NO

Dino Skull

2012-02-07T00:05:00.002-07:00

I'm on a roll. :D

Dino Head

2012-02-06T20:59:00.002-07:00

Heaven Without Christ

2012-02-06T03:59:00.002-07:00

Today Pastor Babcock said the whole point of heaven is Christ, and what would be the point of heaven without Christ? It would be better to be in hell with Christ than in heaven without.

Of course that isn't possible, because wherever God/Christ isn't is by definition hell, but suppose for a minute that it were possible to have a Paradise without Christ. Wouldn't it be perfectly wretched? Like a Christmas break that got stretched out waaaaaaay too long while you slowly drown in a sea of fatty foods, overshadowed by the malaise of pointlessness?

P.S. I hate it when people say "travesty" when they mean "tragedy".

Meet Me in the Spring

2012-02-01T19:13:00.001-07:00

I read a book by Tennessee Williams called The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. I mostly read it because I found it at the library because I felt like Tennessee Williams was something I ought to read. I read a play too, once, Glass Animals, and I remember it being peculiarly depressing, mostly I think because I wasn't expecting it at all.

Anyway, back to Mrs. Stone. It's about a lady who has just retired from the stage and lost her husband to a heart attack. Before she retired, Mrs. Stone was a fairly successful person both in her career and in her social circles who, as we would say, "won at life". I just want to quote a large chunk:

All those things she remembered, all those names and faces and characteristics of people who might conceivably be of use to her, were like articles stored on shelves about the walls of some great vacant chamber. Mrs. Stone knew what that sort of vacancy was, as well as anyone knows it. It was that sort of vacancy which permitted so many people of her acquaintance to lead the sort of lives they lead without any evident consciousness of taking part in the vast ritual of nothingness. Mrs. Stone knew of that ritual. She took part in it herself. She went to the parties; she pursued the little diversions. She moved in the great, empty circle. But Mrs. Stone glanced inward from the peripheries of that circle and saw the void enclosed there. She saw the emptiness. She knew that it was empty. But Mrs. Stone was always a busy woman. She had been continually occupied with more things than a single existence seemed sufficient to hold, and for that reason, the way that centrifugal force prevents a whirling object from falling inward from its orbit, Mrs. Stone was removed for a long time from the void she circled (pp 80-81).

Now, having retired, Mrs. Stone finds herself falling aimlessly into that void. It is what Williams--and she--calls "The Drift." She has nothing better to do than spend money and have affairs. It is a pointless existence, punctuated only by occasional poignant reminders of her husband and past life.

I have another excellent book which I perceive as an antidote to Mrs. Stone. (I really like this idea of books and their antidotes. Books and anti-books, you might say.) It is called Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper. I used to read it when I felt like I was wasting my life. I don't know why I stopped that practice. I am going to quote another large chunk:

I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader's Digest, which tells about a couple who "took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells." At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn't. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life--your one and only precious, God-given life--and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: "Look, Lord. See my shells." That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: don't buy it. Don't waste your life (p 46).

I don't think John Piper is saying Don't Retire or Don't Spend Your Last Years Collecting Shells. I think he's saying what Tennessee Williams is saying: if your life boils down to aimless pleasures at the end, you've built your life around a void. If that's all you have, you have nothing.

The review on the back of the The Roman Spring says, "The Roman spring is actually Mrs. Stone's autumn." Very clever, Chicago Tribune. Very punny. But also true. I'm sure Tennessee Williams intended the irony of a story called "spring" about someone's retirement. Mrs. Stone's spring--her temporal spring--is an autumn in that she's done, fading away. John Piper says it should be the other way around. Even in autumn, it should always be spring. There should always be some new way of serving God. The "new creation" referenced in I Corinthians 5 isn't a one-time thing.

Chocolate and Squares of Coffee

2012-01-30T11:59:00.003-07:00

Today, I didn't get up until almost eleven o'clock. I haven't done anything constructive in the last two and a half hours. I had great intentions of cleaning my room or something, because I realized that I need to have not so much stuff and have the existing stuff more organized if I'm gonna move in August. But then I got distracted by a dinosaur shirt that needed fixing, so I started to fix it, and then I got bored. Basically all I have done today is eat tomatoes and chocolate and coffee. That's food, right?

It is very hard for me to get anything done if I don't have a million things to do. Saturday was a nice day, because I was scheduled all day. Odd as it sounds, it felt really good to be rushed. It was nice to run from job to job. I wonder if I would really even like a full time job? It's more fun to work full time hours in ridiculous configurations at different jobs. I guess we'll see.

I feel bad about being so lazy. I feel like I'm wasting my life and doing no useful things and turning into a lazy pile of laziness. But I guess it's okay to take a sabbatical of sorts? Maybe? I certainly haven't been so not-stressed for a long time, not in the past six or so years. Also I haven't gotten sick at all yet this year, which is really nice. Is this the way life is supposed to be? It's pretty weird. ^_^

It Turns Out

2012-01-23T13:01:00.003-07:00

Pain is Gain, Right?

2012-01-20T13:13:00.003-07:00

it takes an athlete to dance

but an artist to be a dancer

--quote on the wall at the ballet studio

Right now I'm neither

I am so sore

Not since poland

have I been this sore

It's kindof embarrassing.

^_^_^_^_^_^

But on the whole,

I am so glad to be taking

ballet again

after 17 years.

Reading Narratives Part I: Lots of Rambly Questions

2012-01-14T13:44:00.003-07:00

What makes a story "good"? Because I want there to be objective goodness in stories.

Erin and Dad say stories should be measured up against Philippians 4:8: "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy--meditate on these things." In order for a story to be good, it has to be something on which you can, according to Philippians, meditate. Or is it the recommendability test? A book is good if you can recommend it?

The problem with these tests is they seem to exclude one of my favorite books, The Unbearable Lightness of Being*, which I really really want to be "good". But it isn't really noble, just, and certainly not pure, and I would only recommend it to a few people. But on the other hand, it so aptly captures feelings (particularly the feeling of "the restless will" wanting "some great thing to do or secret thing to know"*) and so beautifully condemns meaningless kitsch and sentimentalism.

It also raises questions out of the primal thought goop and makes you think (more so than The Joke, I think. At least, more pertinent questions and thoughts). I want to read it again. So is a good book good because it is discussible?

Truth is certainly important (see Philippians again). If a book portrays people in ways that people don't behave, it is either the product of some bad ivory tower theology or else it is just poorly written. I think that non-Christian authors are capable of portraying people realistically, because even if their theoretical idea of people is incorrect, if they just write what they see they will get it right, because truth describes reality.

Alternately, are there some "bad" books which are okay to read? Can you have a book whose purpose is to portray ugliness, so that it is not beautiful art, but it is useful and purposeful art? Rabbit Run by John Updike I would put in that category. I didn't like it per se (though it was skillfully written), but I was glad I read it because of insight it gave me into someone's mindset. It was a good book for reasons external to itself.

Is that part of the author/reader tango? Are there criteria for both the author and the reader to meet for a book to be good? If a book is alone in a forest, is it still a good book? Was The Unbearable Lightness of Being a good book when I read it, but a bad book when someone struggling with lust read it?

In conclusion, a list of ideas of "good book" tests, but no answers:

Philippians 4:8
Recommendability
Discussibility
Accurate depiction of reality
Clicks with but doesn't tempt reader

Thoughts?

Blogalogue

2012-01-09T11:58:00.002-07:00

Or, if you will, a Blogalectic.

Along with a few other awesome people, including but not limited to Will, Joseph and Laura, I think, I'll be participating in a sort of "by consensus free discussion of an appointed topic" in which we dance around a particular subject together, but each in our own ways, like a ballroom filled with circling couples.

It's as if we were all sitting together languidly in a room again, sipping coffee and letting our words fall out of our mouth like water. (At least water falls out of some people's mouths. You know who you are.)

The first topic, which will come once I've decided how I want to dance my particular dance with it is "Reading Narratives."

Sock'd

2011-12-31T12:01:00.002-07:00

So... I have 52 pairs of socks/stockings. Yup. That's right. Fifty-two. Obsession, maybe? :P

And that's not even counting the ones that are (hopefully temporarily) missing their mates...or the four old pairs I finally threw out. ^_^_^_^

Also, happy new year!

Two Approaches to Jigsaw Theology

2011-12-30T12:42:00.005-07:00

Today I am glad I have a nerf sword, because I can reach for things without leaving my chair. Last night, when I was cleaning my room, I came upon a draft for a short piece I wrote about capital punishment. I also came across a whole sheaf of papers which contained bits of unfinished stories, and I realized that I haven't been writing enough lately. The excuse maker in my head says it's because I wish I had a typewriter, and everything would be so much easier and more inspirational if I had a typewriter. Part of the rationale for that is that the internet is so distracting, and if I type on the computer, I end up just clicking around. Well, I could turn off the internet. And in all honesty, it's my phone that distracts me more these days.

So, without further ado, I am going to write about something I have been thinking about recently, which is the title of this post: two approaches to theology. These aren't supposed to be the two exclusive approaches, just two possible approaches, specifically for communicating of theology to other people.

The first way is the topic or argument way. This is when you say, today we are going to learn about Predestination. We are going to go to all those famous passages, such as Romans 8 and 9 and Ephesians 1. Then we are going to some more esoteric passages in Acts and maybe skip over to Genesis and Galatians. Then we are going to poke our finger in the air and say, see, I told you, God sovereignly predestines us from the foundation of the world! Or we could do the same with marriage. Go to Genesis, Matthew, Ephesians, I Corinthians, and so forth to concoct a cohesive argument about the sanctity of marriage. Pick your topic, find your passages, build your argument.

This is the good way if you want to get into a discussion or a (more or less friendly) argument, or if you want to clarify a stance. This is what I did when I was writing my "Why I Am A (Flaming) Calvinist" treatise. Which I never finished. I should finish it.

The second way is the "OH man this is awesome!" way. Again, it can be topical. That is why I call this Jigsaw Theology. In a jigsaw puzzle, you have all the pieces all mixed up, and you take individual pieces and see that lo! they fit with other pieces, and it becomes more and more exciting as you put them all together and finally realize: they all connect! In the same way, you can be reading through Isaiah and suddenly think to yourself, Oh Man! This is like Hebrews! Then you go over to Hebrews, and it reminds you of Romans, or Malachi or whatever (I'm just making these up, except the Isaiah --> Hebrews). The more connections you make, the more you have to tell somebody else, and the more you realize that they all connect, and that Jesus is truly the crux ( :D ) of history and theology.

This kind of theology is more suited for theology parties and midnight discussions by ponds. But the exciting thing about oh man this is awesome theology is that it can be used to draw tepid Christians back into excitement about God. If someone you really respect is really excited about something (say shepherds?) and can't stop talking about it, you end up getting hooked too. My hope is that God could also use this for some sort of evangelism--the idea being that non-Christians would see the excitement and say to themselves, "why are we standing on the outside looking bored?" (to quote the Newsboys).

Both kinds of theology are awesome, and of course neither is supposed to be a replacement for just sitting down and reading the Bible in a more or less chronological fashion. After all, if you're not familiar with the Bible in its entirety, your jigsaw theology tends to be a little shallow. That is why my goal this year is to not only read through the entire Bible (which I've done before), but to do so out loud. Won't that be rad? :D

And Lanterns Cheered the Walls

2011-12-14T00:00:00.002-07:00

I love the waxy smell of good origami paper. I like the fact that my room is full of instruments and Christmas presents. I love having Christmas cards and pictures from my students on my walls.

I just read Of Mice and Men. Was George justified? I don't know. Because on the one hand, one isn't supposed to take the law into one's own hand. On the other hand, if he hadn't, the law certainly wouldn't have been in the proper hands. I saw The Fountainhead at the library, but I thought I didn't have the stamina for another Ayn Rand story right now. Especially since looking at the book jacket, it looked like essentially the same story as Atlas Shrugged. I did accidentally buy Heart of Darkness from the library book sale though. That place is dangerous, man. Now I am reading Tess of the D'urbervilles. I wish I knew how to pronounce it so I could tell people what I was reading.

I like symphonic metal. Especially the more folky/mythy bands. They remind me of Carl Orff, with their harmonies and pattern/rhythm driven music. I think of them as Orff's metal sons (and daughters, I guess).

Finally, I hope ducky is born soon. Tell it to hurry up, Virginia.

My Soul Magnifies the Lord

2011-12-09T07:40:00.005-07:00

Arvo Part: Magnificat

James 5:16 says that the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Sometimes it's weird and almost insulting to know when people are praying for me, but in the end, I appreciate it. But if they're gonna tell me, I'm going to retaliate by giving props.
So props, John, and then in a rather less offensive way, props to Joseph too.

Also, I had my last day at donut land today. I had a celebratory (it said celebrate! CelebRate!) smoked pizza-egg-burrito for breakfast, and tomorrow I can get up at WHATEVER TIME I WANT. And then we will put up Christmas lights. And then I will see my favorite person. And it will be so magical and I will never go back to donut land again! (Except to pick up my check. :P) ...I am happy about this.

In conclusion, the title of this post is partly because I'm "rejoicing always" about no more donuts, but mostly about the Magnificat. Here is some more Arvo Part, since I'm on a little bit of a kick. It' very meditative and background musicy:

Arvo Part: Spiegel im Spiegel

Khachaturian is My Happy Music

2011-12-05T13:11:00.003-07:00

But this isn't really about Khachaturian...except that I'm so pleased to have found a recording of his first symphony on youtube! It's pretty good as live recordings go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apjXRoeFNS8&feature=related

9:20 still reminds me of that apocryphal scene in the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe movie when they're crossing the river.

And onto the substance of this post, in Matthew 6:31-32, Jesus says:

"Therefore, do not worry, saying 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows you need these things."

Now I just noticed this, but it doesn't say "don't worry about x, y and z because they're not important." It says "don't worry about x, y and z because God knows you need them." We're not gnostics or ascetics or something here. It's not that physical things don't matter. They do. But it's okay, and we don't have to worry, because God is on top of these things. He's got us covered. (Haha. Haha. Ha.)

Another magical verse I discovered yesterday while I was waiting for the Messiah to finish so I could get out of my car:

Psalm 119:71 - "It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes." This I think is pretty cool, and certainly a better attitude that some other ones I've taken. Actually, the whole Psalm 119 is pretty cool.

It's Alive!

2011-12-03T09:09:00.003-07:00

Having been stitched together and empowered by lightning, I'm back.

First of all, sometimes experiments don't work. Like, for example, this donut job. I am quitting it. I have one week left. I realized I was going to quit when I played for Mrs. Brush's violin recital and made as much money in two fun weekends as I make in one miserable week at work. I also realized I was going to quit over Thanksgiving break when I could get up whenever I wanted in the morning and I didn't feel like I was going to die or reek of donut glaze.

I don't like quitting things. It feels like giving up and being, well, not-victoria. But I also realized that I'm not invincible. I have to sleep sometimes, and apparently it doesn't work to sleep in small chunks. Someone told me that at the outset, that you have to have continuous sleep for it to work, but I had to try. Now I will never take sleep for granted again.

In conclusion, I would rather be a starving artist than a starving donut baker. Not that I'm starving. Just saying. :P

Dreams, Dreams, and Half a Dream

2011-11-18T18:52:00.004-07:00

After Inception came out, it was popular to talk about dreams within dreams, and how cool that is. Actually, dreams within dreams are not cool at all. (Unless we're talking about That Bwessed Awwangement.) If you have dreams within dreams, it is usually because you are too tired to stay awake even in your dreams. And then you wake up from your second tier dream to find that you are late for work, or something horrible like that. Then, you wake up for real, and realize that you've only been sleeping half an hour.

This morning, I also had this rather horrid dream. In the dream, there was a girl whose boyfriend's pet worm escaped and got inside her headphones and crawled into her ear and from there into her brain and she died. (Chris says this couldn't actually happen. Phew.) This whole time, I was having an incredibly hard time sympathizing, because I had just gotten dentures with nerves (???), and they felt hecka weird, as if my mouth were a horse's mouth. I think I was clenching my teeth.

Finally, sometimes I apparently reply to people's text messages before I am fully awake. Then I look back later and realize my spelling is atrocious and I ask weird questions. Like for example, "Did you just send this?" Um. Yes. That is why you woke (somewhat) up. ^_^

Why Knights Shouldn't Feel Obligated to Marry the Damsel They Rescue

2011-11-17T11:20:00.006-07:00

Knight: Oh, a damsel! In distress! I shall rescue her.

(Knight rescues Damsel.)

Damsel: Thank you, kind sir!

Knight: But of course. You know, I rather like you.

Damsel: I rather like you too.

Knight: Let's get married in a few, shall we?

Damsel: My pleasure.

Knight: I will always be your protector.

Damsel: Sounds good!

Some time elapses...

Knight: Damsel, what are you doing?

Damsel: Oh, just the things I like doing.

Knight: Oh. I see. Are they...necessary?

Damsel: I suppose not.

Later...

Knight: Damsel, why are you sad?

Damsel: Well, because I never do the things I enjoy anymore.

Knight: Oh. Why not?

Damsel: Well, you didn't really like it.

Knight: Oh. I see. I suppose it's okay sometimes.

Later...

Damsel: Knight, why are you sad?

Knight: You've changed. You aren't like you used to be when I first met you.

Damsel: But why would you want me to be like I used to be when you first met me? I was in distress! I sucked when we first met!

Knight: Oh. Yeah.

Later...

Knight: Why are you always so sad?

Damsel: I thought this was how you liked me.

Knight: But it's so exhausting. I have my knight's work to do, I don't have time to always be cheering you up.

Damsel: Okay, well then let me be happy.

Knight: But I don't like you when you're happy!

Damsel: I'm sorry. You don't like me when I'm sad either.

Knight: I know. Maybe I don't like you at all. Maybe this is a bad idea.

Damsel: Then what am I going to do?

Knight: I don't know. But I think we'd better part ways.

Damsel: But...

Knight: It's better this way.

(Knight begins to ride off.)

Damsel: (Yelling after him) Wait! What about how we were getting married in a few?

(Knight turns around but doesn't answer, then rides away, leaving Damsel once more in distress.)

The End.

...I just wanted to get that off my chest. I think we're good now. ^_^

Sermon Notes from Sunday

2011-11-15T13:55:00.003-07:00

Our problem is not low self-esteem. We have a need for a radical redemption that changes our nature.

The problem with just wanting to be happy is it keeps us from thinking about eternity. We were created--we had a beginning--but we'll go on for all eternity. WO. Earthly life is just a "sowing time".

Sin levels all men--at the cross, we are all equals: equally FAIL. Sin isn't low self esteem, it is rebellion against God. And no one can escape His all seeing eye. You must be perfect, or you will be damned.

So,

Glory in the cross. Jesus wasn't afraid of crucifixion; it was the very wrath of God--going to/through hell. Points to the seriousness of sin. =| "It is finished."

Our hearts are restless till they rest in Him. The cross declares that God loves us dearly, and THIS is our treasure.

Do you glory in the cross? Is it everything to you? The center of your universe?

"Let us not grow weary of doing good." (Send to Joseph)

Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

Interplanetary Travel

2011-11-12T15:17:00.001-07:00

I remember once, I went to the mall with Virginia. As we entered through the forbidding glass doors of Macy's (I think?) I said to her, "I feel like I stepped off the space-ship onto the wrong planet." And so it was for many years, and so it was that many people (aka mom) rallied to my cry: "The mall is the wrong planet!"

Something has changed.

Last night, I went to the mall because I was meeting a friend for coffee, and the most convenient place for her was a Starbucks inside of the mall. My first indication that something was different was the fact that a total stranger complimented me on my chicness as I entered through those formerly forbidding Macy's* doors. Maybe it was the 4 inch high-heeled boots? Maybe it was the skinny jeans? The oh-so-trendy studded belt? Short hair?

So I have an admission to make. I actually kindof like the mall. I kindof like the lights and the glitter and the trendy little shops that sell fashionable but cheap clothing (like Wet Seal :P) I like to watch the people, and it reminds me of being in Prague (and of buying 500 kc worth of chocolate at the Albert in the mall :D). Furthermore, the way I dress now, I fit in. Is this shocking? Is this terrible? Have I become a heathen or a philistine?

Probably. But one thing hasn't changed. I still couldn't find my car when it when it was time to leave. Thankfully, that search was unwitnessed. :D

*Or, wait. How do you possessivize Macy's? Macy's'? Macy's's?

In My Dreams

2011-11-09T11:36:00.000-07:00

...I go to work. And then I wake up when my job is done, regardless of whether it's time to wake up or not. This morning, I was glazing carrots. That is so disgusting. Who in the world would want glazed carrots?

Blag

2011-11-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Oh ne. My blog is turning into a blag, Joseph style.

Here is how my life goes these days:

Tuesday - Friday are like days of non-existence. All I do is sleep and work.

Saturday, I try to have a social life and host parties. Saturday night, I get sick.

Sunday, if I am not sick, I go to church. That is awesome. Especially since Melanie is starting a choir.

Monday is a very nice day. I don't have to get up in the morning, although I like to get up around 8ish so that I'll be able to sleep at night. Monday morning is the time I have to practice the piano and the guitar (I played the piano in church yesterday, and it was SOOOO obvious that I haven't been practicing :P) and write up my lesson plan for Latin class.

That is how I be.

Certain things excite me. Among them are:

Latin nouns.
My kids.
Pizza. Ethan and I sang the entire Hallelujah Chorus yesterday over slices of pizza.
Accompanying! I missssss having a music job.

Certain questions terrify me. Chief among them is:

What am I doing with my life???

Certain people are suddenly even more awesome than I expected. Among them are:

Kristen.
Eli. (One of my co-workers at Scottsdale Prep)
Chris.

Finally, in conclusion, I am reading Lord of the Rings again. It is still awesome, nothing has changed. :D

Hello, November

2011-11-01T20:00:00.002-07:00

I like the way you smell.
I like the way you come creeping in
Like no one would ever tell.

I like that the leaves on the trees are still green
But the quality's different--crisper and clean
And at two in the morning I turn on the heat

...all I can think of that rhymes with heat is "Geat".

But I am glad it is November. I am not doing Nano this year. Notwithstanding, it should be an interesting one...

You Were On My Mind

2011-10-26T00:59:00.002-07:00

Remember when I said my brain was a donut? Now it really is. I think about frosting things when I'm trying to go to sleep at night. Except our pink donuts have pink and white sprinkles, not rainbow ones.

And then I think about, what if you got locked in the donut freezer? You'd subsist on donuts and wrap yourself up in the plastic bags for warmth and flatten out the boxes for a bed and use one in the corner for a toilet (because face it, it'd be necessary) until someone came and rescued you.

Then, to top it all, I started composing a Dunkin' Donuts musical in my head. I am only going to say that it has to do with jelly donuts. Yyyyeah.

I hope pretty soon I can post about things that aren't donuts again. :P

What Are You Talking About? Ramen Is Totally Food!

2011-10-22T10:01:00.002-07:00

I am sitting at my desk, wearing my pajamas, wrapped up in my comforter. I am supposed to be sleeping right now, but I can't. Maybe because I ate Ramen for meal #2, maybe just because my brain knows I don't have to go to bed as early tonight. Not sure. I think Sunday is going to be the best day in the world now.

I'm liking Atlas Shrugged less now. I liked the first two parts, the parts that set up the problem. Now that it's onto the solution, I'm liking it less. I will save the essay post until I finish it, though. I'm just going to say now, it's convincing me of its opposite. It seems to be an extended rant against people who want people to sacrifice themselves for the "greater good." Her idea is that if everyone does what is best for themselves, that is the best fastest path to the greater good. But you're not supposed to do it for the greater good, you're supposed to do it for yourself.

So I think she's right to some extent--God is awesome, right, and we're made in His image. And God has it set up so that to those of us that love Him, our best and His glory coincide. Romans 8:28, you know. He has it set up so that when things work, they work generally, and good isn't helpful to some and detrimental to others. It's not a zero sum game. Okay, so she's right in that. Doing stupid things isn't going to help anyone.

But is the solution selfishness? I think not. I think she has it backwards. Do unto others comes first. What I'm trying to say here is that whether or not I agree with Ayn Rand, the reading of this book is helping me to justify what I'm doing (something I always have to do). It's okay for the one half of my life to be all directed toward "the greater good" of my students. Even if this is temporary.

The other thing is the mental / physical dichotomy. Rand is right, one isn't good and the other bad. To be human is to be both body and soul. And therefore, it is okay to take a break from being continually intellectual and spend some time doing "manual" labor. Baking donuts is probably the closest thing to manual labor I'll ever do. I hope.

Finally, I burnt myself on a baking pan yesterday. And then I scalded all the hair off the backs of my hands in the dishwater today. Now I am going to try to go back to bed until my second alarm goes off at 1pm. Ohhhh life, it's fun!

Dies Togarum

2011-10-20T18:48:00.002-07:00

That's what it was at Latin class today. The girls wore togas and colored "stained glass" windows of the Sanctus.

We're doing ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation, but for some reason the curriculum writers felt compelled to teach them about togas anyway. So we had a mixture of high church and random Roman culture. That tends to happen in beginning curricula, I think.

Do Or Donut. There Is No Try.

2011-10-19T01:27:00.004-07:00

Just sayin'.

What I Do Makes A Lot Of Sense

2011-10-17T18:36:00.003-07:00

Tomorrow is my first day at my insane new job. I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty awesome getting a text message from your boss: "see u at 2 am!" On so many levels. ^_^

I got out of SPA early, and I said to myself as I was driving home, I will try to be in bed by 7:00-7:30. That is WEIRD, guys. In my former life, I went to bed at 1 or 2. Now that's my getting up time. I also said to myself, I'm going to eat ice-cream for dinner. So now, I am in a state of having eaten ice-cream and (caffeinated) tea for dinner, and I'm supposed to somehow go to sleep in half an hour.

What I do makes so much sense. ^_^ Don't worry, Mom, I'm going to eat a slightly more mealy meal when I get up at 1.

I also had to buy a new pair of jeans because I...made the hole in the knee of the others so much more holy while we were at Grandma's house on Friday. Unfortunately, the jeans that fit the best and are the most comfortable are very teenagery. I was a little bit astounded. But it's okay. No one will watch me bake donuts in my skinny-jeans in the middle of the night. Except for my boss while I'm training. :P

I just have to keep remembering the "end game." It kind of looks like the tracks down there on the ground have a particular direction. I have three things which I have to keep at the forefront of my mind as I go into this crazy new schedule.

1. I need to save up some money.
2. The most important thing is that I do my best with my students.
3.

I wish I could remember 3. I feel like it was important.

I've also been reading Atlas Shrugged. It's a really good book. I was pleasantly surprised. It's a book that you keep reading for the joy of it and not the duty. I honestly wasn't expecting that. I will probably write an essay/post about it when I finish in....600 pages.

Tracks

2011-10-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

I made up words to describe how I feel about life. Ready? Go!

I feel like in college, and particularly last year, I was driving a train fast and furiously toward a goal.

Then, I graduated and realized that the goal was just a cliff, which I drove right off.

Now, I'm just falling at a slow and leisurely pace, with all my innards up in my throat.

It's really hard not to think of this year as a waste, just waiting to land somewhere.

Are you scared? said Ruthiey.

No, I'm not scared. I'm just impatient to land somewhere.

And uncertain of where I'm going to land.

But God is good, and I know I'll land on a track.

I just don't know which one.

Maria von Trapp Meets Ethnomusicology

2011-10-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

That's what I felt like, driving off to Scottsdale Prep and then Archway on Thursday and Friday, with this in my backseat:

If you can't tell, that's dad's guitar, my didgeridoo, the djembe, and my concertina. I was going to take my hammered dulcimer too, but I was too lazy to tune it. :P

I also felt like a total hobo. My truck is full of all sorts of stuff for future times which doesn't really have a home in my bedroom. For example, there is stuff for Virginia's baby shower, stuff for my Latin students, stuff for Youth Group, stuff left over from Scottsdale Prep which isn't trash but I don't know what to do with. I guess it's okay to be a truck hobo. :D

Personal Waste Land, I and II

2011-10-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

I. Inanimate Objects

October is the cruellest month, bringing
Gasps of fresh air and mornings saying
You've been living too long
In the dry summer months
Where you can leave things out
And not worry about them molding.
And memories come softly floating in
Of buses and of seat of buses
Where one sat too long
And slept
Because the weight of the world
Pushed heavily, causing drowsiness
And missed one's stop.
Reminds of achselhohlegebissene schlangen
And long sleepy drives
Veering off to the right side of the road
Through a brown countryside
Into a tan city
And death is so close
When you drive without sleep.
But what of black and starless nights
The sky gummed over with clouds
What of sudden rainfall
And diamonds dripping of the rain spout
One by one
Was ist den, was ist los?
Nichts, gar nichts,
Ich schaue nur die Diamanten an.
But so something is los
Something rabidly preached against
In a torrent of emotion
And emotional song
All the while the hypocrite buffs up shoes
And dances.

II. Transients

And once again, rain.
Having been, come, gone
And in the blue light of a parking lot lamp
The shadows of its stains
On the windshield
Dapple the pages of a book
And the same nostalgic breeze
From an endless succession of Octobers
Which always bring desire
Once the urgent and terrible need
To make pumpkins
From cheap materials
Always a Wanderlust
Oder Sehnsucht
Für etwas unbekannt
Comes.
And so one realizes,
And the realization always comes mixed
With forms of motorized transportation,
That the soul doesn't exist
Who will fit comfortably into the same space
And this world of bachelorisms
Habits,
Solitude, and days within days
Won't suffer an entrant
And because of the barriers
Softly flashing orange signs
In a graying setting evening
Achtung! Attention!
None have tried.

For Bethany

2011-10-06T08:57:00.002-07:00

Because it was essentially her idea.

Proclaiming Linguistic Sins On a Street Corner With a Sandwich Board

2011-10-05T12:02:00.001-07:00

A brief regurgitation of a discussion I had with Joseph and then again with Mark:

I noticed the other day that the buzzword "sustainability" essentially means the same thing as that horror, "conservatism". Both are about maintaining a status quo. But the difference is "conservatives" want to preserve the status quo of, say, 60 years ago. Or if you're ultra-conservative, the status quo of ~200 years ago. Minus the slavery and stuff.
That which is to be preserved by "sustainability" is something qui isn't status yet. It's something quem they want to regulate into statum.

I can't remember whose idea it was that I should proclaim this truth by means of a sandwich board. But I don't think I will follow his advice.

Things Fell Apart

2011-10-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

On the back cover of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, which I just read, says that it "concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries."

In my book about missions, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, it says, "In spite of tremendous sacrifice, African missions have been harshly criticized, particularly in regard to the misionaries' ties to colonialism and their exporting of European civilization."

In Things Fall Apart, things fall apart. Unexpected, huh? The main character, Okonkwo, sees his life destroyed by two events, neither of them his fault. The first is an accidental manslaughter which effects his exile for seven years, and the second is the arrival of white missionaries. Because Okonkwo is absent from his village during a period of change, when he comes back, he is unable to reinstate himself, and he despairs, fulfilling the words of his lazy father: "You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone."

Manliness is an ideal in Okonkwo's culture. His main grievance against the Christian missionaries is that they bring what he calls effeminacy--they are passive people. Then, having introduced the idea of passivity and kindness to the people of his village, they introduce British style government, complete with British officials. Now the people have been trained not to resist, so the newcomers have their way. Okonkwo feels like he has come back from exile into a village of women.

What do we make of these criticisms and accusations? It is true that missionaries to Africa had (and have) the idea that they have to bring some of their culture as well as Christianity. How much of that is ethnocentricity and how much of that is because western culture is Judeo-Christian? People like to paint a picture of nice little indigenous cultures being thrown into an uproar and confusion by white missionaries--white missionaries make things fall apart. But should those things stay together? For example, both the missionary handbook and Achebe's book mention the practice of twin-murder. Twins were taken out into the forest to die because of spiritual misunderstanding. One of Achebe's characters, Okonkwo's eldest son, feels the wrong of this and later converts to Christianity.

My missionary handbook says:

Perhaps the greatest criticism of African missions has come from social scientists and anthropologists who have charged that Christian missions have wreaked havoc on African culture. It is true that missionaries of the nineteenth (and even the twentieth) century often failed to appreciate the distinctive qualities of unfamiliar cultures and failed to make Christianity compatible with the customs of other societies. But there were some customs, such as twin-murder and cannibalism and witchcraft, that did not contribute to a healthy environment [no really?]. The missionaries' efforts to eradicate these practices helped preserve Africa's most valuable cultural asset--the people themselves.

It's always hard and a little bit unprofitable to say what people should have done or not done "back then." The importation of white culture certainly didn't turn Africa into a paradise or even a first-world country. But, as I have to keep reminding myself all the time, it's better to be confused and get straightened out in heaven than to be confused and get straightened out in hell. Infinitely better. And I've been to Africa. The attitude of white people has changed from imperialism to santa-clausism. But there are true Christians there! At least in Ghana, where I went. And this is good!

And I have to go to work. So these thoughts will remain unfinished.

Maruška

2011-10-02T15:31:00.003-07:00

Because this has now safely arrived at its destination, I post a picture of Mary's early birthday dragon. It's better in real life, because the sparkles are iridescent, which the scanner didn't catch.

Sad Dino Love Song

2011-10-01T01:10:00.000-07:00

You and I are as old as the hills
We could have made it last by the strength of our wills
But where there is no will there is no way

We banked our love on ephemeral things
Like plastic hearts and aluminum rings
Things that crumbled and cracked at the end of the day

Volcanos burst along the fault
And we left our tracks with the pillow basalt
The mountains slid and the skies rained tears
And we fell and we laid for a million years

You and I are as old as the hills
We fell and we lay and we're lying there still
Alone together forever and forever apart

Our muscles rotted and we lost our hides
And our organs failed and we fossilized
But I want you to know that somewhere I still have your heart

And people come and people gawk
At all the places we used to walk
And all their presence can't change our past
You and I are as old as the hills
We could have made it last
by the strength of our wills
But where there is no will there is no way

D is for Delicious

2011-09-30T01:34:00.000-07:00

Most delicious thing in the world: a tomato eaten in the shower.

In Czech, the word for "paradise" is raj, and the word for tomato is "rajča." Coincidence? I don't think so.

Sunset

2011-09-28T01:25:00.000-07:00

I hope somebody in Phoenix last night noticed the sunset and took a picture of it. When I got off work, the sun was a huge neon pink orb in the sky, and the clouds were just so--stringy and flitting across it--so that it looked more like a setting Saturn than a setting sun. The road was splashed with tangerine light. Beautiful.

One thing I do want to say. Czech Republic is beautiful. Czech Republic is great. I love Czech Republic. But they have nothing on Arizona sunsets.

A sonnet, maybe?

The reckless pink and bulging sun
is somehow not ashamed
to show its gaudy face inflamed
upon prosaic dun
and blocks of concrete strips of road
are stunned with violent light
and let it lie without a fight
and bear the weightless load
the man-made edifice of square
is conquered by a sphere
gold on grey opaque and clear
let workmanship compare
the freeway sunset contrast stark
--and then descends the dark

Spiky Hair, Blurry Pictures

2011-09-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

I spiked my hair yestday for my French class. I tried to take pictures of it, but they came out rather blurrilicious.

Basically, I put gel in my hair and then brush it all the wrong way. It's fabulous. :D

Also, I thought you all might like to see what I found in my pants drawer:

In my supposed pants drawer, I have, as well as pants, three pairs of fake glasses, two pairs of fake eyes, two pairs of fake hair, and one viking hat.

That, my friends, is how I be. :P

There Ain't No Party Like a Communist Party...

2011-09-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

I finally finished reading that book of Marx selections that André sent me for Christmas last night around 11:30. Then, either because of that or because of the coffee I had at 9:00, I couldn't go to sleep until 2:30, even though I actually tried for once. In my lack of sleep, I had lots of intelligent thoughts about Marx and socialism, which I decided not to get up and record. I don't remember most of them. I do want to go through a couple things, though, from the very last section of this book, which is called "Future Society."

When one studies the materialist theories of the original goodness of man, the equality of intellectual endowment among men, the omnipotence of education, experience and habit the influence of industry, the value of pleasure, etc., there is no need for extraordinary penetration to discover what necessarily connects them with communism (from a text called Die Heilige Familie).

In other words, taking the assumptions w, x, y and z, socialism and communism are obvious. Whatever else Marx may have been, he wasn't actually a terrible logician. His problem is that he starts with false premises. He wants man to be originally and inherently good. He also says (over and over) that man is a social animal. (In this edition, at least, he uses italics excessively.) In his mind man, if left to himself and freed from the current oppresive State, will naturally tend toward the socialism he has described. Crime is something engendered by social conditions.

Along with this idea of man being a social animal, Marx sees and defines individuality as something negative. When the distinction between individuals in a civil society is their individuality itself, there will necessarily be conflict of interest, and interest is what should hold a society together.

If man by nature tends toward this socialism, this bond of common interest, though, why is the world like it is? Why haven't we all been happy socialists since the days of Adam and Eve? Marx would answer this by saying that our error in asking the question is the same as our error in mentioning Adam and Eve. For Marx, there is no "Adam and Eve," there is only evolution, both of humans as such and of civil society. He says, "For the socialist man, the whole of what is called world history is nothing but the creation of man by human labour, and the emergence of Nature for man" (from his economic and philosophic manuscripts).

I used the verb "tend" for a reason (not just because Will always misuses it). Marx has stated in other places that the stages of history--feudalism, capitalism--are necessary. They, just like gills and eye spots for the biological evolutionist, are the necessary evolutionary steps toward some telos, some societal goal. What is this goal? One would think from his writings that communism was the goal, but he says, "Communism is the necessary form and the active principle of the immediate future, but communism is not itself the aim of human development or the final form of human society" (ibid). Then what is, Herr Marx? He doesn't say.

That's the end of that train of thought; there is one more unrelated quote I want to mention. In another place in Die Heilige Familie, Marx say of Napoleon, "He practiced terrorism by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution." Huh. I wonder if he would have said the same of Lenin and Stalin?

Historical Linguistic Fiction

2011-09-25T14:36:00.002-07:00

Historical Linguistics is the study of the development of languages: cognates, derivatives, proto-languages, and so on and so forth.

Historical Fiction is when an author takes a historical event and builds a fictional story around it, creating new people and sometimes reinventing motives.

Historical Linguistic Fiction is something my dear Latin student Brooke does. She takes words, any words, and creates new history and new motives for them. For example, "vocabulary." "If you take off the v, the o, the c, the a, the b, and the u," she says, "what you have left is Lary. That is my pastor's name!" ...um, yes. Larry is definitely short for vocabulary...right. ^_^

I'm sorry, Brookie; people can change grammar and people can change usage, but they can't change history.

:D

Night Psalms

2011-09-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

Last night Joseph and I were talking about all the times the psalms mention the night, so I went through and made a quick gloss of verses about the night, sleeping, or being in your bed. The verses in parentheses are verses which contain one of the words, but I think they're being used more metaphorically or something.

Night:
1:2
6:6
16:7
17:3
19:2
22:2
30:5
32:4
42:8
63:6
77:2
88:1
90:4
91:5
92:2
119:62
119:48
121:6
134:1
139:11-12

Sleep:
3:5
4:8
(44:23)
(76:5-6)
(78:65)
121:3-4
127:2
132:4

Bed:
4:4
6:6
36:4
(41:3)
63:6
132:2
149:5

Misc.:
116:17
102:7
130:6

Joseph, I think the one you were talking about which says "go to bed!" is either 4:4 or 116:17. "Go to bed! It says so in the Bible!" Totally gonna use that on my hypothetical kids.

Also, it's pretty awesome reading through the entire book of psalms all at once (in two sittings; I eventually decided last night that it was too ironic to stay up looking for these verses). I found lots of cool things, which I might mention later. But this post is really just meant to sit here as a reference.

Lions and Prophets and Bears, Oh My!

2011-09-22T20:35:00.002-07:00

Or, People Getting Mauled In The Bible.

1 Kings 13 contains an interesting story about a dude who dies by a lion. The story goes approximately like this: A man of God delivers a message to King Jeroboam (who has only recently rebelled against Rehoboam and become king of the ten northern tribes) concerning a judgment on the idolatrous altar at Bethel. Having delivered the message, the man of God refuses to return with Jeroboam, saying that God forbade him to eat or drink. On his way home, the man of God is waylaid by another prophet who lies to him and says that God had rescinded the don't-eat-don't-drink command. The man of God believes the prophet and goes in to eat and drink. While they're doing this, the prophet says, guess what! Since you believed my lie and disobeyed God, you won't be buried with your fathers. Then the man of God goes out (apparently unfazed) and dies by a lion. When the prophet hears, he says, "It is the man of God who defied the word of the LORD. The LORD has given him over to the lion, which has mauled him and killed him, as the word of the LORD had warned him" (v 26). Then he buries him.

What???

In a certain sense, prophets have a sucky job. Their job was to be a representation--sometimes verbal, often visual--of what was to come. And what was to come in Israel was often bad. This poor die-by-a-lion guy in chapter 13 has the job of mirroring King Jeroboam in chapters 11 and 12, as well as showing the outcome.

In chapter 11, Jeroboam gets word from the Lord that he is going to be the ruler of the ten northern tribes. This is because under Solomon, the people began to give themselves over to idolatry. The split kingdom is supposed to fix that problem; Jeroboam's job is to stop idolatry. This command to Jeroboam is paralleled in the command to the man of God: don't eat or drink. The first thing Jeroboam does after gaining the kingdom is to get bad advice: you don't want people slinking back to Jerusalem, so set up golden calves. In other words, disregard the former anti-idolatry command. This is parallel to the lying word of the old prophet to the man of God. Then, comes the indictment: Hey, you knew. And you didn't test the spirits to see if they were from God. Therefore judgment will come on--there will be a slaughter at the altar, you will die by a lion.

We can see that the man of God's gruesome death has picture function because the conclusion the old prophet draws from it is this: Yup. What he prophesied against the altar will surely come to pass (13:32).

The next die-by-a-lion story is equally bizarre and has the same picture function. In 1 Kings 20, a prophet says to a man, strike me! The man refuses, and first prophet says okay, so go die by a lion because you didn't obey God. Then, the man goes out and dies by a lion.

Harsh?

Just before this incident, King Ahab had gone out to battle with Ben-Hadad, king of Syria. The Syrians had reasoned among themselves and come to the conclusion that God was a "god of the hills but not of the valleys." God, to show them that they were utterly confused about His nature, gives Israel a huge victory in the valleys. Ahab is now in a place where he's heard the word of the Lord--the Syrians will lose so that God's Lordship will be obvious--and he's also in a place where he has the Syrians in his power. And what does he do? He makes a treaty with Ben-Hadad. But when God says strike, as the man in the following verses finds out, you'd better strike. It's not cool to make a treaty with the enemies of God. So we have the violent visual illustration of the man dying by a lion for not striking, and then when the prophet gets someone else to wound him, he goes up to Ahab and enacts the moral again, ending with the saying, "Thus says the LORD: 'Because you have let slip out of your hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore your life shall go for his life, and your people for his people" (20:42).

The last mauling takes place in 2 Kings 2. Elisha has just seen Elijah go up in the whirlwind, received his mantle, and crossed back over the Jordan. Now he is heading up to Bethel, when some youths come out and mock him, saying , go up, you baldhead. Elisha turns around and curses them, and hem some bears come out and maul them.

The "cheater notes" in my study Bible suggest that maybe the taunts of these youths was particularly insulting because Elijah had been hairy, and the youths were saying why aren't you like Elijah, and why don't you go up to heaven like him?

Whether or not that's what the youths meant, something is seriously wrong in Israel. Compare the reaction of these youths to Elisha to the original meeting of Saul and Samuel. In 1 Samuel 9, Saul and his servant are out looking for donkeys. The servant suggests they go see Samuel--the resident prophet. Saul's response is, what are we going to bring as a present to honor him? Back in the day of Samuel, it was the custom to honor a prophet with a gift. Now, as Elisha comes back in his new role as resident prophet, he receives only mockery. Something has drastically and seriously changed in Israel, and that's not okay. The insult, the curse and the resulting mauling is, again, a microcosm of what is happening in Israel. God is no longer honored, His people have elicited the curses elaborated in Deuteronomy, and judgment is coming.

[ht to Erin for making us all curious about people dying by lions]

Meta-Post

2011-09-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

This is a post about posts! Blogger has this lovely statistics page, and sometimes I like to look at it because it amuses and or flatters me. The existence of this page fills me with the desire to manipulate. For example, I like linking to other posts, because that makes the statistics cool. (I am guilty of having done that in this post.)

In addition, highly amusing is the place where it tells you search terms. Apparently, one lovely person stumbled upon my blog after searching for "istb2 noises." You have no idea with what joy that fills me. That would have led them to this post. I am so happy that someone else found istb2 creepy enough to google what in the world is going on there. Someone also searched "women wearing tap shoes." I have no idea where that got them. ^_^

Furthermore, now it's time for a moment of honesty. I noticed that my blog was becoming a blag--it had the lowest amount of visitorship since 2009, when it became interesting. Oh ne! Have I become boring in my old age? Not okay!

Finally, thanks to Ruthiey, who apparently sends over the largest percentage of visitors. By linking to her blog, I'm doing her a statistical favor in return. By mutually increasing each other's traffic, we can have some sort of Blog Alliance, and then when the aliens come, we'll hole up in our Blogoforts together and stave them off with brilliance and wit! ...or something.

In conclusion, Meta- is one of my favorite prefixes to (mis)use.

The End.

A Brief Exchange

2011-09-21T02:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Sir or Madam,
What is your apology for existence?
And what are you doing
That you do it with such persistence?

Dear Questioner:
I quite appreciate your concern,
But what I do and why
I don't know, nor do I care to learn.

A Slow Infusion of Coffee to the Veins

2011-09-20T01:28:00.001-07:00

It is not I, but the caffeine inside me. For some reason, it takes me hours to drink a cup of coffee. For example. The coffee I got this morning after French class at 10:30pm, I sipped on all the way until I got off work around 6:30pm. And then, as soon as I got home and ate dinner, I made myself a cup of black tea. I really don't drink large amounts of caffeine--at least compared to some consumers--but the way I operate, there is a continual input of caffeine into my system. This can't be good. At the very least, it probably explains why I am still wide awake at 1:00, even though I got up relatively early and didn't sleep in between class and work. Tomorrow (by which I mean today), though, is one of those magical days on which I don't have to get up.
This wood-between-the-worlds stage, this graduated-but-not-really-working stage is so weird. I hope I can normalize it to some extent and in some direction.

I also put my heart back on a chain and am wearing it. I won't give it away so easily again, and it's nice to have finally cleaned up enough shelf space for it.* Just sayin'. I relate very symbolically to things and places. I have this notion of "cleaning up" or "redeeming" places. I want to re-use them for better purposes and attach better memories to them. Things are more of a reclamation--I have to reclaim things as mine. That's how it is with my little ballet-dancer heart. Virginia bought it for me at the California state fair for my eighth birthday. I'm not sure why I'm even talking about this, except that I'm wearing it again for the first time in...three years? four years?

I think this is my cue to go to bed. Goodnight!

Distracted By the Bottle

2011-09-19T14:04:00.001-07:00

I am, of course, talking about sliding a glass bottle up and down the neck of a guitar while strumming instead of learning to play like a normal person.
Why? Because guitars are not designed for normal people! They are designed for people with the wrist flexibility of an eel and six or seven fingers!
Actually, our guitar neck is just a little bit wide for me. I think it will be easier on a non-classical guitar. I decided that if I always want a guitarist at my disposal, I should just suck it up and learn to play myself. I can now painfully and hesitantly play 3 and 4 chord songs. But that's okay! Most praise songs only have those chords anyway. I just tend to get distracted by slide-guitar options.
Folks, it's really hard to be self-motivated. Even with the best of intentions, my free time devolves into sleeping, misusing guitars, sitting at the computer (cough) and making up charts about verbs. I need another job. P-: (I learned from Mark today that I can make the tongue-sticky-outy-face the other way and it doesn't lose its cynicism.)
Now, though, for the next four hours, I become externally motivated. I have to go to work/school, where I will help kids with their verb problems and teach them about healthy grains. Sometimes I wonder how this came about. How is it that I am teaching kids about healthy eating?
When I get back, I will write my Latin lesson for Thursday. How does this even be?

Hey There, Dvořák

2011-09-17T12:56:00.001-07:00

Hey there, Dvořák,

what's it like there as a statue

I'm six-thousand miles away

and miss

the city all about you

yes I do

I left my heart in Prague with you

you know it's true

Hey there, Dvořák,

don't you worry 'bout the distance

I'll come back there in a year

or so

with scholarly assistance

if I can

look at all my apps, you'll see my plan

you'll be my man

Hey there, Dvořák,

man, it's really not about you

but the city and the people

and the

godlessness around you

and it's rough

interest in religion's not enough

there must be love

Oh, it's what Prague does to me

oh, it's what Prague does to me

Six thousand miles seems pretty far

but they've got planes and trains and cars

I'd walk to you if I had no other way

the world might all make fun of us

as arrogant or dumb because

we say

that they don't know the one true Way

Dvořák I can't promise you

that I'll be there to see this through

but know that if I never back there get

I won't forget

Hey there, Dvořák,

please be good and watch my city

and I'll

pray for all its people

you just keep your music pretty

like you do

you know that beauty points to truth

and they all need to know the Truth

and so Dvořák here's to you

your city too

Oh, it's what you do to me

oh, it's what you do to me

Tricky Isness

2011-09-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

One of the hardest things to grasp when learning a foreign language as such is the concept of isness--or ontology or Wesen, if you wish. Pick your language. Students get lists of vocabulary: Tisch means table. Luna means moon. Être means to be. Vocabulary comes off as a list of codes: I mean cookie, c-o-o-k-i-e, but I don't want my kid to overhear and understand, so I say "plätzchen". That thing up in the sky at night is moon, m-o-o-n, but the crazy Roman people called it "luna". It's hard to convey to students and to understand oneself that the old Romans didn't just have a code for m-o-o-n, but that m-o-o-n and l-u-n-a are both codes--equally valid, equally arbitrary, equally crazy--for that scar-faced ball of rock which demurely circles our planet. (If I had a face like the moon, I would probably be significantly less demure.)
"Mrak" isn't "cloud", it's:

"Livre" isn't "book", it's

When the world is new, that is, when you've just been born, nothing has a name yet. A table isn't a Tisch, table (French pronunciation), or a mesa. It just is, in all its glorious isness.Only as you get older and have a need to communicate that isness do you learn the linguistic sign: table. And then whatever else you learn about tableness, in whatever language, will be defined by your first linguistic experience: table. And you'll find roads like Table Mesa Rd. funny, because, Haha! "Mesa" means "table"!

Only when you experience newness again, like a new food, do you get the benefit of having a primary experience in a different language. Like svičkova. I have no idea how or if it translates to English. If I met a dish like it here, I would say, oh, this is like svičkova. "X-term" means "svičkova".

The concept of isness is hard to grasp, and primary labels are hard to overcome, but when you do--when this

is equally a table or a Tisch, when

is equally luna or moon--it is one of the most gratifying feelings ever.

But sometimes it ruins your phone-answering skills.

September Air Between My Toes

2011-09-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

We don't get Fall as such in Arizona--our one deciduous tree won't drop its last leaf until January--but all this week, in the morning, the air has been different. Magical. And when the wind blew through my toes as I drove--because I drive with my foot out the window--it was chilly.
Annnnd, I was going to try to make this a meaningful post, but it's almost midnight and I'm going to do something new, something unheard of, and go to bed before tomorrow. So no meaningfulness tonight. Czech back later, I might say something good eventually.

Ohhhhh Ne

2011-09-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

I broke my computer. Now there is a black V of broken screenness that wiggles ominously betimes. V for Victory, said Joseph.

V for Fail. ):

How Does This Be?

2011-09-13T00:47:00.001-07:00

This is how I study French. Linguistic comparison and markers make everything better.

Happiness Isn't Free

2011-09-12T19:11:00.001-07:00

I saw a trippy car on the way home from work today--and I don't use that adjective lightly. It was painted with weird little almost-cartoon-style animals and flowers and was, well, trippy. On the front, it said, "Happiness is free."

I contend that, like lunch, there's no such thing as a free happiness. At least not a lasting real deep one. There was a high price, and Somebody else paid it.

Also, even godless fifth graders know that some things are beyond stupid--they're Wicked.

On the other hand, some things, though awful, are funny. Awfully funny. Like Sonja barfing tuna across the kitchen. Yep, you all wanted to know about that.

We're Just Technologically Impaired

2011-09-11T19:51:00.001-07:00

We were supposed to give our Team Praha presentation at church today, but it didn't work out because of a technological fail--nobody checked to see if the projector and computer supplied were compatible. Sometimes, like in Calculus class, the powerpoint is a crutch, and canceling class because the projector is broken is ridiculous. But I think that for a mission's presentation it's really important to have faces for names. So we consented to having our thing put off till next week. Pastor said, well, disappointments are His appointments. It will actually be more convenient in terms of inviting friends to do it next week.

I think Ciaran has been at our house more in the past couple weeks since Team Praha than all the times previously put together. Which, I hasten to add, is a good thing. I also think that I am literally and legitimately going to go look for a second job which takes place in the middle of the night instead of trying to get another 20 hours in my morning holes. Who needs to be awake during the day anyway?

"I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen." (Romans 9:1-5)

It's a Romans 9 night. And being part of the Team Praha we know and love which shares all things liberally and without complaint and takes all drinks without necessarily asking, I've collected Joseph's cold. I've never had a huge amount of respect for hand sanitizer, but it's pretty jerk move to not use it at school. Funny thing, funny to me at least, is that I bought it for use in Africa. ^_^

Perfume Ascending

2011-09-09T20:26:00.001-07:00

I like my Latin class. It is composed of three little girls, two are second grade and one is a little sister of uncertain age. They learned about the alphabet and about derivatives. Baby words, we called them. But the baby word is longer than the Mom word! Yeah, sometimes that happens that kids grow up bigger than their parents.

They also learned to say oremus: let us pray. So at the end of class, oravimus. Adelaide prayed, dear God, please help me with my homework because it's hard to spell things. Then, Amelia prayed, dear God, I pray for all the people in the world.

I like listening to little kids pray. They're totally right in their implicit trust that God cares--He cares about the little things like spelling, but He also cares about huge things like all the people in the world. There's no inhibitions or attempt to pare down the request to something "reasonable."

"Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength..."

"Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."

French Is More Bearable If You Translate It Into German

2011-09-08T01:45:00.001-07:00

My first French class was right after I got home from Czech Republic. I went to class and sat there in the cold room (because classrooms are always cold) and wanted to cry. I decided that French being beautiful was one of those lies that was just big enough and repeated enough to be bought. But then I have a fondness for consonant clusters.

But I've been translating my vocabulary lists into German instead of English, and now it is more exciting to me. One of the sad things about English is that it doesn't have gender. German does. I've been trying to find patterns to predict when the French and the German gender will be the same and when they will be different. The only thing that I've found so far is a little bit obvious. When we have words which are essentially the same in both languages--only slightly modified from their parent languages--they usually have the same gender:

une bibliotheque, die Bibliothek
un café, das Café
une faculté, die Facultät
une université, die Universität

and so on.

Usually.

une fenetre, das Fenster.

Crazy German people. I blame it on them because it's also feminine in Latin.

I should mention that French only has masculine and feminine, whereas German also has neuter. So masculine nouns in French can correspond either to masculine or neuter nouns in German. I should also probably mention that une and die are feminine, un and der are masculine, and das is neuter. And I don't know how to do accent grave or accent circonflex, only accent aigu.

Linguistics stuff makes me excited in sort of the same way that history does. I was talking to Joseph tonight about parallel things: it's fun and weird to think of how things happen at the same thing as other times. For example, while he was flying out to Czech Republic for English camp, we were out on the golf course in the midst of the great Haboob of 2011. Talking about comparing parallel events, he said, "It's like people exist elsewhere!" That's how it is is with studying history--while Haydn was hanging out at the Esterhazy estate, people in America were revolting. What? (Or is that surprising; aren't we always?) In the same way, while French people (who don't always eat baguettes, as we learned today) were developing their language, Germans were doing so next door on a completely different track. Then, synthesis of these different parallel tracks is very cool.

All that said, I think it's better as an insomniac hobby than a career. I think I like my job at Scottsdale Prep with middle schoolers. Maybe that's because, as Mary would say, they're my peer group. I'm also starting Latin class for second graders tomorrow. Can you believe, I used to think I didn't like to teach? I think it's because the things that people suggested I ought to teach were things I didn't feel good enough at. Like piano.

Also, can I just be nocturnal?

Isaiah 43

2011-09-07T12:00:00.002-07:00

Playing with pastels on black paper...

Vlasyraptor

2011-09-02T09:56:00.001-07:00

Because in Czech, "Vlasy" means "hair."

And because I very badly miss the one we called that.

Sleep is for the Weak

2011-08-30T00:47:00.002-07:00

But we are weak. But when I sleep, I have weird and unsettling dreams. You know you're up too late when your Czech friends start appearing back on chat. :P

Vlasymandias

2011-08-26T14:44:00.003-07:00

I met a traveler from a modern land
Who said I've heard your faith and where I stand
It seems a pleasant thing essentially
But we'll all end up the same eventually
And I appreciate it looks cute on you
But this righteous zeal to get me too
I confess I don't comprehend
A means as useless as the end.

Yup, Ozymandias, he said
And put his arm around his head
A gesture more of humor than alliance
For on our side, he said, we've now got Science
And you can show me how you failed and where
But I refuse to look, I shan't despair.

This trackless waste, these arid sands
Won't bring me to the law's demands
And if they did, I'd keep my knees
Erect, and bow to whom I please
To whom I please and where and how
For now is fun, and fun is now
And saying thus, he traveled on
I sat and wept when he was gone.

Phantastes

2011-08-24T14:55:00.005-07:00

This past week, I read George MacDonald's Phantastes. I don't know what to do with it. I need someone to exegete it for me.

All of George MacDonald's books seem to have this same theme. I didn't like it in Lilith and I equally didn't like it in Phantastes (oddly enough, I used to love it in The Lost Princess. I don't know if I still would). The idea is to start with a character. In the case of Phantastes, Anodos. Said character gets transported into a different world and is presented with a situation of choice. He makes the wrong choice, despite a nagging feeling. Romans 1, anyone? As the book proceeds, it becomes more and more clear that one of the options with which he is presented is Wrong. There's temptation, then there is downright forbidding. Despite warnings he continues to choose Wrong.

Then, there is a turning point (which I can't quite determine). After the turning point, he is presented with a series of tests. Somehow now he knows he is being tested, which somehow makes it easier (though not easy) to choose the Right. After going through these increasingly hard tests and becoming better at picking the Right, he has a final consummation and thereupon is transported back to his original regular life.

Can I just say, What? It works as a narrative because it is very like a fairy tale and MacDonald is such a master of description. But the content presents such a synergistic view of grace, I don't know what to make of it.

Singing Smetana on the Banks of the Vltava

2011-08-22T21:50:00.003-07:00

I'm going to try to write a blog post again. This time, I'm not going to leave the post unfinished and open while I take a shower. For the record, I thought it was safe to sing in the shower because Erin was the only person home and the only person who would hear. ^_^

It always blows my mind when I go to Prague, and I go up into the bedroom on the third floor and look out the window, and lo! there is the Vltava flowing placidly by. You don't understand; I grew up listening to that one Smetana piece--Die Moldau, it usually goes by, but in Czech it's Vltava. The whole Ma Vlast suite, really. And then I look out the window, and there it IS. I can't fathom it. It's within walking distance. We can (and did) walk across the bridge and sit by the banks and pray. Can I say, Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Or, in Czech, Coooooooooooooooo??

Every time I go to Czech Republic, I leave a bit of my heart behind. The first time I went, I came back knowing I could do that forever. But not receiving great encouragement for that idea, I forgot what I knew. The second time I remembered, but was talked out.

This third time, I've come back to almost nothing to anchor me down. My family is great, but they don't anchor me down here. But I have no boyfriend, no college, no real job, nothing to keep me here but people. And I feel like the vast majority of people here have sadly let me down in the past year. Maybe that's unfair to them. Maybe that's completely unfair to them, but it's still how I feel about most of them.

But this wasn't meant to be a sob story--I'm trying not to do that again. I just mean to say, I left my heart in the Czech Republic, and there is very little here to bring it back.

Czech Republic is beautiful. When we were in the mountains, I was overcome with this Romans Ninesy sort of melancholy. I wrote in my notebook, If beauty is truth and truth beauty, why is there so much death in the midst of beauty?

How can such a beautiful place be filled with so many non-Christians? How does this be? Czech Republic is rife with history. (Just ask Kaja.) I've been to Jan Hus's house there (not this trip), and touched the lintels of the door of the place where he did something. Can't even remember what. In any case, Czech Republic is full of reminders of God working through history. And to many of them it means nothing. For those who have been and seen, this is heartbreaking.

I never used to know what people meant when they looked at a sad situation and said, "Oh, this just breaks my heart." Now I do. It's when you come home from a week in the mountains in which you've walked up the highest mountain in Czech Republic and into Poland (I walked to Poland guys! Whaaaat!) and ballroom danced on the wet slippery porch until midnight and sang ridiculous songs around a camp fire and sat in the dark and stared at the stars and then got up the next morning to slice up loaves and loaves of bread for lunch sandwiches...you live in each other's sweat and laughter, and then when it's time to leave, and you ask them, "Are you coming to church on Sunday?" They laugh and say, "It depends on how drunk I get on Saturday night" and then won't promise anything. Then you come home and it feels like your little innards are slowly being sawed in half with a blunt and clumsy knife and you know they don't care about any of the gospel they've just heard. And you can't think about anything else, and you're praying the completely selfish prayer, "God can you convert him just so I can stop thinking about it and this pain will stop?" That's a broken heart.

But there are joys too! Like when you are playing baseball with the kids at the last day of VBS in Prague, and two of the boys from the hiking trip just show up to hang out. And then they come to the closing program for the kids. They didn't know any of the kids. They just came because they were curious. And then they came again on Sunday. Lord please turn their curiosity into faith!

This is rambling. I'm going to leave all the thoughts unfinished and come back to it maybe later. I'm not really sure how to wrap it all up, because nothing is wrapped up in my brain yet. But I want to go back. I have this emotional and slightly cliche propensity to look for somewhere I belong. I've probably written about it before. It's caused a lot of (unnecessary?) pain and stupidity. But every time I go to the Czech Republic, I think to myself, this is where I belong, especially this last time. Is this God saying, Vicki. Duh. Right now I'm praying it is!

p.s. Dear Stomach. I've heard it's pretty cool to digest things. You should try it sometime. Just sayin'.

Writing A Story About The Entire World

2011-08-20T20:07:00.002-07:00

I feel like I should write a post about the trip to the Czech Republic, but the idea is daunting me out of my Kindersneaker giraffe socks. (Side note. Giraffe socks?? Yes!)

HACKED BY ERIN

Vicki's singing opera in the shower right now. And there's an animal in our house we can't locate.

Focus on God is super important. Don't lose focus.

There's nothing that hurts so bad as loving someone who doesn't believe in God and knowing there's nothing you can say.

I like it when people pray specifically.

And always remember - BATTLE SHIP MAKES BEER.

Everybody Speaks English Here

2011-08-18T10:29:00.002-07:00

...and I just answered the telephone saying, "Dobrý den!"

Can I go back to the Czech Republic? Forever?

Guest Post: When Not To Box

2011-07-30T08:13:00.001-07:00

Ruthiey writes...

You've heard of stereotyping, right? It's how we classify people in our minds. It's actually a defense mechanism to help our brains not turn to melty cheese. Imagine if you had to create a separate mental cubicle for every single person you know. You couldn't just refer to one group as 'preppy' or one as 'theological' or 'my age but married', you'd have to think about each person separately every time you thought about them and you'd have to reassess them every time you saw them. Sounds exhausting, right? It would be. We'd all need thirty-four hours of sleep a day and since that's longer than a standard day, the government would have to change the length of a day and that would take eons of bureaucratic hours and they'd need so much more sleep trying to make laws _while_ trying to reprocess everyone they saw all day that they'd eventually go into a coma and die and we still wouldn't have longer days. You see the problem? I rest my case.

However, despite the essential need of our ability to stereotype, I would like to present an argument against stereotyping, or 'pinning', as I like to call it. Sometimes when we pin people down, we cut ourselves off from ever seeing then differently and maybe encouraging change. For example, say your friend is depressed and unmotivated about life. Yes, absolutely love them and empathize when they share their struggles, but don't be unwilling to envision something better for them. Don't let the ease of saying "They're just like that," stop you from encouraging them and speaking words of truth when the time comes. When I know someone who is needy or difficult, especially emotionally, part of me wants to run far, far away from being close to them because I fear they will suck me dry. Part of me (that's a bit more sanctified), though, wants to see them changed and freed and _complete_. It's seeing them through Jesus' eyes. It's beautiful. Since bullet points are my latest favorite thing, I'll break it down.

Don't pressure them to change. You'll both be annoyed.
Believe God is able. Look back at what he's done for you.
Think vision. Envision them delighting in Jesus and becoming whole in him.
Give them one thing they can pin down for sure - that you love them.

Over and out!

R<3

I Write To Be Read

2011-07-22T14:36:00.002-07:00

I sing to be heard
I cook to be eaten
...????
Um. Yeah.

But it's hard for me to find a balance between being dreepy and baring my soul on the internet (as Grandma would say) on the one hand and being boring and superficial on the other. Some people can write about their innards and it's okay, some people can't. The only way to be safely consistently deep is to turn it into a literary journal or something...and why not???

But anyway. I won't be writing anything for about a month now, because I'm going to the Czech Republic by means of California. In the meantime, Ruthiey is going to post a guest post sometime while I'm gone.

That's all.

<3

The Return of the Prodigal

2011-07-21T12:35:00.004-07:00

That is what I feel like as I begin to pack for the Czech Republic. (Where by "pack" I mean "throw clothes into a laundry basket.") It's partly because the story of the prodigal son is part of the VBS we'll be doing and partly because it's been a couple of years since I've been to Czech, years that I'm not sure were spiritually well spent.

I'm afraid of "older brothers"--people who may exist only in my head--who will think, "Hey, who are you to be telling people about God when you've been eating the food of theological pigs?" Or not eating any food at all.

I'm also terrified of this idea of a hike. The second week of the trip, the team is going to take a series of day-hikes with our Czech peers. I have, on the nebulous scale from zero to twenty-four, zero stamina. I've known all along we'd be doing this, but when I realized I would be going to Prague after all (it wasn't immediately obvious), I fell into a sort of soul-panic: "I've got to get my act together!!" That seemed to be more important to me than beefing up. Now I think I maybe should have combined the two.

But are these legitimate concerns? Or are they just the telling fears of one who doesn't really believe what she read this morning: "Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law" (Romans 3:28)?

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited. Especially when I go back and look at pictures from my and other people's previous trips and remember all the kids. And I love the Czech language. Reading and practicing it makes me want to run around in circles for joy. It's so beautiful.

On a lighter note, I want you all to know that I'm really enjoying poking holes in a styrofoam cup with a needle. Also, symphonic metal cover of Carl Orff's O Fortuna? I think yes!

Therion: O Fortuna

Retail Conversations

2011-07-19T23:05:00.003-07:00

Working retail, I have these standard somewhat meaningless automatic responses. For example, this little miniature conversation happens with almost every customer:
"You have a great day!"
"You too!"

This is fine. This is just nice friendly customer service, and it doesn't really matter that all the pleasantries I exchange with customer N are the same that I did with N - 1.

When it does matter is when I become the customer. I had to go to the bank today and let them know that I'm leaving the country so they don't lock down my account if I try to use my debit card in Czech. At the end, the dude said, "You have a great trip!" and I said, "You too!....er....I mean. Don't have a nice trip....I mean...." And he kinda laughed at me.

:P

Trendy Tuesday: Fedora

2011-07-19T09:19:00.005-07:00

I just thought this was an addition my wardrobe needed. :P

Fifteen

2011-07-13T23:59:00.001-07:00

There's no avoiding

The sharp dull silver

That cuts and bites deep

Trim, snick, snap

Peeling back the sickly bark

Exposing raw pain underneath

Something must be wrong

There's no reply

Can't just grovel

With a deeply ingrained desire

Doesn't count

To wrench out the heart

By steaming arteries

And hold it dripping

Dangling veins

Look, aren't I pathetic?

See what I've done

To myself

Won't you at least

Give me something

Or let me go?

Above it all

Beneath, beside, around

Inside, outside

Doesn't matter what I want

Even if I knew

It wouldn't make a difference

No pitiful cringing

Makes real prayer

Excuses aren't repentance.

I'm a Nut

2011-07-11T21:35:00.001-07:00

I'm an acorn small and round

Lying on the cold cold ground

Everybody steps on me

That is why I'm cracked you see

I'm a nut

That is my theme song. And Nick says I'm a nut. If even Nick says I'm a nut, I must actually be a nut.

I Hate Mornings

2011-07-08T12:00:00.003-07:00

I can't get anything done in them and I don't have any thoughts in them. I just sit around and wander back and forth between keyboards (piano and computer). I want to be back in school.

I made a song but I'm ashamed to play it on our piano in public to get it up to recording snuff. So I'm just chain listening to Decemberists instead. I'm also making little sets for a video for my song, an effort made half-hearted by the nagging reminder in the back of my head that my camera sucks.

A Hole in the Night

2011-07-06T10:56:00.001-07:00

Morning was unbearably hot, and Sam woke with a massive headache. “But I didn’t even get that drunk last night,” he said. Then the weight of his great social blunder descended on him, and he was pinned to the ground where he lay. “I can never leave this room again,” he thought. He was afraid to get up and go out lest his guests still be there, but even more afraid that they should be gone. Either way, the situation was unredeemable.

His cell-phone was lying on the floor beside him, and he looked to see the time. It was slightly after eleven. “At eleven fifteen,” he thought, “I will get up and go face the world.” Having made that resolution, he got up and straightened out his clothes. He left the room slowly, unsure of what attitude to strike if he met his guests.

The house was empty, though, except for the dishes and trash from last night. Sam drank the remains of the wine from someone’s glass and set about putting the dishes next to the sink. When they were all arrayed around the sink like livestock around a watering hole, Sam proceeded to throw away all the napkins and other trash. Feeling like he had violated his father’s sanctum, he put the couches back in their original homes and even went so far as to wipe off the coffee table.

One of the armchairs had been shoved into the corner, with its back to the room. When Sam went to pull it out into the middle of the room, it was full.

“Oh, God,” he said, jumping back. When he had dusted the surprise off his hands and she had rubbed the sleep in her eyes into the back of her head, he asked, “When did you get here?”

“Last night,” she said, “they let me in on their way out.”

“How did you get here?”

“I walked.”

Sam didn’t know what to do with her. When he had told her to come, he had imagined that she would join the party, perhaps get drunk, and forget her intentions. He hadn’t planned to fall asleep, and he certainly hadn’t planned for her to be there the next morning.

She washed and dried all the wine glasses and cracker plates, swept the floor, and took out the trash, not because she was a particularly domestic person, but because she simply had nothing else to do. All the while, Sam sat uncomfortably on the edge of the arm chair, which he never restored to its original home.

He thought at first about making conversation, but conversation seemed as out of place here as it had been in her frigid wasteland of train tracks. When she ran out of things to do, she came and sat down on the couch and looked at him expectantly.

“Well,” said Sam finally, “I don’t really know what to say to you.”

She nodded. “That’s okay, I can go if you want.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then stay. I’ll think of something.” Sam got up and paced back and forth in front of the TV set. Ariel sat on the couch and followed him silently with her eyes, folding endless purple papers into flowers with her hands. When the room was so full of purple flowers that Sam could no longer pace without stepping on them, he crunched through and sat down on the coffee table. “Give me your hands,” he said. She gave him her hands, and he put them on the coffee table too. “Now, what are we going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, how about we figure out. For example. What do you do with yourself when you’re not talking to me and you’re not on the other side of the tracks?”

She appeared to think. “Well,” she said, “sometimes I work.”

“Where do you work?”

“At the hospital.”

Sam was taken aback. “What do you mean, you work at the hospital?”

“I work in the ER.”

“That’s your real job?”

“Yes, I suppose so. That’s my real job.”

“And what do they call you there?”

“Angel.”

“Is that your real name?”

“No.”

“So what do you do at the ER?”

“I save people’s lives.”

“Why?”

Now she was taken aback. “Why not? Of course I save people’s lives. Why else would I work there?”

“If it’s your job to save people’s lives, why do you keep trying to kill yourself?”

She rubbed the question off on her shoulder.

“Okay. How about this question. I thought you were a student. How do you have time to work at the hospital and be a student and disappear for extended stretches of time into your suicidal fantasy land?”

“They don’t notice,” she said.

“Who doesn’t?”

“Nobody does.”

“Nobody notices when you leave?”

“No. I—“

“Great,” Sam cut her off. “Let’s go, then.” He stood up, and she looked up at him balefully. “You can take your hands off the table now.”

She peeled her hands off the table, leaving behind crimson handprints.

“Oh, geez,” said Sam. “Are you okay?”

She looked from one hand to the other. Sam went into the kitchen to get a wash-cloth. He scrubbed at the table, but the handprints wouldn’t come off. “Will these hands never be clean?” said Ariel. At first Sam thought she was quoting something, but she repeated it again and again, with rising hysteria, and began rubbing them violently on the couch.

“Ariel, stop. You’re getting your red all over my dad’s couch.”

She stopped and looked up. “But they’re broken,” she said. “My hands are broken.”

“They’re fine,” said Sam. “They’ve just turned red. Let’s go.”

“It’s because of a rip,” she said.

“Let me see. We probably have band-aids or something in a cupboard.” Sam had left her, and was in the kitchen, looking in drawers.

“You can’t tape up a rip with band-aids,” she said.

“How big is it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, let’s go look in my dad’s bathroom. We’ll find something to tape it together.”

“It’s not a cut,” she said, coming into the kitchen, holding her hands out in front of her. “It’s a rip in the night.”

Sam ran his fingers through his hair and shut the silverware drawer. He had taken out a knife and slipped it into his pocket, though he didn’t know why. “Ariel, I don’t really know what you’re talking about. Are you bleeding?”

“No,” she said, putting her hands on the counter. “It’s not blood.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s a rip in the night. It’s happened before, you know. That was how I saw you the first time.”

“That’s nice,” said Sam. “I have to go put on some shoes. And then we’ll go.” He left the kitchen abruptly. He went into his room and sat on the edge of his bed with his fingers in his hair. Presently, he began to put on his socks and shoes, which were scattered about.

When he came back out into the kitchen, Ariel was standing at the sink and letting the water run over her hands. “All the perfumes and spices of Arabia will never clean these little hands,” she said, and again Sam had the feeling that she was quoting something.

Sam reached to turn off the faucet, but it was too hot to even touch. “Yeesh,” he said, “are you trying to boil your hands off?”

“No,” she said, without moving her hands. “I can’t feel it.”

Sam summoned his courage and pushed the faucet off quickly, then stepped back, shaking his hand. “No hurting yourself in my house,” he said.

“There’s a hole,” she said, rather desperately, turning around and putting her hands together. “I don’t usually.”

“A hole in what?” Sam found something tangled in the back of one of his curls. He pulled it out and rolled it between his fingers therapeutically to curb his annoyance.

“Well,” she said, “sometimes you can see through from one to the other when you don’t want to. And then I’m afraid the pressure created by then vacuum will suck me in.”

“Amelia,” said Sam, “I mean, Ariel, you don’t ever make any sense. Let’s just go and look for my father again, okay?” Later it perturbed him that he had called her the wrong name at first, even though neither was her real name. She was dripping diluted red water, like hummingbird food, onto the floor. “Here,” said Sam, and gave her a dish towel to dry her hands on. “Keep that,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it gets all red.”

George’s car had disappeared with him, so Sam and Ariel took the city bus. Sam was used to riding for free because of the campus shuttle and because George had worked for the system, but now that George was a non-entity, Sam had to scrounge up change for both fares. The bus driver was annoyed at his incompetence, and there was unnecessary confusion about fares, since Ariel couldn’t let go of her soaked dish towel. Then, instead of staying up by the wheelchair ramp, Ariel made her way to the back corner of the bus. The whole thing happened against the backdrop of Sam’s world, but for the first time he was an alien in it.

It was an older bus, with the gray seats flecked with purple and green and people’s chewing gum. Ariel sat next to the window and stuck her feet on the bar of the seat in front of her and Sam sat next to her. “I haven’t ridden on a bus for a long time,” said Ariel, putting her red fingerprints on the window. “Look at the spots of head-grease.”

“Things are not going well,” said Ariel when they reached the tracks. They stood in the middle, looking across. Her remark seemed a little superfluous, since there were patches of blackness in the field of purple flowers. They weren’t so much a concrete blackness, though, as they were not—nothing at all. “I told you there was hole,” she said, “it’s leaking out.”

“That’s nice,” said Sam. “Let’s go.”

But Ariel was transfixed by the patches of nothingness.

“Come on,” said Sam, “It’s your fault it’s leaking out, isn’t it?”

“I know,” she said suddenly, bitterly, dropping her cherry dish-towel. “Everything is always my fault, isn’t it?”

“Well, I’m sorry you think that,” said Sam. “Are you coming in with me, or am I going in alone?”

“Don’t go alone,” she said dully, and her words fell heavily on the tracks. As the resulting clang sounded, they walked in silence across to the other side. It was still echoing and spreading out over the bleak scenery, when Sam realized that they had just fought.

They walked along the tracks for several minutes, Ariel pouting and Sam slightly bewildered. Sam finally broke the silence carefully, sliding his words into the darkness as into water. “Ariel,” he said

“I’m not Ariel,” she said.

“I know, but that’s what you told me to call you.”

“Today I’m not Ariel. Today I’m Ophelia.”

“That’s nice. Ophelia, then. I think that going along the tracks is futile. We tried it before.” Then he added, “Are your hands still red?”

She held them up. “I can’t tell,” she said.

“No, I can’t either.”

“That’s okay.” She rubbed them against each other and then against her pants. “Do you want to explore the rest of the world?”

“Well—“ Sam stopped.

They set out perpendicular to the tracks, and Sam walked carefully, because he suddenly wasn’t sure that the ground was real. He was seized with the conviction that a misstep would land him in an endless black hole, a nothingness like that which was eating up the field of purple flowers.

They walked for a while through the gravel and around the black rocks. Once, Sam stopped to touch a rock to make sure it was real. It seemed real enough. Ophelia didn’t wait for him, and he had to catch up with her. After a while, Sam noticed that the landscape was changing. The world on either side was sloping up and folding in, until they were walking through a ravine.

The gravel and black rocks diminished and then disappeared, and at the top of the ravine—which wasn’t very deep—vegetation appeared. The ravine itself was lined with concrete, and Sam had the feeling they had walked into a drainage ditch.

“Where are we going?” he asked presently.

“We’re going to my house,” said Ophelia.

“You have a house?”

“Well, yes,” she said, sidestepping something. “I have to live somewhere.”

“I thought you lived on the other side.”

“Well,” she said, and stopped. “What are these?”

“I don’t know,” said Sam. “This is your place.”

“Yes,” she said meditatively and stopped to contemplate the dark balls which had suddenly appeared. She kicked one and it rolled away. “Dead oranges,” she said.

Sam looked at the top of the ravine and saw trees, also covered in dark balls. “Your place is full of dead things, isn’t it?”

“My place,” said Ophelia, suddenly throwing up her hands against the dark sky. “Yes, this is my place,” she said, spinning around and around.

Sam watched the oranges on the ground because he wasn’t sure whether they were moving or not. Then he realized it was not the oranges but he and Ophelia who were moving, gliding along without moving their feet, away from the oranges and toward a distant grate. “So we are in a drainage ditch,” he said.

Ophelia was still standing with her arms up, apparently oblivious to the current which was now making it hard for Sam to stand. He struggled to maintain balance and not be swept away, but finally he gave up and began to swim. And then it was even difficult to swim because the water was flowing so fast and his clothes were waterlogged. He tried to kick off his shoes because he had heard you were supposed to do that, but they were stuck to his feet. He lost all sight of and concern for Ophelia in the intense effort to stay above the cold foam.

The grate was fast approaching, and Sam didn’t know what would happen when he hit it. He would probably break into a thousand pieces like ice.

The impact was so hard and heavy it took his breath away, and he stuck to the grate like sodden cardboard, with barely the presence of mind to pull himself up above the water. He did, though, and hung on the grate with his stiff fingers like a mollusk for a long time while the water beat against him and his hair dripped into his eyes.

Presently, the water subsided, though, and he dropped off onto the muddy ground. There was an embankment of rocks to his left, and he began to crawl toward it, hoping to climb up before the water returned.

At the top, which was painfully far away, he found himself on a strip of grass next to an empty street. Ophelia was also stretched out on the grass, pale and unmoving, with her eyes wide open and flowers scattered around her.

“Are you okay?” asked Sam, crawling over and beginning to take off his shoes.

She didn’t answer at first, and when she did, nothing moved but her lips. “Am I still alive?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Sam, taking off his socks. He wasn’t watching her. “So is this what you do? You come here and torture yourself in every way imaginable?”

“Yeah, basically,” she said.

“That’s nice,” said Sam, squeezing water out of his shirt and shaking it out of his hair. “Your hands still red?”

“My what? Oh, my hands.” She held them up in front of her nose. “I guess not.”

“Well, I guess that as good for something, then.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, please.”

“Sometimes that’s the only appropriate thing to be.”

Ophelia sat up and picked up a flower. She twirled it around between her fingers and said, “Do you want to keep going?”

“I don’t really know where we’re going,” said Sam, “but I guess so.”

They got up and began to walk along the road, staying in the grass. It was damp and Sam’s wet clothes flapped around him and clung to him like sodden storks around a nest of young. “It’s coming,” said Ophelia and stopped. Sam stopped too and waited for it to come. Nothing came but a breath of cold wind that plastered everything to the north side of his body, and then they kept walking.

They were walking by a row of gray-barked trees and dirty crème fences, but presently everything opened up, and they began to walk away from the road and across the grass. It was like a field, except that the grass was cropped short, and in some places it was too springy and in others it was dry and hay-like. Then they suddenly stumbled forward into sand, and Sam understood that they were walking across a golf course. All around him, he saw the shadows of decrepit golfers coming for their last hurrah.

Ophelia ran up to the top of a hillock and stood with her hands out and her nose in the air. Sam didn’t change his pace but plodded slowly to meet her. It was becoming manifestly clear how she kept getting lost in here, but Sam didn’t mention George again yet. He followed her as they wound along the course and into an indent.

Suddenly, the golf course ended and the indent opened into a concrete ditch, wide and shallow, flanked by the same dirty crème fences as before. Sam was suspicious, but he said nothing until they came upon the black oranges again, scattered at unnervingly irregular intervals over the floor of the ditch. “We’re going in circles,” he said. His accusation was too loud, and it echoed off the walls of the ditch and came back again and again, buffeting them in a whirlwind of judgmental sound.

When it died down and flowed away down the ditch, Ophelia said, “It always goes in circles.”

“Is that why we never get to the train station?”

“What train station?”

“The one that goes to the train my father drives.”

Ophelia looked at him, and he knew that she had completely forgotten George. For her at this moment, there was nothing but the endless circling ditch system and the two of them, and it was doubtful that she even registered Sam.

“Well, if you’re going to forget everything, let’s at least get out of here before the water comes.”

Ophelia continued to stare blankly, so Sam walked to the edge of the ditch and began to climb up. A black orange dropped off a tree and rolled past him. The ditch had seemed shallow, but the climb was long, and oranges kept falling on and past him. When he finally reached the top, he put out his hand to touch the stucco fence in front of him and found that it went through. He almost fell forward but caught himself in time, which was good, since the world apparently ended a few feet in front of him. He walked cautiously forward and saw that it dropped off into infinite blackness, below and above.

“There’s nothing there,” he called down to Ophelia.

“I know,” said Ophelia.

So Sam climbed down and they continued along the ditch, being careful not to step on the oranges or on the glass from occasional shattered bottles. Without the water, it took them longer to get to the grate, and Sam saw that in front of the grate there were rows of huge concrete slabs.

“It’s like a graveyard,” said Ophelia.

“You’re like a graveyard,” muttered Sam.

This time they had to scramble up to the embankment on rocks made treacherous with mounds of dried evergreen needles and tree roots and contraband trash. From above, the concrete slabs looked even more like a graveyard—like a mass graveyard that would happen after a war or genocide, repented of too late.

“Let’s not go back there again,” said Sam.

“Okay, Hamlet,” said Ophelia.

“I don’t read literature,” said Sam.

“What do you read?” asked Ophelia.

Sam shrugged. “Wikipedia pages?”

“We don’t really get internet connection here,” said Ophelia.

After that, they walked along the road like civilized people. All the dirt from the scramble up the embankment stuck to Sam’s wet clothes, and he carried his sodden shoes and socks. Ophelia was shivering again, and Sam dug past a freshly forming callous for some pity. “Want my shirt?” he said.

“It’s wet,” she answered.

The houses along the road looked eerily familiar, as if Sam had seen them before in a dream or while drunk. Presently, Ophelia stopped under a streetlight. “Here,” she said.

“You don’t live here,” said Sam.

“No,” she said, “but there’s a hole here.”

“That’s nice,” said Sam. “So let’s go find George now.”

“It’s a rip.”

“Okay, all right. What’s a rip?”

“There’s a rip in this side and stuff leaks out—or in.”

“That’s nice.”

“So this is where I saw you the first time.” She pointed indeterminately at the road.

“Wait, what?”

“You were in a car with someone else, and he said you wouldn’t rape or murder me.”

“Wait, what?”

“It was cute, a little. Your friend was nice.”

“Wait, what?” said Sam again. He said it not because he didn’t know what she was referring to, but because the coincidence was just too much for him to believe.

“It was the first night,” she said.

“So the first night, I just happened to be driving by when you happened to be here.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“That’s nice. So how did you know about George?”

“That’s just what I was saying, only you didn’t let me finish.” What she meant was, you didn’t probe when I trailed off vaguely, and Sam knew it, and he refused to pander. “It was the first night after George ran me over.”

“My dad ran you over?” Sam stopped looking beyond her and stared at her.

“Well, he didn’t mean to. It wasn’t his fault.”

Sam stopped staring at her and began pacing back and forth on the gravel with his hands in his damp pockets. Then he stopped and stared across the road. Across the road was another drainage ditch, all dirt and weeds this time. “You and your damn ditches,” he said, “tell me about George.”

“I don’t know anything about George,” she said and started walking into the road. “Come on,” she said, “I think it would be bad if you were left behind.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for something.”

“Did you drop it?”

“Come on,” she said, urgently. “I really don’t think it would be a good idea to leave you behind.” She looked so alarmed and serious that Sam followed her.

“Here!” she said and then shrieked. She grabbed Sam’s shirt by the arm, pulled, and they stood blinking in the sunlight. “The hole,” she explained breathlessly, although it was hardly an explanation.

I Did It!

2011-07-02T20:59:00.003-07:00

This was my first assignment in Ruthiey's School of Cooking.

Behold! Chocolate mousse!

Made from this recipe. It's really nothing to be proud of at all. But it tastes good. :P

Collage Mail

2011-07-02T11:50:00.003-07:00

Bad art is better than a bad mood, right?

This thing came about for a few reasons--partly, because Erin has been getting a lot of college mail, and I wanted to put it to some use, partly because I'm frustrated that I've graduated with two perfectly good degrees and still don't know what I'm doing and don't have a job. As it turns out, knowledge isn't wealth, success, or happiness. That's why the enticing and promising figures are on the stomachs of mythical beasts.

Gero, Gerere, Gessi, Gestum

2011-07-01T14:24:00.003-07:00

I can't tell if I'm losing my mind or coming back into it after a long hiatus. There's something in there that wants to come out but no medium is satisfactory. This is a concessional post.

Bird Floundering in a Flower

2011-07-01T13:03:00.001-07:00

...as correctly identified by Calvin. "Or is it a bird tangled in a parachute hitting the water?"

:P

Train

2011-06-30T14:56:00.001-07:00

Two Nouns According To My Definition

2011-06-30T00:27:00.002-07:00

Proximity: With but not necessarily among.

Isolation: Among but not with.

Sam's Summer

2011-06-29T10:00:00.001-07:00

Over the summer, Sam moved out of the apartment and into George’s empty house. George had very graciously set up an automatic transfer to Sam’s account to pay for Sam’s apartment rent during the school year, and since he had disappeared before he could cancel it for the summer, Sam found himself with a nice monthly stipend. He didn’t mean to take advantage of his father; it just happened naturally and accidentally.

The first week at home, Sam felt awkward and out of place. He was afraid to touch or move anything, especially the pile of mail on the kitchen counter. When he decided to watch a movie one night on the big screen TV, he felt he was desecrating the couch by moving it in front of the set, and he put it back when he was done. It was an intensely lonely experience.

The second week, Sam became more comfortable in the house. He didn’t feel the need to replace everything, and though he didn’t have the drive to sort through the mail, he moved it on top of the fridge. He also didn’t feel the need to shut every door behind him. The vast emptiness of the house—though it was a small house—no longer made him uneasy. But he still shut the bedroom door at night. As Sam began to feel more homey in his old home, though, a strange sensation started to creep over him from time to time. At first it baffled him. It came intensely in the morning when he retrieved the paper—because his father had subscribed—and again in the evening when he sat in the backyard with his legs dangling in the pool. Once he discovered the solution, it was obvious. What he was doing, of course, was missing his father. The paper was his father’s paper, and he had sat with his father by the pool in his childhood.

It annoyed him that he missed his father, because it made him feel young. But he argued with himself, alone by the pool, that it was justified. His father was abnormally missing. Missing in action, as they would say in the military. He dipped his hand into the pool and sprinkled the water on his bare knees. Next week, he decided, he would do something. Enough of this lazy, lonely, minimalist existence.

When he returned into the house, his phone was ringing. He answered it without looking to see who was calling after eleven.

“Hey, Sam? It’s me.”

“Ariel?”

“Mhm.”

“What’s up?”

“I…I don’t know,” she said.

“Where are you?”

“Walking.”

“Walking where?”

“Toward the train track.”

“Okay,” said Sam, “will you do me a favor?”

“Sure. Insofar as I can.”

“Turn around and walk back to wherever you live and go to bed.”

“Oh.”

There was a long silence. Sam sat on the barstool and picked at the grout of the tiled counter with a nail. He waited for Ariel to argue or acquiesce. Finally, he said words, because words were necessary to say. “Are you going back home now?”

There was another pause. “No,” she said.

“Are you still going toward the tracks?”

“No.”

“You’re just standing there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Well. Turn around and go home. And get some sleep.”

There was another pause.

“Why did you call me?” asked Sam.

“Because you told me to.”

“Is this the first time you’ve thought about going over since last time I saw you?”

“No.”

“Have you gone over?”

“Yes.”

“Have you tried to kill yourself?”

“Sort of.”

“Then why’d you call me tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay. Well, I’m going to hang up on you. Call me again when you get home, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Goodbye, then.” Sam hung up and set the phone on the counter without waiting for her to answer. “She won’t call back,” he said, and went to bed without remembering to turn the sound up on his phone.

The next day, when he woke up, he was unnerved to find his room filled with a strange scent. When he put his feet on the ground, something floated away from them, and he saw that his bedroom floor was covered with the same purple flowers. He leaned down and blew a path to the door and walked to the kitchen. He saw that he had missed several calls, but none of them were from last night. They were all from that morning. He rubbed his eyes and saw that it was past noon.

He went to the closet to find a broom, but apparently George never swept. He hauled out the ancient vacuum, which looked like a marsupial, and took it to his room. There he vindictively vacuumed away every last purple flower and several other things as well.

Sam never listened to the messages on his phone, so he missed forever a chance at reconciliation with Alex, and he also didn’t know that he should expect the arrival of his mother. After eating a concoction somewhere in between breakfast and lunch and checking his bank account, Sam systematically went through his phone contacts to see who he could invite over to fill the desolate emptiness.

Most of his friends were out of town, having gone back to the land of their origin. Of the ones who had stayed in town or had lived in town all along, most had summer jobs—an idea which had genuinely not occurred to Sam. He finally scared up a party of six or seven people, set it arbitrarily for the next night (a Thursday) and set about shopping for it.

It was hard to illegally purchase alcohol in George’s suburban neighborhood, so Sam plundered his wine stash, hoping he would forgive him when he returned. Forgiveness would have to be gracious and generous, actually, but Sam had forgotten that the money transfer wasn’t a right.

At first Sam’s guests didn’t know what to do with themselves—partly because it was a Thursday night, partly because they didn’t all know each other—but once Sam introduced the Pinot Noir and the idea that it should be a languid and sophisticated party, they became more comfortable. The wine was strong and plentiful, and the guests became heady. One of the girls was lying on the coffee table, trying to sip wine indolently while telling an uproarious story. Others were playing ping-pong on the back porch, but hitting ball after ball into the pool.

“I’ll go in and get them. I can swim,” said one.

“No, no,” protested Sam feebly, because he was unable to get out of the recliner, “you’ll drown.”

“Hey Sam!” yelled someone inside, “your phone is ringing off the hook. Get it? Off the hook!”

Sam didn’t get it. “Bring it out here!” he yelled back.

“Come get it yourself!”

“I can’t get out of this chair!”

“Well, I hope it’s not important, then!”

But in a momentary burst of lucidity, Sam realized that it probably was important. With great effort he hoisted himself out of his chair and went inside. He wasn’t tipsy in a gravity defying way, he just felt incredibly languid and bereft of energy, as if his real calling in life was to be a piece of dumpy furniture.

“Sam?”

“Is this Ariel?”

“Yeah. Hi.”

“What’s up? Where are you?”

“On the train tracks.”

“Which side?”

“Neither.”

“Are you on the road or on the sidewalk?”

“On the road.”

“Okay, well, for starters, get out of the road. What time is it?”

“I don’t know. I’m on my phone.”

“Well, I don’t either. Hey, look, Ariel. I’m kindof drunk right now. Can you save this for later?”

“No, not really.”

Sam was filled with incredible weariness. “Okay,” he said. “I’m not going to hang up on you, because if I do you will disappear and go in, right? Okay. So I’m going to put my head in the sink for a few minutes and don’t leave, okay?” He set the phone on the counter and stumbled over to the sink. He ran the faucet over his curly hair and then shook the water all over the kitchen. He felt somewhat more awake, but what goes onto a man can’t help what has gone into a man.

“Are you still there?” said Sam to Ariel.

“Yes, I’m still here.”

“Are you still standing in the road?”

“No, I’m standing on the sidewalk now.”

“Well, that’s a start.”

“What’s going on, Sam?”

“Just a minute, guys. Just a minute, Ariel.” Sam had been leaning on the counter, but he dragged his infinitely heavy body back into his bedroom. “I’ll be back guys, I have to take care of a thing.” He lay down on the floor and waited for everything to settle.

When it had, he resumed the conversation. “What do you want me to do, Ariel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why did you call?”

“Because you told me to.”

Sam had neglected to turn on the light. He strained, trying to see the ceiling. “Did you go home the other night, or did you go in?”

“I went in.”

“You make me feel useless.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, don’t do it again. Go home right now and go to bed.” There was a long silence, and Sam began to make out stars on his ceiling. He thought he saw the Big Dipper, but maybe it was just a reflection. “You’re not going to go home, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, tell you what. Come to my house then.”

“Where do you live?”

Sam gave her George’s address, and then he said, “Look. I’ve got guests right now. I’ve gotta go. Just come to my house. We’ll talk then.”

“Okay,” she said mournfully, as if her voice was falling away off a long cliff.

“Okay. See you then!” Sam hung up. He looked at the galaxies on his ceiling and tried to find patterns amongst the stars. Then he fell asleep.

Quotes

2011-06-28T12:54:00.004-07:00

"But you already know that the objects which your desire imagines are always inadequate to that desire. Until you have it you will not know what you wanted."

"Do you not know how it is with love? First comes delight; then pain; then fruit. And then there is the joy of the fruit, but that is different again from the first delight. And mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair."

I haven't read Pilgrim's Regress (C.S. Lewis) for more than four years, since it belonged to Virginia and moved out with her. I had forgotten how good it is, and I had also forgotten that the second quote came from it.

Skypespeare Gone Wild (Live)

2011-06-27T20:52:00.004-07:00

We've had lots of Shakespeare parties over Skype (or Skop as James would say), but we finally had an opportunity to nab some of our players into our very living room!

Here we present the (excellent!) cast of A Midsummernight's Dream:

Back row: Nathan as Theseus and Bottom, Vicki as Puck, Ethan as Egeus and Peter Quince

Front row: Laura as Helena, Lauren as Hermia, Nick as Lysander and Oberon, Danny as Demetrius and Flute/Thisbe, Erin as Titania, and Judith as Hippolyta.

Best actor prize might go to Danny, for his excellent interpretation of Francis Flute playing Thisbe.

And If You Ever Make It To Ten, You Won't Make It Again

2011-06-23T09:06:00.003-07:00

That is a line from a song which is, for some reason, really catchy. And I'm not sure what it means, but I don't think it is good.

In the meantime, I don't know if I'll make it to ten, when LAURA AND LAUREN (and the boys) ARE COMING. WOOOOOOO. Actually, they're not even coming at ten. But approximately. ^_^

And Who Drives the Train

2011-06-22T13:29:00.001-07:00

Sam called Ariel as they had arranged, but she did not answer her phone. He left her a message, but he knew it was futile. He wouldn’t see her for another week, at least. She had probably gone over to the other side, despite him, and had lost track of time.

That was fine with Sam. He had his finals to worry about, and now that he knew his father was alive, he didn’t feel there was a great rush to rescue him; they had never been close. Projecting past trends into the future, Sam guessed that he wouldn’t see Ariel again until he started talking to another girl. Whether Ariel was jealous or whether it was coincidence, she had appeared both times when he was just starting to make headway.

For that reason, Sam shyly avoided girls in whom he might be interested, and confined his extra-curricular activities to drinks and video games. Meanwhile, a burst of massive man-drama cropped up between his roommates who had, it turned out, both been pursuing the same girl. Sam tried not to be in the apartment when both warring parties were present, with the result that he began to feel something like an exile. School was no fun, because he couldn’t talk to girls, and he was dogged with the guilt of finals. Home was uncomfortable because his roommates fought. He had no parents’ house to retire to. He played video games at the apartments and dorm rooms of other friends, but he felt like a moocher.

One evening he was sitting alone with himself and his sparse thoughts at a bar, when Ariel appeared. She must have walked in the door, but he hadn’t seen her do so. He didn’t notice her until she was sitting on the stool next to him. She seemed deflated and smaller than usual.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” said Sam, “I knew you would forget.”

“I didn’t forget.”

“Well, whatever. Did you go across?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” She put her head on the counter and let her hair spill out.

“Do you want a drink?”

“No, I don’t drink here.”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“No, I mean, I don’t drink on this side.”

The bartender walked up and asked, “A drink for the lady?”

“No, thanks,” said Ariel out of her hair. Sam looked at the bartender and shrugged.

“Okay, look. Let’s have a real conversation.”

“Okay, a real conversation,” she said, straightening up and shaking out her hair. It surrounded her face like a mane before it settled into a haze.

“Why do you go over to the night side?”

“I went over to find your father.”

“No. On the contrary. You found my father because you went over there. And then you went over again even though I told you not to go alone. We were going to go together, remember?”

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh? That’s all you have to say?”

“Oh,” she said again.

Sam took a deep draught of his cheap beer and coughed. “Ariel,” he said.

“Who’s Ariel?”

“That’s what you told me to call you.”

She ran her fingers through her hair. “I remember that now. Ariel wasn’t really a girl. He wasn’t exactly a boy, either. Some sort of androgynous spirit.”

“That’s nice,” said Sam. “Anyway, idiotic question.”

“Mhm?”

“Are you real?”

“I don’t know,” she said, staring dreamily ahead.

“If you kill yourself, will you really be dead?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. “It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like.”

“So acting on the assumption that you are real. Do you try to kill yourself here? On this side, the day side?”

“No.”

“Only on the night side.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then don’t go on the night side alone. And if you feel like going on the night side, call me instead. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now. Let’s go back there, and you’ll show me how to get in.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now. You don’t have anything better to do. I don’t have anything better to do.”

They walked across campus together again, until they came to the place where the tracks were. They stood in the middle and looked across. The night side was as black as ever, and the day side was draped in an evening twilight. The purple flowers lost all their colors and looked gray.

“Ready?” she asked.

Sam nodded. She took his hand, and they plunged in. It was like going through a curtain of gelatin, and they were completely in the dark. At first Sam could not see anything, but presently his eyes adjusted and he could see the gleam of moonlight reflecting dully off the rails. He looked up, but there was no moon to be seen. The sky was spattered sparsely with weak stars, and he didn’t see any constellations he recognized.

“Well,” she said weakly, “let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“We have to walk along the rails until we find the station.”

“How far is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you ever found the station before?”

“No.”

“How do you know there’s a station?”

“I don’t.”

They walked along the rails nonetheless, Sam on the embankment, and Ariel balancing on the metal. The air around them was cold and dead, like air that has been in an unused freezer too long. “Geez, this place is depressing,” said Sam. His words sounded stupid and inconsequential and hung in the air too long. When they finally fell, they shattered on the tracks because they were so brittle and ill fitting. Ariel stepped carefully over them.

The landscape on either side of them was bare and spread out, empty gravel fields full of large rocks, which cast weird shadows in the light of the non-existent moon. Their progress was slow, and the unchanging landscape made it seem that they were not moving at all. Sam began to feel drowsy and hypnotized by the monotony of it all.
He became aware of a strange sound, and gradually realized that it was coming from Ariel. It was her teeth, chattering wildly in her mouth. “Are you cold?” he asked softly, because he didn’t want his words to shatter again.

“Yes,” she said.

Sam was only wearing one shirt, because it hadn’t been cold back on the other side, but he offered it to her anyway.

“No,” she said, “It’s from within.”

“My shirt is from within?”

“No, the cold.”

They fell silent again, and on the horizon, a white firework exploded. In front of the firework, a slight change appeared in the scenery. At first, Sam thought it was a building. After a quarter of an hour, though, he realized that the boulders from before were being replaced with metallic geometric shapes. Ariel was still shivering, violently now.

Engulfed in the timelessness and monotony of the place, Sam saw how Ariel kept getting lost. “Maybe we should turn back,” he said. “I don’t know how long we’ve been going, and I don’t know how long until we get anywhere. Maybe we should come back with a car.”

“It wouldn’t make a difference,” said Ariel dully, “even if we could bring one in.”

“Let’s turn back anyway,” said Sam, seized with the sudden conviction that they must get out.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ariel.

“Yes it does. We aren’t doing anything useful. We’re just walking. And you’re shivering like crazy.”

“It’s from within.”

“No it isn’t. It’s from this frigid God-forsaken place. Let’s go back.”

“Look,” she said, pointing ahead.

Several feet ahead on the track, a gallows had appeared. A noose was hanging invitingly from it, wrapped around fourteen times, fit for a king.

“Did you imagine that there?” asked Sam.

“Maybe.”

“Well, stop. We’re going back.” Sam turned around and began to walk back. Ariel did not follow. “Ariel. Come on.” Sam went to her and took her by the wrist.

“That hurts,” she said, but she said it like it was hurting someone else. She followed Sam back along the tracks, and the return journey seemed interminable.

Finally, a gleam of light that wasn’t pale blue or tarnished appeared in the distance. “That’s the exit,” said Sam.

“It’s a train,” said Ariel.

“It’s the exit,” said Sam more forcefully.

It got brighter and brighter, and presently they saw it was indeed the exit. They were about to step out when the tracks began to rumble. “It’s a train,” said Ariel.

“Let’s go,” said Sam.

Ariel pulled away from him, but he pulled harder, and they fell in a pile onto the right side of the tracks, just as the train thundered past.

“We missed him again,” said Ariel.

“How do you know?”

“He drives the train.”

~

George was driving bus number 1431 on the Jupiter route the day it happened. It was already a bad day the weather was in poor taste, and he had gotten to the Tempe Transportation Center late. He was a good driver, a careful driver, but on account of everything else he didn’t want to wait for the train, so he sped up before the lights started flashing and the barriers came down. Later, when he had endless nights to ponder, he still wasn’t sure what had happened. People walked up and down the sidewalks, and George always kept an eye on them. College students decided to cross the street at the stupidest possible moments. This wasn’t one of those stupid moments, though. Whatever happened, it wasn’t that. There was a flurry of activity on the sidewalk, and he swerved to avoid a falling object. The bus lurched as he hit it, and at that moment the train came. In a moment of quantum confusion, he found himself driving the train instead of the bus, and the windshield was spattered with blood.

Trendy Tuesday: Shirt-Fusion

2011-06-22T11:32:00.003-07:00

Sometimes I look in my shirt drawer and have to admit to myself that there are some shirts in there that I never wear in their current manifestation. Especially t-shirts. That's when I resort to .... editing! Yay! Clothes editing!

I look a little bit silly and fluffy in this picture:

These used to be two lame t-shirts. Now they are one sweet strappy shirt. Or something.

Also. I know today isn't Tuesday. Just in case you were worried. But I did wear that shirt yesterday, which was Tuesday, to my voice lesson and Bristol-kid-babysitting.

Favorite Bristol kid moment last night: Sarah jabbing her fork with all her might into a pile of macaroni and cheese and coming up triumphant with two noodles. "I got it!" ^_^

):

2011-06-20T00:11:00.002-07:00

They said he was 19
But he really wasn't
He was my same age
Even a little older
Which I always found
Hard to forgive him for.

But we used to argue
About mountains
And whether they looked
The same in California
As they did in Arizona
They don't.

We used to hate each other's
Twelve year old guts
And kick each other
In the shins
Especially when
We had to dance together.

But times change
And people change
And sometimes they get lost
And never get found again
And sometimes they fall
And never get back up.

I Never Thought I'd Miss You

2011-06-18T09:52:00.003-07:00

When I was in Africa, I wanted to go home, and when I got home, I never thought I'd miss it. But yesterday, I went with Greg to MIM--the Musical Instruments Museum. The first room we went to was Africa. It wasn't so much all the instruments that made me miss Ghana as the videos with all the scenery and the red red dirt and happy African dudes. And I thought to myself, aww, maybe I should go back sometime.

It's really interesting to me how African music is based on rhythm and pattern instead of melody and harmony. Even when you get the melody instruments like the side-blown trumpets and bowed strings, it's still the rhythm that gets all crazy complex, and the music is still highly patterned and repetitive.

I have a theory in my head that this is related to tonal languages. I'm not quite sure how yet, but it seems that places with tonal languages are more likely to have rhythm-driven music with a smaller melodic vocabulary. Maybe because they're more likely to mimic speech?

I Shoulda Done This Like A Million Years Ago!

2011-06-16T22:49:00.003-07:00

(Says Bubs)
(And says Calvin imitating Bubs)

This is a fangirl post about Calvin. Today, Calvin, Greg, Ethan and I went up to the Tonto natural bridge to hike. It's not really a hike, though, it's more of a meandering creek scramble with lots of stops for Calvin to take pictures.
On the way down (and on the way back) we listened to P.D.Q Bach and learned Calvin's opinion of Taylor Swift: She has "simpering harmonies" and makes him want to scream. And is gut-wrenchingly awful. I thought she was a little vapid myself, but not that bad. ^_^

The bridge, of course, was beautiful, and Calvin took a million pictures (~300?), so hopefully I'll be able to snag a couple of those.
Have I mentioned yet that Calvin is awesome?? Under the bridge, there are little caves on the sides. We went into one and realized it went back further than we thought. "Oh," says Calvin, "let me get my caving light." And lo, he pulls a caving headlamp and shimmies in. Because of course everyone carries a headlamp in their backpack??

There's a trail that goes under the bridge and up the creek, and under the bridge you're supposed to cross on the left side of the deep pools of water. But Calvin and I found a tree trunk leaning up against a steep incline on the other side. He climbed up using the trunk as hand-holds, and then I took off my shoes and Ethan threw them up to him and I started to climb up. At the top of the tree-trunk, I was too short (or too incompetent) to get up to the next foothold, so he wedged himself into a rock and pulled me up by my left arm.

Further down the creek, we ended up going "swimming" in a little pool about 4 feet deep. In all our clothes. Calvin, being nice, not only took pictures of the scenery but also took it upon himself to take people pictures. Unfortunately, he didn't bring his tripod so he isn't in any of the pictures.

Tonight, Calvin and Erin and Greg and I teamed up to sing the Petrouchka chord (two major triads a tritone apart). Erin and Calvin took one pitch set, Greg and I took the other. Now we just need to train ourselves to do it on the spur of the moment.

:D

Not Awesome Things

2011-06-16T01:37:00.000-07:00

* Our house smelling like dead rat. Please decompose quickly, my friend!

In Which the Train Makes Its Appearance

2011-06-15T13:44:00.002-07:00

The disappearance of George affected Sam’s mood but not his life. The next day, he tried to call the girl three times, to no avail. He tried again on Saturday, and again she didn’t answer. Not knowing what to conclude, he crumpled up the purple note with her phone number and dropped it in the trash can without saving the number on his phone. That night he dreamed that he was running and dodging as an angry butcher threw steak knives at him; the next morning he felt peculiarly relieved.

Not much has been said about Sam’s school up until now because, frankly, it wasn’t very important to him. He had continued to attend classes with his body during the first week George was missing, but his mind had been absent.

After the dream of the steak knives, his mind returned to his class work, in particular to the work of getting into a project group with a certain girl. This girl called herself Alex, and was mousy in the sense that she darted around baseboards and generally avoided the middle of the room. Sam had managed to see from her identification that her real name was Alexandra, and he thought this suited her better.

In the classroom, seats were established by the second week of school. In a great lapse of judgment, Sam hadn’t sat close enough to her to maintain non-awkward contact. He noticed, though, that it was okay to change your seat by one seat, so he had been slowly working his way across the room toward her. Now he was close enough that he thought he would be grouped with her, at least, if groups were chosen by proximity.

As soon as he got within speaking distance of Alex, he made excellent headway. The first and most obvious conversational gambit was homework—or lack thereof—but from there it moved easily into the realm of weekends and after school hours. He consulted his roommates and discovered that girls like to be asked to partake in coffee, so at the end of the week he girded up his loins and did so. She acquiesced without a murmur, and so they found themselves sitting in a shop where the seats were all too low and orangey red, talking about Communications.

Alex excused herself after an hour to go to her next class—a legitimate excuse—and Sam remained on the uncomfortable orange couch, heady with success. He had forgotten momentarily his father and completely the purple nameless girl.

Then she walked in. “I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly and without preface. “I forgot about your father. I saw him, but I just completely forgot.”

“You wait, what?”

“I saw your father, of course. But I forgot about you. I’m sorry.”

The details of her appearance slowly dawned on him, in this order: first, that her nose was sharply pointed, second, that she wasn’t wearing black today, but rather bright green, and third, that her arms were wrapped in white bandages. “What happened to your arms?”

She looked at them closely, like she had never seen them before, holding up each wrist for inspection. “I sliced them,” she said.

“How?”

“With a razor blade.”

“Why do you have a razor blade?”

“Because it’s culturally unacceptable for girls to not shave.”

Sam stood up and collected up his belongings. “May I see?” he asked.

“Not in here.”

They walked out of the shop, where everything had stood still during their conversation. As soon as the door closed behind them, a glass, which had been suspended half-off the counter, fell to the ground and shattered into a million pieces. The proprietor swept it up into a dustpan and blew it out the back door in a sparkly cloud.

Outside it was windy and smelled of stale green. People were walking by at unnatural speeds, and the warmth of the pavement soaked up through Sam’s old tennis shoes. “Can I see your arms again?” he said. He hadn’t meant to say “again.”

“No,” she said, “they will be okay. I need to go back and find out where your father is again. I promise I’ll help this time.”

“Go back where?”

“There’s a railroad track,” she said, “and on one side it’s night, and on one side it’s day.”

Sam twisted his finger in a curl above his ear. “That’s nice,” he said. They were walking in an indeterminate direction across the oblivious campus. Sam wasn’t worried about running into Alex, because he felt they were in some sort of warp in which Alex didn’t exist.

“Well,” she replied, “there’s a railroad track, and on one side it’s night, and on the other side it’s day.”

“You just said that.”

“I know. But I’m going to go back to the night side, because your father is on the night side, and last time I was there, I forgot.”

“Because you were busy doing this?” He took her arm before she could protest and began to unwrap the bandage. She ran away from him, and he stood there, and the bandage unraveled and unraveled, until there was a long white suspension bridge between them, and he could barely make out her facial features.

“I promise, I promise, I promise I will find out about your father next time,” she called to him across the gap. Then she disappeared.

Sam climbed on the bridge and walked across it to where she had been. The further he
went along the bridge, the more patches of dried blood appeared on it, until by the end it was a brown bridge. When he got off the bridge, it melted away behind him, leaving only a few spots on the ground. Sam felt the sudden need to cleanse himself, so he returned to his apartment as soon as possible to take a shower.

After that, a long period elapsed in which he neither heard from the girl nor his father. The police were notified, and rewards were posted—it was too surreal to Sam to see his father’s face on the missing persons posters pasted on the bus stops—and his mother finally stopped calling. During that time, Sam accidentally committed some unforgivable faux pas in his budding relationship with Alex—he wasn’t sure what—and she stopped having coffee with him. He didn’t mind not having coffee, but the fact that he had been rejected over something unknown made him stalk around angrily with his hands in his pockets. He also took to staying up late partying and sleeping in and shuffling into his first class seventeen to twenty minutes late. This was more of a concession to his roommates’ lifestyle than a reaction to Alex.

The semester was almost over, and Sam was beginning to panic about finals for classes for which he had never studied, when the girl appeared again. As was her habit, she appeared at the most inconvenient time and place, surrounded by a blazing radiance of good intentions.

Sam was talking to another girl from one of his inconsequential classes by the fountain, when a strong breeze suddenly blew all the purple flowers off a jacaranda tree and into the fountain. They floated in the water, closer and closer to the jet of water, until they were suddenly sucked under. The girl from his class, who had some generic name like Maddie, kept talking, but Sam didn’t hear her anymore. He watched her mouth moving, and he felt his own mouth moving in reply, but he was distracted by the inevitable approach of the girl. Later, he couldn’t recall the topic of the conversation at all.

The girl was wearing long sleeves, even though it was a toasty day, and she approached him with a prepubescent eagerness. “Sam!” she said.

Maddie turned around and looked at her.

“Oh, hey!” said Sam, wishing he knew her name.

Maddie’s lip curled alarmingly, and she excused herself from the situation.

“Cat,” remarked the girl. “Sam, I saw your father again.”

“That’s nice,” said Sam.

“I tried to talk to him, but he went by so fast, and he couldn’t hear me. It was too loud anyway.”

Sam opened his backpack and put his frustration in the front pouch for later. “When was this?” he asked, zipping it up.

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?”

She shook her head.

“Are you a student here?”

“During the day, yes.”

“Can I see your arms?”

She held them out in the air, and the sleeves pulled up at the wrists just a little, enough to show that she was still wrapped up.

Sam held out his hand, waiting for her to give him hers. “Why do you cut yourself?” he asked.

She didn’t give him her hand. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You really don’t know?”

“I really don’t know.”

“You need to take care of yourself.”

“I know. I want to help you find your father.”

“Why?”

“Because I know where he is. And he wants to come back.”

“He does?”

She didn’t answer, but turned around and walked to the fountain. One of the purple flowers was floating by the edge, and she picked it up and watched as it turned into a bird and flew away. “Look,” she said, “I saved it from drowning.”

“If my dad wants to come back, why doesn’t he?”

“He can’t.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll show you where he is, tomorrow, okay?”

“No,” said Sam.

“No?”

“No. If we wait until tomorrow, you will disappear again, and you will try to kill yourself again.”

“I didn’t try to kill myself.”

“No? Then why are your arms all bandaged up?”

“When I try to kill myself, I won’t fail.”

Sam put his hand on the bulging front of his backpack to keep the frustration in. “Okay, whatever. You will slice yourself.”

“I might not.”

“That’s not an answer. Either show me now, or promise me you won’t cut yourself tonight.”

She hesitated. Then she held out her right arm to him and pulled up the sleeve.

He took it. “I meant, show me whatever you were going to show me about my dad,” he said. But he started unwrapping the white strip.

It came off to reveal three diagonal gashes, crusty with puss and old blood, puckered up at the edges like sick little mouths. “Yeesh,” he said. “Maybe you should get stitches?”

“No, they’re okay. Can you wrap it back up?”

Sam looked at the bandage. It was yellow and brown on the inside. “I don’t think we should wrap it back in this; I think we should get a new one,” he said.

“I don’t have another one.”

“We’ll go back to my apartment.”

“You don’t have any at your apartment.”

She was right. Sam thought through the things in his apartment, and none of them included anything remotely resembling clean linen. “We’ll go to the school nurse, then.”

“No!” she pulled back, and the bandage snaked off her arm and dangled from Sam’s hand.

“Why not?”

“We just can’t. Here. Put it back on, please, and then I’ll show you where your father is.”

She put out her arm again, inside up, and Sam wrapped it back up as carefully as possible. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

She nodded.

“How long ago did you cut it?”

“I don’t remember.”

He tucked the end of the strip in, and she pulled her sleeve down.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said. They walked across to the other side of campus, then away and off. They walked for perhaps a mile, until they came to a railroad crossing.

“Here,” she said, “look.” They stood in the middle of the sidewalk and looked down the train track.

For a moment, Sam saw nothing special. Then he saw, suddenly, that the track was split in half. On the left side, it was night. On the right side, it was day. And on the day side, there was a field filled with purple flowers.

She pointed away to the left. “Your dad is in there.”

Sam nodded. “Can we go in?”

“Not we. I,” she said. “Wait.” She let go of his hand—he hadn’t even noticed she was holding it—and stepped into the darkness. Sam watched as she receded. Along the track, on the night side, a small light appeared. He felt the train tracks shuddering beneath his feet in a low deep bass.

The light grew larger and brighter, and Sam could no longer see the girl for the brightness of the light shining in his eyes. The noise of the oncoming train was deafening—both its mechanical rattling and its horn—and the ground shook beneath him.

Suddenly, something hurled against him and he fell sideways onto the day side. The night side was gone, and he was on the ground with the girl on top of him. “You idiot,” she said, picking herself up. “Did you think it wasn’t real?”

Sam got up and dusted himself off, not knowing what to say.

“It’s too late,” she said, “we missed him.”

They stood in silence for a while, looking at the train tracks, which were now all in the day. Finally, she touched his shoulder and said, “We’ll try again some other time. Don’t go by yourself.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you go by yourself either.”

“Call me tomorrow after you get out of class. Let me give you my phone number again.” She took his phone and typed her number onto the screen and handed it back.

“What’s your name?” asked Sam.

She lifted up her sleeve and peered in. “I think they’re bleeding again,” she said.
“You can call me Ariel.”

“Is that your name?”

“No, it’s from Shakespeare.”

“I don’t read literature,” said Sam.

Awesome Things

2011-06-14T23:54:00.006-07:00

* Delicious pancakes
* Recording silly songs for ISLAS
* Seeing my oldest friend, Julie, after FAR too long
* Voice lesson
* Eating an entire pizza with the Bristol kids
* Jumping on the Bristols' trampoline after putting the kids to bed
* Driving on the 202 after hours
* Coming into my room and freaking out at the sound of soft men's voices and then realizing it's Kullervo

Good day? Yes. Thank You Lord! (:

This, My Friends, is a Dark Day

2011-06-13T22:09:00.004-07:00

I had a headache at work today, so during my 10 minute break I ran over to the Starbucks (side note: I'm glad you didn't get a job there, Erin; all the other employees are super sketch) and got coffee , and lo, my headache went away!
Caffeine addiction, here I come.

A Poem, Maybe?

2011-06-11T23:17:00.002-07:00

sitting on a platform
dusty with unuse
covered by a skeleton
picked dry by crows
no other where to go
suitcase full of plans
can't be worn
won't be thrown out
waiting for a train
that will never come

Sometimes I can't let a phrase go. ^_^

So

2011-06-11T01:19:00.002-07:00

I know I just changed my blog design not too long ago. But I really love this picture that Eddi took. And the pink was really, well, pink.

Waiting For a Train That Will Never Come

2011-06-10T12:12:00.004-07:00

This morning, I went out with Eddi from Rivera photography for graduation pictures. Eddi is amazing. He took me down to this super sketchy train yard, and we took all these sweet pictures with trains and tracks and an abandoned platform until a dude came along and kicked us off the property.

Sometimes when I go down to south/central Phoenix, I feel really bourgeois. In addition to being a city girl, I am also definitely upper middle class. I sometimes feel bad about it, but I shouldn't. I realized, Mom and Dad have worked awfully hard to have eight kids and still be well off. It's not like they're just floating about on flowery beds of ease. Also, every good and perfect gift comes from above, so I shouldn't be ungrateful.

One train that isn't coming for me is the job at the classical school. I knew they were small and not sure if they could continue, but I filled out all their applications and went down and interviewed and got all excited anyway. This morning, while I was in the bathroom of a food bank changing into a ballgown for my photo shoot, the principal called and let me know the sad news that the school had to close.

I am inflexible. When I make plans, I don't like to make back-up plans. I'd rather squeeze a square plan into a round hole than have a square plan and a round plan. But working with schools is teaching me that sometimes plans can be whittled and tailored, and sometimes they just have to be tossed. I wish I knew what I am going to do in the fall. I want certainty. But God has been teaching me, you have to be okay with not knowing where you're going. Just keep pursuing the opportunities I give you, He says, and I'll channel you into the right one. For now, stick to what you know.

What do I know? God is good, and I like middle schoolers. ^_^

Conclusion:

2011-06-09T23:25:00.001-07:00

I am an incurable city girl.

Story pt III

2011-06-08T00:00:00.001-07:00

Sam’s very logical first move was to call his father. The phone rang and rang, and when the answering machine came on, Sam left the very illogical message, “Hi, dad, are you lost?” After he hung up, he knew that was a stupid message to leave, so he called again. No one answered. He sent a text message that said, “Hey, Dad, everyone keeps asking where you are. Is everything all right?”

Then he sat down on the edge of his dumpy bed. He pushed the pair of pants off onto the floor and lay back and looked at the ceiling. He couldn’t decide whether he should be worried or not, and into his mind came the completely random and totally disquieting image of a field filled with purple flowers.
Across this field ran a person dressed in black gauze, and Sam knew he had seen her before. He just couldn’t remember where. “What’s your name?” he called to her across the field, but his voice got swallowed up in the dark spaces around his imagination, and she didn’t answer.

Over the next few days, Sam grew to vicariously hate his mother through his phone. She called insistently, asking again and again after his father. He answered the first few times, but then stopped. If it had only been his mother, he would have thought she was just on some sudden vindictive rage or some new medication. But the TTC called too, at least twice, and other people from his old family life joined the barrage. The only person who never called was his father.

That was not true. The mysterious caller from the first day also never called again. Sam forgot her until one day he was playing video games with his roommates, and the screen on the wall suddenly exploded into a field of purple flowers.

Sam bolted from his chair, past the perturbation of his roommates, and into his bedroom, where he had left the phone because he was tired of answering it. He listened voraciously through all his old voicemails, but the one from the mysterious number was gone. The number was also not recorded anywhere on the phone. He stuck a pencil fiercely into the mattress of his bed. It quivered softly, and he thought of a little yellow butterfly on a spring on the top of a garden stake. It had been in his mother’s garden when she was a child, he knew, even though he had never seen it before.

The solution began to develop when he was at school, several weeks later. He found himself walking by the Life Sciences building, which was not part of his normal route, in the late afternoon. The building was tall and oblong, like an oval which had been aborted. As he walked by, something floated to the ground in front of him.
At first, he thought it was a purple flower. Startled, he bent to pick it up. It wasn’t, after all, a flower, but a crumpled sticky note. He unfolded it, but it was blank. He looked up, and saw the girl from the field in his imagination peering down at him.

“Hang on,” he said, “I’m coming up.”

He ran up the six flights of stairs—because she appeared to be on the sixth level—instead of taking the elevator because he was seized with the fear that she would try to elude him. He reached the top just as she was disappearing into the elevator. He ran after and stuck his arm out, and the doors reopened. He stepped in, and they closed.

“What floor do you want?” she said.

Sam suddenly noticed the awkwardness of his position. He had seen her before, in his daydream, but she had probably never seen him before. It was probably a pure coincidence that she had dropped a purple note on him. He was also prodigiously out of breath.

“Never mind,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. They’re all the same anyway.”

“No, I, uh, would like floor two, please,” he stuttered.

She indicated the wall of the elevator. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, and pressed the button for floor two. The elevator lurched down, and Sam watched the floor numbers go by with growing apprehension. “You ignored my message,” she said presently.

“I did?” said Sam.

“You did. Both of them.”

“There were two?”

“Yes. I left a sticky note on your computer, and I called your phone.”

Sam struggled, and he finally remembered a glimpse of purple catching his eye the day his computer had been opened. “Oh,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She shifted her dingy backpack—which ought to have rung a bell in Sam’s brain, but it didn’t—and shrugged. “In any event, I know where your father is.”

“Where?” asked Sam, aware that the elevator had been traveling far too long.

“He’s stuck on the wrong side of the track.”

“I…oh.”

“I’ll take you there. But not today. I can’t do it today.”

“When, then?”

“Tomorrow, maybe, or maybe Saturday. Don’t let me forget.”

“I, uh, won’t. Can I get your phone number?”

“I already gave it to you.”

“You did?”

“You’re holding it.”

Sam saw that his hands were opening and closing the sticky note she had dropped on him from above. On it was written, in distinct angular handwriting, a phone number.

“But it was blank before,” he said.

“Na, and?”

“Oh,” said Sam. He put the note in his pocket. “What is your name?”

“I’m a salamander. I’m on fire,” she replied. Then the doors opened. “Here’s your floor.”

“But it’s one, not two.”

“You didn’t want floor two. You have no reason to be on floor two.”

This was true, and Sam couldn’t argue. “But your name?” he asked, moving into the opening so the doors would stay open.

“I’m burning up inside,” she replied, “can’t you see it coming out my eyes?”

He couldn’t. “Are you getting off?” he asked.

“No, no,” she chortled. “I’ve got places to go. Goodbye!”

Despite Sam’s presence, the doors to the elevator closed, shutting him out.

And Yet Somehow I'm Exhausted

2011-06-06T12:16:00.002-07:00

We said that mom's being gone was a zero sum game. If everyone was still alive when she returned, and the house was as clean as when she left, we won.

I don't know if we'll make it or not; I didn't finish cleaning the kitchen until 1:30 last night. That was partly because I didn't start working on it until midnight, because I was waiting for everyone to be definitely gone. I was also having one of those conversations with John that I describe as an "agreeing party." After those, I always feel like, "Well, that's nice for him," even if I was the one who started it. Walking into the kitchen to all the dishes sobered my ivory tower idealism.

I didn't really fall all the way to sleep until 3, and Erin got up at 5 or something to go hiking. She came back around 8 or something, so after I made "eggs with cheese on top" for Sonja, I went back to bed until noon, where I had the worst kind of dream. The worst kind of dream happens when you are so tired that you can't even stay awake in your dreams. So in my dreams, I was trying to do all this stuff and interact with all these people, and I could barely keep my eyes open. In part of the dream, I went to take a 10 minute nap on someone's couch. ^_^

Then, I got up and made lunch for the kids. Then I went back to bed. I do not want to go to work in 50 minutes. I want to go back to bed forever and ever. Have I mentioned that this is a post about how tired I am? Mom is coming back tonight, in 5 or so hours. I will be gone most of those 5 hours at work. I hope the house is okay when she comes back. I never got my laundry out of the dryer. I don't care.

*goes back to bed*

When You've Hit Terminal Velocity, Everything Else Seems Slow

2011-06-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

This is a post about two things: first, it is a post about how we went skydiving. (And it was awesome!) Second, it is a post about how I don't do well with summer. Don't you love this new tendency of mine to announce posts? You can think of it like an abstract. If you're bored at the end of this paragraph, don't bother reading further.

Skydiving, by the way, is pretty much the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. It's also like performing, in that you think about it a lot leading up to the day, then right before the jump, analogous to a recital, you're struck with absolute terror, then while you're falling through the air, you're filled with an incredible adrenaline rush just like you get when you're playing. Then, it's all over, and you realize it's gone by way too fast. The only difference is skydiving is a little bit more nauseating and way less work.

I'm not sure what part of the jump was best--the free-fall or the parachuting. There is a moment at the beginning where you feel like you're falling and you see nothing below or above (because the plane flies off on its merry way) and you think to yourself, "what the clavier? did I just jump out of a plane?" but as soon as you hit terminal velocity and don't feel like you're falling anymore, it's completely comfortable.

On the way back, driving seemed interminably slow, especially the stupid stretch of Doubletree that has the 30mph speed limit. That's when we noticed (Calvin was actually driving) that once you've hit terminal velocity, everything else seems really slow.

That's how I feel right now about life (I knew I could make a metaphor out of skydiving). I feel like during the school year, I was falling fast, with my jobs and schools and everything, like I hit terminal velocity of Doing Things. Now everything's out, and it's SO SLOW. I do zero things on the days I don't work, and it's driving me crazy. But I don't know what to do or how to prepare myself for next semester when I have to jump out of the metaphorical plane again.

Finally, doesn't the title of this post sound like a song lyric? It does to me. But it's really hard for to build a poem around one. I've tried it before (the last two lines of this one), and I don't really like how it came out.

How To Change the World in Six Easy Steps

2011-06-03T13:28:00.002-07:00

This post isn't actually about changing the world in six or any number of steps. It's about how today, I took Sonja to the park to feed the moldy bread to the ducks and geese. We sat on an aluminum bench and distributed almost an entire loaf to the greedy hoard. Geese are greedy and brash, folks!

After we finished the distribution, we went over to the playground and I sat on top of it while Sonja did her thing amongst the other kids and their moms. It is weird to be in but not of the crowd of young moms. Because I'm old enough I could be a young mom, but I'm not. I'm just her sister. But I'm sure they assumed I was her mom.

I think a lot about changing the world and doing generally grandiose things. I also think it is a lot easier for people in fantasy stories. For them, changing the world involves a definite task: drop x ring in y fiery mountain, defeat z evil power, etc. It's a lot more vague and less quest oriented in the real world.

Today, while I was sitting on top of the playground, I thought, maybe it's not really my job to change the world. Maybe I should just have some boys and raise them to do it. It's more of a manly job anyway, right? Or is that just perpetuating an endless cycle of putting off the responsibility?

And what do we want to change the world into, anyway? I'm not a utopianist, or even really a postmillenialist. Maybe changing the world is too big and unreasonable and undefined. Here's something both more optimistic and more possible: Change your light-cone.

...?

More Pictures

2011-06-02T17:15:00.005-07:00

Ruthiey took a lot of fabulous pictures, because she's a really good photographer. Here are a couple of my favorite from our trip to the Minnesota Institute of Art.

Gina and her new role model.

Dancing in a French drawing room.

Gina and I look at a picture of people looking at a statue.

Ruthiey uses the amazing telephone in the amazing elevator.

I just like this picture.

I think you can probably go to the rest of the photo group from those links. All her pictures are good because she puts effort into adjusting the exposure and stuff. And she has skillz of artsiness.