all this work that I need to do!!"); I'm always tired and not eating well at all. it's unhealthy on the emotional, physical, and spiritual levels for me, right now, and I'm trying to figure out how to stay out of this same problem in the future. one thing I think I'll have to do is drop out of honors, and I'm sad about that, but I can't justify the time sink. and the classes have just not been that incredible. neat opportunities, but too much work for someone this in love with her major.
things will get better, though, I know this. and there is always coffee.
11 September 2015
:: blahhhhhh ::
my excuses now all include key words like "schoolwork" and "no time" and "please just let me cry in peace for a moment."
this blog post is no exception :D
I have very unwisely committed myself to some extra-curricular projects which are adding a lot of stress to my life, as well. take-home message kids: don't add free work to your schedule when you're already swamped.
duh.
I'm even failing at lettering every day. it's one of the most discouraging things about this semester so far -- which really hasn't been that bad. I shouldn't be so stressed about it. I just have a lot of work converging at very bad times and getting it all done requires a level of time-management that I have not mastered yet.
mastery will come, I suppose. or at least I'll get through this.
this blog post is no exception :D
I have very unwisely committed myself to some extra-curricular projects which are adding a lot of stress to my life, as well. take-home message kids: don't add free work to your schedule when you're already swamped.
duh.
I'm even failing at lettering every day. it's one of the most discouraging things about this semester so far -- which really hasn't been that bad. I shouldn't be so stressed about it. I just have a lot of work converging at very bad times and getting it all done requires a level of time-management that I have not mastered yet.
mastery will come, I suppose. or at least I'll get through this.
15 August 2015
:: school starts in one week ::
I've been preparing for it like a crazy person; between the family conference (two weeks ago), a sister michigan road trip (last week), both works (book store & internship; interspersed throughout), and a necessary re-watch of both the importance of being earnest and pride and prejudice ('95 duh), I am proud to say I have still managed to do some lettering -- although I have not managed to let anyone know about it.
and I am still the inimitable master of run-on sentences.
18 July 2015
:: with a little ink ::
that was derived from a quote of the incredible typographer archimedes, who once famously said, "give me a pen and a place to sit, and I will draw the word." that's me, just humbly following in his footsteps.
sean mccabe recently put out a free 'learn lettering' newsletter (like this article, but expanded & delivered straight to your inbox) prior to the release of his 'learn lettering 2.0' class (coming july 27! so excited!!). I signed up for the newsletters a few weeks ago and it's really been incredible: in some ways I see my lettering improving, but more importantly, I'm remembering why I love doing it and I have renewed motivation to work diligently and consistently. (last schoolyear my extracurricular artistic endeavors disappeared, really, and summer hasn't gotten me a whole lot of truly free time. also I'm lazy.)
these are some things I've worked on lately:
amirite?
what sean calls "deliberate practice".
oh, my wit. I slay me.
now go have a productive weekend!
sean mccabe recently put out a free 'learn lettering' newsletter (like this article, but expanded & delivered straight to your inbox) prior to the release of his 'learn lettering 2.0' class (coming july 27! so excited!!). I signed up for the newsletters a few weeks ago and it's really been incredible: in some ways I see my lettering improving, but more importantly, I'm remembering why I love doing it and I have renewed motivation to work diligently and consistently. (last schoolyear my extracurricular artistic endeavors disappeared, really, and summer hasn't gotten me a whole lot of truly free time. also I'm lazy.)
these are some things I've worked on lately:
now go have a productive weekend!
10 July 2015
:: desert-air sweetness-wasting ::
I think I'm a flower born to blush unseen. my thoughts:
so of course everybody loves literature's secondary couples.
jane & bingley. jack & emily rennells. sir andrew & suzanne.
I mean, we're so happy for harriet and robert, glad that sharifah gets the physician's son -- "why shouldn't she want the best?" but it's in a rather patronizing oh-you-married-a-doctor-how-nice sort of way.
because seriously. who ever said, "one day my @richardcarstone will come for me #happilyeverafter" or "I have a whole pinterest board dedicated to my future wedding to traddles!" -- no. everyone sees themselves as the intelligent, subtle, still-waters-run-deep main character, whose thrilling and wonderful personality only shows through when sarah's been attacked by a bow street runner and sir tristram's got to -- well, you know. we like ludovic, but we're not riding ventre à terre to get him.
the sad thing is, somebody has to be those people. somebody has to be the plain background -- the plain, lesser, unassuming and simultaneously clueless secondaries.
diana don't know she ain't got what anne got. we People In The Know slightly pity her: she's satisfied with fred. the Jealous of Gilbert know better.
in the great story of life, though, who then are the lucy westenras and arthur holmwoods? if you don't know you're a second (and seconds never do), how will I know whom I'm destined to be: mina? or jane fairfax?
AND WHAT IF SCARLETT STEALS MY FRANK???
so of course everybody loves literature's secondary couples.
jane & bingley. jack & emily rennells. sir andrew & suzanne.
I mean, we're so happy for harriet and robert, glad that sharifah gets the physician's son -- "why shouldn't she want the best?" but it's in a rather patronizing oh-you-married-a-doctor-how-nice sort of way.
because seriously. who ever said, "one day my @richardcarstone will come for me #happilyeverafter" or "I have a whole pinterest board dedicated to my future wedding to traddles!" -- no. everyone sees themselves as the intelligent, subtle, still-waters-run-deep main character, whose thrilling and wonderful personality only shows through when sarah's been attacked by a bow street runner and sir tristram's got to -- well, you know. we like ludovic, but we're not riding ventre à terre to get him.
the sad thing is, somebody has to be those people. somebody has to be the plain background -- the plain, lesser, unassuming and simultaneously clueless secondaries.
in the great story of life, though, who then are the lucy westenras and arthur holmwoods? if you don't know you're a second (and seconds never do), how will I know whom I'm destined to be: mina? or jane fairfax?
AND WHAT IF SCARLETT STEALS MY FRANK???
29 June 2015
:: le silence du monde avant les mots, part 3 ::
subtitle: OR, LITERARY DEVICES AND CONFUSION.
confusion. the power of gordon-levitt.
as I was taking my (copious) notes on what I thought of the actual plot and storyline, I also took (copious) notes on what seemed to be symbols and development and themes and stuff. I am not good at "symbols and development and themes and stuff" but I also know you improve only with practice, and this was sort of interesting to me, and I can't find much on night train anywhere else so I might as well be first.
woo.
one huge -- and unfortunately blatant -- motif in this book was that of sight. seeing is hugely important to raimund gregorius (whom I will call RG), at first for the physical reason of reading; as the story progresses, his physical sight comes to reflect the acuity of his spiritual & emotional sight, how well he sees and understands not only himself but those with whom he interacts.
the progression is most obvious in gregorius's glasses. the books begins in switzerland, where he wears his ordinary, comfortable, habitual glasses, the prescription of which he obtained from an old greek doctor-friend; when he reaches portugal, the glasses are knocked off and shatter. he happens to have a backup, but also gets a new prescription from an optometrist in lisbon, and the new glasses frighten him with their newness and clarity and precision. at first he hides behind his old glasses and refuses to use the new, but gradually 'outgrows' the old and abandons their use altogether. below are my original and -- except for a few cases of clarification -- undedited thoughts :)
"'nor was he uninformed, like a blind shut-in.' could it be: he wears glasses to read to better understand the world. his first pair is smashed (as his mind is opened by this book and he breaks out of his normal routine) & he acquires a second, new pair -- but he still fears blindness (i.e. ignorance and human disconnect). ... Doxiades. THE GREEK. DUH!! ...D helps him to see when in switzerland. senhora eça helps him to see in lisbon. from greek to portuguese. & then there is 'something' between RG & D -- a break in their relationship because of the break RG has had with his old life. and his new glasses seem 'importunate, even threatening in their new clarity.' he struggles to choose between them. either way, both will change how others see him. outside & inside worlds again; understanding of self in the context of (outside) world as well." and then I quoted:
"but the world was closer and more oppressing, it demanded more of you, but its demands weren't clear. when they became too much for him, these obscure demands, he retreated behind the old lenses that kept everything at a distance and allowed him to doubt whether there really was an outside world beyond words and texts, a doubt that was dear to him and without it he couldn't imagine life at all. but he could no longer forget the new view either and in a little park, he took out Prado's notes and tried the new glasses.
YEAH?! IT'S ALL ABOUT SEEING."
later, when gregorius is on his way home to bern, he has a serious spell of dizziness. these have been occurring sporadically throughout the book, but now they're getting bad and it's scaring him. he wakes up (on the train; this is important) and he tries to reassure himself with greek words. "greek, the security, the static, the old, the untouchable, immutable. he worries about resuming this old life, this cramped, untravelled blindness (as he can't resume his old glasses; as A[medeu] de P[rado] discusses in ch. 24 on travel) exactly because he doesn't want 'the time of his stay [to] be destroyed': to reassume a life of 'infinite possiblity' is one thing, but trying to fit in a small mold, when you have expanded, a whole different one. yet that is what RG is doing: reassuring his new self with the security of the old."
and telling, in the context of glasses, is the quote on page 424: "I want to go through life unknown. the blindness of others is my safety and my freedom."
next: obviously, of course, trains will be important since they even function in the title. right away, I noticed a passing mention of a poster for a movie that gregorius likes -- a movie he's never seen, but whose title intrigues him: l'homme qui regardait passer les trains, or 'the man who watched the trains'. I started to formulate this theory in my head that the trains symbolized life. at one point prado (the doctor) writes an essay on life and travel, and he compares living to a night train, rushing along to its destination -- fast, furious, unstoppable, hard to understand, and headed for a "last tunnel" from which we will not emerge. a few chapters later I wrote this:
"the portuguese- and french-speaking lady: it all comes together in her. foil? to the red-coat lady, she reads le silence du monde avant les mots on the slow train because 'nowhere else was she so open to new things.'"
anyway, whatever I thought I understood was apparently confirmed, not too long after. I wasn't being super clear, but I think it had to do with the title.
"chapter 12's note, 'fleeting faces in the night,' totally corroborates my 'l'homme...' theory. for both men, their lives were going towards that 'last tunnel' -- as are all of us -- & both were casting 'fleeting, rushed looks at the others sitting behind dull glass in the dim light' as they feel their own train rushing faster than they want it to. both feel in the dark (night train), both hope to end in a place of fulfillment or understanding -- for P, the place he couldn't leave, for which he was always homesick, & for RG, the place he sought when nothing else offered the right security & where he found the most answers: for both men, lisbon.
I knew trains were important."
surprisingly, I didn't write anything categorically about travel. travel makes its way into my discussions of other things, but I didn't really focus on it (although there were a lot of things I didn't focus on that I could have. books. smoking. chess. love, and which aspects of it the four women in his life represented (from the "desire, security, pleasure" quote). is prado a vampire of life, and is his career as a doctor a subconscious way he battles himself -- and who are his victims? all things to ponder, but not here).
travel, I feel, is a very important part of the book, especially since the story is predicated on gregorius's trip to lisbon. sure, it mirrors his inward journey to self-knowledge, but I can't believe it just ends there. what about his trip to finisterre, and how does gregorius provide the foil for prado? is it that he is more adventuresome, more willing to break out of his mold; somehow free to leave the place of his own security, as prado is not? this is frustrating. anne, I want to know!
finally, weather (trust me, I'm almost done). ever since thomas foster stressed the importance of weather in these sorts of books, I've been overanalyzing like freud for anything of slight meteorological significance. again, it's pretty obvious -- and again, unfortunately -- that rain and snow mean something, but this is one thing I never really figured out. is it more than the typical rain = youth, growth, renewal? I don't know. definitely open to input on this one.
- "what is it when the rain turns to snow as RG leaves for geneva?"
- "doxiades's words give RG 'the courage to make this trip, despite the snow that started falling in bern.' ?? snow again."
- "'was he still mundus, the myopic bookworm, who had gotten scared only because a few snowflakes had fallen in bern?' SNOW. ??"
- "and as he enters the clinic, it starts raining. I need to understand this rain. 'at the entrance to the clinic, gregorius turned around and waved. then he went in. as the door closed behind him, it started raining.'"
a week later I came back and wrote this.
"POSTULATION. IF the rain symbolizes new life & growth -- say RG's when he was young & had life before him -- then the snow could conceivably scare him because it represents his own age, his own withering & the coldness of his life & freezing of his spirit. so he's scared and wants to get away, to a place of sun & youth, to find his deepest self -- perhaps the one part of him that does not grow old?
it is at the end of the earth (the end of himself & his knowledge) that P loses hope. and it is the same place where RG discovers human companionship -- accompanied by 'sun, wind, and words'."
- - -
very conclusive, am I not? < I can't even conclude one freaking blog post without a question.
I would like to have all the answers.
I would love to be able to read something once, put it down with a satisfied sigh, and thereafter be able to explain in depth all the deeper meanings, symbols, motifs, themes, and devices used in the book to anyone with the inclination to listen. no, not to impress them, but because I want to understand it. there is so much knowledge and insight out there, I want to glean as much of that from as many sources as possible.
sure, I won't agree with it all, but it will challenge me. the problem is, how can my mind grow and expand -- as john waters asked this week: "isn't that what college is for?" -- if I don't get what is trying to be said?
on the bright side, to just about everyone I'm still a baby. barely out of our teens, most of my contemporaries don't even know where they're headed (I am just extraordinarily lucky that way). I don't need to have everything figured out at this point -- not even everything in the books I read. I guess it would be nice to publish organized, insightful thoughts here on this one-faceted representation of me; but I need to remember these messy, unclear thoughts come closer to being who I am at this moment than any well-crafted and, haha, professional article could, no matter how I wish I could present myself.
and guess what? peter bieri actually mentioned this.
"life is not what we live. it's what we imagine living."
confusion. the power of gordon-levitt.
as I was taking my (copious) notes on what I thought of the actual plot and storyline, I also took (copious) notes on what seemed to be symbols and development and themes and stuff. I am not good at "symbols and development and themes and stuff" but I also know you improve only with practice, and this was sort of interesting to me, and I can't find much on night train anywhere else so I might as well be first.
woo.
one huge -- and unfortunately blatant -- motif in this book was that of sight. seeing is hugely important to raimund gregorius (whom I will call RG), at first for the physical reason of reading; as the story progresses, his physical sight comes to reflect the acuity of his spiritual & emotional sight, how well he sees and understands not only himself but those with whom he interacts.
the progression is most obvious in gregorius's glasses. the books begins in switzerland, where he wears his ordinary, comfortable, habitual glasses, the prescription of which he obtained from an old greek doctor-friend; when he reaches portugal, the glasses are knocked off and shatter. he happens to have a backup, but also gets a new prescription from an optometrist in lisbon, and the new glasses frighten him with their newness and clarity and precision. at first he hides behind his old glasses and refuses to use the new, but gradually 'outgrows' the old and abandons their use altogether. below are my original and -- except for a few cases of clarification -- undedited thoughts :)
"'nor was he uninformed, like a blind shut-in.' could it be: he wears glasses to read to better understand the world. his first pair is smashed (as his mind is opened by this book and he breaks out of his normal routine) & he acquires a second, new pair -- but he still fears blindness (i.e. ignorance and human disconnect). ... Doxiades. THE GREEK. DUH!! ...D helps him to see when in switzerland. senhora eça helps him to see in lisbon. from greek to portuguese. & then there is 'something' between RG & D -- a break in their relationship because of the break RG has had with his old life. and his new glasses seem 'importunate, even threatening in their new clarity.' he struggles to choose between them. either way, both will change how others see him. outside & inside worlds again; understanding of self in the context of (outside) world as well." and then I quoted:
"but the world was closer and more oppressing, it demanded more of you, but its demands weren't clear. when they became too much for him, these obscure demands, he retreated behind the old lenses that kept everything at a distance and allowed him to doubt whether there really was an outside world beyond words and texts, a doubt that was dear to him and without it he couldn't imagine life at all. but he could no longer forget the new view either and in a little park, he took out Prado's notes and tried the new glasses.
YEAH?! IT'S ALL ABOUT SEEING."
later, when gregorius is on his way home to bern, he has a serious spell of dizziness. these have been occurring sporadically throughout the book, but now they're getting bad and it's scaring him. he wakes up (on the train; this is important) and he tries to reassure himself with greek words. "greek, the security, the static, the old, the untouchable, immutable. he worries about resuming this old life, this cramped, untravelled blindness (as he can't resume his old glasses; as A[medeu] de P[rado] discusses in ch. 24 on travel) exactly because he doesn't want 'the time of his stay [to] be destroyed': to reassume a life of 'infinite possiblity' is one thing, but trying to fit in a small mold, when you have expanded, a whole different one. yet that is what RG is doing: reassuring his new self with the security of the old."
and telling, in the context of glasses, is the quote on page 424: "I want to go through life unknown. the blindness of others is my safety and my freedom."
next: obviously, of course, trains will be important since they even function in the title. right away, I noticed a passing mention of a poster for a movie that gregorius likes -- a movie he's never seen, but whose title intrigues him: l'homme qui regardait passer les trains, or 'the man who watched the trains'. I started to formulate this theory in my head that the trains symbolized life. at one point prado (the doctor) writes an essay on life and travel, and he compares living to a night train, rushing along to its destination -- fast, furious, unstoppable, hard to understand, and headed for a "last tunnel" from which we will not emerge. a few chapters later I wrote this:
"so who is 'the man who watches the trains'? [prado] &/or in a deeper sense, RG?I'm very decisive, as you can tell. and so good at deciphering deeper literary meanings.
in a sense, RG, because he has not, in P's sense, been riding one: he has watched it pass him by. and [he has watched] P's in particular: he went to lisbon & has seen this man pass before him through his own words and the words of others.
but even more so, I think, is 'the man' P: because he has learned about himself in watching others.
...as RG is doing now. [and I literally drew a frowny confused face]"
"the portuguese- and french-speaking lady: it all comes together in her. foil? to the red-coat lady, she reads le silence du monde avant les mots on the slow train because 'nowhere else was she so open to new things.'"
anyway, whatever I thought I understood was apparently confirmed, not too long after. I wasn't being super clear, but I think it had to do with the title.
"chapter 12's note, 'fleeting faces in the night,' totally corroborates my 'l'homme...' theory. for both men, their lives were going towards that 'last tunnel' -- as are all of us -- & both were casting 'fleeting, rushed looks at the others sitting behind dull glass in the dim light' as they feel their own train rushing faster than they want it to. both feel in the dark (night train), both hope to end in a place of fulfillment or understanding -- for P, the place he couldn't leave, for which he was always homesick, & for RG, the place he sought when nothing else offered the right security & where he found the most answers: for both men, lisbon.
I knew trains were important."
surprisingly, I didn't write anything categorically about travel. travel makes its way into my discussions of other things, but I didn't really focus on it (although there were a lot of things I didn't focus on that I could have. books. smoking. chess. love, and which aspects of it the four women in his life represented (from the "desire, security, pleasure" quote). is prado a vampire of life, and is his career as a doctor a subconscious way he battles himself -- and who are his victims? all things to ponder, but not here).
travel, I feel, is a very important part of the book, especially since the story is predicated on gregorius's trip to lisbon. sure, it mirrors his inward journey to self-knowledge, but I can't believe it just ends there. what about his trip to finisterre, and how does gregorius provide the foil for prado? is it that he is more adventuresome, more willing to break out of his mold; somehow free to leave the place of his own security, as prado is not? this is frustrating. anne, I want to know!
- "what is it when the rain turns to snow as RG leaves for geneva?"
- "doxiades's words give RG 'the courage to make this trip, despite the snow that started falling in bern.' ?? snow again."
- "'was he still mundus, the myopic bookworm, who had gotten scared only because a few snowflakes had fallen in bern?' SNOW. ??"
- "and as he enters the clinic, it starts raining. I need to understand this rain. 'at the entrance to the clinic, gregorius turned around and waved. then he went in. as the door closed behind him, it started raining.'"
a week later I came back and wrote this.
"POSTULATION. IF the rain symbolizes new life & growth -- say RG's when he was young & had life before him -- then the snow could conceivably scare him because it represents his own age, his own withering & the coldness of his life & freezing of his spirit. so he's scared and wants to get away, to a place of sun & youth, to find his deepest self -- perhaps the one part of him that does not grow old?
it is at the end of the earth (the end of himself & his knowledge) that P loses hope. and it is the same place where RG discovers human companionship -- accompanied by 'sun, wind, and words'."
- - -
very conclusive, am I not? < I can't even conclude one freaking blog post without a question.
I would like to have all the answers.
I would love to be able to read something once, put it down with a satisfied sigh, and thereafter be able to explain in depth all the deeper meanings, symbols, motifs, themes, and devices used in the book to anyone with the inclination to listen. no, not to impress them, but because I want to understand it. there is so much knowledge and insight out there, I want to glean as much of that from as many sources as possible.
sure, I won't agree with it all, but it will challenge me. the problem is, how can my mind grow and expand -- as john waters asked this week: "isn't that what college is for?" -- if I don't get what is trying to be said?
on the bright side, to just about everyone I'm still a baby. barely out of our teens, most of my contemporaries don't even know where they're headed (I am just extraordinarily lucky that way). I don't need to have everything figured out at this point -- not even everything in the books I read. I guess it would be nice to publish organized, insightful thoughts here on this one-faceted representation of me; but I need to remember these messy, unclear thoughts come closer to being who I am at this moment than any well-crafted and, haha, professional article could, no matter how I wish I could present myself.
and guess what? peter bieri actually mentioned this.
"life is not what we live. it's what we imagine living."
26 June 2015
:: le silence du monde avant les mots, part 2 ::
home is the sailor, home from the sea, and I am home from california. (it was lovely.) taxiing down the runway, moments before we lifted off the ground, I realized that this was actually happening. it was a thrilling moment -- pushed backwards into my seat, the earth falling away behind us, I was on the way to my beloved california for a gorgeous wedding.
because I've experienced the 'wow' realization factor, this really made sense:
"and there, all of a sudden, he realized that he was in fact making this trip -- that it wasn't only a possibility, something he had thought up on a sleepless night and that could have been, but something that really and truly was taking place. and the more space he gave this feeling, the more it seemed to him that the relation of possibility and reality were beginning to change."
lately I've been pleasantly surprised by the changing of "the relation of possibility and reality". more than just california trips, life in general has seemed so much more wide open and free: my "life may be all it promises," and that possibility is breathtaking to consider.
um, yes, we are back to night train. (part one is available here.)
pascal mercier/peter bieri believes that "there [is] no greater distinction between people" than whether they are a reader or a nonreader.
I feel you, brother.
also, I definitely feel that it is hard to understand people who don't love to read -- partly due to my own obsession (you're different? what?? how can you?!) and partly because I can't imagine what it is like to be someone else, in all literal-ness. I try, of course, but we all have our own idea of even what 'understanding' someone else is, and it's all based foundationally on whom we ourselves are.
I love mercier's thoughts on this. [he's writing about seeing his own reflection in a window, and at first not recognizing himself, but judging the apparent stranger on first glance.]
for between us there is not only the deceptive outside world, but also the delusion that exists of it in every inside world. persons A and B see the same outside world -- by "see" I mean "perceive" -- differently because of whom they are, differently, inside.
isn't it true that it's not people who meet, but rather the shadows cast by their own imaginations? ... that was also true of looks. looks weren't there and were read. looks were always looks read into. only as read into did they exist.
like, it's a wonder any two humans get along at all, ever.
"'so the word is the light of men,' [silveira] said. 'and so things exist properly only when they are grasped in words.'
'and the words have to have a rhythm,' said gregorius. 'a rhythm as the words have in st. john, for example. only then, only when they are poetry, do they really shed light on things. in the changing light of the words that same things can look quite different.'"
and as gregorius reads: you know, thinking is the second most beautiful thing. the most beautiful thing is poetry. if there were poetic thinking and thinking poetry -- that would be paradise.
but as without words you can't have a worthwhile book -- or any kind of book, really -- nor can you have a book that doesn't deal with love and/or death. yup, you know it's coming.
in a way, I think gregorius's new realizations of the world around him are prompted by approaching death: the reality that life is finite and he is sitting still in a moving world, watching others pass. [this is an important topic; possibly The most important topic in the book, and so I will devote part three in this series to the symbols and themes and my closing thoughts on all of it (probably erroneous but so good to get off my chest).]
a little necessary story background: the main character, raimund gregorius, travels to lisbon on a freak whim and ends up spending his time researching the life of dr. amadeus de prado, who also wrote a philosophical book-thing. RG has come across this book and he falls in love with it and wants to find out more about its author; along the way, he also finds out more about himself. ...duh. excerpts from the main book are in quotes, but I've italicized the book-within-the-book quotes for clarity; although since I didn't explain that till now, you're probably super-confused. I don't blame you.
so. love, argues dr. prado in his book, is made of three more or less transient emotions/feelings: desire, pleasure, and security -- but he also holds that love cannot last because feelings cannot last. they cannot weather life and stay intact.
"that's why loyalty was important. it was not a feeling, he thought, but a will, a decision, a partisanship of the soul. something that turned the accident of encounters and the contingency of feelings into a necessity. a breath of eternity, he said, only a breath, but all the same."
themes of transience, death and the fear of death, consistently recur, perhaps because love and loyalty are such struggles for prado. one of his most important relationships, his best-friendship with a man named jorge, falls apart seemingly inexplicably. this crushes him. when gregorius tracks jorge down, the man tells him, "I'm glad I have the pharmacy. I can live there in our friendship. and occasionally I succeed in thinking that we never lost each other. that he just died."
as both the book and prado's life draw to an end, he starts thinking more about loneliness, meaning, death and the Living's reaction to it. his best friend has a crisis at one point, before their friendship ends, and he starts to consider it: jorge had always wanted -- always planned -- on learning how to play the piano. somehow he has come up with the number of years it would take to become concert-pianist proficient at it, but one night it hits him that he's too old. he won't, in all probability, live long enough to make it to the end of those years, and it scares him. he is terrified and helpless.
because I've experienced the 'wow' realization factor, this really made sense:
"and there, all of a sudden, he realized that he was in fact making this trip -- that it wasn't only a possibility, something he had thought up on a sleepless night and that could have been, but something that really and truly was taking place. and the more space he gave this feeling, the more it seemed to him that the relation of possibility and reality were beginning to change."
lately I've been pleasantly surprised by the changing of "the relation of possibility and reality". more than just california trips, life in general has seemed so much more wide open and free: my "life may be all it promises," and that possibility is breathtaking to consider.
why do we feel sorry for people who can't travel? because, unable to expand externally, they are not able to expand internally either, they can't multiply and so they are deprived of the possibility of undertaking expansive excursions within themselves and discovering who and what else they could have become.this idea of travel grips me. I may or may not agree with it, but it's a beautiful thought: wherever we go, we leave some part of us -- so that when we return to a place, we reassume that self, that life and its promise that we'd left behind. and "what could be more exciting than resuming an interrupted life with all its promises?"
um, yes, we are back to night train. (part one is available here.)
pascal mercier/peter bieri believes that "there [is] no greater distinction between people" than whether they are a reader or a nonreader.
I feel you, brother.
also, I definitely feel that it is hard to understand people who don't love to read -- partly due to my own obsession (you're different? what?? how can you?!) and partly because I can't imagine what it is like to be someone else, in all literal-ness. I try, of course, but we all have our own idea of even what 'understanding' someone else is, and it's all based foundationally on whom we ourselves are.
I love mercier's thoughts on this. [he's writing about seeing his own reflection in a window, and at first not recognizing himself, but judging the apparent stranger on first glance.]
is it the same with others: that they don't recognize themselves in their outside? that the reflection seems like a stage set full of crass distortion? that, with fear, they note a gap between the perception others have of them and the way they experience themselves? that the familiarity of inside and the familiarity of outside can be so far apart that they can hardly be considered familiarity with the same thing?... even the outside world of an inside world is still a piece of our inside world, not to mention the thoughts we make about the inside world of strangers and that are so uncertain and unstable that they say more about ourselves than about others.so person A sees person B. A interprets B through A's own lens, a double distortion: B is presenting himself as B either wants or cannot help, but that may not articulate B's real self; while A sees and interprets that projection through A's own distorted understanding, just by being A.
for between us there is not only the deceptive outside world, but also the delusion that exists of it in every inside world. persons A and B see the same outside world -- by "see" I mean "perceive" -- differently because of whom they are, differently, inside.
isn't it true that it's not people who meet, but rather the shadows cast by their own imaginations? ... that was also true of looks. looks weren't there and were read. looks were always looks read into. only as read into did they exist.
like, it's a wonder any two humans get along at all, ever.
when we talk about ourselves, about others, or simply about things, we want -- it could be said -- to REVEAL ourselves in our words: we want to show what we think and feel. ...[but] not only do we reveal ourselves with our words, we also betray ourselves. we give away a lot more than we wanted to reveal, and sometimes it's the exact opposite. and the others can interpret our words as symptoms for something we ourselves may not even know. as symptoms of the sickness of being us. it can be amusing when we regard others like this, it can make us more tolerant, but also put ammunition in our hands. and the moment we start speaking, if we think that others are doing the very same thing with us, the word can stick in our throat and fear can make us mute forever.words. words are so important.
"'so the word is the light of men,' [silveira] said. 'and so things exist properly only when they are grasped in words.'
'and the words have to have a rhythm,' said gregorius. 'a rhythm as the words have in st. john, for example. only then, only when they are poetry, do they really shed light on things. in the changing light of the words that same things can look quite different.'"
and as gregorius reads: you know, thinking is the second most beautiful thing. the most beautiful thing is poetry. if there were poetic thinking and thinking poetry -- that would be paradise.
but as without words you can't have a worthwhile book -- or any kind of book, really -- nor can you have a book that doesn't deal with love and/or death. yup, you know it's coming.
in a way, I think gregorius's new realizations of the world around him are prompted by approaching death: the reality that life is finite and he is sitting still in a moving world, watching others pass. [this is an important topic; possibly The most important topic in the book, and so I will devote part three in this series to the symbols and themes and my closing thoughts on all of it (probably erroneous but so good to get off my chest).]
a little necessary story background: the main character, raimund gregorius, travels to lisbon on a freak whim and ends up spending his time researching the life of dr. amadeus de prado, who also wrote a philosophical book-thing. RG has come across this book and he falls in love with it and wants to find out more about its author; along the way, he also finds out more about himself. ...duh. excerpts from the main book are in quotes, but I've italicized the book-within-the-book quotes for clarity; although since I didn't explain that till now, you're probably super-confused. I don't blame you.
so. love, argues dr. prado in his book, is made of three more or less transient emotions/feelings: desire, pleasure, and security -- but he also holds that love cannot last because feelings cannot last. they cannot weather life and stay intact.
"that's why loyalty was important. it was not a feeling, he thought, but a will, a decision, a partisanship of the soul. something that turned the accident of encounters and the contingency of feelings into a necessity. a breath of eternity, he said, only a breath, but all the same."
themes of transience, death and the fear of death, consistently recur, perhaps because love and loyalty are such struggles for prado. one of his most important relationships, his best-friendship with a man named jorge, falls apart seemingly inexplicably. this crushes him. when gregorius tracks jorge down, the man tells him, "I'm glad I have the pharmacy. I can live there in our friendship. and occasionally I succeed in thinking that we never lost each other. that he just died."
as both the book and prado's life draw to an end, he starts thinking more about loneliness, meaning, death and the Living's reaction to it. his best friend has a crisis at one point, before their friendship ends, and he starts to consider it: jorge had always wanted -- always planned -- on learning how to play the piano. somehow he has come up with the number of years it would take to become concert-pianist proficient at it, but one night it hits him that he's too old. he won't, in all probability, live long enough to make it to the end of those years, and it scares him. he is terrified and helpless.
the bright awareness of finitude that assaulted Jorge in the middle of the night and that I have to inflame in many of my patients with the words announcing the fatal diagnosis to them, disturbs us like nothing else because often without knowing it, we live toward such wholeness and because every moment we live to the fullest draws its liveliness from the fact that it represents a piece of the puzzle of that unknown wholeness. if the certainty befalls us that it will nevermore be achieved, this wholeness, we suddenly don't know how to live the time that can no longer be part of a whole life. that is the reason for a strong, distressing experience of some of my doomed patients: they no longer know what to do with their time, however short it has become.prado addresses this same thing again, many chapters later, hoping to have fundamentally understood the human fear of death.
the fear that life remained incomplete, a torso; the awareness of no longer being able to become the one we aimed to be. that's how we had finally interpreted the fear of death. but how, I asked, can the missing wholeness and coherence of life be feared when it's not experienced at all as soon as it has become an irrevocable fact? [if life, when done, isn't to our living satisfaction, what does it matter: we are dead.] ...why don't I want to know what I thought and wrote back then? whence this indifference? is it indifference? or is the loss greater, deeper? to want to know how one thought before and how it became what one thinks now: that, too, if it existed, was also part of the wholeness of life. so had I lost what makes death fearsome? the belief in a coherence of life worth struggling for and which we try to wrest from death?he takes a final trip, alone, to finisterre (in spain. robert service wrote a great poem about the finistère in france, if you're interested). here at the end of his life, at the end of relationships, at the end of his hope and belief in anything, at the end of the earth, he really comes to terms with the emptiness of existence he has reasoned himself into.
finis terrae. never have I been so awake as there, and so sober. since then, I know: my race is at an end. a race I didn't know I was running, always. a race without rivals, without purpose, without reward. wholeness? espejismo, say the spaniards. I read the word in the newspapers on those days, it's the only one I still know. mirage. fata morgana. our life, those are fleeting formations of quicksand, formed by one gust of wind, destroyed by the next. images of futility that blow away even before they are properly formed.
09 June 2015
:: ttyl ::
my best friend is getting married on saturday and I am again flying out to california for that. today.
today, as in, less than five hours from now I will be in the air.
I'm maybe a little excited.
anyway, because I've been preparing for this and scholarships and doing internship things, and have no plans to stop any of those things for a while, I'm taking a little break from this imaginary sector of my life. for those of you waiting with bated breath for my world/words post part two, it will of necessity be a little longer. possess your soul in patience.
today, as in, less than five hours from now I will be in the air.
I'm maybe a little excited.
anyway, because I've been preparing for this and scholarships and doing internship things, and have no plans to stop any of those things for a while, I'm taking a little break from this imaginary sector of my life. for those of you waiting with bated breath for my world/words post part two, it will of necessity be a little longer. possess your soul in patience.
03 June 2015
:: le silence du monde avant les mots, part 1 ::
"I am only on page 15 of night train to lisbon, but I'm already blown away by it. perhaps because I so relate to gregorius in his wanting to do something new -- crazy, different -- with himself and his life.
I love the first sentence -- it grabbed me, with its brilliant backwardness:
The day that ended with everything different in the life of Raimund Gregorius began like countless other days.
it's sheer genius."
I recently finished peter bieri (as pascal mercier)'s book night train to lisbon, obviously. it made me think and consider and overall, I appreciate its insight. I finished it about three weeks ago, but I haven't stopped thinking about it, so it seemed appropriate to write something word-vomit-y because that always clears my head (sorry for yours).
although I hesitated to write this, actually. I had enough reservations about the book to begin with, and then when I looked into what other people had to say, I felt dumb for liking even what I did (most of the reviews were negative). but then I realized, I am my own person, and I can like what I like, without being afraid of what people will think of me.
I took notes as I read -- personal notes, in my personal journal. they weren't written to be read by others and I don't write very professionallywhen it's only to myself ever (though let's face it, I'd try harder if this blog weren't just an extension of that self-talk); but it has my thoughts down better. so this is going to be a compilation of those thoughts and my now, at-this-moment thoughts as well.
one and a half caveats. this book was translated from german, and sweet baby buttercream, the translator sucked. I think night train might have made a top spot in my favorites if it had just been written a little better -- the wording was really, really choppy in a lot of places. it was heavy and plodding, with weird words mixed together. I wish I'd written down an example, but the translator used intellectual words by slang words, in the same sentence; like if you said, "her pulchritude was on fleek." and it was like that all the time. not all of either category and not consistently (per character or something), so the result was kind of unsettling -- maybe the uncanny valley for writing, ha.
caveat.5: while I was intrigued by some symbols, in some cases it seemed a little too much. too many symbols, too obviously... although I do like to chalk it up to bad translation. because who actually knows? not me! this part is in german, and we don't understand it.
it's a hard balance, reading secular books like these and loving the theoretical what-are-we, where-are-we-going hypotheses, but trying to stay focused on the truth. yet there are plenty of things the Bible doesn't address, doesn't answer, and I think in that category of question marks are equally plenteous things we are free to speculate on. consider the harmless question: how do our perceptions of us differ from how others perceive us... and how do our perceptions of us affect theirs? (I'll talk about this more next post. mercier has some fascinating thoughts.) in some ways, that's not just harmless and neutral, but positively a great thing to consider, because it can totally make us more empathetic, thoughtful of other people, interested in and at peace with them -- "as far as it depends on you." and I thought about that:
"please note I am still thinking of all this in a purely secular light. providence & sovereignty & eternity are all very true things that I believe fully answer all these questions; but I like to ponder them theoretically. again, though: these questions, these statements -- 'he would have to be quite different from me...' -- are so unrealistic as to be contrived. contrived & therefore fake, shallow, & petty.
do I become that by thinking about these things?"
you are what you eat, after all.
"perhaps I am fake & shallow & petty & contrived, just as the book is. but I relate to it, all the same.
'all the same.' ha. what I mean is, perhaps we are the same, and that is why I relate."
reading over my thoughts again and being able to dissect them in my own mind as I copy them is showing me, no, I'm not shallow and petty. (I mean, this is what I think, not that I'm absolutely not. not that I'm not to other people. as for contrived? maybe, sometimes... :)) I think I am an over-analyzer and worried about growing up and knowing what is right and what is wrong. I made a good point when I realized I'm only 19 and 3/4 (although now, I'll be 20 TOMORROW. woo!!): I am still a kid, and I'm still discovering and learning and understanding. I'll never know everything, and I'm still early on in learning anything. how much life I still have before me!
I have a lot more thoughts on this book, so until next time.
I love the first sentence -- it grabbed me, with its brilliant backwardness:
The day that ended with everything different in the life of Raimund Gregorius began like countless other days.
it's sheer genius."
I recently finished peter bieri (as pascal mercier)'s book night train to lisbon, obviously. it made me think and consider and overall, I appreciate its insight. I finished it about three weeks ago, but I haven't stopped thinking about it, so it seemed appropriate to write something word-vomit-y because that always clears my head (sorry for yours).
although I hesitated to write this, actually. I had enough reservations about the book to begin with, and then when I looked into what other people had to say, I felt dumb for liking even what I did (most of the reviews were negative). but then I realized, I am my own person, and I can like what I like, without being afraid of what people will think of me.
I took notes as I read -- personal notes, in my personal journal. they weren't written to be read by others and I don't write very professionally
one and a half caveats. this book was translated from german, and sweet baby buttercream, the translator sucked. I think night train might have made a top spot in my favorites if it had just been written a little better -- the wording was really, really choppy in a lot of places. it was heavy and plodding, with weird words mixed together. I wish I'd written down an example, but the translator used intellectual words by slang words, in the same sentence; like if you said, "her pulchritude was on fleek." and it was like that all the time. not all of either category and not consistently (per character or something), so the result was kind of unsettling -- maybe the uncanny valley for writing, ha.
caveat.5: while I was intrigued by some symbols, in some cases it seemed a little too much. too many symbols, too obviously... although I do like to chalk it up to bad translation. because who actually knows? not me! this part is in german, and we don't understand it.
but aside from these technical, writing problems, the content resonated with me.
what I immediately noticed was something that scarily echoed my thoughts on march 21st.
[on march 21st, I wrote: "in this case, it's the latin that speaks to me -- latin can be austerely, expressively beautiful sometimes. like the letters that became roman script, the original trajan font: austere & immoveable & unchanging & beautiful in their untouchable aloofness.
[on march 21st, I wrote: "in this case, it's the latin that speaks to me -- latin can be austerely, expressively beautiful sometimes. like the letters that became roman script, the original trajan font: austere & immoveable & unchanging & beautiful in their untouchable aloofness.
now I'm getting wordy."]
I was thinking about latin, & this is what mercier has to say about it:
he loved the latin sentences because they bore the calm of everything past. because they didn't make you say something. because they were speech beyond talk. and because they were beautiful in their immutability.
what's crazy to me is that reading this book is like reading my own thoughts in someone else's words. it's eerie and thrilling; it's exciting and a relief, like the tear-raising response that carl rogers wrote about, when you feel understood.
this relating to the text makes it hard for me to dislike the book -- it's like disapproving of me. which is weird.
this relating to the text makes it hard for me to dislike the book -- it's like disapproving of me. which is weird.
I'd like to go back to those minutes in the schoolyard when the past had dropped off of us and the future hadn't yet begun. time came to a halt and held its breath as it never again did. ...or is it the wish -- the dreamlike, bombastic wish -- to stand once again at that point in my life and be able to take a completely different direction than the one that has made me who I am now?
there's something peculiar about this wish, it smacks of paradox and logical peculiarity. because the one who wishes it isn't the one who, still untouched by the future, stands at the crossroads. instead, it is the one masked by the future become past who wants to go back to the past, to revoke the irrevocable. and would he want to revoke it if he hadn't suffered it? to sit once more on the warm moss and hold the cap -- it's the absurd wish to go back behind myself in time and take myself -- the one marked by events -- along on this journey. ... but then, if he [the younger me] had [made the choices I now wish he/I had made], he wouldn't have become a man who would later wish to return to the previous crossroads. can I wish myself to be him? I don't think I could be satisfied to be him. but this satisfaction can be mine only because I am not him, only as the fulfillment of wishes that aren't his.
^this fascinates and disturbs me. fascinates because I love the thought of what makes me me & the fact that, were I a different me, that me would see me as me and be just as foreign to me as I would be to me. or it.
unfortunately, this is exactly what mama was saying back on february 17th: 'when you change you'll be fine with "you". you won't miss whom you were.' anyway, off the topic of mama being right (AGAIN) it also disturbs me, because
1: that kind of thinking & reasoning can get frustratingly circular & convoluted & ultimately petty and
2: it's ultimately petty and
3: I don't understand it.
like, theoretically I do, but at the same time, I can't fathom it. the human mind (or at least mine, that can't run 'firmly and accurately' through the alphabet to K, much less Q) can't formulate the two distinct mes that would be without dragging the one that is into the wrong equation.
but seriously, folks. really, what does it matter what we might have been? and here's where the pettiness comes in. being anything other than what we are is impossible & not as fabulous as it sounds. it's always that way; life's like that. we'll never be content. so we can reason ourselves around & around & question what makes us us, & what would be different if we weren't us but somebody else...and yet we can't change anything, and we can't even know, so why does it even matter. like, it's interesting, but it's nonsense. really, truly nonsense disguised by big words & falsely mysterious, grandiose thoughts.
yet I'm enthralled. I've thought about these same quirks of being thousands of times myself, so to hear them from someone else is in one way revolutionary and in another cozily familiar. I know these thoughts. I've thought them.
but it's more, it means more to me than just a weird thought-version of déjà vu -- it goes deeper, because I've never been able to articulate thoughts very well at all. I've felt it, but here it is, expressed. it gives me a voice somehow.
but it's more, it means more to me than just a weird thought-version of déjà vu -- it goes deeper, because I've never been able to articulate thoughts very well at all. I've felt it, but here it is, expressed. it gives me a voice somehow.
what could, what should be done with all the time now before us, open and unshaped, feather-light in its freedom and lead-heavy in its uncertainty?
I wonder about growing up. I am, right now, in the spot 'when the past dropped off of us & the future hadn't yet begun'; in gregorius's words, 'how much life [I] still have before [me]; how open [my] future still is; how much can still happen to [me]; how much [I] can still experience!' I don't want that to go to waste, and I want to live now -- choose my forked path now -- as I try to imagine both later mes would wish.
being me me, though, and unable to state something without qualifying that statement, I immediately started doubting myself and my enthusiasm.
I wrote in my journal, "the things is...we're back to pettiness. am I getting wrapped up in this retarded, 'deep' crap because I'm 19 and 3/4 & totally naive & totally too open to crazy ideas? no, I don't even mean that, because the kind of 'crazy ideas' I mean I want to always be open to. but am I too accepting -- too gullible -- & being schnookered by fancy words of wind that make me feel like a deep thinker while saying 1: nothing new or even originally spinning something old and 2: nonsense to fool vain (shall I say) autodidacts* into thinking they're very intellectual philosophical thinkers?
and why am I thinking about this, and why do I care? basically, I'm becoming afraid that I will swallow the truth with the untruth & grow up to laugh at my foolish impressionable intellectualism that really was nothing & had nothing.
I have nothing."
*this guy has some interesting things to say, but he seems kind of arrogant, which turns me off; and he refers to himself as an "autodidact", which I tried to subtly mock here. I had written in my journal a few weeks earlier about something he wrote, and referred to that in this entry. but sorry, that stays locked; I'm not recording all my private thoughts for the world here on the never-deleted internet.
being me me, though, and unable to state something without qualifying that statement, I immediately started doubting myself and my enthusiasm.
I wrote in my journal, "the things is...we're back to pettiness. am I getting wrapped up in this retarded, 'deep' crap because I'm 19 and 3/4 & totally naive & totally too open to crazy ideas? no, I don't even mean that, because the kind of 'crazy ideas' I mean I want to always be open to. but am I too accepting -- too gullible -- & being schnookered by fancy words of wind that make me feel like a deep thinker while saying 1: nothing new or even originally spinning something old and 2: nonsense to fool vain (shall I say) autodidacts* into thinking they're very intellectual philosophical thinkers?
and why am I thinking about this, and why do I care? basically, I'm becoming afraid that I will swallow the truth with the untruth & grow up to laugh at my foolish impressionable intellectualism that really was nothing & had nothing.
I have nothing."
*this guy has some interesting things to say, but he seems kind of arrogant, which turns me off; and he refers to himself as an "autodidact", which I tried to subtly mock here. I had written in my journal a few weeks earlier about something he wrote, and referred to that in this entry. but sorry, that stays locked; I'm not recording all my private thoughts for the world here on the never-deleted internet.
it's a hard balance, reading secular books like these and loving the theoretical what-are-we, where-are-we-going hypotheses, but trying to stay focused on the truth. yet there are plenty of things the Bible doesn't address, doesn't answer, and I think in that category of question marks are equally plenteous things we are free to speculate on. consider the harmless question: how do our perceptions of us differ from how others perceive us... and how do our perceptions of us affect theirs? (I'll talk about this more next post. mercier has some fascinating thoughts.) in some ways, that's not just harmless and neutral, but positively a great thing to consider, because it can totally make us more empathetic, thoughtful of other people, interested in and at peace with them -- "as far as it depends on you." and I thought about that:
"please note I am still thinking of all this in a purely secular light. providence & sovereignty & eternity are all very true things that I believe fully answer all these questions; but I like to ponder them theoretically. again, though: these questions, these statements -- 'he would have to be quite different from me...' -- are so unrealistic as to be contrived. contrived & therefore fake, shallow, & petty.
do I become that by thinking about these things?"
you are what you eat, after all.
"perhaps I am fake & shallow & petty & contrived, just as the book is. but I relate to it, all the same.
'all the same.' ha. what I mean is, perhaps we are the same, and that is why I relate."
reading over my thoughts again and being able to dissect them in my own mind as I copy them is showing me, no, I'm not shallow and petty. (I mean, this is what I think, not that I'm absolutely not. not that I'm not to other people. as for contrived? maybe, sometimes... :)) I think I am an over-analyzer and worried about growing up and knowing what is right and what is wrong. I made a good point when I realized I'm only 19 and 3/4 (although now, I'll be 20 TOMORROW. woo!!): I am still a kid, and I'm still discovering and learning and understanding. I'll never know everything, and I'm still early on in learning anything. how much life I still have before me!
I have a lot more thoughts on this book, so until next time.
of the thousand experiences we have, we find language for one, at most, and even this one merely by chance and without the care it deserves. buried under all the mute experiences are those unseen ones that give our life its form, its color, its melody. then, when we turn to these treasures, as archaeologists of the soul, we discover how confusing they are. the object of contemplation refuses to stand still, the words bounce off the experience and in the end, pure contradictions stand on the paper.
14 May 2015
:: english is crazy ::
english is crazy. but we all already knew that. my (very short, for once) issue today is with the phrase "b*ted breath".
it looks like I'm swearing.I swear I'm not OKAY TO THE POINT.
I always have difficulty remembering if it's "baited breath" or "bated breath" -- because I feel that etymologically, it could sort of be either.
take "bate". this, if these two were on a multiple choice test, would technically be the more correct answer and would get you enough points to win that merit-based scholarship so that you can tell millions of children down the road how you fought to succeed and now you're giving back to them, go them, go you, do big things, and you can retire with a ton of money and down pringles and café au lait all day while you watch BBC dramas and princess bride. I hear you. so "bate" is short for "abated" and you abate your breath when you hold it, so you wait with abated breath. gotcha.
but hear me out: "bait" means to lure for the purpose of trapping/victimizing/eating/removing unwanted squirrels from your bird feeder; like, if you're fishing, you bait the hook to catch the fish. if something surprising happens, you catch your breath, right? while I'm not saying it's the correct -- as in, societally established -- way to spell "bate" I think "baited breath" is at least understandable. you've trapped, caught your breath, 'waiting with caught breath' so to speak. amirite?
and this, my friends, is why I get the two confused sometimes. -- frequently. just saying.
it looks like I'm swearing.
I always have difficulty remembering if it's "baited breath" or "bated breath" -- because I feel that etymologically, it could sort of be either.
take "bate". this, if these two were on a multiple choice test, would technically be the more correct answer and would get you enough points to win that merit-based scholarship so that you can tell millions of children down the road how you fought to succeed and now you're giving back to them, go them, go you, do big things, and you can retire with a ton of money and down pringles and café au lait all day while you watch BBC dramas and princess bride. I hear you. so "bate" is short for "abated" and you abate your breath when you hold it, so you wait with abated breath. gotcha.
but hear me out: "bait" means to lure for the purpose of trapping/victimizing/eating/removing unwanted squirrels from your bird feeder; like, if you're fishing, you bait the hook to catch the fish. if something surprising happens, you catch your breath, right? while I'm not saying it's the correct -- as in, societally established -- way to spell "bate" I think "baited breath" is at least understandable. you've trapped, caught your breath, 'waiting with caught breath' so to speak. amirite?
and this, my friends, is why I get the two confused sometimes. -- frequently. just saying.
08 May 2015
:: in which, I fall in love ::
it's happened, guys.
I'm in love.
his name is george.
just kidding. I mean, it will be, one day, although that is a story for another time, but for now --
we were in kitty hawk this past week for a (MUCH NEEDED) vacation (well, specifically, kill devil hills is where our hotel was located), and while there, my mom and jess and I hang glided.
hung glide? hung glid?
we went hang gliding. whatever.
I was almost silly here, like "GUYS AND IT WAS AWESOME" but really all-caps doesn't express how utterly breathtaking and awe-ful it was. I'm serious guys. it was awesome.
utterly incredible.
magnificently glorious and wonderful. I cannot express how much I loved it and I cannot wait to do it again. I got to steer the glider and I got to see all the way out, over currituck sound, past the outer-est of the outer banks to the glistening atlantic; I saw the inversion layer (ah, meteorology, finally something practical) and I could see where the hazy mist bent as the globe began to curve. the air was cool and it rushed past (although I felt like I was sitting still) and it was silent.
silent except for my constant, "oh my gosh, this is beautiful. how gorgeous. it's AMAZING.
I LOVE IT!!!!!"
my instructor thought I was hilarious, but he understood, because when you're dedicated like he is, you love meeting people as crazy as you are about the same things. I wanted to hug him for understanding.
it was better than a roller coaster (we made it do the crazy up and down that a roller coaster does, only in this case, we were suspended in air, and it was me flipping us upside down and nosediving, no track or straps or anything but thermals keeping us from crash-and-burning). I almost cried from sheer joy -- this is what birds feel like. this is what I've wanted to do for my entire life, the exact thing I long for whenever I'm swinging at a park and wish the swing could break off and take me up, up, up above the world. I hadn't ever realized it was hang gliding I wanted when I wrote about this longing as my 10-year-old self, but when I did it, I knew this is what I wanted. this is my sport; this is what I was born to do.
like, if I hadn't gotten an internship -- if things don't work themselves out university-wise -- I'm getting my hang 3 at least and moving to the coast. no joke, guys. it's already changed my life.
I'm in love.
his name is george.
just kidding. I mean, it will be, one day, although that is a story for another time, but for now --
we were in kitty hawk this past week for a (MUCH NEEDED) vacation (well, specifically, kill devil hills is where our hotel was located), and while there, my mom and jess and I hang glided.
hung glide? hung glid?
we went hang gliding. whatever.
I was almost silly here, like "GUYS AND IT WAS AWESOME" but really all-caps doesn't express how utterly breathtaking and awe-ful it was. I'm serious guys. it was awesome.
utterly incredible.
magnificently glorious and wonderful. I cannot express how much I loved it and I cannot wait to do it again. I got to steer the glider and I got to see all the way out, over currituck sound, past the outer-est of the outer banks to the glistening atlantic; I saw the inversion layer (ah, meteorology, finally something practical) and I could see where the hazy mist bent as the globe began to curve. the air was cool and it rushed past (although I felt like I was sitting still) and it was silent.
silent except for my constant, "oh my gosh, this is beautiful. how gorgeous. it's AMAZING.
I LOVE IT!!!!!"
my instructor thought I was hilarious, but he understood, because when you're dedicated like he is, you love meeting people as crazy as you are about the same things. I wanted to hug him for understanding.
it was better than a roller coaster (we made it do the crazy up and down that a roller coaster does, only in this case, we were suspended in air, and it was me flipping us upside down and nosediving, no track or straps or anything but thermals keeping us from crash-and-burning). I almost cried from sheer joy -- this is what birds feel like. this is what I've wanted to do for my entire life, the exact thing I long for whenever I'm swinging at a park and wish the swing could break off and take me up, up, up above the world. I hadn't ever realized it was hang gliding I wanted when I wrote about this longing as my 10-year-old self, but when I did it, I knew this is what I wanted. this is my sport; this is what I was born to do.
like, if I hadn't gotten an internship -- if things don't work themselves out university-wise -- I'm getting my hang 3 at least and moving to the coast. no joke, guys. it's already changed my life.
06 May 2015
:: jane austen & fanny price, ultimately ::
one thing I hadn't foreseen when I really started my whole webseries-junkie thing was how much they would actually make me read. (disclaimer: I do not say that watching a classic-derived webseries will make a non-reader read, nor would I recommend that method. like, so no way. and of course, I would never, ever, ever recommend watching instead of reading.)
but for me, knowing and loving the classics that people modernize and film makes them that much more amazing when I watch the series. these are great characters, with great stories to tell, and they've lasted, beloved, for the exact reason people want to make a modern version: it has a truth that lasts through time.
anyway, since the series always drags out when I'm following it real time, I end up forgetting little plot twists or wanting to know "was that in the book?" and I learned my lesson from emma -- you can't just skim to find the part you want. I started by skimming and got bogged down repeatedly: by parts I didn't remember, parts I loved and wanted to read again, and overall got lost in the book and couldn't find what I was looking for. I ended up reading straight through and loving it all over again. so when I sat down last week (FIRST WEEK OF FREEDOM HOLLA) to read my long-neglected mansfield park, I sat down to read straight through -- and I did. and it was delightful.
I think I've only read mansfield once or twice before. I remember thinking jane austen was getting a little too tired in this one, because it was super-predictable without the sparkle of character that her other (similarly predictable) books had. and she also seemed to tire of the story all of a sudden, like, SPOILERS "hijinx, misunderstandings, long sad look from fanny, totally unrealistic clueless reaction from edmund, bla bla bla, detail detail detail...... and then they fell in love and got married and yay the end." END SPOILERS expecting this, I was pleasantly surprised to realize the depth of character that fanny (in particular) develops over the course of the story. the ending wasn't nearly so brushy-off as I'd remembered and there was one passage in particular that I found adorable and had missed my other peruses-through. (more on that later.)
everyone of course knows jane austen is a classic author; we were all assigned pride & prejudice in high school, right? but I suppose I had never thought about what exactly made her works classics. having just finished thomas foster's how to read literature like a professor, I've been viciously looking for deeper meanings and symbols, and it was this passage that really struck me -- I don't think of older authors as being so subtle and yet so blatant. here, somehow, the depth seemed almost modern, or at least not the witty-&-light-social-commentary I stereotype her.
and of course the more I thought about it, the more things occurred to me, so I ended up considering austen's whole social agenda here and I touched on that below, as well. I have never been a very organized writer. obviously.
(to catch you up: basically all the main characters are at sotherton, the rushworth's family property, for a day of hard partying [lol jk]. fanny price, edmund bertram, and mary crawford have split from the rest of the group -- "the rest" being maria and julia bertram, mr. rushworth, and henry crawford -- to take a walk through the woods. julia gets stuck talking to mr. rushworth's obnoxious mother; meanwhile, fanny gets tired and edmund and mary promise to be back soon, but they want to explore a little farther [to resolve a rather flirtatious debate]. she's left waiting on a bench for a long time, when the other part of the group [maria, mr. rushworth, and HC] show up. they want to go through a locked gate to another part of rushworth's property; he leaves to get the key. maria and henry have a conversation. I'm going to assume your familiarity with the relationships and dynamics between the characters.)
(note, there will be PLOT SPOILERS in abundance below. you've been warned.)
I don't think this passage needs much explanation, but I am going toexplain anyway point out some things I found interesting.
this is a blatant foreshadowing of maria's affair/elopement with henry later on. mr. rushworth (I keep wanting to call him rory x)) shows up very soon after this passage with the key -- the key, the enabler for the freedom that maria wanted, if only she'd waited. would it have been as sweet to her? of course not: maria wants the popularity and power that comes with being rich and beautiful, but she doesn't want the side affects of the path she's choosing -- in other words, marriage, and to mr. rushworth. she wouldn't ever have waited for his key, because what she wants is freedom to do what she wants (she's just like henry that way). it's not the gate itself, nor is it even marriage, but the societal rules for what a woman is supposed to be and how she is to behave that maria wants to avoid.
this incident also proves fanny's judgment in disliking henry. throughout the story, she doesn't like what she sees in him, but she can't ever come up with a solid example; because it's all like this. fanny "[feels] all this to be wrong" but can't quite put her finger on it, because they aren't really doing anything wrong, exactly, but it's the underlying principles (or lack of them) that she senses. and of course when they actually run away together -- bypassing the now-figurative gate of marriage and sex and fidelity and socially accepted boundaries -- they are doing something wrong, and fanny's earlier doubts are proved correct. though maria ends "alive and well," perhaps her gown had trouble, when her reputation is unsalvageable by the end of the book.
nor does it need much highlighting that maria is banished from society, while henry... nothing. henry's punishment "should in a just measure attend his share of the offence [sic]," austen points out, but comments that "in this world, the penalty is less equal than could be wished;" henry receives no real societal censure. this double standard probably had implications for austen's writing: men of course could publish things, but single women? that wasn't so acceptable.
in a way, I think austen pitied maria. she is in a box, unable to be anything other than a woman under her father or a woman under her husband. she goes about getting out of that box the wrong way, but that doesn't make her situation less difficult. austen also found another way, but I imagine it wasn't easy for her, either.
though maria scorns fanny's prudish, fearful notions, it is that exact prudence that keeps fanny herself from falling when henry starts paying attention to her. fanny, on this other hand, doesn't do anything 'exciting' and may be considered a doormat, because she waits. she waits for edmund to come back; she waits for him to return her horse; she waits for him to ask her, to tell her, to talk to her, to help her; she waits to be invited, waits to be told what to do... but fanny is not afraid to speak up for what she believes is right (evidenced here in a small way).
whether fanny's pale quietness is your style or not, you can't argue that her waiting doesn't eventually gets her what she wants. by the end, fanny price has come into her own: recognized as virtuous, beautiful, worthy, she outstrips all the other females of the story as a paragon of all that's good -- worth more, even, than edmund, a man, who was blinded by love as fanny was not. edmund becomes fanny's key (as writing became jane austen's?) and this quiet heroine proves her strength, by waiting, in eventually becoming more: more desirable, more respected, more happy than the other, more boisterous females. perhaps even than the other males.
I think jane austen has made her point.
but for me, knowing and loving the classics that people modernize and film makes them that much more amazing when I watch the series. these are great characters, with great stories to tell, and they've lasted, beloved, for the exact reason people want to make a modern version: it has a truth that lasts through time.
anyway, since the series always drags out when I'm following it real time, I end up forgetting little plot twists or wanting to know "was that in the book?" and I learned my lesson from emma -- you can't just skim to find the part you want. I started by skimming and got bogged down repeatedly: by parts I didn't remember, parts I loved and wanted to read again, and overall got lost in the book and couldn't find what I was looking for. I ended up reading straight through and loving it all over again. so when I sat down last week (FIRST WEEK OF FREEDOM HOLLA) to read my long-neglected mansfield park, I sat down to read straight through -- and I did. and it was delightful.
I think I've only read mansfield once or twice before. I remember thinking jane austen was getting a little too tired in this one, because it was super-predictable without the sparkle of character that her other (similarly predictable) books had. and she also seemed to tire of the story all of a sudden, like, SPOILERS "hijinx, misunderstandings, long sad look from fanny, totally unrealistic clueless reaction from edmund, bla bla bla, detail detail detail...... and then they fell in love and got married and yay the end." END SPOILERS expecting this, I was pleasantly surprised to realize the depth of character that fanny (in particular) develops over the course of the story. the ending wasn't nearly so brushy-off as I'd remembered and there was one passage in particular that I found adorable and had missed my other peruses-through. (more on that later.)
everyone of course knows jane austen is a classic author; we were all assigned pride & prejudice in high school, right? but I suppose I had never thought about what exactly made her works classics. having just finished thomas foster's how to read literature like a professor, I've been viciously looking for deeper meanings and symbols, and it was this passage that really struck me -- I don't think of older authors as being so subtle and yet so blatant. here, somehow, the depth seemed almost modern, or at least not the witty-&-light-social-commentary I stereotype her.
and of course the more I thought about it, the more things occurred to me, so I ended up considering austen's whole social agenda here and I touched on that below, as well. I have never been a very organized writer. obviously.
(to catch you up: basically all the main characters are at sotherton, the rushworth's family property, for a day of hard partying [lol jk]. fanny price, edmund bertram, and mary crawford have split from the rest of the group -- "the rest" being maria and julia bertram, mr. rushworth, and henry crawford -- to take a walk through the woods. julia gets stuck talking to mr. rushworth's obnoxious mother; meanwhile, fanny gets tired and edmund and mary promise to be back soon, but they want to explore a little farther [to resolve a rather flirtatious debate]. she's left waiting on a bench for a long time, when the other part of the group [maria, mr. rushworth, and HC] show up. they want to go through a locked gate to another part of rushworth's property; he leaves to get the key. maria and henry have a conversation. I'm going to assume your familiarity with the relationships and dynamics between the characters.)
Miss Bertram began again. "You seemed to enjoy your drive here very much this morning. I was glad to see you so well entertained. You and Julia were laughing the whole way."in light of what happens later in the story, I was astounded at the parallels. just a few sentences later, julia shows up alone, frustrated at being left behind, and follows the two around the gate, another suggestive incident (yates, anyone?).
"Were we? Yes, I believe we were; but I have not the least recollection at what. Oh! I believe I was relating to her some ridiculous stories of an old Irish groom of my uncle's. Your sister loves to laugh."
"You think her more light-hearted than I am."
"More easily amused," he replied, "consequently you know," smiling, "better company. I could not have hoped to entertain you with Irish anecdotes during a ten miles' drive."
"Naturally, I believe, I am as lively as Julia, but I have more to think of now."
"You have undoubtedly -- and there are situations in which very high spirits would denote insensibility. Your prospects, however, are too fair to justify want of spirits. You have a very smiling scene before you."
"Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally I conclude. Yes, certainly, the sun shines and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. I cannot get out, as the starling said." As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate; he followed her. "Mr. Rushworth is so long in fetching this key!"
"And for all the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth's authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited."
"Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way and I will. Mr. Rushworth will be here in a moment you know -- we shall not be out of sight."
"Or if we are, Miss Price will be so good as to tell him, that he will find us near that knoll, the grove of oak on the knoll."
Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong, could not help making an effort to prevent it. "You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram," she cried, "you will certainly hurt yourself against those spikes -- you will tear your gown -- you will be in danger of slipping into the Ha-Ha. You had better not go."
Her cousin was safe on the other side, while these words were spoken, and smiling with all the good-humour of success she said, "Thank you, my dear Fanny, but I and my gown are alive and well, and so goodbye."
(note, there will be PLOT SPOILERS in abundance below. you've been warned.)
I don't think this passage needs much explanation, but I am going to
this is a blatant foreshadowing of maria's affair/elopement with henry later on. mr. rushworth (I keep wanting to call him rory x)) shows up very soon after this passage with the key -- the key, the enabler for the freedom that maria wanted, if only she'd waited. would it have been as sweet to her? of course not: maria wants the popularity and power that comes with being rich and beautiful, but she doesn't want the side affects of the path she's choosing -- in other words, marriage, and to mr. rushworth. she wouldn't ever have waited for his key, because what she wants is freedom to do what she wants (she's just like henry that way). it's not the gate itself, nor is it even marriage, but the societal rules for what a woman is supposed to be and how she is to behave that maria wants to avoid.
this incident also proves fanny's judgment in disliking henry. throughout the story, she doesn't like what she sees in him, but she can't ever come up with a solid example; because it's all like this. fanny "[feels] all this to be wrong" but can't quite put her finger on it, because they aren't really doing anything wrong, exactly, but it's the underlying principles (or lack of them) that she senses. and of course when they actually run away together -- bypassing the now-figurative gate of marriage and sex and fidelity and socially accepted boundaries -- they are doing something wrong, and fanny's earlier doubts are proved correct. though maria ends "alive and well," perhaps her gown had trouble, when her reputation is unsalvageable by the end of the book.
nor does it need much highlighting that maria is banished from society, while henry... nothing. henry's punishment "should in a just measure attend his share of the offence [sic]," austen points out, but comments that "in this world, the penalty is less equal than could be wished;" henry receives no real societal censure. this double standard probably had implications for austen's writing: men of course could publish things, but single women? that wasn't so acceptable.
in a way, I think austen pitied maria. she is in a box, unable to be anything other than a woman under her father or a woman under her husband. she goes about getting out of that box the wrong way, but that doesn't make her situation less difficult. austen also found another way, but I imagine it wasn't easy for her, either.
though maria scorns fanny's prudish, fearful notions, it is that exact prudence that keeps fanny herself from falling when henry starts paying attention to her. fanny, on this other hand, doesn't do anything 'exciting' and may be considered a doormat, because she waits. she waits for edmund to come back; she waits for him to return her horse; she waits for him to ask her, to tell her, to talk to her, to help her; she waits to be invited, waits to be told what to do... but fanny is not afraid to speak up for what she believes is right (evidenced here in a small way).
whether fanny's pale quietness is your style or not, you can't argue that her waiting doesn't eventually gets her what she wants. by the end, fanny price has come into her own: recognized as virtuous, beautiful, worthy, she outstrips all the other females of the story as a paragon of all that's good -- worth more, even, than edmund, a man, who was blinded by love as fanny was not. edmund becomes fanny's key (as writing became jane austen's?) and this quiet heroine proves her strength, by waiting, in eventually becoming more: more desirable, more respected, more happy than the other, more boisterous females. perhaps even than the other males.
I think jane austen has made her point.
02 May 2015
:: supes adorbs ::
last post, I mentioned that there was an adorable part of mansfield park that I'd missed before. basically, I love when you get to see growing affection between two estranged/separated characters -- ships or sibs or whomever, when you like them both and want them to be happy. (ahem marianne&brandon ahem)
I never liked the sudden denouement of mansfield park (pardon my french, it just seemed to fit), but then I found this one little paragraph that softened my attitude somewhat.
it's the last chapter: the author quits such odious subjects as guilt and misery and restores everybody not greatly in fault to tolerable comfort, while having done with all the rest.
Here was comfort indeed! and quite as soon as Sir Thomas could place dependence on such sources of good, Edmund was contributing to his father's ease by improvement in the only point in which he had given him pain before -- improvement in his spirits. After wandering about and sitting under trees with Fanny all the summer evenings, he had so well talked his mind into submission, as to be very tolerably cheerful again.
edmund. and fanny. wandering about and sitting under trees on summer evenings. how sweet is that?? and how utterly conducive to a romance! it doesn't wholly satisfy my longing for a nice bang-up "you have borne it as no other woman in england would have borne it, dearest, loveliest fanny, for you alone I think and plan, and I am bound to you as much in honor as in affection and please come live at combe magna with me" speech... but then, one can't have everything.
28 April 2015
:: since I've been gone ::
I have had a week of glorious freedom, and it's time for me to chill out, settle down, and deal with the little leftover shreds of life that I have neglected since approximately december.
today is beautiful and I'm reading (and thoroughly enjoying) kathryn stockett's the help, so this is going to be short and sweet. you can't expect more brilliance or commitment from my sporadic posts. sic transit gloria blog-posti. duh.
and probably it won't be short, actually, either. but it will be a list, which is at least much shorter than a wordy post. wordy lists are my specialty.
updates, not in order of importance, with the most important last:
#1. waaaaay back in february, I got a job!! it made this semester much more difficult, but I love this place and the semester could have gone much worse (see #3). karen is a fantastic boss, and I am truly loving serving free coffee and reading books. every girl's dream, what?
#2. I got a $2,000 scholarship through the art institute.
yeah. I know: wow. the first money I've received by merit. I was blown away.
#3. my meteorology class almost killed me this semester. it was really hard (in weird ways), and I struggled. on top of trying to get into the graphic design program and working at karen's, it was really stressful and I cried frequently. this was a very, very hard winter for me -- but it's done! it's done!! -- and I seriously considered dropping the class. but I decided to push through.
and then I got a B. this was crushing, not just because of the heart and soul of me I'd poured into my work, but I really wanted to keep a 4.0 GPA if at all possible. apparently not possible, right?
well, today when my professor uploaded the official, final grades, she weighted some of the assignments, incidentally ones I had done well on.
I actually got an A.
#4. my graphic design teacher (leslie friesen) offered an internship opportunity to me usually only available to upperclassmen. she asked three students from our class if they wanted one of the two positions, and we had to apply if we were interested. two of us responded, but we were in competition with seven others from our to-be-boss brian faust's web design class. my interview went really, really badly.
somehow, I got the position. it's paid, and starts mid-may.
#5. I have plane tickets for my trip to kelsey's wedding. YAY! I'm so excited for her!! (and for me, too...)
#6. I bought a dress, for the wedding, that should also be arriving mid-may. it's handmade, and it's from italy. and it will have a pocket. embarras de richesse.
#7. we're going to kitty hawk for a little relaxing beach fix this coming week; I cannot wait.
and --
#8. I was accepted into the graphic design program.
this has been the best first week of summer ever. possibly of my life. I am unutterably grateful to God for all this abundance of mercy that has suddenly broken over my head -- innumerable blessings that came in such dreaded clouds. I don't know what His purpose was, and I definitely don't know what it is to be in the future, but I have renewed hope and confidence.
this is going to be a thrilling summer. I'm trying new things and really exploring who I am. those old mists are rising: the world lies spread before me and -- it has been an adventure already!
today is beautiful and I'm reading (and thoroughly enjoying) kathryn stockett's the help, so this is going to be short and sweet. you can't expect more brilliance or commitment from my sporadic posts. sic transit gloria blog-posti. duh.
and probably it won't be short, actually, either. but it will be a list, which is at least much shorter than a wordy post. wordy lists are my specialty.
updates, not in order of importance, with the most important last:
#1. waaaaay back in february, I got a job!! it made this semester much more difficult, but I love this place and the semester could have gone much worse (see #3). karen is a fantastic boss, and I am truly loving serving free coffee and reading books. every girl's dream, what?
#2. I got a $2,000 scholarship through the art institute.
yeah. I know: wow. the first money I've received by merit. I was blown away.
#3. my meteorology class almost killed me this semester. it was really hard (in weird ways), and I struggled. on top of trying to get into the graphic design program and working at karen's, it was really stressful and I cried frequently. this was a very, very hard winter for me -- but it's done! it's done!! -- and I seriously considered dropping the class. but I decided to push through.
and then I got a B. this was crushing, not just because of the heart and soul of me I'd poured into my work, but I really wanted to keep a 4.0 GPA if at all possible. apparently not possible, right?
well, today when my professor uploaded the official, final grades, she weighted some of the assignments, incidentally ones I had done well on.
I actually got an A.
#4. my graphic design teacher (leslie friesen) offered an internship opportunity to me usually only available to upperclassmen. she asked three students from our class if they wanted one of the two positions, and we had to apply if we were interested. two of us responded, but we were in competition with seven others from our to-be-boss brian faust's web design class. my interview went really, really badly.
somehow, I got the position. it's paid, and starts mid-may.
#5. I have plane tickets for my trip to kelsey's wedding. YAY! I'm so excited for her!! (and for me, too...)
#6. I bought a dress, for the wedding, that should also be arriving mid-may. it's handmade, and it's from italy. and it will have a pocket. embarras de richesse.
#7. we're going to kitty hawk for a little relaxing beach fix this coming week; I cannot wait.
and --
#8. I was accepted into the graphic design program.
this has been the best first week of summer ever. possibly of my life. I am unutterably grateful to God for all this abundance of mercy that has suddenly broken over my head -- innumerable blessings that came in such dreaded clouds. I don't know what His purpose was, and I definitely don't know what it is to be in the future, but I have renewed hope and confidence.
this is going to be a thrilling summer. I'm trying new things and really exploring who I am. those old mists are rising: the world lies spread before me and -- it has been an adventure already!
26 March 2015
:: so not cool ::
my sister has an old navy store bag on her bureau, with some stuff in it (no, I don't know what kind of stuff nor even specific items. stuff). I'm 99.99972162% positive it's from here ("here" being louisville), but the bag has "san francisco, california" blazoned beneath the logo. as if.
looking at the bag from across the room, I was laughing ironically to myself ("ironically" is describing the laugh, similar to dick swiveller's three syllables, only in that case it was "like a fiend" while here it's "ironically" and just a self-deprecating chuckle). (these parenthetical addenda keep getting in the way. I'll do my best to stop.)
SO, laughing ironically to myself, I thought: if you live in san francisco, you're cool. like, automatically cool.
I wish I lived in SF (for more than just the cool factor, but there you go). (sorry.)
and then I went, but, see: if I did live in SF, I wouldn't be cool. if I'm not it now -- honestly, moving somewhere that was wouldn't make me. it. cool. popular. artsy. whatevs.
I don't really know where I'm going with this. it's not a pity post, to me, because I didn't mean -- I don't mean -- for anyone to come comfort my little ego. I just realized this and wanted to share it; I guess partly because I also have a sense that there are other people out there (though about 0.000000% of them read my blog) (AAACK) who struggle to be a "cool kid" too. admittedly, I suck, but frequently try anyway. (all I can suggest to you is, if the parentheses bug you, don't read them.)
worse, I'm not even not-cool in a cool way. < this is NOT a "bnr jk lol" situation where I follow up by posting a selfie of a gorgeous me with [pick famous person or grumpy cat or something that would automatically make me cool]. I'm totally serious here: I AM NOT COOL EVEN IN MY NOT-COOL-NESS.
that felt really good to get out, if you can believe it.
moving forward, this isn't a situation I need to rectify. essentially, I've been trying to rectify "this situation" (read: me) for going on 20 years now, and I think it's time to stop. I like what I like and I am what I am and that needs to be okay. of course, I dread falling into the other chasm deep and wide that contains those people who ARE THEMSELVES IN ALL CAPS and who like to make sure you know that they're beyond okay with themselves, so there. which really is saying, please validate me. which is the exact same problem at the core.
I don't want to have a problem. I want to be so focused on others that I don't even think about myself. who cares if my shirt is too boxy? or too long? or too plain? who cares if I don't wear shorts, or if I bought my jeans two years ago, or if they still don't fit around my cotton-pickin' waist because I don't fit in normal-people jeans WHAT THE HECK? -- does anyone else have that problem?? where your jeans need a belt around the waist and do the weird butt-bubble thing when you cinch the belt 150,000 notches*?
*another thing that makes me not cool
it's time to get ready for school. I can't believe I found the time to do this, but man, it feels good to just say it: to just acknowledge that I will never be a paragon of fashion and design. c'est la vie, amirite.
and this, kids, is how to solve problems of the not-successful-enough kind: if you don't reach the standard, simply lower the standard! tune in next time for 'how to pat yourself on the back' with your host -- in the twilight zone.
oh wait.
looking at the bag from across the room, I was laughing ironically to myself ("ironically" is describing the laugh, similar to dick swiveller's three syllables, only in that case it was "like a fiend" while here it's "ironically" and just a self-deprecating chuckle). (these parenthetical addenda keep getting in the way. I'll do my best to stop.)
SO, laughing ironically to myself, I thought: if you live in san francisco, you're cool. like, automatically cool.
I wish I lived in SF (for more than just the cool factor, but there you go). (sorry.)
and then I went, but, see: if I did live in SF, I wouldn't be cool. if I'm not it now -- honestly, moving somewhere that was wouldn't make me. it. cool. popular. artsy. whatevs.
I don't really know where I'm going with this. it's not a pity post, to me, because I didn't mean -- I don't mean -- for anyone to come comfort my little ego. I just realized this and wanted to share it; I guess partly because I also have a sense that there are other people out there (though about 0.000000% of them read my blog) (AAACK) who struggle to be a "cool kid" too. admittedly, I suck, but frequently try anyway. (all I can suggest to you is, if the parentheses bug you, don't read them.)
worse, I'm not even not-cool in a cool way. < this is NOT a "bnr jk lol" situation where I follow up by posting a selfie of a gorgeous me with [pick famous person or grumpy cat or something that would automatically make me cool]. I'm totally serious here: I AM NOT COOL EVEN IN MY NOT-COOL-NESS.
that felt really good to get out, if you can believe it.
moving forward, this isn't a situation I need to rectify. essentially, I've been trying to rectify "this situation" (read: me) for going on 20 years now, and I think it's time to stop. I like what I like and I am what I am and that needs to be okay. of course, I dread falling into the other chasm deep and wide that contains those people who ARE THEMSELVES IN ALL CAPS and who like to make sure you know that they're beyond okay with themselves, so there. which really is saying, please validate me. which is the exact same problem at the core.
I don't want to have a problem. I want to be so focused on others that I don't even think about myself. who cares if my shirt is too boxy? or too long? or too plain? who cares if I don't wear shorts, or if I bought my jeans two years ago, or if they still don't fit around my cotton-pickin' waist because I don't fit in normal-people jeans WHAT THE HECK? -- does anyone else have that problem?? where your jeans need a belt around the waist and do the weird butt-bubble thing when you cinch the belt 150,000 notches*?
*another thing that makes me not cool
it's time to get ready for school. I can't believe I found the time to do this, but man, it feels good to just say it: to just acknowledge that I will never be a paragon of fashion and design. c'est la vie, amirite.
and this, kids, is how to solve problems of the not-successful-enough kind: if you don't reach the standard, simply lower the standard! tune in next time for 'how to pat yourself on the back' with your host -- in the twilight zone.
oh wait.
21 February 2015
:: the eternal surge of time and tide ::
once upon a time, something really super-awesome happened to me.
it was like this.
for years and years (or more like year and a half) I had been searching for a. e. housman's a shropshire lad. searching. every library, every bookstore, and I could find no copy anywhere.
(pause, for a sad face.)
and then last week, an idea of uncommon brilliance burst upon me and I asked for the housman call number at my university's library. wonder of wonders...
they not only had an entire shelf of housman works and commentaries and criticisms, they had THREE COPIES of a shropsire lad! embarrassment of riches. I had a glorious time reading it, and lived happily ever after. yay!
in all seriousness, though, I rediscovered 'on wenlock edge', a poem I must have read hundreds of times but whose impact I'd never really absorbed. I kept reading it over the next few days, trying to soak in the genius, the wistful, solemn, suddenness of it all, but I had this nagging sense I'd read this poem in a different form before. long story long, I went looking for a millay parallel (you know my obsession with good ol' edna st. vincent) and came upon 'if still your orchards bear'. your task: read both. then come back here, if you feel like it.
both poems are incredible. their deceitfully simple formats hide complex thoughts -- maybe because I'm still struggling to grasp the full import of their meanings, but the emotional power still hits me every time.
both poems seem to flow from a heart-trouble. each speaker mentions a personal difficulty: "the thoughts that hurt him, they were there....then was the Roman, now 'tis I" and "I cannot think your thoughts will be much different from mine....supposing in ten thousand years, men ache, as they do now" -- but each is universally applied. the speakers may have varied "memories hard to bear" and "thoughts that hurt", but at the same time, don't we all have "things that [we] could not bear, and live"? "men ache," says millay, and that's true of all men at all times, no matter the specific cause. one speaker looks forward, the other looks back, but both discover the same truth: "there is nothing new under the sun".
both poems, interestingly, use nature -- orchards & fruit, wind & storms & landscape -- as the constant, even in its changes. in housman's poem, the trees are the men and the wind is their life, an outside force that spends itself and leaves the trees (no pun intended) silent, unmoved, and in a way unchanged; eternal. as if the ranks of men are always there, animated as separate beings, but ultimately ever-passing. in millay's poem, the tree is human life; trouble is the fruit, held & warmed & owned by the human hand.
I think ultimately the focuses of the poems are fundamentally different: millay gently sympathizes with every centuries' daily struggles, housman subtly emphasizes the brevity of man's life. but the similarity occurs as both throw light on their own trouble by speaking of universal difficulties, however vague and unspecific these "difficulties" may be.
it is through the vagueness of their difficulties that they speak of ours. on one hand, the authors make these things universal, a large, human turmoil that spans the ages -- perhaps eternal "who are we? what are we? where are we?" questions. but both poets also make it a more personal thing, for them and (since I can't speak for you) for me: subtly relating their parts in mankind's ever-recurring troubles, but a relation general enough for a broader reader interpretation. people can universally relate to these personal troubles, in part because they're not specifically stated. I have "memories hard to bear at noon, at moonlight harder still"; perhaps small struggles, but I imagine everyone does. this poetic generalization works because I know my memories without having them dictated to me by the author's single and particular viewpoint. I place my own history in the words to "bring the eternal note of sadness in" as I more fully realize each poem's thrust: changes and troubles and lives come and go, and the ages roll on towards eternity.
the thing is, neither the speaker nor the subjects are emotionally connected at all. housman will never know the roman whose ashes have been buried for thousands of years; millay doesn't know the "brother" who might stand here when her ashes have been buried for thousands of years; and neither of them knows me, just as I don't know them or you. even in our connected humanness and the difficulties we all experience because of life, there is an impassable separation between us that cannot be bridged.
I'm struggling to clearly explain what I mean and I am becoming incredibly redundant. this is shaping into an all-around rough week for me.
just enjoy and appreciate the incredible insights these two very different people had into the human condition: the personal sorrows which fundamentally, deeply relate all humankind to one another, and the loneliness that forever separates them.
*hey, you're awesome if you can identify the byron quote. BYRON YEAH MAN
it was like this.
for years and years (or more like year and a half) I had been searching for a. e. housman's a shropshire lad. searching. every library, every bookstore, and I could find no copy anywhere.
(pause, for a sad face.)
and then last week, an idea of uncommon brilliance burst upon me and I asked for the housman call number at my university's library. wonder of wonders...
they not only had an entire shelf of housman works and commentaries and criticisms, they had THREE COPIES of a shropsire lad! embarrassment of riches. I had a glorious time reading it, and lived happily ever after. yay!
in all seriousness, though, I rediscovered 'on wenlock edge', a poem I must have read hundreds of times but whose impact I'd never really absorbed. I kept reading it over the next few days, trying to soak in the genius, the wistful, solemn, suddenness of it all, but I had this nagging sense I'd read this poem in a different form before. long story long, I went looking for a millay parallel (you know my obsession with good ol' edna st. vincent) and came upon 'if still your orchards bear'. your task: read both. then come back here, if you feel like it.
both poems are incredible. their deceitfully simple formats hide complex thoughts -- maybe because I'm still struggling to grasp the full import of their meanings, but the emotional power still hits me every time.
both poems seem to flow from a heart-trouble. each speaker mentions a personal difficulty: "the thoughts that hurt him, they were there....then was the Roman, now 'tis I" and "I cannot think your thoughts will be much different from mine....supposing in ten thousand years, men ache, as they do now" -- but each is universally applied. the speakers may have varied "memories hard to bear" and "thoughts that hurt", but at the same time, don't we all have "things that [we] could not bear, and live"? "men ache," says millay, and that's true of all men at all times, no matter the specific cause. one speaker looks forward, the other looks back, but both discover the same truth: "there is nothing new under the sun".
both poems, interestingly, use nature -- orchards & fruit, wind & storms & landscape -- as the constant, even in its changes. in housman's poem, the trees are the men and the wind is their life, an outside force that spends itself and leaves the trees (no pun intended) silent, unmoved, and in a way unchanged; eternal. as if the ranks of men are always there, animated as separate beings, but ultimately ever-passing. in millay's poem, the tree is human life; trouble is the fruit, held & warmed & owned by the human hand.
I think ultimately the focuses of the poems are fundamentally different: millay gently sympathizes with every centuries' daily struggles, housman subtly emphasizes the brevity of man's life. but the similarity occurs as both throw light on their own trouble by speaking of universal difficulties, however vague and unspecific these "difficulties" may be.
it is through the vagueness of their difficulties that they speak of ours. on one hand, the authors make these things universal, a large, human turmoil that spans the ages -- perhaps eternal "who are we? what are we? where are we?" questions. but both poets also make it a more personal thing, for them and (since I can't speak for you) for me: subtly relating their parts in mankind's ever-recurring troubles, but a relation general enough for a broader reader interpretation. people can universally relate to these personal troubles, in part because they're not specifically stated. I have "memories hard to bear at noon, at moonlight harder still"; perhaps small struggles, but I imagine everyone does. this poetic generalization works because I know my memories without having them dictated to me by the author's single and particular viewpoint. I place my own history in the words to "bring the eternal note of sadness in" as I more fully realize each poem's thrust: changes and troubles and lives come and go, and the ages roll on towards eternity.
the thing is, neither the speaker nor the subjects are emotionally connected at all. housman will never know the roman whose ashes have been buried for thousands of years; millay doesn't know the "brother" who might stand here when her ashes have been buried for thousands of years; and neither of them knows me, just as I don't know them or you. even in our connected humanness and the difficulties we all experience because of life, there is an impassable separation between us that cannot be bridged.
I'm struggling to clearly explain what I mean and I am becoming incredibly redundant. this is shaping into an all-around rough week for me.
just enjoy and appreciate the incredible insights these two very different people had into the human condition: the personal sorrows which fundamentally, deeply relate all humankind to one another, and the loneliness that forever separates them.
*hey, you're awesome if you can identify the byron quote. BYRON YEAH MAN
19 February 2015
:: excuse-y fluff. skip it ::
if I could type a guilty face, I would totally type it here.
like, I have been so lax about posting that for the past fewdays weeks months I've been avoiding thinking about this whole blog because I feel like such a slacker. I could come up with some plausible excuses, like, I did just get a job on top of my Very Stressful (Graphic Design Entry Of-Which-Only-15-People-Are-Accepted-From-The-Current-45-Attending) Class.
but at the same time, that feels kind of cheap. I should find time, make time, you know? :/
in other news, we had three snow days this week because of the crazy cold and snow, so I got some fantastic amounts of homework done and managed to read the three musketeers (EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!). I should have taken notes so that I could write something cohesive and intelligent about it after the fact, but honestly. I was so absorbed by the thrilling story I don't think I would have had the patience for that. did I ever say what I thought of count of monte cristo, like, a year ago? well, whatever I said, this is so much better I can't even explainhow gorgeous your hair is.
if rating the characters counts as something intelligent (why did I even say that, of course it doesn't) then I will merely nominate athos for my favorite musketeer; planchet for my favorite valet; lady clark and felton for my third and fourth favorite characters, respectively; and everyone else an even second.
dumas is incredible, guys. I need a loud, obnoxious bumper sticker for the extent of my obsession.
anyway, snow days! I currently have a poetry post in the works, but I'm sorry I can't promise any more-frequent posting. I'd love to have the time, trust me, but right now I have too many other responsibilities. wait until all the season of snows and sins is over.
ugh, an education. amirite? x)
like, I have been so lax about posting that for the past few
but at the same time, that feels kind of cheap. I should find time, make time, you know? :/
in other news, we had three snow days this week because of the crazy cold and snow, so I got some fantastic amounts of homework done and managed to read the three musketeers (EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!). I should have taken notes so that I could write something cohesive and intelligent about it after the fact, but honestly. I was so absorbed by the thrilling story I don't think I would have had the patience for that. did I ever say what I thought of count of monte cristo, like, a year ago? well, whatever I said, this is so much better I can't even explain
if rating the characters counts as something intelligent (why did I even say that, of course it doesn't) then I will merely nominate athos for my favorite musketeer; planchet for my favorite valet; lady clark and felton for my third and fourth favorite characters, respectively; and everyone else an even second.
dumas is incredible, guys. I need a loud, obnoxious bumper sticker for the extent of my obsession.
anyway, snow days! I currently have a poetry post in the works, but I'm sorry I can't promise any more-frequent posting. I'd love to have the time, trust me, but right now I have too many other responsibilities. wait until all the season of snows and sins is over.
ugh, an education. amirite? x)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)