Scramblings

Sucky Crap

2012-02-02T00:02:00.002-06:00

While my last post was about the nice things in being engaged, this is the flip side. Being engaged, I've discovered, is a lot of work and very little of the reward. We have to do lots of errand-y, decision things and we haven't been spending as much time just alone and enjoying each other. While I know the other side of the wedding day is not just alone time and googly eyes, the thing that irks me is that he's not there to just talk to me before going to bed in addition to the fact that we spend a lot of time reigning ourselves in. Tonight we were just spending time together, talking and being a little silly, but when he said he had to go, I just started welling with tears. I couldn't even help it. We've been engaged a whole two weeks and I already feel emotionally frustrated. Honestly, it's worse than the physical part.

My favorite thing in the world is just quietly talking to him and I want nothing more than to have somewhat silly talk with him as we drift off to sleep. So I cried, uncontrollably, both times he tried to leave. I finally managed to pull it together for him to leave because he just couldn't leave me crying. Even now, as I think about that moment, I feel little droplets streaming. I feel like a crazy person, but it's because we don't have that much time for those little intimate moments. They recharge me and help me remember why I'm expending so much energy on this one event (though I still couldn't care less about 90% of it). To me, it feels like morphine wearing off and you can't help but feel the pain when it leaves. He makes me happy and I feel good and whole. When he leaves, I feel torn. It's happened previous times, but it's gotten worse. My feelings when we separate have blown out of proportion, but I want him to be there so we can have those moments I like so much.

Is it May yet? Seriously. The weather has been all confused.

Perks

2012-01-30T00:55:00.001-06:00

The secret perk of being engaged is that I have become way more productive. This means I'm a bit busier, but I do enjoy accomplishing things that have been sitting around forever. I have 95% percent finished scrapbooking my trip to Thailand, which I took in summer of 2006. I had it partially done forever and couldn't bear to cull my ridiculous amount of photos (somewhere near 100 for a two week trip...), but when I realized I had to move my things again, I just hated the idea of schlepping the scrapbook AND the photos separately. So I started going through and, in a whirlwind fashion, cutting and pasting them into some semblance of a scrapbook. Just have to label some things and then it's finisimo! Hopefully I will tackle some of my Europe pictures (and possibly print some from Germany and Hungary to finish it all!) before I move. My Sundays are the day when I take on little projects like that. I'm still going through my clothes and pulling things I never wear. I have to possibly share closet space with him and I need to move all of it anyway, so I'd rather get rid of things I don't use that much.

This weekend we also got my ring back (so pretty and sparkly), looked at one venue (the Stowell's), got Matt's wedding band at an antique store (he also bought me a button from Gorbi coming to Merchandise Mart back in '92), had a double date with my parents for Mission Impossible 4 (the main plot was a Swedish nuclear extremist trying to frame the USA for an attack and warm up the Cold War––SO RIDICULOUS), mostly decided on a venue, and we ruled out Glacier National Park as our honeymoon spot. We both wanted to go to Glacier, but it was expensive, difficult logistically, and I became anxious about it. So we're going to Fond du Lac WI instead, with a short pit stop in Milwaukee on the way back. Way more low-key, which is what we really wanted, waaaaay less expensive, and we can simply drive up there in 3 hours. Awesome.

I look forward to the next super productive weekend with a Saturday filled with flower consultation, venue seeing, and possible some other little detail. This won't be so bad! I can do this! [Next week i will probably freak out again since that feeling comes in waves.]

Reflections on a Snowy Day

2012-01-12T23:37:00.000-06:00

It's been almost a month and a half since I have even viewed this blog, let alone write in it. Things just got crazy. I never finished my journal entry from November either. This Matt character has really brought my life into a whirlwind. I'm hoping things calm down after May because things are definitely starting to pick up now that I have to plan a huge party. Parts of it are fun, but it's got big chunks of stress thrown in because it's a lot of logistics. I just want to show up, but I can't afford to have someone plan it for me. Trying to keep things simple and still classy without spending tons o' money: at first it sounded like not such a big deal, but now I'm starting to feel a little more overwhelmed. It's a whole production for such a short celebration. Ah, culture. You make us do some nonsensical things.

I signed up for a German class in all of this and I'm considering taking my C1 certificate test as well. I may end up postponing the latter for the sake of my sanity, but I have a little while until that decision needs to be made. Matt encouraged me to do the class so I would still do something I enjoyed and perhaps unwind? We'll see. He did offer to take up some more of the planning if that would help; what a keeper! I keep pushing him to find time to practice drums too, so perhaps we will both push each other to keep doing our favorite hobbies so we don't go crazy being über-frugal and planning like fiends. I just don't feel like I have time and it's about to get more crunched; my work hours of 9:30a-6p make things wonky as well.

But this new addition of snow is lovely. Definitely a fan of this development. It helps things feel calm and quiet, which I very much need. Maybe this won't be so bad after all.

Die Holiday Weekend ohne Boyfriend

2011-11-29T11:53:00.001-06:00

I was at my parents helping them clean and decorate for Christmas. It was nice to help out the ol' folks. Friday I came home to an empty apartment, but I just puttered around and ended up pulling out the radom nails in my walls and spackling every hole and crack. The fact that I did this on a weekend night and stayed up late doing it (though Emily kept me up later with her happenings) make me feel a little lame, but I'm glad I finally got that household chore checked off after nearly 3 months of putting it off. I have to get paint to repaint my room.

Saturday I woke up like a shot and got straight to making soup. I started thawing my frozen vegetable broth while I ate breakfast and whipped up a minestrone from stuff I had around. I am actually quite proud of that minestrone because I made everything from scratch. I made the vegetable broth weeks ago, and everything else was an ingredient. The minestrone is really good and it has split pigeon beans (usually used for dal), peas (cooked with some pieces of soppressata), red potatoes, red kidney beans, and tomatoes. I was glad I took the mason jars because I was able to divide it and freeze it and look super homey and cute. YES! This soup was a significant victory over the cream of broccoli soup I made, which was more like mushy overcooked broccoli with lots of rice and a little of cream. I didn't have a blender, so I overcooked to broccoli to mushy and used a fork. No bueno. I don't know if I can choke down the last jar I have left. I should find a way to repurpose it.

Sunday Matt came back. I was way happier to see him than I thought I would be.

Life marches on

2011-11-07T13:19:00.001-06:00

The past two months have been interesting. My priorities shifted from reading and blogging to things like puttering, cooking, spending time with my boy, and deciding what I want to do on a given night. I haven't touched a book in at least a month (my 60 book goal is all but dead at this point--I got to 46...), I haven't so much as glanced at my other blog (if I have time, I'd rather do something more productive/less productive).

Things have certainly changed. For one, any moment I'm not at work, I'm either with Matt and/or at church things. If I'm not doing those things, I'm trying to cook for myself, shower, grocery shop, or do other basic chores of life. If I'm not doing chores, I'm dedicating my time to puttering and daydreaming. I keep up to date with CEE stuff, but it's not like it was before. More reasons for grad school. I just feel like the only way to slow down and enjoy myself is to not have lots of extra thigns to do. Life will take me down the road of really busy soon enough.

I've been dealing with some really heavy situations lately, but only one of them has really weighed me down, and it's not that bad either. I just keep humpin' from trench to trench. Life goes on. These problems give me something to think about, which doesn't happen too much during my day to day routine--it's almost a base level of functioning where it's hard to get above the sameness of it all. You just feel a little robotic, going through the motions without a higher functioning intellect. I'm not a dum-dum or anything, but it's almost like motor memory when you don't know what you're doing on the conscious level. You're doing something, but you can't explain why you're not consciouslessly doing it. Work. It's just work.

No way to warn someone

2011-10-19T12:25:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking about the nature of time recently. For the first time in my life, I fully understand what people mean by the "relentless, ever faster pace of modern life", the phrase "the daily grind", and the numerous descriptions of onward marching time. My time is somewhere other than with me. I have time outrunning me, outpacing me entirely. I will have more thoughts on this when I have more time to consider them. The irony.

But the song "We Carry On" by Portishead was a revelation in concert because it was then that I realized that this song perfectly describes the nature of time in my new life.

New life

2011-09-17T09:33:00.000-05:00

I think I'd write a little something because I started a new life.

This reminds me of what Galeano wrote about in The Book of Embraces:

The Japanese painted Hokusai changed his name sixty times, to celebrate each of his sixty births. In Uruguay, a formal country, they would have locked him up as a madman or perfidious forger of false identities.

So I've started a new life, again. I have started many a new life and it's always exciting, but also frustrating. I have to balance the new demands of my life with the wants of the old. I have to basically strike out a deal between what I was and what I am doing now. The negotiation process is currently in session.

My new job is great. It's not my life ambition, but it's good money and a stepping stone. Everyone in the office is really friendly and they seem to like me well enough. The learning curve on the tasks are pretty steep, but I'm doing pretty well. I'm sure that after a few weeks I'll be able to do my work like clockwork. I have put in some overtime during my first week and I have a feeling there will be days when I get 5 jobs to process at 4pm (like yesterday) and some days when the work is a little slow. However, I will always be busy, which makes the repetitive nature of the job secondary.

I love my new apartment. I get my own room, there's lots of space to entertain, and I bought a projector from my friend. We have a huge blank wall that we project onto, which makes watching a movie, or anything really, very fun. Very pleased. The apartment's location is fantastic: we are close to Roscoe Village, which is very cute; near the grocery store AND pharmacy AND Target; two bus lines within a block; the el is 5 blocks away; and we live just east of Western so the houses are cute and suburban-esque. Oh yeah, and there's a Village Discount Outlet a few blocks away. IN LOVE.

I started my German course yesterday. It's a weekly 6 hour commitment (3 hours class, 3 for homework) and the class is one block right after work on Friday. I'm really happy to have an outlet and place to practice my German. It also requires me to be slightly more intellectual than my fancy data entry job, so I don't feel mentally exhausted as much as just tired of sitting on my butt for 12 hours.

All these changes are making me more like the person I hoped to be a year ago. I don't exactly have an idea what I want to do, so I wanted to do something while I prepped myself for grad school. I also hoped to feel like an independent adult and have a vibrant social life. Living in Chicago was the ideal mostly because it would contribute to my social life (and how!). These are all good things. I am happy with the change.

an exception

2011-08-19T10:33:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty wary of all the new disorders that pop up in the medical world, but I think there might be something to this. The obsession with food is borderline psychotic.

Oh no, this might have traveled 600 miles to get here! That egg did not come from a chicken that was naturally fed? Eating animals is so barbaric! I'm sorry, that doesn't fit in with my macrobiotic diet. Do you have anything organic, free-range, and vegan?

I find this to be generally annoying, as my "Tanya Takes It There" article has clearly demonstrated. That being said, I do like food consciousness, but I am generally disgusted by the nit-picky mindset. It's okay to eat some processed foods––I swear it won't kill you. I'm all for healthy choices, but there's a point where it stops being just healthy and becomes a way for you to more legitimately complain. The sad thing is, you can't complain if you're subjecting yourself to an eating lifestyle that is difficult for you and everyone else and you especially can't act all high and mighty.

Twisted

2011-08-10T10:39:00.000-05:00

It's sort of twisted that I don't meet the criteria for any jobs I apply for. Admin and secretary jobs that I find are usually meant for someone with less education or experience. Any jobs I would like to get are for someone with more education or experience. What gives? Are jobs markets deliberately punishing college-educated people that haven't found a job yet? I'm not stupid, I can learn, and yet experience trumps my intelligence. Guess I'll just keep ringing up sandwiches. I know life could be a whole lot worse and that I won the lottery of life, but I'm trying to get the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs! Help me out here.

Day 2: The Rush

2011-08-07T12:25:00.000-05:00

The day started off with Fitz and the Tantrums. David and I caught the last few songs of their set as we met up with Chaz and his girlfriend Lyn. I wished I had been there for the whole thing because it sounded like so much fun! But then we split up with David going to his "modern soul" band and then Chaz and Lyn went to see Death From Above 1979. I went to Deftones, who I've wanted to see since I was 15.

I waited in front of the stage for an hour––listening to DFA 1979 from a distance––about 5 people deep from the center of the stage. I felt prepared to battle people because I was wearing Chucks, which have effectively prevented my feet from being crushed at other shows (which was a tip from my old roommate Kim who could throw herself through a pit). Chino walked out and the insanity began. The videos on YouTube show how ridiculous the show was and I didn't even realize how many people were there because I was so close to the front. The pit was vicious and I was one of a few girls who were not with their boyfriends. I bought earplugs for the show and put both in, but it was too quiet, so I took one out during a slow section (I switched the plugged ear during the show). They played a great set. I especially loved the selection from White Pony and Around the Fur. They kept most of the songs hard and fast because everyone in the pit wants to be aggressive. I definitely held my own and only lost a little bit of proximity in the middle of the show, only to get even closer at the end. Chino nearly crowd surfed and crowd surfing happened the entire time. Some of it got really dicey, but it was wild. I was so close to Chino I could hardly believe it was real, especially during the last song of the set. The end was the wildest part, by far. AHHHHH It was adrenaline-inducing.

As insane as it was, there was a moment in the middle of the set when I honestly thought I was going to be trampled. Pits move wildly and people jump, so holes open up randomly in the crowd. Unfortunately, one opened up behind me and I started falling, but people propped me up before I got far. I had a few stumbles in there, but that was the moment when I went, "Oh, sh*!". I was soaked in sweat that was largely not mine and I smelled like a sweaty dude (or many of them). When the crowd started dispersing, a guy came up to me and asked if I was alone. I said, I'm meeting friends, but none of them liked Deftones. I wasn't sure why he was asking, so I had to slip in the friends part. Then he said, "You were insane in there." I replied, "Yeah, that show was nuts." That made me feel cool, however sad that is.

I met up with David for Cee Lo Green, which was lame. He couldn't work the crowd, who were mostly waiting for Eminem, and he ended 15 minutes early. He kept stopping the music to get the crowd to cheer louder and get more into it, but it became irritating and I think it contributed to his losing battle. I was a little mad I wasted my time there, but whatever. We left the stage after that and got Triple Truffle Fries from Franks 'n' Dawgs. It was so good I slurped up the leftover truffle butter. Mmmm. We then sat on the hill opposite the main stage for Eminem. My adrenaline wore off at Cee Lo Green and I was hurting almost everywhere, so I didn't want to be in the pit for Eminem, though it would've been fun. Eminem put on a good show and he covered some of his early work, but a lot more of his recent album. This was a little disappointing, though understandable because he needs to promote it/most of the fans are too young for his Slim Shady-era songs. He did do "My Name Is" and "The Real Slim Shady". There were SO MANY PEOPLE THERE. And almost all within the first 100 yards of the stage had lighters. David and I laughed at how you could see everyone's LCD screens light up as soon as he walked onto the stage. "The picture of our generation," we joked. We were far enough back that the sound level was normal, but you could hear the bass from Pretty Lights from the nearby Perry's tent, which sounded like a really good time. We were also far back enough that when we left, we weren't in the deluge of people, so we got home faster.

But Deftones alone was worth it and Eminem was the cherry on top. Plus, those fries. Yum.

Lolla Day 1

2011-08-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

To summarize my first day at Lollapalooza: I forgot my phone at home. Classic Taylor. I also realized it as soon as I got to the festival. Also classic Taylor.

David (high school acquaintance, now my coworker) and I took Metra down and walked the mile or so to Grant Park. We had to wait a long time to get in, but once we did, we filled up with water and went to see the Smith Westerns. It was a good show, but I'd seen them before despite not being a rabid fan. I tried to connect with friends via David's phone, but nothing worked out. So I hopped over to see The Kills, who killed it. Alison Mosshart is really something; she puts on a good show, though she looks like she's barely in control of herself. I met up with David again and we went to see A Perfect Circle, but he left a little early.

I was so excited to see them live after all this time! I loved that they played "3 Libras (Massive Attack Remix)" because it seemed unusual to play a version of your song mixed by another band; they also played a remixed version of "Weak and Powerless" in addition to the original. But "Counting Bodies Like Sheep" was SO GOOD. Oh my, it was so good that I forgave the fact that they essentially remixed "Pet" from their second album. They also played "Magdalena" and replaced the title word with "Chicago" and "Barack Obama" at the end, which I thought was funny. The set list was mostly songs I knew and loved––I was pretty happy they left out most of their third album because I don't really know it that well. Okay, so I checked off a band I've wanted to see since I was about 15.

Then I went to see Crystal Castles by myself after an annoying long line at the port-o-potty field. I couldn't hear the singer pretty much at all, but the bass was all you needed to hear to rock out. They ended early, so I headed to the Perry tent to see Girl Talk, which I thought was playing though I figured out it was Afrojack. I slowly worked my way up through the crowd since I was solo and had a good time. At the end of the set, people dispersed and simultaneously rushed the stage. I rushed the stage and got about 30 feet back in the dead center of the crowd. It was so humid and humans in large, sweaty masses smell like a petting zoo. I waited about 45 minutes and made friends with someone who had played the tent at Lolla 2 years ago. I shared my water with some thirsty people (I figured my good will might keep them from elbowing me or fainting on me, but also who wants to be thirsty in that tent? It was a sauna). Girl Talk came on and the raving began. It was one of the most tripped out shows I've ever been to. It was also about twice as sweaty as seeing Muse at the Aragon, which was also a sweaty affair.

Since it's house music, the set is like an hour long song and by the end, you don't really seem to care that a good portion of the sweat soaking your clothes or blanketing your skin is not yours. I was in the thick of it and this one guy corralled me with his arm and tried to grind on me. At first I didn't think it was on purpose (or even a guy), but then I started feeling his boner and wasn't interested in being his masturbation toy. I shoved him back and moved to the side, but he came back for seconds. I repeated my efforts, put my shoulder strap purse behind me (covering my butt) and promised myself if there was a third, I was going for his nuts. Luckily he got the message, so I didn't have to damage his sensitive bits. Back to the show: there was confetti from cannons, balloons, and huge, inflated balls filled with confetti, not to mention glowsticks being thrown everywhere. At the end of the show, when the balloons were released into the confetti fray, the stage went dark and they put on these lights with multiple beams that created the coolest effect, even though I was sober. I could only try to appreciate what it looked like to my drugged up neighbors. The event managers tried to get Girl Talk to end about 10 minutes early, but after some chanting and cheering, he got back on and played for the last 10 minutes. I was absolutely soaked in sweat on every inch of my body and I couldn't have cared less.

Getting out of there was a bit of an ordeal, but since I had planned on it taking about 60-90 minutes to get back to Ogilvie, I was patient. The mass of people went for an exit that wasn't an exit, but it was opened up because redirecting the crowds would've caused panic. We went by ambulances, event pick-ups, beverage trucks, and palettes of canned drinks, which people stole on their way out when the security wasn't looking or yelling at them. Walking back to Ogilvie turned out to be a surprising ordeal because my dehydrated and hungered state made my thinking a little hazy. I was walking the right way, but I thought I passed Madison and backtracked to discover it was Monroe and then I remembered Madison is closed right before Ogilvie, so I had to walk to the back of the station which was 2 blocks longer. I was thirsty, really hungry, and tired. I ended up buying 3 things at Dunkin Donuts because I had impaired judgment; all I really wanted was McDonald's fries in all their salty, carb glory, but the line was really friggin' long for just fries. I got home just fine, including the bike ride. I ate four pieces of salami after walking in the door because I wanted salty SO BAD.

On the docket today: Deftones, Lykke Li, and EMINEM. More bands I've wanted to see since forever.
Sunday: Flogging Molly, Damian "Jr Gong" Marley & Nas, Deadmau5.

The Joke

2011-07-28T13:24:00.000-05:00

"I'd always taken comfort in seeing Lucie as something abstract, a legend and a myth, but now I realized that behind the poetry of my vision hid a starkly unpoetic reality; that I didn't know her; that I didn't know her as she actually was, in and of herself. All I'd been able to perceive (in my youthful egocentricity) was those aspects of her being touching directly on me (my loneliness, my captivity, my desire for tenderness and affection); she had never been anything more to me than a function of my situation; everything beyond that concrete situation, everything she was in her own right, had escaped me entirely. And since she was merely the function of a situation, it stands to reason that when that situation changed (when another situation took me over, when I myself grew older and changed), my Lucie vanished with it, and all that was left of her was what had escaped me, what didn't concern me, what was beyond me. Consequently, it also stands to reason that after fifteen years I failed to recognize her. In my eyes (and I'd never thought to consider her except insofar as I was concerned) she had long been a different person, a stranger."

--Milan Kundera, The Joke

This made me think of a remark the director of (500) Days of Summer made: "Yes, Summer is an immature view of a woman. She's Tom's view of a woman. He doesn't see her complexity and the consequence for him is heartbreak. In Tom's eyes, Summer is perfection, but perfection has no depth. Summer's not a girl, she's a phase."

I feel awesome

2011-07-26T12:05:00.000-05:00

So this job I'm applying to listed "familiarity with mail merges" as a qualification and I, of course, did not know what it was. So you know what I did? I looked it up, found a lesson on the Microsoft Office website, and learned how to create a mail merge. It's really not that hard and it's slick. I feel so awesome that I took 20 minutes to learn how to mail merge, especially since I couldn't use the website's demo lesson in Excel for compatibility reasons. So I just used Microsoft Help and figured out the exact mechanics in my 2004 version and created a bogus mail merge. This 1) illustrates my want for a job in general, and 2) my want for this job.

Also, after I learned how to do it, I became irritated at how I manually did this exact thing for letterheads at my last internship. Furthermore, I wondered why they didn't use it for their letters. It's kind of like how TPT introduced me to CRM databases and I realized that my entire project at IIE was basically trying to create a CRM database out of Excel and Word documents before I knew what a CRM database was. Then I emailed the director and said, "Um, you know what would be a great way to keep track of that information at the office? A CRM database." He emailed back to say, "Thanks for the suggestion and we started to realize that, too." Part of me felt like I should go back there and set up their CRM database; however, I would need to paid for that, at least with some sort of stipend.

But hey, I feel awesome.

This is like me

2011-07-19T16:49:00.000-05:00

but with phone calls and texts. Sometimes I'm like this with emails, but I seldom get emails that truly require a response. I usually respond within a week, but sometimes I mark it to get back to it, and end up completely distracted. For the most part, I do respond within a sane amount of time. If you think my personal case is a technology-etiquette phenomenon, I can assure you it happens even when I'm doing tasks away from a machine. I've always been like that. I eventually loop back, though faster if someone brings my negligence to attention, and I hate leaving things hanging. Just me, though.

Leads...in some direction

2011-07-12T11:09:00.000-05:00

I don't want to jinx myself, but there are some possible job leads on my horizon. I won't say through who or where, but suffice it to say there are a few doors ajar. We shall see if they slam in my face or if any windows open up.

There's a customer who always comes in during slow periods, named Nick, and we chat. Lately he's been giving me bizarre readings of my future (including having 8 children by countless men through a genetic breeding program), but when he came in last week for a philly cheese steak sandwich on his way to the hospital, he asked me about what I planned to do after Rollin' To Go. I explained I was hoping to leave sooner than later, etc., and he ended up giving me a lot of tips on how to get a job at Northwestern. I can't remember exactly what he does there, but he said that he's going to poke around for me and see if there are any positions opening up in his department (since I said I was looking for a job with more hours and better pay, typically admin. jobs). I was flattered he would do all that, especially since he was sleep deprived since his wife gave birth to their second child that day. My coworkers were joking about the fact I was so chatty, but when I told them what he offered, they all shut up and said, "Damn, I would talk to him, too!" Who knew that being a chatty, friendly cashier trying to memorize regulars' names would pay off that way?

Other than that, work is work is work. I had yesterday off because a powerful microburst caused a huge power outage all over the city, including RTG. So I had the day to myself, which I spent writing on my blog, doing some research on one of the job leads, and helping make delicious ribs for dinner.

My books are coming along pretty well. I am finishing my 32nd book of the year, so I need to get back on schedule!

Old School Dating

2011-06-08T10:04:00.000-05:00

I came across this post and watched the video. Oddly enough, I thought there was some solid dating advice in this cheesy old film. Girls don't like being called last minute for a date and dislike having to decide the date when they're being asked out. I think the same would apply for the reversed role: a man would dislike having to decide the activity if he's being asked out. If you've thought about taking someone on a date, it's only appropriate to make a suggestion, at the very least. I'm not of the school of thought that the man should always decide, but I've always dreaded dates where I get asked out and asked to think of something to do. Since most of my dates were in the more traditional Mormon community, I knew that the man would be paying and it seemed insensitive to have me decide how much the date would cost. I'm not high maintenance or anything, but that seems a little backwards. I don't mind it being more casual and not activity oriented; I've had nice dates where I just meet up at a cafe and we chat.

You should also not ask out a girl to a social function and expect her to remain mute except with you. I had someone take me on a date to a party and became rather livid that I was speaking to other guys, which made even less sense because he barely spoke to me at all. It was easily the worst date I have ever been on.

Hot dog!

2011-05-27T09:00:00.002-05:00

I got 223 views on my blog yesterday and 171 of those were for my FEMEN post. AHHHHHHHHH. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

America vs. Europe cont'd

2011-05-26T14:37:00.000-05:00

As I browsed my list of books read and the books I intend to read in my quest for 60 books in one year, I noticed two trends: 1-Eastern Europe and 2-Americana.

For some reason, I have a keen interest in books that are either about the heart/history of America or have something to do with Eastern Europe. My E.Europe books range from European authors to European subject matter, so there's a little more range in that trend. My American authors write about pre-industrial America (though I have one book written by a German). If one was not aware of my internal conflict between my homeland and my passionate love interest known as Europe, my book list says it all. Plus, most of the books on my to-read list were recommended to me by people who either know what I like or have similar taste.

In short, I am living in Chicago, but Europe is taking over my internal life.

Perfect

2011-05-19T13:42:00.000-05:00

This video is just as perfect as when I first saw it. Everything about it is spectacular.

I have to share this

2011-05-12T11:26:00.000-05:00

I already shared the podcast on Fbook, but I wanted to elaborate my thoughts and feelings on it.

After reading reactions and comments on the podcast, I have points I agree with. They do focus a lot on the external realities facing singles today and how that is affecting their relationship with the Gospel. I loved this because I often feel that church on Sunday is just as insulated from the real world as Provo. This isn't to say I haven't had fantastic cross-overs. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife was a YW leader during my time and she was an invaluable leader for someone like myself: questioning and feeling pandered to.

One of the women (I couldn't keep track of who was who) did say that a lot of singles stay in spite of their apathy towards church. DING DING DING. I do appreciate that they bring this up because I know from my group of friends that this is true for a percentage of singles. I only know people who feel this way because I do and can relate to that. My friends at BYU were my greatest support because we were all questioning but still dedicated to figure out what the truth was. We weren't contemplating leaving (though a few have left), but sorting things out. I felt like no one else would understand that complaining about church did not mean that I wouldn't go back next week or that feeling a general dislike for half my ward didn't mean I wasn't a faithful member. It later came to my attention that I probably disliked these people because they were putting on that stereotypical Mormon front. Once you got people to open up and be comfortable, they weren't as loathsome. Some did have very Peter Priesthood qualities, but a lot of them just didn't feel like the church allows them to cut loose and be who they are.

Provo was a long lesson in the dissonance between God/scripture and the people running my ward. This is why I often felt like I was going to church despite church. It is boring and it is because I hear a lot of the same things repeatedly; I also hate people justifying this stale rotation of sanitized lessons by saying that if it's taught more than once, I didn't learn it the first time. Perhaps it wasn't taught right any of those times and therefore I could not learn the lesson. What I have found in my life over the past 5 years is that I have far more spiritually edifying moments studying the gospel alone than in the entire 3 hours I spend in church a week. I mostly wanted to gauge out my eyes to pass the time. I was mildly disruptive, always made snide remarks, and hardly felt like I mattered to anyone there. I went to church because 1) BYU required me to go and 2) I realized it was a token of faith to God. Church doesn't have to be an entertaining carnival, but it does have to stimulate and engage me. The gospel is about knowledge and a lot of the time I feel like we resort to platitudes. It's partially the laziness of it all––we have very demanding callings and I feel bad that teachers are required to do so much. They can't pull the weight of the class and the lesson manual cannot pull the weight of the lesson. I think half the problem is teachers are afraid to adapt the lessons and the other half is we are afraid to veer from the lesson plan in class or even make a comment that doesn't adhere to what the manual anticipates.

Sunday School in my branch has become my favorite part of the entire 3 hours. My Gospel Doctrine class is amazing and I should thank my teachers more often because the lessons are thoughtful, about the actual scriptures, and don't center on marriage or families. This has been a revelation to me because I usually hated Sunday School. I used to hate Relief Society a lot because of the reasons mentioned in the podcast, but when I was in Vienna, it was the only part of church I understood without a problem. From that point, I began to appreciate it more despite the platitudes taught because there were some genuine spiritual insights buried in that mire. I am currently working on sacrament meeting, which is always tough because I have to listen to individuals monologue on gospel topics––always a dubious enterprise. I also struggle with the fact that reverence means near dead stillness because it completely stifles people. I'm not saying we need to have Baptist-like exuberance, but we don't need to looks like bodies in coffins or even act as if we are at a library/museum/funeral.

The one thing I believe the podcast should have addressed is the slowness of finding answers. The internet makes it way too easy to find our answers and I think my generation is slightly averse to finding difficult answers. When the answer is difficult and feels largely irrelevant to your Monday-Saturday life, I can see why a lot of people leave. It doesn't seem worth it. What the podcast does for me is open the door for discussion. I don't think they're suggesting pandering (though it appears that way on the surface) but an open dialogue for how we feel disconnected. I identified with a lot of the points they made and I believe they are issues. What I feel is most dangerous is people dismissing these disconnects and not considering them trials equal to the physical hardships of the revered pioneers. These are serious, serious trials that are far more subtle and pervasive than the physical toll of hardships. Young people are having a hard time feeling connected to the gospel and this is just a difficult to surmount as starvation or torture. People keep saying we are the "choice generation that must face the greatest obstacles" but then turn around and never treat our problems as difficult or worth discussion specifically. How does that make any sense? The greatest trial of all is feeling disconnected from God and that's exactly what we're facing. Physical hardships brought these saints closer to God but these modern trials are tearing us away from God.

The discussion is treating this as a serious issue and discussing the many factors that tear people away from feeling a relationship with God via the church. The church is supposed to be a place where we feel connected to God and learn the great stores of God's knowledge. Right now it feels like an old library in the middle of nowhere: we recycle lessons, do not relate to the contemporary world, and continue to peddle fossilized cultural norms, and do not grapple with greater questions. The early years of the church are inspiring because people grappled with huge questions and doubts, the revelations were incredibly timely and helped people navigate their way to God, and the lessons were rife with new revelation. This is what needs to happen because I feel like the church is settling in and becoming stale. I don't know where the point fingers, which may not be helpful anyway, but I think my generation is losing sight of how relevant the church is to their relationship with God. To be honest, I think they have a strong point. The gospel is exactly what we need, but sometimes church feels like a jail sentence.

Still Rewound

2011-05-12T10:31:00.001-05:00

This is what I thought my life would be life a mere four months later in December 2000:

Dear Taylor,

This should be something interesting to read! This is an activity from the combined Mia Maid and Beehive lesson given by Elyssa Andrus. We wrote down what we want to happen in ten years (from 12/31/00)! Here's what I wrote:

1. I want to be a gymnast/ice skater

To get there I will:

a. take classes/teach myself

b. be disciplined

c. practice

2. I would like to be married, or getting ready to be, and in the Manti temple.

a. live worthily

b. date appropriately (who and how I date)

c. prepare for the commitment

3. I would like to be in college or finishing college.

a. study hard

b. work hard

c. earn enough money to pay for it

4. Live happily

a. be myself

b. good attitude

c. be thankful for everything

I should have also been pretty faithful to my "lucky diary" and thankfulness journal. I bet a lot has changed since I was 13, ongoing 14. Hope it turned out for the better. Have a good life!

-Taylor Catherine Merkley

December 31, 2000

New Year's Eve

A few notes: I do remember having a serious obsession with the Manti temple for a while, which has become glaringly obvious. But on the letter as a whole, I'm not so sure I grasped the fact that I wouldn't look at this for 10 years. Why did I outline how I was going to accomplish these goals? Did I really think I would remember or did I believe I would pick up vibes from the presence of the letter? This remains a complete mystery to me 11 years later. And I was under the false impression that you're in college until you're 23. This turned out to be true, but I have no idea why I thought people were still in undergraduate studies at that age. Plus, my "how to" goals were really specific––work hard? study hard? What does that mean?

Sadly for me, the only things I can tick off this 10 year old list is 1. finishing college, 2. earning enough money to pay for it (do scholarships count?) as well as studying/working hard, 3. being myself, 4. having a good attitude. The rest is either dubious or a complete failure. At least the big stuff counted. Ignore the marriage goal––I was also under the false impression that every Mormon girl marries before they graduate college. And the whole "date appropriately" thing is a figment of an uncultured thirteen year old's mind. I'm not sure what the right "how" for dating is (dating Mormons? not having sex? not dating at all? not farting in front of my boyfriend?) and the "who" portion is always a matter of interest. It would have interested my thirteen year old self to know that I dated one Mormon man and he was not even a remote candidate for marriage. A boyfriend who was agnostic on a good day was about as close as I got, which does not speak very well of my marriage prospects (especially since the topic never came up, ever).

Lastly, how I was blind to my obvious failures to keep a journal? Did I really think I would keep those up for 10 years when I hardly managed 6 months in a row every few years? Taylor, you did not have a clue. Grow up and learn stuff.

Rewind

2011-05-11T10:25:00.002-05:00

Thoughts I had as a thirteen year old. I wrote this to myself back in August 23, 2000:

I will be:

-studying to be a teacher at the University of Illinois

-married in the Manti temple

-honeymooned in Tahiti

-working as a waitress

-living in a small apartment

What's funny is that I thought I'd be in the midst of school in August 2010 (the intended date of this letter's opening) and apparently thought waitressing was to be aspired to. It's all so ridiculous and unlike my life that I can't help but wonder what my thirteen year old self would say. It'd be a remake of "The Kid".

Love letters

2011-05-07T16:52:00.000-05:00

Although I've slacked off in my letter writing as of late, I have been regaling people with my love of letter writing. Email and Facebook is great, but the ease of communication can be a barrier to true communication. I will never forget my father writing that Henry Thoreau once said, "too frequent society left us overly familiar and uninteresting to each other". While I don't one hundred percent agree with this assessment, it does lead me to believe the too frequent internet society leaves us overly superficial and unfulfilled. Emails are easy to write, as are comments on Facebook. This is wonderful because it lowers the barrier to communication, but it also means that it's not quite as thoughtful as a letter.

Traditional American etiquette still recognizes the vast difference between electronic and paper communication. Thank yous for gifts of any kind are supposed to be sent by post and your wedding will be branded as tacky if you send out electronic wedding invitations or announcements. Birthday and Christmas cards are still much better in paper form. Letters are still the most thoughtful gesture and the internet remains a place for tacky forms of communication. The thought and time that goes into mailing something speaks volumes and the contents only add to this. Receiving letters is fun precisely because they don't happen every day. Email is so ubiquitous that even an email from a distant friend doesn't strike a jubilant chord. If I receive a letter, it's like a present and I get giddy; one letter had me misty eyed from joy when it arrived. The time it takes to write out a letter is far more significant than an email and you cannot go back and re-edit it. You have to plan it and write it almost perfectly. It's a total mind shift to sit down and deliberately write your thoughts instead of writing a stream of consciousness.

Journals are subject to this as well. Although Quest Unplug is having its ups and downs, I'm still convinced that if I rededicate myself to the deliberate act of writing, things will slow down and make sense. Writing is the antidote to the speed of modern life. (I ironically typed in my blog entry)

Time

2011-05-05T22:23:00.001-05:00

I wanted to share an illuminating passage from Ryszard Kapuściński's The Shadow of the Sun:

The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time.  In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively, and has measurable and linear characteristics.  According to Newton, time is absolute: "Absolute, true, mathematical time of itself and from its own nature, it flows equably and without relation to anything external."  The European feels himself to be time's slave, dependent on it, subject to it.  To exist and function, he must observe its ironclad, inviolate laws, its inflexible principles and rules.  He must heed deadlines, dates, days, and hours.  He moves within the rigors of time and cannot exist outside them.  They impose upon him their requirements and quotas.  An unresolvable conflict exists between man and time, one that always ends with man's defeat––time annihilates him.

Africans apprehend time differently.  For them, it is a much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective.  It is man who influences time, its shape, course and rhythm (man acting, of course, with the consent of gods and ancestors).  Time is even something that man can create outright, for time is made manifest through events, and whether an event takes place or not depends, after all, on man alone.  If two armies do not engage in a battle, then that battle will not occur (in other words, time will not have revealed its presence, will not have come into being).

Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when neglect or ignore it.  It is something that springs to life under our influence, but falls into a state of hibernation, even nonexistence, if we do not direct our energy toward it.  It is a subservient, passive essence, and most importantly, one dependent on man.

The absolute opposite of time as it is understood in the European worldview.

In practical terms, this means that if you go to a village where a meeting is schedule for the afternoon but find no one at the appointed spot, asking, "When will the meeting take place?" makes no sense.  You know the answer: "It will take place when people come."

This is the stuff I live for. This is why Ryszard is becoming one of my favorite new finds. This is why Paweł is my go to source for book recommendations.

Euro-pretend

2011-05-05T09:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had an hour between driving to and from Glenview for the kid's golf practice, so I decided to go to Lovelace Park and read Dubliners. The sun was piercingly warm and the breeze was a cool kiss on my sun-heated head. Lovelace is about as close to a European park as it gets here: there's a large pool with a fountain in the middle, benches circling it like prey, and rolling hills. Being in America, it had facilities and a tennis court, but sitting by the "pond" made it feel like another continent. An egret flew over the water, dragging its feet, but settled on the stone slab and concrete rim. I saw three 12 year old boys across the way and they each had a fishing pole. They distanced themselves as they fished in the pond. I watched, rather uncertain they would find anything. They chatted loudly, as young boys do, as they held on their rods, hoping for a bite. One of them said, "You are being rather unorthodox at the moment," as his friend was making some rookie fishing mistake. I smiled to myself, wondering how many books he reads and which ones. Soon they gathered closer and still waited for fish to take a bite. They started singing the chorus of Britney Spears' latest hit, "Til the World Ends". Their fishing continued, though one of the boys loudly announced his rod wasn't working. The other two found their lines entangled, which became quite an ordeal considering that one of them had a live fish attached. I soon had to leave, but I smiled at three 12 year old boys fishing in a park that reminded me of Europe.

Exaggerations

2011-04-28T11:15:00.003-05:00

Something has been bothering me lately. The portrayal of virgins (particularly female virgins) in popular media is mind bogglingly flat, stereotypical, and completely off the mark. I'm not even specifically talking about that sex episode of "Glee", though it is completely guilty. I suppose I've started thinking about it because I'm a 24 year old virgin and don't see a reflection of myself in any of the portrayals I've seen. Virgins are treated like those Precious Moments tschotskes: undefiled, completely naive, and fragile. I am not denying that they exist at all because there are all shades of people out there, but is it so difficult to believe that virgins are not completely naive? That they actually know what sex is and they get innuendos? Virgins are crammed into several categories that do not allow room for informed choices, sexual appeal, intelligence, or moderate religious attitudes. The virgins portrayed in the media do not reflect that many I know and it frankly dismays me that sexually abstaining folks are laughed at and given no respect. If this analysis seems to paint the issue with broad strokes, just read the stereotypes perpetuated below.

The Blissful Virgin
The world we live in makes it nearly impossible to be unaware of sexual overtones. The only movies that would be safe for a Precious Moments tschotske would be Disney and they have indirect references to sex. If there isn't a soft porn scene in a show or movie, there's usually a reference to sex. Media portrayals seems to ignore their own tendencies to include sex in everything; it's almost as if portraying virgins so innocently expunges them from the constant sex––See? These girls don't know anything! There isn't enough publicized sex out there! The apparent bliss of these virgins also undermines the idea that virginity is a choice. It's the assumption that they're virgins just because they're unaware. In this day and age, it should be acknowledged that women may actually choose to not have sex while fully aware of it and in clear ear and eye shot of its praisers as well as the act itself. The flat portrayal of virgins would discourage any person from being abstinent because it defines them as naive, possibly without sex appeal, and infantile.

The Unwilling Virgin
The movie "The Forty Year Old Virgin" also portrayed virgins as people who simply gave up trying. These are the "hopeless" lot of virgins who simply can't get it together and blew their chance at sexual competence and bliss. While Carrell's character was endearing and not quite so flat, it still pigeonholed him as an unwilling and hapless virgin. In defense of sexually active people, it also portrayed his potential partners as unforgiving. I can't imagine his mishaps in potential sexual conquests would truly discourage a partner who honestly wanted him. The reason I have a problem with portraying the unwilling virgin is because it once again ignores the choice aspect. While it was a choice to give up, it never addresses that some virgins never choose to never try prior to marriage, a particular partner, etc. Though I am writing specifically about female virgins, male virgins typically get lumped into this category. Media tells us that all men want to, but the ones who haven't are incompetent or unappealing. I feel sorry for men in this regard because they're portrayed as completely controlled by the desire for sex. I give men more credit for better or worse. Maybe it's too zany to assume someone would choose to never try despite seeing images of sexual enjoyment and hearing people endlessly discuss it. Even zanier is someone who chooses not to try and isn't ashamed.

The Hellfire Virgin
Virgins are also portrayed as religious zealots who simply obey the dictates of their pastor and in turn preach hellfire and brimstone. This particularly gets my goat because I often feel like people don't realize that I'm not a virgin out of ignorance or even religious obligation. It frankly boils down religious people to the looniest demographic. Religious people are not always whack jobs and they're not ignorant either. While my faith has informed my decision, it does not control my decision entirely. I always acknowledged this when people asked me if I didn't do this or that for religious reasons and replied, "My religion advises me not to, but I just don't want to." It's the truth. I could have very easily had sex by now and inched closer than I should have, but the fact of the matter is I didn't want to. It didn't feel like the right time. Call me crazy, ignorant, or religious, but I chose it out of my own free will. That's feminism.

The Hunted Virgin
There's also the portrayal of virgins as prey. For some reason, Hollywood likes portraying virgins as victims of men who prefer "breaking in" virgins. One, the fascination is disgusting. Two, that's degrading for virgins and men alike. Those men exist, believe me, but it's portrayed as incredibly common and that bothers me. Virgins are only as valuable as their unperforated hymen (excuse the imagery) and as soon as they lose that, they are available to the wider sexual community as easy options. "Easy A" was a good example of this. As soon as Olive "loses" her virginity to the rumor mill, she's "open for business" and everyone tries to take advantage of her. What I didn't like was that the movie could only resolve itself by her publicly declaring her virginity, which solidifies the idea that she needs to be a virgin to be innocent or of worth, which is similarly damaging for women who choose to have sex (even lots of it). The "Hunted Virgin" stereotype also portrays the hunted virgins as completely oblivious to the man's real intentions. I don't understand why virgins have to be so witless. I can confirm from experience that most virgins do understand the difference between a man who cares and a man who wants your panties as evidence. The movie "10 Things I Hate About You" does show Bianca wising up to Joey Donner's advances, which I liked despite the Hunted Virgin stereotype it perpetuates.

Why the Stereotypes?
I keep wondering why virgins are painted so flatly and unrealistically. My first thought is that any coming of age movie deals in extremes and that subtlety is largely left to indie films. Portraying a willing virgin must be difficult because it requires actual characterization and an understanding of what informs those decisions. Maybe writers lack the creativity to explore a character that chooses to stay abstinent without being a nincompoop. But maybe there's another reason: virgins justify sexual activity. If being a virgin makes you a porcelain doll, then being sexually active is the better choice. It makes the virgin the outsider and everyone else privy to a knowledge of sex. You couldn't justify sexual activity by portraying knowledgeable and cool virgins because it means that sexual activity is not a prerequisite for such knowledge and prowess.If virgins can only attract serial deflowerers, there's no appeal. If virgins could attract anyone they wanted and still choose not to have sex, the whole system would blow up.

Let's be honest, if a movie portrayed that kind of virgin, she would immediately be pigeonholed as crazy––why waste such sexual appeal? I loathe that sexual appeal and attraction is confined to the goal of sex. Just because you have appeal doesn't mean you have an obligation to use it for sex. I'm not stupid and realize that the ultimate goal of sexual appeal is sex, but it's as though sexually appealing women are obligated to succumb to those urges. There's more to sex than coitus; everything leading up to it is part of it. Making out isn't sex, but can anyone deny that it's part of the journey? Sex appeal is about mystery as much as sex. I want someone other than ascetics to show sexual restraint beyond "this would complicate my life/relationships" situations. Please, let there be one movie where an attractive, sexy, knowledgeable virgin refuses to attempt sex even though she has strong feelings and feel the urge––even better, have it include a truly caring boyfriend. Maybe it's asking too much, but I'm asking the consumers as well as the producers to stop perpetuating the idea that virgins are ignorant, hapless, religiously insane, and hunted by pigs. There's more to sexual choice than those four dimensions. I hope everyone knows that.

Things that float through my mind

2011-04-27T22:55:00.002-05:00

I don't understand the hipster fascination with looking outdated and ugly.

I gave up on tight clothes right before I left college. I like loose button-ups as cardigans and pants that don't feel like jeggings.

I can't buy a book that's not CEE related, as my recent trip to Borders proved. I gave up a Neruda anthology for Hemon's Best European Fiction 2011.

I really have no idea what I want to do vocationally. Reason #650 why I should probably just become a professor.

Dating someone would sincerely help my feelings of unattractiveness and for the past two months I've taken up the stance that dating for fun is okay by me. It's taken me 4 years of singleness to reach this. By my own personal standards, it still feels like settling.

For some reason, dating Mormon men actually frightens me. I have this inner fear that any date with a Mormon means that he has an interest in marrying me. Though I sincerely want to get married, I honestly don't want that to be in the back of my mind when I'm on a first date. Now that I think about it, this probably has to do with Sam wanting to marry me when I was dating him for purely shallow reasons. This may also have to do with my fear of misleading men, which my new 'date for fun' attitude has to ignore.

The fantasy of living out of a maybe two suitcases continues to plague me. All efforts to appear normal about this are hard won.

I really love poetry.

I really like the poem I wrote last week.

I miss my friends a lot. A lot a lot. I hope they move to Chicago.

Caverns of Autumn

2011-04-14T18:56:00.000-05:00

floating endlessly by,
green leaves dot ponds
rippling with raindrops
shuddering from the cold

when the dust settles
the days will rejoice
feeling the warm sun
for the first time in months

can the seasons possibly predict
the ones that follow?
do they follow some pattern
that i am forbidden to know?

years have worn me down
cataclysmic edges so sharp
my loneliness could stab
any passerby saying hello

there is a place
inside me, you
welling with pride
decrepit with faith

the breeze whispers past
keeping its secret safe
never listening to others
forever keeping steady pace

memories so sweet

2011-04-13T19:28:00.000-05:00

This warm weather is doing very strange things. I am constantly flooded with triggered memories. I don't even know what triggers them, but some of them date back to high school. Suddenly moments or even entire summers get condensed into a moment drenched in an emotion, a wispy notion of accumulated time. I can't control it either. The other night, for reasons I cannot explain, I had an intense hankering for mineral water. Maybe it was because I was writing Juliane; it could have triggered a thought about Lütte in the summer, which made me want mineral water desperately. It was so sudden and yet it couldn't go away. My summer will be a swirling moment in time, with the rims traveling slower than the center.

Wow

2011-04-06T10:08:00.001-05:00

I remember watching this on TV when I was living in the yellow house. I fell off the couch as I gaped at this routine. LIKE BUTTER.

The only thing that was better was Lezak clinching the 100 free relay. Seriously one of the most exciting Olympic wins of all time. The French were the heavy favorites and they were winning until the last 25 METERS. Just watch. It still gets me riled up. And the French were such snots leading up to the event and then they got slapped with 2nd place.

Feel better or else

2011-04-05T20:47:00.000-05:00

Today I interviewed for a trading assistant position with a small hedge fund company. I didn't feel like it went super well, but I am also allowing room for the element of complete surprise. I was feeling kind of crappy about it as I walked back to Ogilvie, but then I crossed the Madison St bridge. I first saw an older black man with a storm cloud grey beard selling Chicago Sun Times, a step up from Streetwise. Then I saw an older black woman holding a sign. She held a sign with a begging cup underneath it, but the sign intrigued me. As she begged for your change with a smile, the sign read, "Looking for a job. Experience in administrative work. No job is too small!!" I thought, maybe I didn't get the job, but I am still better off than this woman. Not only am I living at home, but I am young and white. Those are two things that, no matter how wrong it is, will be an advantage. And that was the saddest part.

I hope her sign helps her find something.

Isn't this the truth

2011-03-31T11:17:00.001-05:00

Ghost

2011-03-29T08:55:00.000-05:00

I saw a ghost on the way to school. I was scuffing my shoes on the asphalt and just thinking when I saw him. At first I didn't pay much mind, it could've been a very old man who is too absentminded to think about how close he was walking behind a young girl. I stopped to tie my shoe and then sneak a glance behind. It was an older man, with a long prolific beard, shiny as a coin, and a black, wide brimmed hat sitting on top of his head. I shrugged it off, figuring it was some Hassidic Jew that lived in the neighborhood. As I continued to walk along the asphalt crumbling into large sand, I thought it peculiar. Hassidic Jews don't live near my house. The man was walking, his hands clasped behind his back, in a rumpled black suit; his gait was normal, though I didn't see him push off the weight of his feet. I stared at him and he just kept walking. I waited until he was right next to me and then I just looked. He was hazy but opaque. He slowly turned to me and just stared through his round framed glasses, waiting for me to do something.

I grabbed his hand and ran to the swing set at a park not too far away. I made him sit down and sat myself on the next swing. He looked befuddled as I swung my legs back and forth metronomically, so he just melted onto the ground. I didn't know what to do with a melted ghost, so I grabbed a nearby plastic bucket and tried to corral the goop inside. It slipped and slid out of my hands and I couldn't do anything. Then I just started mixing sand into the goop until it was like clay and then I sculpted a little dog out of the clay. I took it to school with me and it sat in my locker all day. At lunch time my friends needed a baseball to play with, so I took off the dog's legs and made a baseball out of it. I hit a home run, but my team lost after we couldn't find the baseball anywhere in the field and couldn't score any more points. We did find a ball of bones, which totally freaked out my friends, but since I knew why it was there, I didn't say anything. I couldn't have friends if I told them that I made a clay dog out of ghost goop. I don't think people know about ghost goop. I buried the bones under my favorite tree to play in and sat the legless dog on top of the grave. The next day it was a big deer skull, so I figured I better bury it with the ball of bones.

The next day, I saw a tree walking behind me on the way to school. I just let it follow me, leaves rustling and birds singing.

why I want to go to grad school about CEE

2011-03-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

Simply put, when I find a bunch of books on Central and Eastern Europe, I cry out of joy and also out of despair––I don't have enough time or money for all of them. I'm perfectly fine reading about anything related to that corner of the world with very little else and I am constantly wanting to learn new Eastern European languages. I think that says it all.

my struggle

2011-03-21T10:37:00.000-05:00

Right now I'm struggling to decide if I want to finally attempt Tellkamp's Der Turm or Toni Morrison's Beloved. They're both prize winning, but the German may potentially set me back on my 60 book goal due to its length and language. I have 14 books read already and to be on target for 60 books, I need 6 more by the end of the month. Which is more important? I've had Der Turm for 2 years now...maybe I should go for it.

How I do

2011-03-17T00:34:00.000-05:00

So...I'm up late because I lost track of time when I was baking a chocolate Guinness cake for St Patty's. I've also gone to bed at 1am for the past two nights and didn't feel like going to bed. Which is funny, actually, because the lunch shift at the sandwich shop today was insane and after I finished, I hit a wall. I was hungry and tired and wanted to collapse on a bed. But I had to nanny and drive all the way to Niles and then mail the mother's clothes back to the manufacturer while I was waiting for the kid to finish basketball. It took 10 minutes because I was slow and deliberately writing at an obscenely slow pace, possibly because I spent an hour and a half straight writing up sandwich orders. I kept messing up people's orders and rewriting them because I couldn't control my fine motor skills or even keep track of what cookie they wanted. We didn't even have time to wrap the damn things because the lunch rush came and didn't leave for an hour and a half. But after I finished writing deliberately slow on the padded envelopes, I laid down on a hill right by the parking lot to enjoy the beautiful spring weather and chill. But then it got chilly because it was hazy and the breeze was unpleasantly cold. I was a little bothered that my attempt to sun myself was foiled, so I went into the car and melted into the leather captain seats in the back. My feet were resting on the driver's seat and I realize that it may have looked unusual to other drivers. I listened to my Hungarian pop and trip-hop and simply floated in and out of consciousness as I felt my body pulse into the seat. It felt amazing even though my life isn't necessarily amazing. I mean, I don't exactly want to be living at home and working two part-time jobs, but I have been more socially active since the sandwich shop hired me and I've saved up a good chunk of money. I certainly have been doing pretty well watching people's kids and preventing them from stabbing their eyes. I did well enough that I thought, why not buy that ticket to Utah you've been thinking about for months? And I did on Wednesday. It was pretty momentous and I am excited to go back (though it may be potentially depressing? Time will tell) and see everybody and do my thang. I'm glad I'm still in Chicago despite the fact that I'm missing out on a cool experience. I haven't lived here in five years and it's nice to be back where I have roots and a connection. It also makes me feel like a lame townie, but then I feel European for staying in my home city. My coworker in Budapest grew up, went to college, and worked in the same side of the city: Pest. She hasn't lived anywhere else and that sort of blew my mind because she's lived on one side of a city her entire life and she's not poor or uneducated. She loves it and that's cool, but it makes you wonder why she didn't move across the river, though Buda is not as exciting, that's for sure. In conclusion: Anything with cream cheese frosting tastes good, even a shoe. Damn, that stuff is happenin'.

Absurd

2011-03-15T10:34:00.000-05:00

I am reading a book entitled, Russia's Lost Literature of the Absurd: Selected Works of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky and I very much like it. And yes, it is the product of library browsing. It's so easy to tell. Moving on, I read a short story that makes me laugh every time I read it:

"Blue Notebook No. 10"

There was once a red-haired man who had no eyes and no ears. He also had no hair, so that he was called red-haired only in a manner of speaking.

He wasn't able to talk, because he didn't have a mouth. He had no nose either.

He didn't even have any arms of legs. He also didn't have a stomach, and he didn't have a back, and he didn't have a spine, and he also didn't have any other insides. He didn't have anything. So it's hard to understand whom we are talking about.

So we had better not talk about him anymore.

The Soccer War

2011-03-13T20:13:00.001-05:00

I finished reading The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuścińsky the other night. If reading Hopscotch was like swimming upriver, The Soccer War was like floating with the tide. Ryszard (using the first name because using all the extended Latin letters is tiring on my computer) has a straightforward and mesmerizing writing style, though it was translated from Polish. He has amazing (read: death defying) stories from various revolutions that occurred in the 60s and 70s in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America while working as a foreign correspondent. My friend Paweł had suggested Ryszard months back and I finally got to it. The book clearly went to my head because this afternoon I had a very intense dream about being in somewhere in the Eastern Bloc when war erupted. I kept thinking, "This is the book I need to write!"

Ryszard's stories are so compelling because he zooms in and out in his storytelling. He weaves political timelines with his death-defying moments, but he also does not lose touch with the important center of his stories: his subjectivity. Journalists often come across as afraid to take sides unless they're opinion writers, but Ryszard keeps a very human approach and an understanding that he witnessed and participated some, but he was able to leave. The wars he covered are the stories of people who could not leave. He never loses sight of the fact that he doesn't know everything and he doesn't give answers. He just tells the story, but makes you feel those moments of despair and terror vividly. He's one hell of a person, not to mention writer, and I loved his bit about how furniture separates people, particularly the desk. I loved it to pieces. I want to frame it. There's a lot more I could say about the book because it is a collection of stories that weave together his dispatches. I cannot even imagine doing his line of work and admire his nerves of steel, but the book helps you feel the rush; he admits that once you get into that mode of life, it's very hard to care about the minutiae of daily life. His explanation of how he is an outsider in his own country (and in his old life) struck me because I identified with it a teeny tiny bit. It's a hard life to go out to a country and be an outsider only to return as an outsider. But if Ryszard loved it, then I'm glad he did it so I could read this book.

Hopscotch

2011-03-11T09:34:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading Cortázar's Hopscotch. It may, in fact, be one of the most unfulfilling books I have ever read and luckily, that's the whole point. First of all, the Serpent Club (a bunch of expats and a Frenchman that discuss abstract ideas and philosophies) reminds me of the sort of talk that makes me weary, especially of academia. There's almost no connection to reality and it is all too verbose for me to carefully read it. I usually skipped along, hoping that a light reading of their discussions would be enough. They're picking apart things that don't even exist and Oliveira is the worst because he talks that way all the time. He's always talking about the metaphysical state of everything in terms that border on the babble of the insane. I often thought, "How do people refrain from hitting you when they talk to you?" I identified with La Maga in this respect because I thought they were in the clouds with no feet planted on the ground. If you asked me, that's worse than insanity because insane people have a tenuous grasp on reality, as opposed to none. Oliveira did make this point by saying that normality is the great absurdity and that accidents or misfortune (as well as insanity) were the true state of normal. I also thought Oliveira is slightly mentally ill, but that's beside the point.

I chose the second "active" method in which I flipped back and forth between the chronological chapters (which, I might add, was not the easiest to follow for the first 20 chapters because of the constant switch between first and last name references and no background whatsoever) to the expendable chapters in the back filled with literary snippets, flashbacks, and an alternative ending. The expendable chapters made sense about halfway through the book, but not a moment before. I kept wondering who Morelli was and when I found out late in the book, it made sense. Up until chapter 20, I also struggled with the feeling that this book was going to be The Sun Also Rises, a book about people doing nothing of value, though this time it's in sensual Paris and not lascivious Madrid. I thought that book was a waste of my life––I don't care what anyone else says. This book kind of was, though the expendable chapters made it a self-reflective work. The complete lack of a traditional trajectory saved it from being trite and completely meaningless (aka it's meaningless if you read it from chapter 1 to 56). By unveiling its lack of meaning or real purpose, the story redeems its pitiful state. By admitting it has no real point, it has a point because the purpose is no longer the lack of achievement. Oliveira keeps searching for the metaphysical center and the book doesn't give it, nor does Oliveira find it, which means that it works on a meta level (who doesn't love meta, right?).

Since the book was a meta story, it made a little more tolerable that Oliveira was verbose and insane. I think he spent his entire life making up philosophical and metaphysical impediments for himself because without them, he would have very little left to ponder and might actually have to work a job and live in reality. When he returns to Buenos Aires, he gives up his lofty life and becomes a regular working Joe, refusing to speak French, though he fights it even as he lives it and eventually his philosophical needs creep back into his life, as well as Traveler's. I often feel that if you are truly engaged in a fulfilling life, you do not spend obscene amounts of time tying yourself into philosophical knots. Some philosophical knots are based in reality, e.g. Dostoevsky's characters and their dilemmas––but Oliveira's are not. He often gets himself in a knot about thoughts he's had challenging each other. I can't even fully describe them, which is a testament to his insanity. The ending is set in a clinic for the insane, which is another meta commentary and the perfect home for Oliveira, who cannot add two and two without getting 15. In the expendable chapter, I remained unclear as to whether or not Oliveira attempted suicide after his imaginary stand-off with Traveler though he apparently needs cold compresses and for his eyes to be bandaged. Did they perform surgery on him? I don't know. At the same time, part of me thinks that by not knowing, it just ties a bow on Oliveira's insanity and packages it nicely. I liked the book more once I finished it, but reading it was a bit of a chore (with the exception of chapter 7 and a few snippets in other chapters). If you're okay with thinking about the book on a meta level and liking the finished product far more than the process, I'd recommend it.

East meets East

2011-03-10T09:55:00.000-06:00

I've been watching Dekalog ("The Decalogue") for the past two weeks. It's a Polish TV serial (highly regarded) of 10 "episodes", which are basically short films, and each one is about the corresponding commandment found in Exodus 20. It's set in a large housing complex in Warsaw (with characters from previous episode making cameos in later ones) and deals with the modern quandaries regarding the Ten Commandments. I saw almost all of them at the International Cinema about a year ago, but there were a few they cut out for rather obvious reasons. I really loved them and wanted to see them in their entirety. I wasn't going to watch all of them at once because that's 10 hours and I'm not a movie marathon person. But while I was at Rollin' To Go manning the cash register, I wrote a haiku about the 6th one; later that night, I decided to write one for all of them. Since I've only seen 7 at this point, I will include the last three later.

1. (no other God before me): computer knows all, solve for the thickness of ice, son falls in and dies.

2. (do not take the Lord's name in vain): a baby inside, a doctor must then decide, he lets them both live.

3. (keep the Sabbath day holy): old mistress appears, search for husband lasts all night, the game lets her live.

4. (honor thy father and mother): she finds old letter, they struggle with their feelings, it was all made up.

5. (thou shalt not kill): he kills cab driver, lawyer thinks death sentence wrong, yells after he's killed.

6. (thou shalt not commit adultery): he spies through window, and touches her thighs one night, bleeds away his love.

7. (thou shalt not steal): she takes girl away, and wants to be called mother, but leaves all alone.

What I found interesting was my reactions to each of the episodes both times. The first time I saw Dekalog: jeden (1), I helplessly wept when the father entered the cathedral distraught. Number two left me in awe of her husband's love both times. Three left me feeling annoyed at the mistress the first time, but the second time around, I understood her desperation and admired Janusz's compassion, despite that it could reintroduce problems into his marriage. Four was difficult to watch (it was not including in the International Cinema lineup) because a father and daughter discuss what feels like incestuous feelings despite the fact that he is not her biological father––though it brings the age old adoption question of what is a father–– and made worse by the revelation at the end. Five truly captured my attention the second time. The first time around, I felt that very little sympathy was focused on Jacek, which helped me focus far more on the overwhelming similarities between the two killings. The second time I watched, I was captivated by the speech Piotr gives in his final exam while Jacek wanders aimlessly around Warsaw. It added a beautiful layer of depth to the entire episode. The sixth episode, which I hadn't seen before, had a variety of reactions: at first I was disgusted by his actions, then I felt a tenderness for his innocence and devotion (especially when he was embarrassed by his early finish), and then I thought about how love comes about in strange ways when Magda tries to find Tomek. I thought that earlier when Tomek was half stalking Magda, but still thought about how creeped out I would have been.

The seventh had the same visceral reaction both times, though the second time I was struck by the mother's coldness towards Majka and her lack of sympathy for Majka's maternal feelings. I realized that both of them stole Anka, though Majka makes the point that she cannot steal what is hers (which I'm not sure I agree with). Also, if Anka ever finds out that Majka is her mother, imagine how freaked out she would be. All in all, it was a no-win situation for everyone involved and a breaking point for both mothers feeling the loss of her respective child. It was tragic how Ewa treated her own child, but how tenderly she cared for Anka––she admitted she'd rather have Anka than Majka and I think part of the reason is because Majka is the product of her failure as a mother and Anka is her redemption. Sadly, though, her redemptive role as Anka's mother furthers her failure as Majka's mother. It's the one episode that gets me very worked up and leaves me at a loss for resolution. It was a Greek tragedy that nothing could have stopped once the stage was set.

TOUGH

2011-03-03T14:13:00.000-06:00

So Conservation Corps is a no...I'm sad to say it, let alone to have turned it down. I wanted it, but it didn't sit right with me. If you're religious, you're well aware of the struggle between what you want and what you're being guided to do. Even if you're not religious, you know what it's like to have a sinking feeling tell you "no" for no apparently good reason. I couldn't accept it and even after I turned it down, I didn't feel regret. I just felt disappointment. There's a world of difference and because I didn't feel regret, I knew I made the right decision though it saddens me so.

Other news: through Adam, I got a day job manning the register at a local sandwich joint (where he also works). It gives me something to do, desperately needed human interaction other than children, money, and a reason to get dressed before 10am. Let's be clear: I get dressed before 10am, but even if I didn't, I would still be doing productive things.

I also found that one of the Hungarian designers I featured during fashion week commented on the post! She appreciated my review. It's very exciting to know that someone has either backlinked to my blog or Googled to find it. Still very cool and very exciting.

I'll be back with more creative writing. I'm trying to figure out my new rhythm because my schedule has been changing all over the place. I'm a schedule person M-F, sadly, because I can't function with a loose time structure. This sort of eliminates "freelancing" from my career options...

Yann Tiersen, I love you

2011-02-25T17:28:00.000-06:00

I'm going to see Yann Tiersen play tonight. BE JEALOUS. I'm jealous of myself.

I'm not sure I've said this enough, but I feel liberated! So liberated! Libero libero liberooooooooo. I also wanted to share some beautiful things I've been exposed to lately:

Henryk Górecki (Just break my heart, why don't you!)

Isabel Bayrakdarian (I chose the one video that's not opera or Catholic hymnals)

The rest are all repeats from before, so I'm going to let them be. Plus, I found out that Isabel sang for the LOTR soundtrack. Her voice was perfect for it because she has a stunning voice. I put her up there with Ileana Cotrubas. It's so clear and piercing. Heaven have mercy!

The real question is, why does my taste in anything reflect my obsession with Eastern Europe? Armenian and Romanian opera singers, Polish composers...Polish poets, Croatian journalists...it goes on and on.

Expanding my repertoire

2011-02-22T12:22:00.000-06:00

My letter writing is going well and I've expanded my collages with tiny stories written around them to old photos I will never use being combined with cut out images. I have a slew of Thailand photos that I will never actually put in a scrapbook because there are too many and I figured since my friends keep sending me awesome pictures or postcards, that I should do something of the sort. Of course, I have my spin on it. I've also written a letter that consisted entirely of poetry (some of which are mine) and beautiful one-liners with little drawings. Currently I'm writing one that is written in prose, but each sentence has internal rhyme. It feels so good to be back on my creative horse!

I realized long ago that my feelings of love and creativity were intrinsically linked. I don't really need a muse (though it certainly helps), but I need a secure feeling of love in my life to feel at all creative. I felt my creativity slowly choke over the years, but I don't know what it was that made me snap out of it. Maybe it was because I was keeping a journal and actually working through my feelings. Maybe it was because I came back to the place where my demons reside. Maybe it's because I'm alone with myself for days on end. There are too many possibilities. The timing and place are right and I feel like I'm coming back from the dead. I do believe, however, that I've started to feel love again because I coaxed my creativity out through letters. The permafrost is thawing. Hallelujah, the end is coming.

Dissonance

2011-02-17T14:32:00.000-06:00

I feel a constant dissonance with myself. I am nestled within my subconscious, hoping no one will notice that I pulled the covers over my head. I built this place from my hardened years when the lull was too much to bear. It was the lack of music to my ears, the water when I felt the need for wine, the contrived looks of good will. No one reached out. Maybe they did, once. But I lopped off that hand, disgusted that it even tried. How dare you assume I want your help––but I knew I wanted them to try anyway. I test them and try their patience. They cannot reach once and expect me to warmly shake their carefree fingers. I cut off hands, pinkies, and ears while silently screaming for someone to keep trying. No one wants to lose more just so I can feel at peace and they leave. I don't blame them. I understand them and I nestle their effigies deep in the folds, feeling the ache of their blood loss.

It's my job to carry them, to make sure I don't forget. The hurt is for me, not for you. My nose, yes, I cut it off to spite my face. I cut your nose to spite my face because I can see the gaping holes of your septum and see through to your brain. I gently touch my own, my eyes apologizing without words. If I apologized, I would have to crack open the walls and, you see, that would mean I would feel the cold winds. You could come in and I can't let you see these effigies, these martyrs to my own pain. You don't want it. I don't want it. Go away. This place is mine to clean up and I don't need your help. Wait outside if you want, but there is no room for you amongst these crumpled sheets. Lap the shores of my fortress and erode my defenses through the eons. It's all you can do because I sold the dynamite years ago and left the key to burrow in a cellar. Build me a new place where I can claim the open walls and carve my destiny before this place rots around me. But the truth is, if you eroded me for eons and lapped my shores, I might still stay in here to rot, holding my effigies tightly and sobbing quietly until I fall asleep.

Shoes

2011-02-15T13:50:00.002-06:00

Can we discuss how amazing and kooky these shoes are? It doesn't surprise me they came from China.

Interpol

2011-02-14T13:33:00.000-06:00

I saw Interpol perform on Saturday and it was exactly what I needed. It was a flashback of who I've been emotionally and I felt the dissonance between my two selves. It was also a moment of realization because I never really thought about the fact that a person is behind Paul Banks' voice; it seemed to be almost like a part of my inner life instead from someone else. It was a bit odd, but in the best way.

After the concert, I decided to give their latest album another try and after listening to it a few times, I figured out exactly why I didn't like it. The poetry of Banks' lyrics is gone. They're too formulaic and straightfoward, not to mention 80% of his singing is repeating the same lines. The progressive nature of the lyrics AND the music has been lost. "Our Love To Admire" was a heartbreaking album and I love it. Their self-titled album is ironically the album that feels like a betrayal to their style. The music sounds similar, but instead of having essentially two choruses per song, there's one that makes up the bulk of their lyrics. No longer do we have lines like "Show me the dirt pile and I will pray that the soul can take three stowaways"; now there's "Sometimes it feels like a barricade to keep us away; it kinda does". The "it kinda does" kills the song. The incredible power of his imagery and sound in the lyrics has been completely squashed. It could be the band or it could be the producers, but it doesn't matter. The only song that holds the same promise as their old work is "Lights" and that's borderline.

I loved the way Banks manipulated language and imagery to paint a picture and that the song progressed instead of being repetitive. It's all gone and left listeners with the conventional song structure we hear on the radio all the time. I don't mind artists moving in new directions, but Interpol has kept their signature sound without the elements that fleshed their music into a masterpiece. I don't know one song out of their first three albums that I dislike. Their last album has been a total dud. It sounded promising, but the lack of good lyrics has made it flat and one dimensional.

Food for Rather Jaded Single Mormon Thought

2011-02-10T11:56:00.000-06:00

This article was such a great response to the NYTime article that caused quite a brouhaha (such a good word) in the Mormon community.

I haven't fully developed my thoughts on the topic and it's something I can't really describe to anyone that's not in the Mormon community. There are so many nuances and cultural contexts to the problem that its portrayal in outside media is flat at best. I sympathize with this woman's frustration and I'm only 24; I can only imagine it festers with time. BYU is a gauntlet for those who don't emerge with rings because it's just so marriage crazy. My time at BYU was difficult because of my disparaging lack of a male counterpart, even a boyfriend, but I also came out with a lot of good experiences that changed my life. This isn't to say my life would have been less if I was granted my wish, but I certainly wouldn't be who I am now. It's a different direction, nothing more, nothing less. Besides my education and unwavering interest in CEE, I came out of BYU realizing the huge difference between what happens in church and the Gospel. If I hadn't picked up on the incredible difference between those two, I would've walked out as soon as I left BYU. People have good intentions and, more often than not, terrible manners. I will never forget the line in "True Grit": You can never know what's in a man's heart. It's really stuck with me. People may mean very well with the things they say, but you may still feel slighted. I know I have felt that way. I still think people could do better by saying less, but since talking is considered a right and not a privilege with responsibilities, we're all going to have to make do. (On a side note, I read 19th century novels and marvel at the conversations and how carefully people speak.)

What the article really drives home is that the divide between single and married Mormons is largely of our own doing. There are life and priority differences between the two groups and that's natural, but the divide is greater than that. I'm not placing married people at fault because it's also a single's insecurity that eats them alive. It's also the perception of facts that makes cooperation difficult. More often than not, singles perceive a smugness, a "you wouldn't understand" attitude that goes for married couples as well. Sometimes married people assume singles can't understand their problems because singles have never been married, but think they understand singles' problems because they were at one point. I also hate hearing married people say, "I'm so glad I'm not single" (I've heard it so many times); singles don't go around saying, "I'm so glad I'm not married". The former comment is so damaging because it makes being single a despised state, something you have to endure until you get married. While marriage should be aspired to, why denounce being single or make marriage seem like the very best thing that can ever happen to you? A life experience other than marriage or death never receives equal respect. Marriage is hard and rewarding, I get it, but other things in life are too (like being single?). I'm not exactly getting everything I want either. Marriage should stop being treated as a zenith and more like a stepping stone in a different direction. Getting married isn't the end of the journey for anyone. Perhaps we would all get along better if that was taken to heart.

lovely

2011-01-27T16:18:00.000-06:00

I read these in "Five Centuries of Polish Poetry":

Recollection of Past Love by Franciszek Karpiński

Within the vale the stream runs on.
Sycamores shield it with their boughs.
I think of evenings long since gone
When you, Justine, and I made vows.

Night passed too quickly: then pale day
Allowed one single last caress.
Our love had stolen sleep away.
Love feeds upon our sleeplessness.

Dawn whitened earth. We saw on each
Sycamore diamond signatures.
We sat unmoving, without speech,
And carved our names, my name and yours.

No one sneers, and no one knew;
Heaven alone watched over us.
There was no guilt between us two.
Heaven did not think me infamous.

Look answered look as hand clasped hand.
Two mouths, made one, drank from one bowl.
Our bodies learned to understand
And soul, when asked, replied to soul.

Then thunder came: a storm arose:
An ancient oak fell like a stone:
And, trembling as you held me close,
You said, "I will not die alone."

Here, to this stream, that apple tree,
I often come and try to think.
My thirst was never slaked till she
With her own hands gave me to drink.

But nothing in this world will keep.
Fate parts us, angry Fate, and blind.
A country yokel tending sheep
Has blotted out names we signed.

No, there is not a single trace.
The wood is overgrown and sere.
The stream, the sycamores, keep their place,
But you, Justine, you are not here.

Epitaph by Bartołomiej Zimorowic

My wedding dress is just a winding sheet:
A handful of my earth my dowry when I meet
The worm, my bridegroom: the grave, my marriage bed:
My children are the tears my parents shed.

In Defence of Drunkards by Jan Kochanowski

Earth, that drinks rain, refreshes the trees:
Oceans drink rivers: stars quaff up the seas:
So why should they make such a terrible fuss
Over insignificant tipplers like us?

Boy Toys

2011-01-26T13:14:00.001-06:00

My first love was in kindergarten. I couldn't have imagined anyone more enchanting at the age of five. I don't remember why I was in love with him, but when your primary concerns in life are doing math problems with beans, what does it matter. I never told anyone I loved him, but I was a silent witness to my own devotion by sitting on the bench and watching him play on the monkey bars. I just wanted to watch him be the very person I loved. Sometimes I would make dandelion necklaces with other girls and then get harassed by a boy who made us scrunch up our faces when he smashed daddy long legs in his shirt pocket. Sometimes I played on the swing set and pretended I could fly to the moon. But I was always watching and lovingly gazing at him, falling more in love with who he was.

I was five, so the love burned like a extinguished flame. My love for the vivacious boy with a tiny rat tail (to my great shame) was over. I fell in love again in fourth grade. I wasn't known very well because I hardly ever spoke to people. My crippling shyness lead me to fall head over heels for Andrew. He was nice to me and played a game called Othello with me almost every day. His quiet friendship inspired romantic feelings that would only clog my throat up more. I couldn't bear to keep this love inside myself like before; I had to act. My desires only met with my tendency to clam up and it was only through an anonymous gift that I felt relieved of that unbearable tension. I bought a small key chain at a church rummage sale and wrapped in paper, addressed it to him, but left ??? where my name should be. I slipped this token into his lunch bag and grew anxious about the prospect of him opening it. Lunch came and went. I never saw him open it. My romantic anxiety found its end when I realized he would never trace this gift to me, which I had secretly hoped despite my discretion. I hoped he would search for me. He didn't and my heart sank.

I didn't fall in love again for many years. There were those that made me smile and giggle, but I never felt the anxiety or the welling dam in my soul. It was freshman biology when I met Gabe. My body had matured though my concept of love had barely changed. I still had elementary school love in the body of a teenager. I barely had time to process the fact that boys' interest in me grew with my cup size. He was funny and way more socially adept and "cool" than I was. Even now, I cannot explain exactly what it was that anchored me to him. We were friends and our AIM chats were personal, but he didn't make a move. I fluttered when he touched me and I grew flustered when he was near me, which continued for two years. One night, we were watching a Christopher Guest movie and he put his arm around me. I was on fire and fireworks shot out of my ears. Convinced that he was making a move, I waited on pins and needles. Days later, his scent hadn't quite faded from my sweatshirt and sandalwood became my new favorite smell. Soon I heard he was dating someone else. I felt my organs shatter and collect in the caverns of my feet. Betrayal and disappointment were two words that barely conjured up the implosive release of my anxiety.

I began to lose my inner fantasies. My fancies were uninspired and could not conjure the orchestrations that boys plucked out of my heartstrings. The first boy I dated was not a love of mine. I settled because I couldn't bear to have naivete at 16. He was kind enough when we dated, though I hardly enjoyed him more than a diversion. I dumped him only to date him a month later for my heart didn't know the difference between loneliness and yearning anymore. I understood the difference when he dumped me through AIM a month later because one evening I pushed his hand away. I didn't miss him––I missed what he could have been. He could have been the face tattooed on my heart, but he never was meant to be. He was only meant to be an asshole, a lesson I wouldn't forget. I found myself humming through the next few months.

I sat in Japanese class, wondering why I was still taking this language when I couldn't understand the teacher's instructions. It took a great deal of discussion to figure out I was supposed to switch seats for an activity. I grabbed my binder and sat on the other side of the room. The activity barely kept me focused, but I turned to ask the other group a question and for the first time I saw him. He must've answered or said something, but I turned back to finish the dumb activity. It's a wisp of a memory now, so I cannot recall how it was that we first conversed. He probably said something funny and I shot something back and the volley didn't lose momentum. The bell rang and when we discovered we walked to same route to our next class, we walked together. We never sat next to each other in Japanese class, but we always walked to our next class together.

I wish I could say that I fell for him hook, line, and sinker right then, but I didn't. I think my heart had grown bitter and sleepy since its last awakening. When he wrote his phone number on my hand, I was giddy, but I didn't feel the waters swirl. I was enchanted when he called about Japanese homework, which was not his real motivation. We had a date. I was excited, but reserved. We drove to Chicago for a Decemberist concert, but we got lost in our dialogue and the streets. Turning back, we barely kept track of the intersections as we laughed and built up the euphoria. It was at the café downtown that I fell in love with him like I'd never loved anyone else. Though it's laughable that he told me peeing stories as we sipped hot chocolate, my heart beat deeply and I felt my fingertips pulsate. It wasn't long before we had made it official. A week later, when our lips first touched, I felt myself dissolve and glow. I'd practically swallowed his head and was making my way down to his toes. I ate him alive and still hungered. He broke up with me six months later and I simply died. I didn't shatter, but I just rotted into the ground. After two months of feeling like a pile of decaying refuse, he came back. I told him to convince me and he confessed his stupidity while professing feelings I dreamt of hearing from him. I nearly cried to wash away the rot. He formed me out of the dirt and I felt alive for a long time. The time eventually came when we had to decide and though deep in my soul, I knew I would never love him again, I couldn't even conceive of my life after the fateful moment. Life has a better imagination.

My first requited love was the humblest of beginnings, but the longest of ends. The rapture that swept me eventually dragged me on the ground. He dragged me through the years with a rope following behind. I followed him for years, sustaining wounds that only reality can give the naïve. I held on for a lost hope but it was time and disillusionment that frayed the threads one by one. The naivete of my first loves was discovered in the aftermath of my first deep heartbreak. I didn't know there was an end, one I couldn't control, and I didn't know that requital isn't always equal. There's never a good answer to questions of lost love because the heart does not speak in words. The answer is always the same and it's never satisfactory, no matter the ending. The door to a story is only closed by someone else. You do not carry the keys to your own heart.

all atwitter with anticipation

2011-01-24T13:36:00.002-06:00

So many good things are happening, guys! I'm a very happy woman. I bought tickets to see Interpol on the 12th for the first time eve and I'm seeing the State Ballet of Russia on the 5th. But that's not all! I'm hoping to gather some people to see "Being Harold Primer", a production from the Belarus Free Theater on the 11th. Clearly, I'm going for not only myself, but for my blog as well. My blog had Christine Armbruster featured and I'm so excited about it. I honestly am on the verge of tears it excites me so much. I have to work on my next few posts...

But I wanted to talk about how my other blog came about. Interestingly enough, it was the result of taking time away from the computer. I decided to take a walk along the Ladd Arboretum, which is a hop, skip, and a jump away from my house and is basically a strip of trees and pretty paths in between the canal and the busy McCormick Boulevard, with an ecology center thrown in for good measure. It was snowing and I was reflecting on when I spent an afternoon with Kate and she suggested doing a blog to track my thoughts on CEE to help with grad applications. I was working out in my mind things I'd like to do if I had the tenacity to do them and I liked the idea of creating a magazine like Popular Science, but for social science. So, basically it would be Popular Social Science, but each month would have a central topic because otherwise it would be completely nonsensical. Social science even includes economics and psychology, so the topic would get covered from all these angles. I had all these ideas on hiring PhDs that don't have tenure or a professorship and ridding them of their bad academic writing style so they can write about what they love and earn money. I like magazines and there are few social science periodicals that are geared towards the general public. What better thing to do than combine them?

I have zero experience in putting together a magazine and I thought it was a pretty lofty goal. It may still be in my bucket of dreams, but for now I thought, what can I do to combine my interests into something productive and fulfilling? So I put up the new blog in an effort to have an outlet for an interest very few of my friends share and really push myself to keep current on issues and explore more resources. It's pushing me to expand my knowledge and reach out to the community of CEE obsessors. I hope to expand my repertoire to professors doing research in the area when my blog has established itself a bit more. While the blog does require me to be on the computer more, I feel fulfilled. It's aiding me in making the computer an instrument for my happiness rather than a distraction from the lack of it or simply the result of mindless activity. I have a purpose for being on it. I have to find jobs, find interesting CEE material, and keep my blog running. It's a place of business and action these days, and not just browsing and endless video watching. THUMBS UP.

never cat napped

2011-01-20T14:11:00.002-06:00

I end up dreaming when I nap, which ends up being a "sleep" because it never ends up being short. I dreamt that I was the lead bassist for Chevelle and my blog was simultaneously successful. UGH, WHY ISN'T THIS MY REAL LIFE?

Last night, I was babysitting and cleaning up after dinner as the 7 year old boy was jump roping with his stuffed snake. I hear a clang and turn around to see meaty pasta sauce all over the kitchen. He had obviously accidentally flipped it over by jump roping too close to it. He was looking at the floor, then looked up at me, and said, "That was a poor decision." His response was so adorably precocious that I helplessly laughed and said, "You got that right."

Also: the last installment of the LOTR series will be viewed tomorrow and I'm way excited. Brand me a loser if you want, but I'm still excited.

slowing down picked up pace

2011-01-17T17:02:00.002-06:00

You all know about my new blog (http://whysored.blogspot.com). It's a red hot, passionate love affair and we're pretty heavy at the moment. (Pun wasn't intended) Don't worry, I'll still be here, but I'm trying to get some liftoff with the other blog and figure out a good rhythm. I can't do daily posting because I will exhaust myself. Right now it's daily, but that's to garner interest. If you want to know what I'm reading or thinking about regarding East Europe, head on over there. I will be keeping this one up, but I can't promise any sort of frequency other than maybe once a week. It may be Tanya taking it there, or it might be observations on my recent Quest Unplug relapses. Sigh, it's a work in progress. Using the computer for job hunting and freelance copywriting is wearing down my resistance, but I'm determined to keep the computer shut down from 5p until 9a. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

Since it's after 5, I gotta wrap this up and get my Unplug on. I'll be back.

hit the books, they don't hit back

2011-01-13T13:33:00.004-06:00

Yeah, I saw "Easy A". What of it? (I have ideas for a post on it...)

So I was at the library again today. I say "again" as if this is a chronic thing, but I only went last month and that was after a hiatus. Anyway, I had a limited time window and I had no idea what I wanted to get. This, of course, means I go to my default: Europe, mostly ECE. It's like a brain virus. I find one book in the catalogue under "poland communism" and think, "That one book will tide me over," but as soon as I reach the shelf, I find myself grabbing books like a mad woman. I didn't have time to really deliberate my choice of East European literature anthologies, so I just simply headed to the checkout with my stack. I saw two kids at the checkout counter fighting over who got to carry the books and it was adorable. I love seeing kids get excited over books! And then I realized I always fight myself (or perhaps the other library patrons?) for books.

I checked out more than I could possibly read in the checkout time if I wanted to be productive and look for a job. While the librarian scanned my books, I noticed a book entitled "The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times" by Pema Chödrön on the counter. I remarked that it looked like an interesting book, and she looked at it and pointed out the book next to it, "When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Difficult Times" by the same author and said, "Yes, I think it's by that African writer." I silently debated the matter in my head for a moment and then quietly said, "Oh, no, that's 'Things Fall Apart' by Chinua Achebe." She laughed nervously and said, "Yeah, that's right. The titles are similar." I am a nerdy stranger. Sigh.

My stack:

Europe, Europe: Forays Into a Continent by Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Five Centuries of Polish Poetry compiled by Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer
Contemporary East European Poetry compiled by Emery George
Description of a Struggle edited by Michael March
Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers by Lidija Dimkovska (trans. from Macedonian)
Prose and Poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke

So let's see, Polish poetry, Macedonian poetry, poetry from Eastern Europe, German poetry, and essays exploring modern Europe. Simply a brain disease. I need an examination. Or an academic career.

alter ego

2011-01-11T14:16:00.003-06:00

Frühlingssuppe at home in Wien. dec 2007

It's time to Tanya Takes It There. My conversation with Corpsenaut inspired the column and it freely flowed. Just like all of my columns, I really mean what I say, though a bit exaggerated. Hence:

Another Installment of Tanya Takes It There, a column of overblown gripes

"Dietary Restrictions: The Greater They Are, The More Annoying You Are To Other People"

My gripe is your problem. Your dietary choice becomes my problem when we eat out. So I gripe about it, just so you can feel the pain. I pay my respects to anyone who is disciplined or principled enough to keep up a vegetarian or vegan diet though I cannot imagine putting that kind of energy into every single bite of my food. Really, I respect it. However, this doesn’t mean I wish to share a meal with you. If people with unrestrictive diets were to be frank, they would say that extreme dietary restrictions are an obnoxious obstacle. You can’t go to dinner with these people unless it’s a place that caters to their needs. Just because you don’t mind eating an unborn chicken does not mean you should be the one who has to suffer through a vegan meal without making a fuss. If you take a vegan to a restaurant without any options for their needs, they will either incessantly whine or defiantly push around the food on their plate while silently cursing your household. I’m not sure why I have to suffer because you chose a burdensome diet. If you want to be a martyr for animals, please note that your silence is a homage to the poor victims of my meal. As for omnivores, my lip smacking is a prayer of thanks for their submission.

Now, I have to mention people who physically cannot handle certain foods. Celiac’s disease, IBS, allergies to common ingredients, etc., are all conditions that no one asks for. The difference is that these poor people don’t express incredulity when you prepare food that they can’t eat. I’ve known someone with an allergy to eggs, another with Celiac’s, and another with some mysterious digestive issue that only allowed him to eat fresh produce and a few other specific dishes. All these people were generally understanding that their needs did not trump everyone else’s; they’re not offended and they certainly don’t parade their needs around. They’re so used to being a burden at mealtime that they don’t want to continually bring attention to it. They eat what they can and let it be. If asked why they didn’t eat certain things, they casually mention their condition and add, “It’s no big deal. I’m used to it.” Because these folks are so magnanimous, most people want to accommodate them. I’ve accommodated these folks because they’re just so damn nice about it.

On the other hand, self-righteous martyrs of certain dietary choices make me want to prepare the most offensive meal possible. Now, an easy-going vegetarian or vegan is a welcome guest at my table and I may even provide a special dish at the meal by the grace of my heart. But if I hear you proselyting bullshit, I will either not invite you or will enjoy seeing you mindlessly pick at your food. Honestly. I don’t go around convincing people to eat meat and drink milk, so you should do me a similar courtesy. If you choose a difficult diet, it’s your responsibility to make yourself comfortable. You cannot demand that I prepare a special side dish for you or that I accompany you to a weird Middle Eastern inspired vegan café. You can request it, certainly, but forcing your diet on me is as well received as the other way around. I’m not going to let your principles control my dinner because I love dinner. Food brings us together and dietary elitism divides. Just recognize this when you go out to dinner with those of a different dietary conviction. Someone is going to play with their food, and it sure won’t be me.

osmosis

2011-01-09T09:17:00.000-06:00

InterClub, where I learned magyarul, sent me this image for Christmas.
AHHHH I MISS EUROPE.

I am trying to reach a state of equilibrium between my virtual and real life.

So far I've accomplished being a Facebook ghost (or very nearly), which has certainly mirrored my real social life.

CHECK!

I'm writing real letters as well as emails.

CHECK!

I read things on paper a bit more than I do online.

CHECK!

I interviewed for a part-time job with weird hours (even though it will involve me being online)!

I might actually become as interesting as my internet avatar appears to be! Whoopee!

For the final bullet point:

I write in my journal a wee bit more than on my blog. I have done this a bit purposefully. I need to start publishing more worthy topics or ideas and most of them are interesting...to just me. The difference in blog writing is that I need to consider my audience and, honestly, I forget this a little and write to myself. Not very compelling. So I'm trying to reach an equal state of compelling to me and you with a journal and a blog, respectively.

I am already revamped when I scrapped journaling on this thing. I'm not changing the format. It's still going to be what I want it to be, but maybe with a little more of an audience in mind. I still haven't forgotten about my letter to myself––worry not. The one thing I'm going to change is post frequency, and that's not just because of my NYR. I need more time to whip up good ideas and nurture them so that more of them will grow in the garden of my mind. Law of the harvest, or whatever.

Meanwhile, I'm busy cutting up magazines and making a torn blouse into a vest (post coming). I like recycling cheap clothing because it makes me feel like Suzy Homemaker.

safe place

2011-01-07T15:54:00.003-06:00

This is the only safe place for me to let our my nerdy feelings.

I think Faramir and Éowyn are the best couple and their love story was so precious and romantic. Sometimes I feel like I am just as frosty as Éowyn and that a man will have to patiently win me over. Is that reading too much into it? Have I gone too far down the lonely road of nerd-dom?

Maybe.

But that's all I needed to say. Facebook was just not a good venue.

breathe the free air, my friend

2011-01-03T17:08:00.003-06:00

Linds' picture of Cliff in her house when she borrowed my camera. nov 2009

A wee bit of an update:

I am now doing some sort of time puzzle with an assortment of odd jobs. I could potentially be doing three or four random jobs with low time commitments, but one would include odd hours. Sigh. It's while I wait on a certain job opportunity and when I find out what the deal is, I can plan my life more accordingly. I'm still applying to stuff, but I don't know what's going on. I'm being very vague because I can't get too excited or specific. Nebulous times. It also amazes me how much time various errands and to do list items take to complete. I spent most of today doing these things and suddenly it's 5pm. Where'd my time go?

Also: I need your addresses! I bought stationary, so I'm committed to actually writing letters to people. If you want something from me, I'm going to need an address to mail to. It will certainly be a short letter, but it might include something more! Oooh la la! I want to get back to the feeling of slow communication and the excitement of a letter. Emails are so blasé. But really, I want your addresses. I'll put this on Fbook too, but you read it here first.

The exciting news is that my next post will include my letter to myself from when I was 13. I won't say much more about it, but it will be up here.

My thoughts recently:

In conjunction with Quest Unplug, I've been pondering why I'm not giving up technology in general. It is because it's rather impractical (especially for my job search), but giving it up entirely means that it has such power over me that I can't have it in my life. If you give something up entirely, it's admitting that you can't control yourself at all. That you cannot have a smidgen of self control or prioritize. Therapy for addiction does not recommend cutting it the addiction entirely, but lessening the frequency gradually until it either becomes nonexistent in the person's life, or exists at a healthy level. It helps give the patient a sense of control and is a sign that the addict has power.

I'm not going to therapy for my electronic addiction (nor do I think it's that serious), but I believe that I'm asserting my control over what I use my computer for. I also will once again learn to use my computer as a helpful tool and not as the center of my universe. Facebook, blogs, email, etc. are all good things, but can take over my free time. I want to cut time wasting activities, the mindless and aimless things I do on my computer, and I feel like I've already made good progress. I still have to do many of my tasks on the computer, but what I can do off of it, I try to do. No more NYTimes browsing for an hour, no more endless Fbook browsing, no more listening to music to rid myself of silence, no more scheduling and making lists on my computer, no more using a blog as a diary. It's going back to brass tacks. Quest Brass Tacks. (Don't you love how I keep changing the name?)

looking back

2011-01-02T19:33:00.006-06:00

Making a photo album from scratch. Christmas Craft 2010.

Since it's 2011, aka The Year That Will (Potentially) Change My Life, I thought I'd look back on my adventures in life, both big and small:

-My first sleep away camp was Camp Shaw-Waw-Nas-See in 3rd grade and I spent all my free time at the barn until the camp counselor there closed the barn and forced me to go swimming
-I went to Camp Timber Lee, an Evangelical Christian camp in Wisconsin with my childhood best friend, and I was uncomfortable with the Bible lessons before each meal
-In 5th grade, I was sick of my white girlfriends, so I purposely hung out with black girls
-I joined the Dance Club and stayed even when my friends left, leaving me to be the only white girl in the club
-I auditioned to sing "On My Own" despite my horrific fear of singing solo in front of a crowd because I loved that song (I ended up singing half of "Castle on a Cloud")
-In 7th grade I was immensely popular due to my friendship with the "queen bee"
-I did a huge, elaborate hoax on the kids in my grade by making someone up and having her befriend them through AIM
-I dumped my middle school friends in high school because I didn't like them that much
-I took up diving after years of swimming, despite my lack of gymnastic experience and my parents' discouragement, because of Laura Wilkinson's rivoting victory in the Sydney Olympics
-I kept having accidents in diving (e.g. hitting my head, scraping the back of my legs, spraining my thumb, bruising parts of my body on a regular basis with a bloody nose or black eye thrown in), but I kept doing the sport anyway
-I went to the Indiana Diving Academy, which was helpful, intense, and simultaneously scarring for life
-I took Japanese for three years
-I switched to German my last year of high school
-I went to BYU despite my unfounded hatred for it
-I took 18.5 credit my first semester while working from 5am-9am and ended up quitting after my grandmother died because I was having breathing problems (which, in retrospect, were due to intense stress)
-I turned around on Mt Nebo at the 10,000 ft tree because my roommate was starting to go into hypothermia and had to strip to put on more warm clothing (my consolation was seeing a herd of elk galloping at the base)
-I dated a guy for a week and had to break his tender heart from 1,200 miles away...by email
-I made out with my ex-boyfriend's best friend to intentionally hurt my ex-boyfriend
-I told my ex-boyfriend about it because his friend didn't
-I went to a Strokes concert with someone I barely met the day prior and we became good friends
-I worked a lot of random jobs, but loved landscaping, which I did on a whimsical desire to be outdoors in the summer
-I went to a study abroad in Vienna and traveled nearly half of Europe
-I skinny dipped in the Irish Sea in November in broad daylight with the other girls in my traveling group
-I moved in with three girls, who were all friends and I didn't know them very well, which turned out to be a fantastic decision
-I went streaking on my 21st birthday
-I had a really, really bad encounter with the other side of the veil
-I felt a good and curious spirit watching me as I was washing the dishes alone in my summer house
-I went to The Slackers concert in Zion and went narcoleptic next to some 30-odd year old hitting on me
-I had Byron sleep on the couch in my room for three months
-I summited Mt. Timpanogos despite my body's complete lack of cooperation and then slid down a glacier
-I did a few "scandalous" photo shoots with Lindsey for her portfolio
-I almost got run over by a car while riding my bike, but luckily dismounted as the car drove over my bike
-A few months later, a car pushed me and my bike with no damage to either
-I rode with Critical Mass despite the Provo police crackdown
-I conducted research in a small town in the former GDR for three months and only spoke English to my family
-I modeled a friend's skirt for a charity fashion show
-I wrote for Me Gusta Magazine and started CTFNTHSM with Copfer
-I took up an internship in Budapest solely because I wanted to live there and learn Hungarian
-I got to spend a week with my sisters and get rather confused at Lake Balaton

last day

2010-12-30T09:19:00.004-06:00

New Year's Eve 2007. View from my porch in Evanston.

It's my last day of work. Internship. This position. THERE.

What am I going to do with my newfound time? Find a job and do some freelance writing. BUT that won't start until probably next week. I will be spending NYE doing whatever I want with my family, NY Day is vacation, and Monday I desperately need to trim my hair and get the third LOTR. These are very important and may take all day if I let them. Buuuut I do need to get crackin' on my freelance copywriting for my friend ASAP. I was supposed to have started weeks ago? but then I lost all motivation in the black hole known as I SPEND 8 HOURS A DAY TRYING TO FEIGN INTEREST. But all is well and the universe will be set right again.

I had a good time the other night spending my evening in downtown Chicago with a friend and emerged from the weird damp weather with good conversation, a stomach full of buckwheat pancakes, a head full of blues, and a German newspaper that cost me $9––it's huge and has a magazine inside. Don't judge me for spending $9 on a German newspaper because if you do, you are judging the majority of my brain activity. I was living it up because I got my $500 check and that's big monies for a scrape like me. Okay, now I have just admitted that buying a German newspaper is living it up and my cool credentials have been killed even though they're already dead. I do it to myself, it's true.

My activities lately have been less than cool, but I'm still pretty interesting. I've got a killer mix of dud and stud, or nerd and cool. I like to embrace paradoxes and paradoxical personalities that always make me think of Russian protagonists in literature. Speaking of literature, I've read 23 books since May and 18 of those were since September. I'm pretty proud of myself. I also just noticed that the number of books equal my age! What a nerd. Next year, I'm going to raise the stakes to at least 30 books. Okay, I'm just digging my cool grave deeper and deeper. So I'm going to stop and try to deal with my unfathomable uncoolness. Let the New Year and my resolution begin!

bold

2010-12-29T11:19:00.003-06:00

It is a bold move to ask out the secretary for New Year's Eve while waiting for a job interview. Not wrong, but bold. I politely said no.

UPDATE:

It got worse. In the interview, the staffing manager asked him how he felt about working in a competitive industry and he went off about how as a 30 year old single man, he's used to being rejected and laughed at when he asks women out. I thought, whoa, back that train up. You're in an interview and the staffing manager heard you through those low cubicle walls as well as I can hear you now. Put your thinking cap on.

a resolution is unfolding

2010-12-29T09:32:00.002-06:00

A little Quest Unplug update:

It's going really well!

I hadn't turned on my computer for 3 days (though I still use a work computer, where I do all my personal biz...oops) and I only turned it on to try to show my sister an old SNL skit that no one has bothered to put on YouTube. Then, through sheer willpower, I watched only a handful of videos, quickly checked Fbook (since I avoid doing that at work at all costs), watched an episode of ZDF news, and listened to the LOTR soundtrack because I had this one movement stuck in my head and I NEEDED TO HEAR THE REAL DEAL.

That was it. I didn't spend hours in front of it. I didn't even really miss it. I've been spending my time reading LOTR and doing crafts with the family. The real test will start when I'm unemployed again. But I have hope. I'm going strong (outside of work, anyway).

Things I've done to progress:

-deleted half of the fashion blogs I follow on Reader

-shut down my computer

-write in my journal on the morning commute

-read lots of books

-not turning on the TV when I'm bored

-did I mention reading?

-not listen to the radio in the car

Keeping my computer shut down has been a HUGE help. It makes checking things like the weather (which is in the paper) or Fbook a hassle and I'm less likely to do it. This also means I spend way less time in my room and more time in the living room reading. I'm happy with my progress because it means I spend less meaningless time on my computer. I had a reason to use it, so I did. No guilt. I watched ZDF to help my unused German and listened to some tunes I really wanted to hear and not because I simply couldn't handle the silence. I'm trying to figure out how to make my life less computer oriented and so far I'm doing pretty awesome.

Any benefits? Yes! I've already felt benefits. My dedication to journal writing has opened up a little dam in my head. I feel more creative and free. I feel less constrained by the pull of the computer and I can think about other things. My writing in my journal has steadily gotten more poetic and interesting. Some days are duds, but there's a general curve of improvement. It probably also helps I'm reading way more and getting those ideas. It's made me feel like technology has dulled my perception of written imagery or the beauty of words. I was reading too many to really treasure the right ones. Maybe my spelling has gotten worse because I spend so much time on the computer. I also feel less impatient, like I'm waiting for something to interrupt me. I'm slowing down and letting time take its course instead of trying to strangle it. I don't wonder what's on TV. I think I was simply just wasting away in front of a screen. I'm gaining my strength, my resolve, and perhaps a clear head. I hope this turns out to be true and that I can salvage what I may have lost.

Quest Unplug is turning into Quest Recharge or something. I like it.

secret life

2010-12-27T16:37:00.006-06:00

Today I found out my boss had a band in college. Actually, he'd told me weeks before and in passing. But today I really found out. He handed me a 1986 Chicago Tribune, in an effort to amuse me amidst his efforts to clean out his hoarding hole, and I showed him the back page where he has written in black marker: CURT ART. I asked what it meant and my questions suddenly revealed that he was in a band called Metal Blister. It was a Dada burlesque band that played in a dinky bar in Madison, Wisconsin. It started out as tongue in cheek college humor, but once the crowd at the bar down the street from his apartment let our roars of approval, they began to get serious. He wore a wig, a cross between Rastafarian dreads and frizzed hair, as he cranked out hair metal riffs on his electric guitar. Probably a completely different animal then, romping about in a post-adolescent playground. His slender frame, clad in sweaters of worn colors or softened button ups paired with khaki colored corduroy clinging to his leather belt, and slightly wiry hair that always sits askew on his forehead hid the prowess of a flickered youth. He says he never thought seriously about it. It was something he did. Yet, he laments, he did not follow his friend to Seattle. We could have made a go of it, he said with a glint in his eye. I regret not doing it. I could have gone there. Instead, he said, I floundered for a few years in Chicago, working telesales jobs. He waved it away with his hand, like it was an apparition of smoke. That's a coulda, shoulda, woulda, he said.

I had somewhat jestingly lamented the lack of video recordings then and with a stifled sparkle in his eye, he said, "I think I have a recording with me." He thought he did. He pulled out a CD from his worn vomit green briefcase, clearly from his mother since her name was on an old ticker label. I couldn't believe he had the CD on him. As he pulled it from the far pocket, he kept saying the lyrics were retarded and the music was cliche. I dismissed his excuses by saying, "I haven't even heard it yet." He tried to stop playing the tracks when I answered the phone, but I told him, "I'm not done yet." He grimaced as I listened, trying to reconcile the feverish guitar with the man sitting in his basement office. I left after the songs faded, but moments later the printer whirred and he came to show me photos, only saying, "Now you've really got me going on this." He tried to wave away and forget while carrying his dreams on a burned CD in his briefcase. It was bittersweet--his soul flickered with a passionate dream, one that didn't make sense but meant everything. It had long escaped his grasp. The bold are always lost, but the timid have a map unfold behind them. Certainty is but a wink. Regrets are a long, hard stare into the day ahead.

a good time to wean

2010-12-22T14:24:00.004-06:00

Apparently, people do not read my blog anymore. That is okay. It only helps Quest Unplug progress further.

I was on hiatus because I was in Fon du Lac county, Wisconsin. My friend Benn has a magnificent cabin up there, called the Treehouse, and I spent Monday and part of Tuesday traipsing in the snow, cooking, and playing Monopoly. I was once a Monopoly hater. In fact, I still hate it. But what made playing Monopoly fun was the new rules.

Monopoly is lethargic, long, and full of money changing. It's pretty dang straightforward and it never really caught my interest. I usually avoided playing it, actually, because it was as exciting as Life, which is the most horrifically boring board game. It's like Candyland for adults who don't want to be seen playing Candyland, but want a similar experience. Candyland is better because it's short. I'm getting beside the point: Monopoly has always been pretty doggone boring. BUT THEN CAME THE NEW RULES.

The new rules inspire a whole new level of fun, one that never existed in the game. First, there's the "time warp railroad" rule: if two people are on railroads at the same time, they must switch places. Okay, nothing ground breaking. Then the "street fights" come into play: if any two or more players land on the same space, they have to have a "street fight". A street fight consists of the players rolling the dice and trying to get the highest number. Other player and the fighters can bet on the winner. If you lose, you have to pay the difference between the rolled numbers to the winner. The bets are distributed accordingly. Now, we weren't excited enough by the street fights, so we began "shower room fights", which were fights between players simultaneously in jail. To make these more exciting, we doubled the stakes and the loser had to pay double the difference in the rolled numbers.

As the game wore on, it became obvious that jail was the place to be because you don't lose money and you can still expand your empire. We had instituted "waiting room fights" in which a player "just visiting" jail could fight a player in jail and the winner would get into jail while the jailbird got kicked out. This was considered a bad fate for those jailed because they had to make their way around the board and lose some money instead of merely collecting it. We realized there needed to be more incentive to leave jail, e.g. you can't develop your properties or collect rent, but played by the official rules in that regard. Need I remind you that the rules don't state you can't run your empire from jail? The unfortunate thing was that Benn, the owner of all the yellow properties (Marvin Gardens, Ventnor Ave, Atlantic Ave), built them up like crazy and we landed on those properties too much for our own good. He caused us all to nearly go bankrupt. I won back some of my fortune with street fights, Brian lasted a few more rounds because I allowed him to bypass paying me rent when he won a street fight against Benn, and Jeb took pity on my financial situation and allowed me to not pay him rent.

It was a riot to play. I haven't laughed that hard in a while, and while playing Monopoly no less! The ridiculous luck of Benn just got funnier the more it reflected real capitalism. He still operated his empire sucking the blood out of poor street fighters while safely nestled behind bars. Anticlimactic moments made it even better and we played for a few hours without getting bored. Oh, plus Jeb's mom made these AMAZING candied pecans that tasted like the top of a crumb cake. YUM. We built bizarre structures from Kaplan blocks (my favorite being Benn's pagoda with Roman style floors for heating), and played bumper pool, darts, foosball, and ping pong. We even danced on the slick wood floors and did the robot to theme songs like "Danger Zone" from Top Gun. It was really fun and I'm glad I was invited this year. It was beautiful in the forest, very winter-romantic, and I had some good company. I already miss being out in the boonies with a close knit group. Perhaps my heart is migrating away from the city. I do not know. I don't have any pictures because I completely forgot to bring my camera. I hardly use it anymore, so I always forget it when I do want it. I hate that.

swimming about

2010-12-18T13:34:00.002-06:00

Courtyard in Beograd, Srbija. aug 2010

I am refraining from a life update! I'm saving it for my journal and trying to divert my attention into something creative or thoughtful for this post. So far, I'm coming up blank. I don't mind because creativity isn't constant, but in spurts. Sometimes you feel inspired; sometimes you feel like you're preparing for the moment you will be. You have to take the stupid with the brilliant and keep creating and letting ideas stew in your mind.

You also need to keep living an interesting life. This isn't living in an interest way for the sake of doing it, but living a passionate life. My creative writing teacher at BYU said, "If you don't do much in life, I'm sorry, but you will not be a great writer." What he meant is that you need to not completely settle into a routine. Do something you've always wanted or something that's out of your comfort zone. A stale life does not contribute to great writing and, like Brenda Ueland, I believe writing and creativity are very similar. You need to stretch yourself and see the other side to truly create sympathetic and interesting work. Creativity is getting in touch with what it means to be human and without feeling it yourself, what can you say?

decisions

2010-12-16T13:27:00.003-06:00

Keen at some beach in SoCal. I don't remember the name of the beach, okay?! jan 2009

Updates on Quest Unplug:

I'm unsure if I really want to turn Quest Unplug into a full blown project. I'm doing it to simplify my life and adding another blog isn't exactly what I originally had in mind. I haven't pulled the plug yet, but I haven't advertised for it either. I do like that I came up with the slogan, "It's like existentialist Lent" because it kind of is. I don't pretend to be original. If you wanna see it, click here. If you want me to keep it, you better have a damn good argument for it. I'm serious. Persuade me.

So a few developments on my ideas for my quest to unplug: I've started writing in a journal. I'm a chronic journal starter and abandoner. I never keep it up. I've been using my commute time for now, so hopefully I will cement the habit? Other things on my agenda: TV tune out, less computer time, more hobbies, more letter correspondences, and more books. These will not be done simultaneously because I am neither masochistic nor overly optimistic. I'm doin' it Ben Franklin style: one at a time. I can't handle such "deprivation" at once and it would make it harder to do real introspection. I'm sure other ideas will come later, but that's what I've got so far.

Since my writing is lacking, I will refer you to something I enjoyed reading (all the ones I've read have been fantastic). I would especially recommend the article about the man trying to escape surveillance Britain. The explore section of my RSS feed has shown me that the same topics come up on so many blogs. You'd think there would be overwhelming variety (or maybe Google is tracking my preferences and stuff...), but I skip over more than 80% because it's the same thing. Also, what's with the subject line "Tommy Lee Doesn't Like Whale Masturbation"?? I don't understand how that's supposed to entice anyone and it keeps popping up. Google, what makes you think I'm interested in reading that even if it is a spam title?

touch it, taste it, feel it

2010-12-15T09:54:00.000-06:00

Sunset over Little Sahara, Utah. july 2008

I took a trip to the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) last night, but unfortunately, my arrival happened fifteen minutes before it closed. I did get to see an exhibit called "Without You I'm Nothing: Art and Its Audience". I like contemporary art since it is far more philosophically provocative to me than medieval paintings. No disrespect, but I don't find it as engaging. The exhibit was even more engaging because it involved the viewer. You could climb on things, listen to a musical sculpture, stamp paper, steal a sheet of paper from the sculpture, move things...I loved it. I loved the concept driving the exhibit, but I mostly loved that it was tactile.

It became very apparent to me during my study abroad in Vienna that the world is largely audiovisual. After going to countless museums, I became sick of looking at everything. I wanted to touch things and physically connect with art instead of appreciating from an arm's length. I craved being able to touch and manipulate because all I could do was stare. No wonder people touch public statues--we are so deprived of physical touch. Humans need to be touched on a regular basis (most, anyway) to stave off depression and to feel connected to other people. It's a way of sensing beyond what the eye can see and connects us to our primary mode of existence. Technology has turned us away from touching and made us stare and listen to everything. Part of the reason computers get under my skin is that it's relentless visual stimulation without anything physical to accompany it. Typing is hardly any movement whatsoever, which is why my hands become ice cold when I work. I believe part of what I loved about landscaping was that I could feel and manipulate; I often dug in the dirt without gloves because I loved feeling it. I've never really considered myself a physical person, in the innocuous sense, but I remember things far better when I write and read what I write. I never took class notes by typing because I'd promptly forget them. In high school, I usually studied by rewriting cheat sheets and note summaries, and I sometimes did this for college courses.

I read an article that expounded on a study in which researchers discovered that children learn better analytical and writing skills by physically writing instead of using a computer. The findings revealed that the connection between the motions of writing and thinking were much closer than previously thought. Children need to learn by writing. I found it hardly surprising that movement is needed to help develop thought, but the extent was intriguing. I wish I could recall the article. But I've thought about how the digital age is effecting how we learn and while more interactive tools are fantastic and worthwhile, I think it will seriously neglect the physical side. Even if computers become more physically interactive, it does not compare to the actual manipulation of physical objects. We are stripping away the various sensations that form how we remember and think.

Some pay more attention to certain senses, but we need all of them. It's like learning a language in the country that speaks it: it's so interactive that you pick it up far quicker than in a classroom. I always felt like a moron talking about things like food in a classroom setting, but in every day life in Germany, I felt less dumb because it mattered and there was so much sensory experience accompanying it. I learned words in Hungarian faster because I was there when I started it. I had to solve the language and pick out things I recognized as I learned them. It made learning a language so much more fun and less of a chore (though still frustrating when you didn't understand). If I learned how to talk about train schedules, I would be able to read it on my way to work and feel smart. It had relevance and experiences to attach it to instead of rote memory. I will never forget the difference between garlic, red onion, and white onion in Hungarian because of my embarrassing mix up at the grocery store, which lead to a one-sided conversation at the check out because I didn't weight garlic as the right vegetable (they are, in respective order: fokhagyma, vöröshagyma, and fehérhagyma). The point is, the more interactive and multifaceted learning is, the more it sticks. The physical is part of that. I think it's time we recognized the power of touching and the audiovisual overload that exists.

browsin'

2010-12-14T09:59:00.001-06:00

Stairs

Japan's 2022 FIFA bid, which may be the best one ever, even if it didn't win against Qatar.

I'm more than a cottonball!

resolving

2010-12-13T09:17:00.001-06:00

A path in the forest by Lütte. may 2009

I've been on a roll here, but let's not jinx it with hopes and dreams. DON'T DO IT.

I've had thoughts lately (particularly since Saturday) and I'm determined for 2011 to be different. I don't remember the last time I made a NYR (New Year's Resolution), the sacred American tradition of failure, and it's time I got on the bandwagon. Part of this was spurred on by a very recent thought, the other parts of it were the result of my new, chartreuse 2011 date book and my letter to myself from 10 years ago. The chartreuse date book just has me all excited to have a central place to put all of my compulsive lists, appointments, and sneering remarks I make in my head. My letter has me all nervous in anticipation of New Year's Eve when I finally get to open it and laugh, feel depressed, and rebound to laugh at what I wrote at the tender age of 13. It's going to be a real trip. This leaves the first ingredient: my thoughts on Saturday.

The thought has some roots from earlier months, when I discovered an previously unknown affinity for Harry Potter. For a few weeks, I couldn't figure out why I was so drawn to the films until I realized that the characters had everything I didn't and missed: a close community of friends, school, Europe, purpose, and hilarious scenarios. This is no time to pull out your hanky. I realized that I wanted everything they had (the magic is nice, but not the central point of envy) and this last movie wasn't an exception. Sure, it's all dark and gloomy (and actually quite scary when you think from their perspective), but they still had that close network of friends and purpose. What I noticed most from this last installment was how often it was quiet. There were moments of drama that warranted sound effects, but there was a noticeable lack of music or sound for that matter. This brought up another aspect I never quite realized: the world they live in is simplistic. The medieval aspects of the magic world are the result of magic itself: because they had magic, there was no need to update to computers or more complicated technology. They never played music unless it was a record, and that was seldom ever done in the first place. There's something to be said for the quiet, deliberate slowness of their education. They had nothing other than a library, quills, and paper. It brings a slower pace to the way they thought things through and carefully deliberated their choices. While I do not exactly wish to revert education to that method, I realize its benefit. It is far easier to spurt out ideas on a computer, which is rather fantastic, but it also makes it much easier to glide on the surface of things. I'm far too distracted on a computer. I'm far less distracted when I'm writing because it can interrupt my thought and then I'm stuck in a half finished sentence, which breeds a slew of problems. I'd really have to STUDY if I wrote by hand. It does make an essay more difficult, but perhaps then we would write less and think more about what we wrote.

What I realized in my string of thoughts was that I really miss the slower pace of thinking and deliberating, as well as the silence in the film. They don't watch TV, listen to music, read 15 news articles a day, or write a blog post (don't take this as a sign I'm giving this up). They live in a world firmly rooted in the now and the most important things. It's a simplicity that blocks out all the hubbub and allows them to focus on what's important. And that's my NYR: blocking out the hubbub. I'm not going to stop listening to music altogether or using technology, but it's time to cut the umbilical cord to the nonstop humming of modern life. It's all too easy to watch TV for hours and I often do it even when I should go to bed. If I read a book, I get tired earlier in the evening and don't fight the bodily urge. With books, I finally unplug from everything and feel rooted in the moment. This is a nebulous resolution at the moment, but I'm working on how I want to limit technology without losing it entirely. I can't lose touch with technology because I would be completely out of touch with the modern world, but I can lessen my dependency on constant distraction. I'll let you know the specifics when they have set in my mind. But if anyone wants to join me on Quest Unplug (which is rather similar to TV Tune Out), speak now! We can have a support group. I'm all for it.

personal experiments

2010-12-12T15:54:00.003-06:00

Sharing a winter scene from my bedroom in Vienna b/c Chicago is blizzardy today. Happy Snowy Holidays! nov 2007

Yesterday I went to a matinee of Harry Potter by myself. I'd actually never been to a movie by myself. Ever. I'd been to countless performances by myself (since usually no one wants to come with me), but somehow I avoided seeing a film in the theater all by my lonesome. For part of my life, I avoided it on purpose. The idea of seeing a movie alone struck me as very sad because it's seldom that people don't want to see one, meaning that people either didn't like you or that you had no friends––they are not necessarily mutually inclusive. Anyway, after high school I stopped having the capability of seeing a movie alone, mostly because of physical distances. I depended on my wheeled friends to get me there. Movies have always been a social events and by that point, I'd gotten used to the idea of needing someone to go to movie. Renting videos is not even the same thing, so don't even try to bring that up. Renting movies is for times when you're hanging out with friends or wish you were.

On Friday, I announced I was going to see a matinee by myself the next day. My parents, clearly worried about my social skills (rightfully so), they suggested I send out an email on the YSA listserv. I honestly wanted to see a movie by myself and even if I didn't want to, it seemed pretty last minute to send an email. Email does not guarantee people will check it at any moment, even if they have a smart phone. I soldiered on and went to complete my quest. I decided to see Harry Potter, though I remain curious about Black Swan (mostly for the ballet, who am I kidding?, but it also looked like crappy ballet in the scenes I saw). After seeing a movie by myself on a rainy Saturday afternoon for 30% off the weekend price, I wanted to do a comparison.

Pros for Going Alone/Cons for Going With People (simply reverse the list)
no waiting
no phone calls
pick whatever damn movie I want
make my own decisions
got lost in the movie easily
easier to find a seat
way less self-conscious about farting
simply think about the movie afterward

Pros for Going With People/Cons for Going Alone (simply reverse the list)
spending time with people
sharing the movie experience
decided movie may be better than expected
have someone to ask, "what happened?"
can steal some popcorn or candy
talk about the movie afterward
have plans after the movie

If I tallied up correctly, going by myself wins! Now, I really enjoyed seeing this Harry Potter alone, probably because I could get lost in it and it wasn't a fun movie per se, which are typically better with other people. Had I seen a comedy or some ridiculous movie, I probably would've been displeased. Taking that into account, they pull a divided tie, meaning that movies like the final installments of Harry Potter are probably best enjoyed in "transparent eyeball" mode, but movies like James Bond are way better with people. To conclude, I have included mathematical relationships:

go with people= (2 x action movie) + (.5 somber movie) + weekend + (3 x [# of friends]/hassle)

go alone= somber movie/fantasy + weekend/ weekday + (5 x no hassle)

I hope that makes sense because if you just plug in your values, you will see the relationship very clearly. If words don't do it for you.

moments of lapsed judgment

2010-12-10T10:21:00.001-06:00

I heavily edited this photo to depict traveling through space and time (taken in Halstatt, Austria). sept 2007

Sometimes I chew my food really slowly and concentrate. Whenever I do this, I become amazed at my mouth's ability to deftly and quickly pulverize with my teeth, push things into place with my tongue, and speedily do both of these things. One of life's miracles, I guess.

I'm going to do a little life update. I'm still doing my internship. I had two Game Nights this week! Muells, his g-friend Christine, and I gathered to play board games, which I almost never do. We had such a fun time playing Chutes and Ladders, Bananagrams, The Squirrel Game, Clue, TriOminoes, etc. that we decided to do it the next night too! Oh boy. I lost my dignity the first night because I came in third for every single one of the games we played. Actually, for some of the games there wasn't really a third place so I technically wasn't the last person, but that's not the point. I didn't win one game. The second night improved with my deft skills at Set, Blokus, and Jumpin' Monkeys. I won three games and came in second in The Squirrel Game, which was a feat because I somehow managed to lose horribly at this child's game the night before. I really enjoyed Game Night, especially after I won some dignity back.

Other than that, I'm knitting again, albeit slowly, and I found books I thought were lost in the attic forever. Nothing compares to the joy of being reunited with your old books. All I was doing was looking for Hungry Hungry Hippos (which may or may not be in the attic) and then I opened up a box and shrieked with joy. It's my All About Me book! I yanked that box across the attic floor and started rifling through the contents. I was so excited that I almost forgot how afraid I am of the far ends of the attic, which were exposed, because as a child I was steadfastly convinced that mice nests resided in the insulation. I actually still believe mice are running about up there, birthing tiny mice that would be cute if they were not in my attic, and no amount of logic will ever rip those roots from my subconscious. It's not as bad as cockroaches, who cause my heart to palpitate, even after I have killed them. I hated my life for those 9 days in Budapest and could not have been more paranoid. I slept with every light in my apartment on before I left for Belgrade. My neighbors must've thought I was out of my mind. But back to my books. I found my book on Japanese cooking, which I had longed for years ago while at school but couldn't remember where I stored it in the attic while I was home. I was excited even though the likelihood of me whipping up miso soup is pretty low. I was mostly thrilled that the books of my subconscious library were back in my life! I had drawings from my childhood (which were pretty decent considering my lack of visual artistic skill), my collection of ads that made me realize that Emily Hannan had a point when she said I collected things as a kid, and all my old yearbooks. I was so excited that I grabbed four books and brought them down to read. My excitement means I won't even get to my 1200 pg. Currents in Marxist Thought book until I finish all of them. I got another Sharon Creech book--say what you want, but she is a fantastic writer and this book, "Bloomabilities" is an excellent parallel for my life--Zlata's Diary (duh, it's about Eastern Europe), The Things They Carried, The Rainbow People (a collection of Chinese folktales), and my Japanese cookbook. I think my choices are all too telling about me.

A sad fact of my life is that my intellectual obsessions are well known. As my friend Adam put it, "You wear your brain on your sleeve". This couldn't be more true because anyone who talks to me for more than 5 minutes will easily discover that I could not be more preoccupied with Eastern Europe and Communism. Or magical realism. Or nerdy stuff like theory. Languages. Europe. I'm going to stop now. I could probably dedicate this blog to writing about these things. <-----This thought makes me believe that it would be fantastic idea. But I could write about it here and call it good. I do what I want because I don't have sponsors or an audience to write to. HAHAHAhahahahahahahahahahahaha. Joke's on me because I need to be paid. :( Because I spend so much of my energy thinking about these things, I simply can't afford to have a job that requires me to actually think about what I'm doing. This is primarily why administrative jobs appeal to me. I spend way less time achieving and way more time thinking. Sure, I could think about what I'm doing, but that takes away from the time I spend thinking about Communism or why English doesn't have a possessive relative pronoun for objects. I discovered this amazing loophole when writing up my friend's bio for her website as I tried to write, "She sought to continue learning Chinese, whose musical quality drew her interest" and realized that "whose" is typically reserved for people, though American English doesn't really care. But the syntactically correct "the musical quality of which drew her interest" is a horribly cumbersome phrase. American English needs to put "create a possessive pronoun for non-persons" on its list of to-dos. Don't get me wrong, I love English for its impressive vocabulary, breadth of sounds, and inclusive disposition, but it has some structural issues and spelling inconsistencies that need to be addressed.

Which leads me to spelling in English. I understand why English spelling is so erratic and almost nonsensical, but my entire life I've had very little trouble doing well on spelling tests. However, the more languages I learn, the worse my spelling has become. I think it's because my brain is training itself to spell according to sound in foreign languages (since other languages have letters consistent with their attributed sounds) and freaks out a little when it comes through the looking glass to English-land. Granted, I have used English my whole life, but that's doesn't mean my mind has set it in stone. I feel bad for children learning how to spell in English because it's a painful process, or so I assume since that's the impression everyone gives. Do you ever look at written English and pretend it's a different language? I do. It looks very strange.

In conclusion, this post is a string of my thoughts. I wear my brainz on ma sleeve.

I should be paid for ideas like this

2010-12-08T15:11:00.005-06:00

One of my brilliant Columbine, The Flower Not the High School Massacre covers using Lindsey's photo of Keen.

Ways to improve this Noah's Ark theme park (which already has a rhyming name):

The ark should be a working ark. They want to build it as a functional one in the sense that animals can live in there and fill it with juvenile animals (because they believe that's the most plausible way for all those animals to fit in there), but it should be able to float. Really. I think it would be fun to flood the park periodically--the frequency is up for debate--but only after the visitors are told over the PA system that the end is coming. Since the main visitors of the part will be very rightist Christians, they will heed the warning (since they believe it will happen at any moment) and no one will drown. For the occasional heathen tourist, it would be a good idea to have life jackets available throughout the park. Or some people could do an accurate recreation and simply elect to use a life jacket and not get on the ark. Clearly, these people will have to sign a safety waiver. Flooding the park would just make it a more convincing replica and infinitely more awesome.

The animals should romp around freely in the park until an appointed time until they get corralled into the ark. I think it would give a real sense of awe and wonderment and the park workers spend HOURS trying to make sure the lions don't eat the zebras as they line up on the plank and get to their pens. At the very least, they should let the some of the herbivores run around and then they get corralled. It's like Busch Gardens meets religious fervor. What's there to lose?!

Period costumes. The Ren Fair does it--not to justify it, but to point out that getting into period costumes just ups the ante on the commitment level. Ren Fair nerds are SO INTO IT and I think it's because they have to dedicate their energy to dressing a certain way. Plus, then you'll get the Cosplay crowd, if they are religious. It's about time someone came up with a Passion Fair.

Um, the part with the doves just needs to happen. We all know why. Maybe they can be like carrier pigeons and carry a message of peace on their feet. Just a little dose of cuteness!

They might want to consider having certificates for people who got on the ark that says, "Follower of God's Prophet Even When It Seemed Crazy". Something like that. It would just reinforce their sense of self-worth and self-righteousness. That's what this country needs!

They could have life sized sculptures of dinosaurs around the park that dissolve in water. Then the flooding would show what they really think happened to the dinosaurs: they didn't follow onto the ark. Or any extinct animal, for that matter. The animals would disappear after the flood and people could point it out and say, "SEE? I TOLD YOU THE FLOOD WIPED THOSE STUPID LIZARDS OFF THE PLANET! THEY'RE NOT WORTHY OF US!" Which may or may not be a valid point. Science is tricky.

All in all, I think these are valid improvements for the not-yet-approved park. If these changes were implemented, I'm not sure I could find a reason to not go. And I would be one of the heathens floating around in the park, swimming for dissolving dinosaurs. You betcha! ;)

taylor's back, tell a friend

2010-12-07T13:34:00.005-06:00

Keepin' it real, fashun-wise. Evanston, summer 2006

I've been sooooooooo lacking on the posts lately. I mostly start one, almost finish it, forget about it, rediscover it, hate it, and start the process over. It's a great system. Mostly unproductive, like my work day.

So I come to you from my work space because I discovered the way to delete my browsing history. Yay! This means my "lunch" is more than an hour long. The best part about using Google Reader for my job (yes, I'm serious) is that I can browse my fun blogs and no one knows the difference. It all shows up as "Google Reader (76)" or however many unread items I have. And for all they know, the numbers are going down because I'm actually doing work! I feel a little bad, but mostly because I want to get reviewed well. The tedium of doing the exact same task repeatedly for hours every a day makes me want to stick a fork in my computer. Also, looking at job ads for hours makes job hunting feel like working overtime, which associates trying to get a better job with the one I currently hate. So I'm just trying to apply for jobs at work so I don't have to worry about this. I would feel bad, but they're killing my will to do better things, so it's only fair. I'm applying to any copywriter job I'm even remotely qualified for, with secretary jobs to boot, and signing up for all sorts of accounts with blogging/copywriting communities. I don't even care if it's part time work anymore. PAY ME MONEEZE. I also got a random inquiry from Rosetta Stone, which is a long story that happened months ago, so there's a slight chance I will teach English. *shrugs* I would tell you jobs I'm excited about, but I'm afraid I'll jinx it by getting publicly excited about it. It's like the opposite of "The Secret". It seem superstitious, but whenever I get publicly excited, I get way too crushed. I guess it's the perceived projection of expectation. But let's not get tangled up in mysterious things like that.

I work with a bunch of answering machines. Not literal machines, but often the way they speak to me sounds like they're leaving a message. It's understandable, really, because they spend all day either calling or interviewing potential hires and clients and have to do the same spiel over and over. But heavens above, whenever they talk, it's like they push play. Unfortunately, since they are not machines, I actually have to look at them, pretend I'm interested, and consciously keep my eyes from glazing over (with the possibility of looking like I'm listening while actually thinking about more important things). I assure you that looking like you're listening when you're actively thinking about something else while taking background notes on snippets of the monologue is no easy feat. I haven't mastered it, but I'm sure getting good at it. I'm told this is good practice for life, jobs, and marriage. In short, I'm learning the best skill of all, but one you would never publicly announce since it's socially taboo (despite being a complete necessity). I like to think of it as information filtering--you can't process every bit of information that crosses your path, so you simply choose what's important and focus on it. Unfortunately for my coworkers, an article on the Noah's Ark theme park in Kentucky gets higher priority than their diatribes. Can you imagine? I'd go for the sheer spectacle of that theme park!

I'm really making work sound like a complete drag. It's not a completely inaccurate picture, but perhaps it's not even keeled. The moments when I perk up are when I a) read funny blog posts and have to choke my laughter down so no one knows I'm slacking, b) need to assemble the direct mailers, c) pick up the phone, d) handle applicants, and e) eat lunch. The rest of it is a drag. Which consists of 80% of my time. It's a slow season for business in general, but especially for temp agencies because the fiscal year is winding down. I can only imagine this was my employer's way of convincing me that this position is not always this boring, but that I happen to be here during an exception. I remain skeptical. There may more interviews and phone calls during other parts of the year, but that fact distracts one from the important truth: everything else is pretty boring, even if there's a little less of it.

p.s. The hiring manager is on the phone with someone named Greg Nipples. He must have had an awful childhood and probably has an adulthood of hidden snickers.

PUMPED

2010-12-02T16:38:00.002-06:00

Fisherman's Bastion, Budapest. aug 2010

I just took the GRE. I told you guys how I forgot to reschedule until too late? BEST MISTAKE EVER. I can't think of any good mistakes I've made (maybe a few––I lied), so this easily reigns as the best. I scored pretty awesomely considering my level of preparedness. This was nearly 8 months after my prep class, after only a month of some studying (mostly 1 hour at lunch for two weeks), and with no cramming. I just went to the center saying, "Oh well. This test is a game!" I also followed some strategic advice (particularly with the quantitative), but other than that, I just did the problems and promptly forgot about them. I ate a little food, but not so much that blood would rush to my stomach. I can't wait until I get my essay scores back.

I'm just pumped. PUMPED. And this was my back up graduate school plan! I did 80 points better in quantitative and I could tell I was doing well because I couldn't solve some of the problems (it's a Computer Adaptive Test). So I want to celebrate. Right now I'm doing it by watching TV. Too bad I don't drink and stuff because it makes it infinitely easier to celebrate. Off to figure out other ways to reward myself!

getting it together

2010-11-29T12:52:00.003-06:00

Sometime during my BYU freshman year, Gareth sent this to me. I can't remember why. I only remember that it was really funny at the time.

I've been gone and it feels so good! I had a really spectacular week. I think my social activity over the past week highlights not only my complete lack of social engagements, but also my love for socializing. I'm not social in the sense that I like meeting new people (not that I don't, I just have to psych myself into it) but I am in the sense that I like spending time with other people. I love spending lots and lots of time with the same small group of people. Once I find people I like, I hang on until death. I had a lot of fun just sitting in the back of Nevin's with my friends and chatting. I spent almost all of Sunday hanging out with Gen. We got brunch, walked to the lake, and then watched some TV while periodically spying on people outside. It was great! I don't mind chilling, I just mind chilling by myself. I do have potential plans for Thursday. They're not definite yet, but it may turn out to be an outing to see a band called Pieptone, who play German hits of the 50s and 60s. Ja wohl! It's mostly ridiculous, but I think it'll be fun. There's not much else to report from my life. So I will finally do something more creative than talk about my life.

Here we go:

What's the give away, the tell tale sign? Long glances, a look, a plea for attention? The tremor in the hand, perhaps, from nervousness or the mouth that can't quite close. Words keep spilling, but never the ones that want to be said. Delirium sets in and suddenly you can't remember what happened moments ago, but simply because you cannot stop thinking about the present moment. Internal gymnastics painfully stretch you, but you never beg for mercy. You can't contain yourself and you shine on whatever crosses your path, but you can suddenly unleash a wrath that seems to come from absolutely nowhere. Your pH is so neutral that a few drops can turn you corrosive. You're here and there, and nowhere in between. A night at stormy sea that promises sandy shores of plentiful coconuts is all you feel. The adrenaline rush is addictive and you get excited with the danger that causes your palms to be clammy. Then the touch. You're embarrassed and excited to a point of exhaustion. It's all you think about because everything else seems muffled. The intensity tires you, but you come back for more while neglecting everything else. You dwell on the past and cannot remember what happened a few breaths ago. You're lost in another time and place in your head. You return to the present only so you have something to daydream about later. It's a sickness almost everyone wishes for, but sometimes people get cured. The rest have it eventually lie dormant, deep within the recesses of their chest.

from down to up

2010-11-25T19:35:00.002-06:00

View of my backyard from the bathroom window. oct 2010

So...I usually refrain from expressing my sad emotions because I end up choking on my own words. Though I do have to say that I have always maintained that I felt like my friends were avoiding me, not that this was fact. That's a good thing because it turns out to be mostly in my head. I was out with said friends until 3am, so I'm pretty sure I don't have a case. I had a good time despite the fact that we were hanging out in loud bars filled with people from high school. I had someone I went to high school with hit on me (not that I knew him that well anyway) and someone who assumed that Adam and I were still dating (and was consequently embarrassed by his mistake). When I mentioned this mistake to Adam, he laughed and said, "If we were still together, we'd probably have 3 kids or something." And I thought, "We would?"

It was also really good to see Charlie, who empathized with my state of life. He said, "It gets better," and I know that, but it was good to hear it from him because he didn't try to fix it or make me feel better, but simply sympathized. Ah I love that kid. I saw some people I hadn't in a while, both familiar and less than. Thankfully, most people don't remember me, so I'm usually off the hook!

Thanksgiving day was all about helping my mom (which I also did on Wednesday with a record breaking grocery run and making butternut squash soup). We had my cousin Mike and his wife Lacey over from Indianapolis and a woman from our ward way back in the day. It was good eating, as Thanksgiving usually is. Am I the only one who finds near food coma uncomfortable? I like sleeping mostly so I stop feeling uncomfortable. Now I'm just watching TV in a semi-stupor. LOVE GLUTTONY HOLIDAZE. Creativity will begin as soon as my stupor lessens. Love!

tuff

2010-11-22T22:34:00.002-06:00

Alrighty. It's time again.

I've had a rough go lately, mostly because I lack a social life. Anyone that reads this has probably heard me cry about it, so I won't go into details. Suffice it to say that all but a highly selective one friend (maybe two?) have bailed and I simply can't gel with anyone else. Sooo...you can imagine how wonderful I feel. But in all seriousness, it's a problem. I'm a sensitive person and facing social rejection (which I naturally fear at all times) is a death blow. If I feel rejected by people I consider friends, it sends me reeling into a dark abyss. It's just that simple. I feel rejected and misled; I will spend months trying to recover. I've been there before and it is my absolute Achilles heel. I will put up with a lot of crap, but when it comes to social situations, I simply crumble. I just don't have the capacity to deal with it.

I came back to Chicago to get back in touch with my roots and while I didn't expect it to go swimmingly, I didn't expect to lose the few friends I had here. Therefore, my attempt has been disastrous. I don't know why and I'm not sure knowing will help me, so why bother. I do realize it's not my fault (though I wonder if they simply just don't enjoy me), but since I've known these friends for a number of years, it's hard for me to wrap my head around it. But life goes on, somehow.

On Sunday, I managed to watch "Das Rheingold", the first out of four Wagner installments of the Ring Cycle, without falling asleep. Wagner feels a little inaccessible because it's so drawn out. A simple scene takes 30 minutes through slow, poetic singing. The music is far more subtle in its variation and there's four operas, each about 2 hours, about a magic ring. Yes, there are similarities to LOTR, but not enough to warrant plagiarism or direct inspiration. It was likely an influence, but not much more. Still interesting. The opera got better when I was able to find a copy of the libretto and follow along since it didn't have subtitles. Even though it's in German, enunciation, vocabulary, and the drawn out nature of the sounds makes it more difficult to follow. I would understand things like "don't look at the gold", "what happened", etc. Not very helpful. I also had to look up the plot so I knew what was happening since everything was in the dialogue.

I have to cut this short because I'm tired. Bye!

says it all

2010-11-21T09:11:00.001-06:00

This is what I feel today. To a T. And exactly one minute from the end, I always start to cry.

wastin' away

2010-11-20T11:35:00.004-06:00

St Stephen's Green, Dublin, Ireland on All Saints Day. nov 2007

I am so drained from work that I can't manage to have a creative thought in my head. It takes so much energy to keep myself from going to sleep or not go crazy that work is exhausting. I applied to Groupon for a staff writing position and I really really really SUPER REALLY hope I get it. It would be a fun job. I'm also being considered for a shorter jet lag sleep study at Rush Medical Center, which would pay me $800 for submitting to their strict sleeping schedule for two weeks. I need those $800 dollars, every one. That, plus the $500 from this internship, would put me in good shape for moving out in the foreseeable future. I've earned some money from odd babysitting jobs, but not enough to offset some costs I've incurred. Now on to my creative side.

I was on the #20 bus on my way to Ogilvie to take the train home when I wrote this [after I had a good laugh at the incident]:

A young couple, maybe not, laughed with amusement as the bus approached the Racine stop. He had a ridiculous and elaborate balloon headdress with SpongeBob perched on top and a curious monkey leaning on the left side, though the balloon eyes looked maniacal instead of a more nuanced expression. She struggled to load the dollar bills into the bus far receptacle with balloons under her arm and when she dropped her final quarter, she gave a curt, short laugh with a hint of anxious embarrassment, that perhaps she was causing too long of a delay. Someone giggled and whispered, "I wonder where they're going!" I could only think, "I wonder where they came from?" The balloon sculptures, creations––whatever they were––orbited the couple in their monstrosity and the two of them could not move without seeming comical; the movements seemed futile against the mass of latex filled with air in their arms, on his head, and in the large shopping bag. SpongeBob certainly made them look like a comedy without having to do anything but wear and hold the balloons on a city bus. They looked for a seat, clearly unable to wield the balloons through the narrow aisle, and a man kindly, with a twinkle in his eye, offered him his. They politely declined, but he insisted as he sad across the way, next to the mother cooing her baby in the stroller.

never saw the light

2010-11-15T20:45:00.003-06:00

Some tiny lake in Belzig (the neighboring municipality to Lütte), Brandenburg, Germany. july 2007

This was an article I wrote for Me Gusta Magazine (back when it existed!), but it was never published. I'm sharing it today. If the magazine starts up again, I'll simply write a new piece because I have many axes to grind and rants to dole out.

“Have Mercy On Me”

Alright, it’s time for me to take it to a place it shouldn’t ever be. Whether that’s a joke about impotency or spanking someone for the fun of it, I’m here to shake things up. That’s why this Tanya takes it there. I got a lot of sarcastic gripes to vent and apparently the best time to hear them is when my friends wake up me in the middle of night and get me worked up about something. I will innocently fall asleep while hanging out and suddenly I am woken up at 2am either by a dachshund licking my face or because I have to fetch the bikes my friend convinced me to ditch because she feared being raped on the ride home. Neither of these incidences is made up. I have to get those gripes off of my chest! I just can’t live with all that opinion swirling inside my powerful brain. It has better stuff to do. Like complaining about other stuff.

Let me give you a familiar scenario: You open the door and there is a plate of cookies made by an anonymous person who happened to have refrigerated dough on their hands. The next day someone knocks on your door. It’s some super cute girl with a super cute plate of super cute brownies that she made in her super cute apron. She hands you the cookies in a super cute voice that wishes you a super cute day. You then proceed to use the toilet to vomit all the super cuteness out of your system, including the super cute undercooked brownies. The following day the Friendship Committee gives you a plate with a huge slice of Oreo cheesecake. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so.

Welcome to my so-called “Valley” life. I don’t really intend this to be a rant on Sugar Sweet Valley dwellers alone because I believe most LDS members experience this sugar overload. Frankly, I find it hilarious and hypocritical that we serve this many treats. We say, “Oh no, we don’t drink alcohol. It can be unhealthy in large amounts” or “We don’t do drugs because it destroys your body and mind” but oh ho ho! We simply down sugar to forget we have no social lubricants. Forget serving some mildly alcoholic punch to grease the wheels of awkwardness, just serve brownies. To Mormons, sugar is drug. Nary a social function passes without us dousing our stomachs in the saccharine sweet goodness of cane sugar. It is simply not a function without dessert. I think this is nearly as wrong as drinking at any social gathering because it just shows how uncreative and dependent we are on it. If you saw “Supersize Me”, you know what large amounts of sugar can do to your body. If you’ve followed “Biggest Loser”, you know that a lot of Mormons have been on that show. I find it fitting (ha!).

Mormons, the big propagators of the Word of Wisdom, cannot exist without some sugary concoctions awaiting them. I once got about 7 desserts in one week from a ward––one I quite liked––and suspected that I was being set up to develop diabetes. If you want me to get diabetes, I’m sorry, but my body has an inability to develop a lifelong condition. YOU LOSE. Stop wasting you dollar’s worth of mixes on me. Give the box brownies and frisbee-like cookies to your enemies and give me, your friend, some soup. Nothing says love like “I hope your blood sugar levels are healthy”. You think this is a joke, but I assure you it is not. I ranted to a fellow church member about it and the next day he dropped by with a packet of dry soup mix. Despite the person in question being a creeper, I was delighted to not have a plate of diabetes sitting in my cupboard.

I often find my strong opinion on the “treats” issue in conflict with my duties. I’m on a committee and as part of my duties, I had to deliver cupcakes––made from a box and frosted from a container––to apartments. I nearly wanted to burn them and pretend I delivered them; it would have been the more Christ-like thing to do. When my apartment received these cupcakes, I actually pawned them off on a guy’s apartment. I was particularly disgusted by these cupcakes because my roommate and I made tarts and cookies from scratch for a party (not that I’m trying to brag here…) and it just made those cupcakes look like a candle present on your birthday: a huge disappointment. I’d rather eat my own desserts, when I feel like dilating my pupils, than your boxed crap on a paper plate wrapped in saran wrap.

resting...or hibernating? recooperating?

2010-11-14T15:39:00.005-06:00

Wing of the Hungarian Parliament. Isn't that lamp the coolest? august 2010

I took a hiatus since long hours on the computer make me want to shoot them. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about computers (my life is essentially contained within its confines), but I've been getting more enjoyment in escapist fantasies (Harry Potter has been my latest fling) and reading incessantly. I'm sure you're relieved that you have less entries to catch up on when you finally do read this. I'm pretty sure that a weekend hiatus will become the rule as I begin working on a computer again. I mostly spend the weekend not being around people that aren't my parents or computers. Still looking for a job, but I've started to consider administrative (i.e. secretary) jobs simply so I can get a job and spend a little bit of time not worrying about things like money or the direction of my life. And after finishing Brenda Ueland today, I'm almost convinced that I don't actually care for marketing, but that I wish I really did because it would make my life easier. Life isn't easy when you live and breathe a subject that is mostly of interest to academics and particular governments.

So what's the Brenda Ueland I'm referencing? Years, years ago my brother gave me a book for my birthday entitled "If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence, and Spirit". I was way into creative writing in my younger years (I've mainly gotten out of practice since academic writing consumed my mind and time) and he said it was one of the best books on creativity. Boy, was that an understatement. I believe it to be THE book on creativity. Whenever I've read it (I usually pull it out once a year to refresh myself), I've felt tremendously inspired and ready to release my desire to create. Though the title references writing, she simply addresses how everyone can tap into their creativity, even if it's something like how to improve a machine or how to decrease your budget. I will share one passage, though one passage can never capture the inspiration of this book:

"But this is the point: everybody in the world has the same conviction of inner importance, fire, of the god within. The tragedy is that either they stifle their fire by not believing in it and using it; or they try to prove to the world and themselves that they have it, not inwardly and greatly, but externally and egotistically by some second-rate thing like money or power or more publicity. Therefore all should work. First because it is impossible that you have no creative gift. Second: the only way to make it live and increase is to use it. Third: you cannot be sure that it is not a great gift. And so I think Blake's attitude toward his genius is the right one. We should all feel as he did. He knew about his inner fire and believed in it. "He knows himself greatly who never opposes his genius." He never hindered or discouraged it or let anyone else do so. He cast out all prudence: "Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity," he said. Moderation, caution, measuring, weighing and comparing––"I will not Reason & Compare," he said; "my business is to Create!"…That is what I urge all of you, and myself, to do: work and shine eternally."

I finished reading it today (about a two day read) and I finished read that passage after I sat in church wondering about where my life was headed. All I love and think about are socialism, political structures, economics, books, ideas, theory, languages, and some other stuff thrown in there. Nothing thrills me as much as reading or experiencing eastern Europe. I feel like shoving my interest into something such as marketing is "opposing my genius", so to speak. I don't love it. It doesn't thrill me; it's interesting, but I find it more taxing than enjoyable. I checked out books on marketing and didn't read them at all. I checked out books on the 1956 revolution in Hungary for a paper, and returned them later so I could read as many as I could. When I was in a book store in Budapest, I spent my lunch break writing down all the titles in the ECE literature section so I could find them later. I look through the reference section of my books on ECE to find new articles to read. The difference could not be more obvious.

I've been holding off grad school because I haven't seen a logical reason for me to go or a very compelling feeling. I sense that it's building because the path I've chosen so far has left me unfulfilled, even as far as imagining myself doing it. All I imagine myself doing is something about eastern Europe. Or being there. I believe Gogol Bordello sang about such a thing in the song "East Infection", and it is my raging fever, my inner fire. I can't deny that it's all I want to do. I haven't cared too much about money, other than not being broke, so I'm not hindering myself for that; I'm scared to simply set out on a completely unknown path. It sounds silly because I've done such a thing my whole life and with seemingly little concern or thought as to its novelty, but I've felt like I needed something more "respectable", or perhaps something a little more practical as far as a career path. I'm not sure that's what I'm cut out for. When I'm doing work I hate, I retreat further into my shell and away from things I love. I can't sell myself short because I will be a shadow of myself. I think it's time for me to really take a chance, even if the competitiveness of grad school and academics scares me.

So really, I'm saying that I'm going to work for another year and then go to grad school. Hopefully to one of the programs I've dreamed about for years––which I've come to realize that I want so badly that I'm afraid to reach for it. I think the reason I came up with the plan to not go to grad school for a few years was so that my transcript would seem less important and perhaps increase my chances of getting in. I'm afraid that I'm not cut out for academia. However, perhaps it will be comforting to realize that the real world can be a little more like a fall back plan, whereas academia doesn't seem to be. This has mostly been a thought dump, but I think this is also my declaration of intent. It's a surprise even to me, but I think that the past 7 months (maybe 3 years?) have started to crystalize in my mind and give me direction. I'll finish the internship or get a job, whichever one comes first and get a move on with my life plans. I'm selling myself short for now, but I'll get there eventually.

more boox

2010-11-11T21:57:00.003-06:00

Halloween 2009: the best thrown-together costume to date. According to Nelson, it's also convincing because he thought I was some punk high school chick.

I'm trying to get used to my new schedule. Getting up is fine, but what happens at 5pm is always dicey. Anyway, I've completed my 3rd day and my first day at manning the front desk. It wasn't bad since it was Veteran's Day and there wasn't much to do. I still generated leads. Yay me. I left early since I was going to the Art Institute of Chicago with Clark. It's free on Thursdays after 5 and luckily my purse was small enough to not be checked! I didn't have cash anyway after the bus incident that morning when I was $1.25 short and only had $1.10, so a kind man allowed me to short change him 15¢ so the line could keep moving. At lunch, I added $20 to my CTA card so I would avoid this problem in the evening. We stuck mainly to the modern art wing and then we had a heated discussion about Europe. Of course.

But enough of that! On to my thoughts! So I finished Crime and Punishment the other day and felt relieved? Honestly, I think The Brothers Karamazov is a much easier read with more plot, but it was good to read a classic. In light of such hefty literature, I'm craving fluff. May I introduce Sharon Creech, probably my favorite juvenile author. I'm actually in the midst of finding her book "Bloomability" which is easily rivaling "Walk Two Moons" as her best book. But I'm here to share a snippet of Walk Two Moons.

"I thought Mr. Birkway was finished with the journals for that day, but he made a great show of closing his eyes and pulling something from near the bottom of the stack.
She popped the blackberries into her mouth. Then she looked all around––

It was mine. I could hardly bear it.
She took two steps up to the maple tree and threw her arms around it, and kissed it.

People were giggling.
…I thought I could detect a small dark stain, as from a blackberry kiss.

Ben looked at me from across the room. After Mr. Birkway read about my mother's blackberry kiss, he read about how I kissed the tree and how I have kissed all different kinds of trees since then and how each tree has a special taste all its own, and mixed in with the taste of blackberries.

By now, because both Ben and Phoebe were staring at me, everyone else stared too. "She kisses trees?" Megan said. I might have died right then and there, if Mr. Birkway had not immediately picked up another journal…"

That may not have been the best excerpt, but it's such a good juvenile book. It deals with miscarriages, death of a mother, disappearance of a different mother (who turned out to have a secret), teenage love, grief, etc. It's got some depth to it. If you want a fun, easy read, turn to Sharon Creech.

clearin' the air

2010-11-09T22:23:00.002-06:00

The sprawling fields behind Lütte, Brandenburg, Germany. aug 2010

Or as my mom sometimes does...clearin' the room. Ha ha. I took the TelePro internship, which will be referred to as TPT in the future. The "other" internship is in the air. We will see what happens! My first day was okay, but what sucks is that it's an hour to get down there via CTA and it took me nearly 2 hours coming back...which is somewhat due to the lack of a bus, BUT it still takes half an hour longer because I have to go all the way around the loop and I can't escape it! Ahhh! I'm also incredibly annoyed that public transit is divided between CTA and privatized ones because it makes buying a monthly pass agonizing. I miss Europe's subsidized public transit. A lot. I also miss living IN THE CITY and not the friggin' suburb.

I'm a little wiped out from the ridiculous commute and ESL (where a Latino student told me, in broken English, that I had a beautiful butt) to do another quote. I'm going to expound on my feelings. Oh goody!

I miss my former lives. This is not going to be a sob fest, I promise. The thing is, I have so many places and lives to miss. My European lives have three forms and they each had particular circumstances surrounding them. Austria was my first taste and was far more structured and therefore magical; Germany had friends and a dreamy situation (hello, scenic countryside with delicious food and a farm full of animals); Hungary was my first foray into actually living in Europe (albeit ECE), but I was lucky enough to have an apartment available to me. Come to think of it, Hungary was 80% the real deal...minus paying taxes (which a paid employee would do). I worked, I paid for everything myself, I figured out almost everything on my own...and I had to make friends via work and CouchSurfers. I miss my Provo life too.

I've been thinking about this because it ties into what I want and my life plans, etc. I want to cure myself of being a "novelty junkie". I've been shuttling back and forth between so many places and experiences that the novelty is almost too much to resist. Living in Thailand? It sounds great! But what I really want long term means I need to settle somewhere. I think my time in Europe has me thinking about staying where you grew up. It's very common in Europe to live within an hour of where you grew up (if not the same town!) while in America it is all too common to move thousands of miles away from where you grew up. There is the call of the frontier that I think Americans always feel, but it can grow to be rather addictive. Unfortunately, my budding addiction is tainted by the perpetual lack of energy to keep making new friends. If I get a partner in crime, I think my feelings will change, but until then, it's a bit tiring to move somewhere new and start over...AGAIN.

I'll be here for a while. Unless I come to the full conclusion that academics are my cup of tea and go to graduate school. I'm coming a little closer to this conclusion, but I'm still KILOMETERS away from being sure. I'm not sure what I want, but marketing is kind of what I'm shooting for at the moment since I can skew my resume that way rather easily, it uses ethnographic research, and it's not completely boring. I'm not riveted, but not very much rivets me beyond anthropology, landscaping, and socialism. So clearly I'm destined to either have an outside hobby that fulfills me, become a professor, or find some career path that combines most of those interests. We'll see, we'll see.

getting off course

2010-11-08T22:33:00.003-06:00

The way up the tower of the Astronomical Clock in Prague, Czech Republic. oct 2007

Soo...stuff has happened, but I haven't posted. This is why having a creative post and not a life post is so much nicer! I don't have to talk about my time! I am starting my internship tomorrow, which includes my commute (1 hr each way--yippee!). I'll let you know how it goes...after it goes. I have ESL right after I get back from work, so it's going to be a real tiring time until ESL ends on the 18th.

So what to talk about today? I was thinking of discussing a passage from my favorite book: "The Book of Embraces" by Eduardo Galeano. This is my favorite book because it completely changed my life when I read it. No book can ever match it because it riveted me down to my creative core. I couldn't go back to the way I was, even if I wanted to. The simplicity and beauty of it escapes words. You're going to have to read it yourself. I hope to one day find a man who appreciates my profound love for this book (he doesn't have to think it's profound, but he has to at least get why it means so much to me)...and my taste in melancholy music. I'm not sticking hard and fast to this hope, but if you appreciate those two things, you have started to unlock the door to my soul. For realz. But, to the "vignettes"!:

"Mapamundi/1"
The system:
It steals with one hand what is lends with the other.

Its victims:
The more they pay, the more they owe.
The more they get, the less they have.
The more they sell, the less they earn.

"Mapamundi/2"
To the south, repression. To the north, depression. More than a few northern intellectuals marry southern revolutions for the sheer pleasure of becoming widowers. They ostentatiously weep buckets, oceans of tears over the death of each illusion, and they never stop long enough to discover that socialism is the longest road from capitalism to capitalism.
It is fashionable in the north, throughout the world, to celebrate neutral art and applaud the snake that bites its tail and finds it tasty. Culture and politics have become consumer goods. Presidents are chosen on television like soap, and poets perform a decorative function. The only magic is that of the market, and bankers are the only heroes.
Democracy is a northern luxury. The south is permitted its show, which is denied to nobody. And in the final analysis, it doesn't bother anyone very much that politics be democratic so long as the economy is not. When the curtain falls, once the votes are deposited in the ballot boxes, reality imposes the law of might is right, which is the law of money, the pleasure of the natural order of things. In the southern half of the world, so the system teaches, violence and hunger belong not to history but to nature, and justice and liberty have been condemned to mutual hatred.

Thinking back on it, it would make complete sense that this book instilled a deep need to understand socialism, which in turn has made me practically obsessed by it. [And it's fitting that it continues the socialist theme from last time.] These vignettes only illustrate a little bit of why I was so riveted by this book. Even though the writing is translated, it has an inimitably smooth sound. The way he writes, as far as it is translated, is like a silk ribbon. That's the only way I can describe it. There is considerable pathos, but with a respect for history and a hope for change. He doesn't write about these ideas and these stories to punish the reader, but to remember what has been erased or simply brushed over. He has compared Latin America to a land of amnesia, and if you've read "100 Years of Solitude", you would realize that Márquez uses amnesia to illustrate a similar point in the story. The story is sort of a parable for Colombia, so it is all too fitting that he uses amnesia. But Galeano spends most of the book (which does not read like a novel) explaining that stories bring things back to life and can embrace the listener. He is a compassionate observer of the human tragedy, and particularly the Latin American tragedy. He condemns everyone and no one. It's not that bankers are evil, but they fall into a system that antagonizes the "nobodies", as he called them. But that vignette is for a different post.

Just chew on this for a while. Galeano will come up in more posts, but I will be spending this week revisiting favorite books of mine. I will give a pseudo-book review and, of course, sharing a quote from the book.

and it goes on

2010-11-05T10:40:00.003-05:00

Nate Zacharias catching butterflies in Provo Canyon on Pioneer Day. july 2008

Soo...the internship has not been decided upon. I spoke to someone I got connected to via my parent's bishop and he may or may not be able to offer me an internship that may or may not include payment. I spoke with TelePro and explained my situation and I have until Monday to decide without severely inconveniencing them. It may turn out that I can do both, but I need to hear from this guy I spoke to yesterday to make any decisions. The devil is in the details. The internship I may be offered would be at a company that is located a mere 4 blocks away from TelePro and from what I've heard and sensed, it would be a more dynamic and young atmosphere. I feel like maybe part of the reason I felt reluctant about the TelePro internship is because it felt a little stiff, even when casual. Then again, that was only an interview, so what else would it be? And really, I could put up with a stiff work environment for 8 weeks--it's doable.

In other news, ESL is going well (4 more classes and then it's finisimo), I'm still applying for entry level jobs and continue to open free accounts on any job search website I come across, I haven't studied for the GRE in 2 weeks and I scheduled it for Dec. 2nd, and don't see any or many of my friends for one reason or another. But I will be buying a CTA pass because either internship will require me to commute (bus and then train), which will make seeing my friends in Lincoln Park much easier because it will not cost me $4.50 every time I go to Chicago.

But enough about my life. On to something else! Today I will discuss something close to my heart: socialism. I've brought this up numerous times, but I want to declare something to the American people. OBAMA IS NOT SOCIALIST. I hate when people nonchalantly label things as "socialist" without actually understand what the label means. (My caveat: there is a discrepancy between the way Americans and Europeans in terminology: Americans call the USSR "Communist" when the Europeans call it "socialist"; Europeans do refer to "socialist" policies, meaning the government has a more central role, but never a socialist government.)

A socialist politician would like a centrally planned economy (aka a committee decides what, when, where, and how much something is produced), which Obama does not promote. Yes, there are government regulations on business, but when your toaster explodes on you and you can sue because of torte law, you have no right to claim that government controls on the economy are too much. As Thomas Friedman pointed out in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", if you want a diminished government role, simply visit the anarchic regions of Africa. The government being pursued in the Obama agenda places more regulations, but does NOT control economy. It's the difference between traffic laws and a roller coaster: traffic laws ensure that you can move about as you wish, but police officers make sure you are doing so within the parameters of the laws meant to protect everyone; roller coasters have a set course and you control essentially nothing. Our government is not trying to create a set course for the economy, but make sure that it moves safely. If you have taken Econ 101, you go over why regulations are important. In short, roller coasters are set (socialist) and traffic laws are regulatory (not socialist).

People simply assume that being socialist means that the government controls everything. It's more nuanced than that. It's an elite group within the government that controls everything. For most of the Eastern Bloc, legislation was merely tongue-wagging. Sure, the people elected their representatives (legislative, usually), but everything went through the central committee, so it didn't really matter. Premier ministers and leadership positions were always hand picked by the party. Gorbachev allowed the perestroika and he was the big kahuna. Perestroika didn't happen under Stalin for a reason––he was a stone cold, power hungry man and he didn't want his spoils of war running out on him. Sure, people grew more bold in the 1980s, but a lot of revolts happened in the 1950s and Stalin's iron fist crushed every single one of them, subduing that whole half of the European continent. Gorbachev was cooperative and not unyielding like Stalin. So let's go through key differences:

Now, our government does not pick our governers or any political representative. We do. Guess what? That's the opposite of the socialist system. NOT SOCIALIST.
Businesses determine what is made and sold and the market determines the price of items. You guessed it…NOT SOCIALIST.
You are guaranteed your job for life, even if you're pretty terrible at it or lazy. SOCIALIST.
There's only one party in power. SOCIALIST. (There were other political parties in socialist systems, but they were completely marginalized)
Two political parties jockeying for power? NOT SOCIALIST.
You are under surveillance because you are an ideological threat to the government. SOCIALIST. (I realize that those who threaten the nation are under surveillance, but never because you called the president an idiot.)
You have a right to free speech, including criticism. NOT SOCIALIST.
You have the freedom to attend church. NOT SOCIALIST.

I could go on. This list is to illustrate how incredible unsocialist our government is. If you are under a socialist regime, you live and breathe your government. That small committee makes sure that everything in your life is controlled, including what you say. Eddie, the Bätz's help around the house, was put in jail for 5 years because he simply criticized the mayor of his hometown to his friend. Read stories about anyone who's been jailed or under surveillance for simply criticizing and you realize that this country is about as far as it can get from socialist.

drum roll please!

2010-11-03T21:15:00.002-05:00

I am way too mentally exhausted to do more than type today and even that is a chore.

My big news (which I am sure you have waited for with bated breath!): I got an internship I applied for a mere two days after I applied! It seems I have an excellent knack for landing positions that offer prospects, but no money. Paid internships? No. Paid positions? No. This internship will pay me $500, but that's not too much of an improvement from no money. I'm 90% sure I'm going to take it, but a small, small part of me is reluctant and I couldn't say why. I am going to speak with the business tomorrow for my final decision, so my decision will be final tomorrow. It's a really good match for my interests and needs, but it is lacking the "making money" part...we can't all get what we want...right? I'm kind of wiped out today. I didn't do anything besides spend 2.5 hours "interviewing" for the position, but I was spent.

Tomorrow I should be babysitting in the morning (not via Village Nannies, which is SO UNRELIABLE), doing ESL tutoring (which ends Nov 18), and then on Friday I should be going to the zoo for the afternoon and then babysitting again! I am awesome! My schedule is making me exhausted. I need sleep.

scoobs

2010-11-02T13:57:00.003-05:00

A Californian beach not too far from Mission Viejo. june 2008

Today is my ode to the winner and most beloved reader of my blog: Sheridan. I will be holding other contests in the near future, which may or may not be more enticing than this one. But today it's all about Bearbo and her awesomeness. Here it goes:

You're older than me
(But then again, you're not)
You're cooler than me
(Probably no argument there)
You're more thoughtful than me
(I offer no competition)
In fact, you're simply better than me
(Well, duh)

You packed my lunches for a year
Wrote nice letters when I felt like crap
Even shared your feelings and a tear
Any more of this and I'll be called a sap!

You were goofy, simply silly,
Like when you wore a slip
All summer until it got chilly
It wasn't, however, very hip
To wear 11 shirts willy-nilly

You had a bucket list, quite long,
Full of little goals to complete,
With sneezes at least 10 strong,
Others very cute and sweet,
But not enough to be lifelong.

We would share secrets late at night,
Cuddle up on Christmas Eve and laugh,
Sometimes give each other a fright,
Call out the other's stupid gaffe,
And we did sometimes fist fight.

Both clean, fastidious, and neat,
And yet remains without presumption,
With a personality that can't be beat,
And attacks with a lot of gumption.

Spunky, heroic, excited, respectful, including dynamic and nutty. Sheridan contains so many qualities that don't fit inside.

Well, readers, I may have some exciting news tomorrow. I'm not divulging now because I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch (if you know what I mean!). Stay tuned!

i smell tomorrow baking

2010-11-01T11:41:00.011-05:00

Gymnastics meet against Niles North (?). december 2007

Sheridan: the most loved reader of my blog.

I know it was midterms at BYU, but I still maintain that leaving a comment equals love. JUST SAYIN'. I'm going to come up with something about my beloved reader tomorrow, but I'm making this a Hanukkah of love.

I feel rather uninspired this morning, so I'm going to cop out and post some pictures.

Happy Monday, urrbody!

the smell of men

2010-10-30T14:07:00.002-05:00

Memorial outside of the Mauthausen work camp, Austria. sept 2007.

First of all, you all SUCK at participating in my contest, which means Sheridan will be the winner. I can give until the end of today, but I thought more than one person would comment! All this aside, I will move onto my entry of the day.

I recently bought some clothes from Salvation Army. I grew up buying a lot of my own personal clothes from thrift stores and I'm just frugal like that. Anyway, I was there to find a sheet for my costume, but apparently no one knew what a "fitted sheet" was and therefore could not tell me if they had any sheets that were not fitted, aka a flat sheet. So I browsed since who can turn down clothes at a dismal fraction of what they actually cost in the first place? I almost bought a pair of wide leg, dark orange boiled wool trousers with red piping down the center of the pant, but I simply could not imagine myself ever wearing them––I simply thought they were amazing and wanted them to be appreciated.

I did manage to buy a pair of jeans and two shirts: one was a soft, white man's shirt that's 3 sizes too big and the other was a medium sized gray one that was so soft I want to live in it, especially because it drapes perfectly and doesn't look baggy, but drape-y. I love the smell of that shirt. Salvation Army has a smell that I can't quite describe, but it's rather musky. I think the reason I love the way it smells is because it smells kind of like a man. It smells like I had a man curling up next to me, which is clearly not the case. I think my brain recognizes this idea in my head and clearly likes it. Soo...the point of this is that if you don't have a man, buy clothes that smell like them. Finis.

15 years ago...

2010-10-29T08:59:00.001-05:00

More high school flashbacks! Gareth and I in Charlie's basement of wonders. circa 2005

This time I'm giving you a taste of my childhood. Yesterday I pulled out my boxes of books from the attic and put them into the bookshelf currently residing in Sheridan's closet. I figure I'm here for at least 2 more months, so I might as well have access to my library. In the process, I found my three journals that I would keep for a few months and leave 80% of the book blank before doing the same thing to a new book. My favorite was my journal when I was 8 years old. Here are my favorite entries (the spelling and punctuation are kept the way they appear):

2-12-96
Dear Journal,
I wrote a little thing about Emma. I hate her! Last night I cleaned the room, read Sheridan the book "Chicken Soup With Rice", then I made my bed, and played on my bed. I'm going to school now! I'm back! I made a picture frame. I'm going to play on my bed it will be fun. good night!

11-24-96
Dear Journal, I havent writen in 9 months! We were in Dimoin, Nebraska [Des Moines, Iowa], with Uncle Wayne and Aunt Greta's house. We left after breakfast. We stopped at a rest area to eat lunch. We're in the car, STILL! Cameron is a pain in the butt. Yaaaaaaaawwwurnnnn!! I so tired. I'll write later.

12-2-97
Lately I've been getting up at 6:20 and taking care of Roxy in the morning. This consists of taking her out (pottey) and feedn' her. My million Dollar Project is due tomorrow and my auto. report is due the week after. I'm to busy. God news! I'm in the class Honor Roll. I'm so proud of myself! I like being smart, but besides my future, it doesn't do me any good. Good Night!

12-5-96

I never took off my necklace since when Emily gave it to me. Today when my team was playing basketball, when I cluched my necklace it gave me self-esteem. It felt like she was right next to me. I felt good about myself. I forgot to call Emily and pay 'What Child is this?'! to her on the phone for a season's greeting. Maybe I can tomorow. That would make her very happy. Ever since Cameron's birthday occured he has been very kind, he doesn't argue alot anymore. Now he feels that someone cares about him. I read a book about parakeets and I wish we had many good things for him [Playdough, my parakeet], but we don't. I've got two new pen pals, my favorite one is the one from San Antonio. I don't like Katy Foley we are nothing alike she likes football and basketball. On my pen pal letter I don't want to hear about who won what. I realy miss Emily alot. Merry Christmas and Good Night!

Does anyone else think it's funny I used "which consists of" and "occurred" as an eight year old? Or that a necklace gave me self-esteem (instead of self-confidence...I think that's what I meant) and I don't think being smart will do me any good (except for my future)? I wish there was more in my journals! I have more to share, but they will have to wait. More embarrassing parts of my life coming in the future (when my smarts will do me good)!

favorite things

2010-10-28T08:20:00.000-05:00

Flashback to high school! Gareth and I doing a circus trick (Kate's photo). circa 2005

Another list! Well, I kept the list shorter this time. Remember, you still need to comment on "don't worry, love the bomb" (Monday's post) if you want to win some recognition on this blog. So far, Sheridan is the only contestant (and therefore stands to be the winner). 2 more days!

Things I Like:

the "sks" and "sps" sound, like in disks and crisps.
the feeling of being alone at dawn
Agnes comic strips
A good bowl of cereal or müsli
BREAD
A nice outfit
Ballet
Play dates
Comedic television
Freshly laundered clothes
A pretty dress
German poetry
Chopin
Staying inside when the wind is howling
Pictures of my friends

Life update: I went and saw The Social Network with Dexter last night. It went fine and the movie is definitely a good rental (though I can't say it's worth the nearly 10 bucks to see it in the theater). Now it gets to the weird part in which I enjoy his company, but not so much that I want to keep going out with him...and we all know I'm not the type of gal who will keep going out with someone simply because she has nothing better to do. If I did, I would end up loathing every guy I've been on dates with.

boooooooks

2010-10-27T14:17:00.000-05:00

Not my photo. I remember being shown this by Charlie, but I have no idea who to credit for this.

Today's entry will be my thoughts on books.

I love books. Love them. I love the smell of fibrous pages (not that glossy crap), which is musty and makes me think of the 19th century. The idea of an extensive library does not induce slight panic, even though having too many clothes does. I love them because my head is a reference desk for my external library. I will remember what book I read something in, but unless I have easy access to the book, I may not remember the title or author. When I encounter it, it's a "Eureka!" moment and I remember where it is in the book.

I would love this room. I really would. I found pictures with televisions embedded in the book shelves and all I could think was, "What a waste of space! What a distraction from the books!" I would only add a sliding ladder.

I love writing and words. I think this is why I have such a love for language. The English language isn't necessarily the most phonetically beautiful language, but it's range of sounds and the extent of synonyms have such enormous possibilities. English is deceptively simple and profoundly complex. I also love the details other languages bring attention to. It's a complete system on its own and what I love is that each language focuses and brings attention to different aspects. German is very orderly and quite literal, which is excellent for purposes of clarity, but it also has a beautiful melodic sound that comes out in poetry. People may say it's harsh, but I like to think it has some grit to it. It has softness and grit. Besides, English is guilty of ugly sounds. I feel like the languages I've learned have all brought my attention to different details throughout the years and broadened my appreciation of different sounds, as well as grammatical constructions.

One day I will have my own little socialist library with anthropology books, books on politics, economics, fiction, books in German or Hungarian, art books, encyclopedias (since I was an encyclopedia nerd as a child), dictionaries, reference books, books on knitting or ballet, European history (especially the former Eastern Bloc), theory, philosophy…the list could go on forever. I love books. I love that I can contain knowledge in a room. To be honest, if I were to come into a lot of money (ha!), I would buy lots of books and lots of top quality food. I'm pretty sure I would still be a general cheapskate on clothes and other items in my life. I just don't care that much about anything else. Food and reading: what I lurv.

I kept books I liked from school. Scoff all you want, but that doesn't even compare to the fact that I put together a list of books I read for classes (that I eventually returned) so I could buy them later in my life. Why? I already have the reference for them in my head, so I might as well get the book to complete the brain file. The more I write this, the more I sound like an academic. I only have somewhere along the lines of 1/4 of the books I wish I had kept. I am a little too practical (well, I moved so much I had to be!) to carry so many books, but when I get a permanent residence, the rest is history: I will have a library towering with books. And they will be categorized and alphabetized. I wish it was now.

random word poem

2010-10-26T11:57:00.000-05:00

Emily and Keen on a dune in Little Sahara, UT. may 2008

So far NO ONE has commented on my movie list so this will be a very easy competition. I give you all until Saturday to make your comments. DO IT. Also, see below for a short life update.

Today I will be writing a poem based on a word randomly generated. The first word was sex, but I think that's a cheap topic, so I went with the second because it was slightly absurd: padding.

Soften these sharp edges
Since I am fragile, weak,
And unstable on wedges,
You are what I seek.

When my floors are hard
And my dreams are soft,
You will certainly retard
The aches from my loft.

Keep me safe, soft one
You soften and cushion
When rough would've won
And called for absolution.

Spongeform or foam
Protective or preventative
I can freely roam
With safety never tentative.

While you protect from a harsh fall,
It cannot soften this plunge
This time my heart did call
And I could only lunge.

That was done in 10 minutes by the seat of my very pants.

Life update: My weekend was pretty uneventful. Friday I spent 4 hours doing a nannying gig (it's like a temp agency, but for child care) and then watched "Tuya's Marriage" with my parents. Saturday I ran errands with my mother, went to a YSA activity that was okay, and had my babysitting gig canceled last minute, which enabled me to end up watching TV for a long stretch of time. Last night I went to see Back to the Future play downtown and it was a really fun atmosphere in the theater. I also received a limited edition 25th anniversary poster! I went for the social aspect and we chilled at Gen and Evan's place afterward and I had a good time. I'm excited for my sister to get here on Saturday! YAAAAAY!

don't worry, love the bomb

2010-10-25T14:37:00.000-05:00

The family watches a slide show together. december 2008

Lists and more lists. I've been sitting on this post for a few days.

Amazingly Bad Movies:

The Room. Seriously so bad that it went back to good.

Showgirls. Because for some reason VH1 played this every time there was nothing good on TV.

The Buttercream Gang. If you've seen this, you know exactly why.

Rigoletto. I loved this movie as a kid, but it's really not that great––it's amazingly bad.

Center Stage. The acting is horrendous, but the ballet is beautiful, so it sort of makes up the difference.

Movies That Are Amazing:

The Decalogue. I may have cried a few times. Post-socialist Poland makes me sad.

Brothers of War (Tae Guk Gi). I couldn't even tell people the ending without bursting into tears. It still makes me tear when I think about it.

Memento. That narrative structure is so revolutionary it blows my mind.

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. According to Myer-Briggs, we have the same personality, which explains why I have always identified way too strongly with her general approach to men (plus, Nino is exactly the type I find attractive, so it was all sorts of spooky).

Good Bye, Lenin! It's German, it's post-1989, and it's bittersweet. Love.

Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Seriously, what's with me and socialism?

Lawrence of Arabia. I surprised myself when I liked it. The cinematography is to die for.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I've discussed this recently.

Lord of the Flies (1963). If the book didn't do it for you, this black and white film will make it all too real.

American History X. We all know I love Norton, but it's such a great redemption story.

Lord of the Rings. Infinite source of potential nerdom. Whatever.

The Fountain. Love the multi-narrative, the soundtrack, the story, the concept...and of course I cannot stop sobbing at the end.

Snatch. What a hilarious heist movie. Brad Pitt started winning respect from me after this movie.

House of Flying Daggers. I didn't think it was better than "Hero" when I first saw it, but then years later I watched on TV and found the love story touching. Maybe I'm becoming a sap?

Interesting mentions:
Full Metal Jacket. I really loved "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien and this movie felt like a twisted, sick spin-off, which he totally would have approved of.

Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt=genius. Idea of artistic recreation of non-existing historical events=way too much genius for one movie. No seriously.

She's The Man. I had such low expectations initially, but it's so funny.

Der Himmel Über Berlin (Wings of Desire). Probably not a surprise, but I wasn't sure I'd like it. It's beautiful. [In weiter Ferne, so nah! (Faraway, So Close!) gets a mention too]

Stick It. Love, love, love this film, no matter how much people bag it. The story doesn't revolve around a love interest, deals with real, modern problems, and it has fantastic gymnastics. Perfect 10.

Der Untergang (The Downfall). Bruno Ganz does it too well and the story is too compelling. I cried for an entire segment of the movie.

I Heart Huckabees. Most people don't get it and think it's dumb, but it hits all the right notes for me and remains one of the best intellectual comedies in my book. Marky Mark is way too good for me to not love it. MAAAAAAAAAAAAARK.

Stranger Than Fiction. I like how meta and how tragically cute it is. I enjoy it every time I've watched it.

Sin City. The stylized violence is sublime precisely because it remains so true to comic book form. Marv= the best storyline. He's the crooked man you cheer for because he's such an unapologetic bad ass.

Quasimodo d'el Paris. It's a Patrick Timsit comedy (French) that takes a modern, twisted spin on the Hugo classic. I saw this in Thailand, which made it weirder and funnier. Plus, Frollo reminds me Byron.

Hot Fuzz. This is a great spoof on cop duo action movies. The very end is when it comes together and becomes a rip-roaring good time.

This concludes my long list of great movies. Disagree all you like, but I'm wondering what you all think of some of my favorites (or maybe amazingly bad favorites). Then I will pick my favorite commenter, who will win a stellar chance to have a story or poem written about him/her on this very blog! Woohoo!

a nice rebuttal

2010-10-24T18:00:00.000-05:00

View of Vienna from the Star Flyer in Prater, a family theme park. oct 2007

It's not that I haven't had ideas, but rather I've been preoccupied. I was reading "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" on the train and this quote struck me. It was the statement Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy gave in response to an argument made by Ramzi Yousef, the man behind the 1993 WTC bombing. It makes a compelling differentiation between "Islamic fundamentalists" and Muslims in general:

"Ramzi Yousef, you claim to be an Islamic militant. Of all the persons killed or harmed in some way by the World Trade Center bomb, you cannot name one who was against you or your cause. You did not care, just as long as you left dead bodies and people hurt. Ramzi Yousef, you are not fit to uphold Islam. Your God is death. Your God is not Allah…You weren't seeking conversions. The only thing you wanted to do was to cause death. Your God is not Allah. You worship death and destruction. What you do, you do not for Allah; others believe that you are a soldier, but the attacks on civilization for which you stand convicted here were sneak attacks which sought to kill and maim innocent people…You, Ramzi Yousef, came to this country pretending to be an Islamic fundamentalist, but you cared little or nothing for Islam or the faith of the Muslims. Rather, you adored not Allah, but the evil that you yourself have become. And I must say that as an apostle of evil, you have been most effective" (405).

I think Duffy's comments were foreshadowing for those who eventually carried out the mission Ramzi Yousef sought. It's also a good reminder that what happened at the World Trade Center is not the act of Muslims, but apostles of evil. Furthermore, what Friedman writes about in this portion of the book points out a glaring hypocrisy in the jihad of bin Laden and his cronies. In the 1993 bombing, Mohammed Salameh (a fellow conspirator) tried to get back the $200 deposit on the van they blew up (which he claimed was stolen) and Friedman writes: "For Salameh the world was two different realms. In the morning you blow up the World Trade Center to kill as many Americans as you can for the sake of good over evil; in the afternoon you try to get your money back on the basis of American legal principles and contract law. Nothing better captures the ability of the Super-Empowered Angry Men to exploit technology of the modern world without imbibing any of its values" (403, italic added). What bin Laden says is "defiling the Islamic home" (it defiles every home, really) is exactly what he needs to wage the war. Sure, he can say he is fighting fire with fire (which Friedman can agree with), but when it comes down to it, his situation wouldn't matter without it. If technology and globalization didn't happen, he wouldn't matter one iota to anyone outside of Afghanistan. He owes all of his infamy and effectiveness to the very movement he professes to hate (he even uses television, which was not so common prior to globalization!).

I have an inkling that a man of his relative importance in the world today cannot exactly imagine retreating back into obscurity, if he were to achieve his objective and close off the Muslim world. His whole schtick is anti-American-born globalization and once it "disappears" from the Muslim world, what else does he have to go on about? His ranting is also rather flawed because no one is forcing Afghans or Iranians or anyone to convert to globalization; they are being pressured, but no one is occupying them or commanding them to. It's in their best interest to do so (as Friedman argues), but it simply isn't a requirement. I think bin Laden is simply upset that his fellow Muslims are unable to adapt without conforming. That's a valid concern! The whole world is concerned about that. He's just attacking the symbol instead of addressing the real issue. It's far easier to point the finger at America than it is to preach that Muslims are losing their cultural foundation. It's very much like Old Testament prophets telling whole cities to repent: sometimes things went badly and other times people repented in a hurry. He's simply to cowardly to face his own countrymen and potentially undermine his power and authority, so he simply wages a jihad on America. (Also, does anyone reading this have any idea what the exact Muslim definition of jihad is? I'm not well enough acquainted to discern from choices via the internet, but I often wonder if the term is correctly used by said extremists or commentators.)

And with the whole Muslim fun center near Ground Zero: the attacks were not Islamic. If we prohibit building the center based on the fear of 9-11, we are losing sight of the greatest strength of America, both in globalization and otherwise, which is the acceptance of anyone and any religion, even if it is foreign to us. We are alienating ourselves from the Islamic world and that is a dangerous step to take in the globalized world of diminished borders. I think every hot headed person who gets red in the face about the topic and insists that we prevent "murderers" from building near their "victory site" should remember that we do not condone discrimination of any kind. Discriminating against religions is a dangerous game in such a heterogeneous community and especially in one, that despite all accusations, is actually very religiously active. While America may have created "godless" consumerism and globalization, it also allows people to be religious (and far extreme in religion). After living in Europe, I can attest that Americans are far more religious than the entire European continent. You may not believe me, but cathedrals are almost always empty and they're restored for historical preservation, not religious sentiment. Most Europeans I have met, whether by socialism or Europe's bloody past, are disillusioned with religion and simply express no interest. It's incredibly agnostic; no one is saying God doesn't exist, but they're wary of maintaining a religion. America is so unabashedly religious in comparison. We have religious nuts and atheist nuts; we have people who worship natural energy or live in communes without electricity. We fiercely protect our right to practice religion, no matter how weird or morally questionable. I wonder if these "apostles of evil" realize that.

idea lady

2010-10-21T15:05:00.001-05:00

The hike up Leopoldsberg outside of Vienna, Austria. sept 2007

I will reluctantly admit I'm more full of ideas than I am actions. I've still pursued countless hobbies (which fade in and out of my life), but I churn out ideas. I will think of new ideas all the live long day. SO I've decided to enact (on a whim) a new direction for this blog. Let's be honest here: it's turned into somewhat of a weep-fest. In fact, that's mostly what this has been! I would bet that statistical analysis would uncover that at least 80% of my entries are intended to express my melancholy feelings. I've never denied my melancholy soul, but I think I need to stop paying it direct homage. At this point, it's becoming rather gratuitous. I've moved something like 4 or 5 times since I was 20 and it's the same story: me have no friends, so sad, hate laif. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but you know what I'm driving at. This needs an OVERHAUL. Life documentation is coming to a near close on this blog because it takes me into bad directions (like airing out my complete set of grievances). I'll still keep you up to date, but my life is no longer European and it's mostly boring.

What's on this new horizon? I will still include a photo per post. I like it and it forces me to dig through my thousands of photos in the iPhoto archives. Plus, when I start running out of photos, I feel compelled to take them. What will a post include? I don't know! Whatever I want it to! I will have, at most, a one paragraph summary of my life. My post could be lists, ideas, funny stories, articles, discussions, whatever. I am spending way too much time thinking about my feelings and way less time being engaged. To start off my new beginnings as a non-diary blogger, I will be compiling a list of books I wish I hadn't read.

Books I Wish I Hadn't Read:

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
A Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Absalom! Absalom! by William Faulkner
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
Pandora's Hope by Bruno Latour
Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant

It's not that I hated all these books, but sometimes there was something in them that I wish I hadn't ever read. We can go through them: 1) hated and felt like I lost some of my life; 2) discontinued reading because it irritated me; 3) do I need to explain?; 4) Julie is self-absorbed and almost an alcoholic; 5) it's culturally enriching to read, but I've never liked it; 6) I read one story and I wish I could unread it; 7) waste of time; 8) what a gas bag!; 9) it's a fascinating book, to be sure, but I had to read each sentence maybe 2 times, which made me a little mad; 10) I loved it (duh), but I'm way too transfixed on that man now; 11) best theory book I've ever read, but now I feel like science has been almost entirely discredited in my eyes; 12) amazing (and amazingly arduous), but now I can explain what makes something sublime, which is way, way nerdy.

channeling spurned wife vibes

2010-10-19T12:51:00.000-05:00

may 2008

Today will be a sample of my writing. I wrote this a while back and I even entered it in a contest with some other poems. I clearly didn't win anything.

“Rumblings”

I've poisoned your lips from stray stumblings
The night brings a blindness that hungry men follow
The feet that step lightly creak the floor late
Arouse me from surety and alert me of dangers
You're fumbling in the dark of rooms you don't know
While trust slowly leeches from my infallible bones
As I stare into the wall with reminders of our love
Hoping for a vision other than the one I imagine
Your peaceful slumber in our bed enrages me
I don't sleep with my lover, I sleep with a baron
My transcendental senses are going numb
How dare you try to fake what I always felt was real
That walls we built for security grow barbed wire and spotlights
The doors swing one way--I hope it smacks you in the face
Your band convinced me of your intent, but now I see it as a trap
It holds me here, holds me dear, and I want to get away
The dirt under the rug was vacuumed, or so you thought
I stored it in a box and smell it every night
Whiffing at your failures and loopholes that you promised
The day I met you was a tragedy but it took years to make
Tally it up, the numbers add up right, I just made a bad investment
It's falling into an endless, empty abyss, it's failing its worth
I pulled out too late, you pulled in too soon
Tires that tread backroads; for the lit ones held no appeal
Fluorescent lights proved too irresistible in a flash-pan desire
The brick in your face has existed forever, I just failed to see it

reminisce

2010-10-18T09:52:00.000-05:00

I looked through some photos and I realized that what I missed most was my group of friends. Everyone from Provo. I miss them because they know me like no one else. They understand my struggles and find my mid-night tantrums funny. They were all rather different from me, but we all had some connection that I'm not even sure how to describe. There was a kinship. We shot the breeze a lot, but sitting around and talking was plenty. Sure, there were bad times and gross times, but I couldn't deny that I loved every moment of our friendship. I felt like there was something there, that kernel of understanding that connected all of us.

I didn't want to go to BYU originally, but since I met my friends, I realized that I needed friends who understood my struggles with being Mormon. None of us were perfect in that regard and we understood that everyone had hang ups and unresolved issues. I found empathy, but also aspiration. I found people who could laugh with me at the ridiculous things that happened in those wards without worrying if I was apostatizing, who could listen to me rant and rave and understand why I still went to church the next Sunday. It made me realize that having friends who understand that struggle is important because it's important to me. I love my older friends too, but I think that is the undeniable connection we had that makes it hard for me to feel the same connection elsewhere. It's not an us vs. the world mentality, but the boat in a lake where I could take a rest and jump back in later. It was a rescue from the struggle of swimming, but we typically jumped back in together. Any of my other friends would simply suggest I stop going to church if it's that much work, which is why they don't understand.

I started reading this blog, written by a BYU alum that I do not know, because someone linked me to a post of hers and I liked her; however, the point is that this post explains how I feel pretty accurately (the internal vs external part). It's not an easy road, but I know it's good, even though going to church is sometimes like pulling teeth and I have to consciously redirect my wrath from people and practice forced love. I've gone when nothing but the truth of it all could entice me to step into the building. I've felt ostracized, judged, and sometimes even the mindless expectation that I would go was enough to put me off. Simply put, I've gone for my own reasons despite the unwelcoming environment at church. Even though I've been through the worst of times, I've also been through the best of times. It's like erasing a relationship in your memory: just because you have bad memories, it doesn't mean you want it all to disappear.

I just want my friends to know how much I love, appreciate, and miss them. I wake up some mornings wishing I was in my crappy Brookview bed with a drafty window above my head just so I could hang out with you. I wish I was there more often than I like being here. I miss you all.

spotted mind

2010-10-18T00:21:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" for the I-don't-even-know-eenth time. I remembered reading on Stuff White People Like that Michel Gondry was a tell tale sign of whiteness and I remembered thinking, "Who is that?" The surreal aspect of the film has always been part of why I love it (which, I suppose, given my hankering for magical realism, makes sense). It's not there for the sake of being there, but to bring us into the strange and malleable world of our memories and it captures the journey perfectly.

I have always loved that movie because it captures the tragic nature of relationships. Not tragic in the sense that all but a few are doomed, but rather that they are a mix of what we want to remember and what we would rather forget. It also reiterates the role of memory in love. How can we move on or even love if we don't remember? We cannot learn (the moment when Joel says he wished he had stayed and said, "I know that now.") and without the memory, we have nothing to build on. When they decide to date again, I can't help but think that they could have never moved on without having something to move on from. Though they have the evidence of their history, they need that "spotted mind" (to play on the Alexander Pope quote). I think it also brings up a good point: is it wrong to have phobias and baggage? Is the grieving process something to be avoided? I think, and I believe the story also makes the point, that it's not wrong and shouldn't be avoided. It's hard and it's sad, but as the story shows, we only run in circles without it.

It strikes me every time that when Joel speaks to Clementine in his memory and she asks him, "What do we do?", he merely replies, with a knowing look, "Enjoy it." Even if that love is destined to fail and leave us hurt, all we can do is enjoy it.

It is perhaps only appropriate and tragic that I chose to watch this movie on Valentine's Day with Sam. I had way too much to identify with. I don't think I'm out of line to suppose that it started me on a line of thinking that lead me to some striking realizations that eventually ended our relationship. But I'm glad I get to keep the memories.

goings on

2010-10-16T18:41:00.001-05:00

Every time I read these comments to a photo from Linds, I laugh really hard. I just had to share it.

Friday morning, I went with my mom to the gym using a free guest pass and we did a yoga class. I like the class, but I cannot afford to pay a gym to be fit. Afterward, we went on the bikes for 20 minutes and then did a few other things. Needless to say, I was well worked out. We also saw my third grade teacher, Ms. Smith (who used to swear in Polish during class), there and it was a little weird. I'm not used to seeing people from my past...still. I spent the rest of the day applying to jobs, etc. It wasn't terribly exciting. For dinner, Cam bought us Lou Malnati's cheese deep dish pizza. The only better thing I can imagine is Eduardo's spinach and cheese deep dish, which is the bomb dot com.

I went and saw DeVotchKa play that night. It was okay, mostly because I was expecting them to play rowdier songs and they played slow tempo numbers. That and they played three, count 'em, three encore songs. ?????? Angus and Julia Stone was way good, even though Julia sounded very much like Joanna Newsom, vocally anyway. One of their songs was so amazingly beautiful and well orchestrated I felt like floating into outer space. This cover was also pretty phenomenal; I also really liked her cover of "Windy City" from Calamity Jane. I got back from Chicago at 1:30 and I was SOOOOO tired. I wanted to collapse, but my face needs its nightly ablutions.

Today I spent the morning sleeping and the afternoon planting daffodil and tulip bulbs for my mom. I have plans tonight, which is nice, and it doesn't involve me going to Chicago, which is even better! I will like the fact that my life is half in Chicago when I'm finally living there. some1hiremepleaze.

Some other tidbits in my life: I've continued my binge on Hungarian pop, and to little shame. I have continued to listen to my "Two Weeks" pandora station (since that song is all sorts of perfect; by Grizzly Bear if you don't know). I've been slowly watching more television since my life feels emptier by the day, but I'm trying to get back on reading track and blast through this Friedman book. And those marketing books. I did, however, make a good dent on my way downtown on Friday. The weather is getting cooler and I love it! Seasons make life worth living and the change in fall is magnificent.

p.s. I'm feeling Ladytron and Chevelle again. Not sure they're related in any way, but this doesn't change their simultaneous re-entry into my "like" list. Sometimes leaving them out of play rotation for a long time makes old stuff seem really appealing.

fall fall herbst herbst!

2010-10-14T19:17:00.000-05:00

In case you're interested in what my prison cell, I mean...my ROOM, looks like. oct 2010

Think about how I do barre in here. Soo...my play date fell through. Wah wah.

Okay, so this guy I met via ESL tutoring asked me out on Tuesday. He texted me today to finalize the plans and after I agreed to the time and location, I realized something. He was taking me to the exact same cafe Adam took me to on our first date. It's not like it's going to put me into tears or anything (heavens no), but I haven't been there since said first date and it seems rather serendipitous? fortuitous? I'm not sure what the right adjective is since only the inaccurate use of "ironic" comes to mind. On a side note, I'm not dreading this date! WHOA! That hasn't happened since German boy of 2009! Yeah, it's that Dexter kid. We'll see how it goes. I'm not super excited, but I also do not have a stone in my stomach when it comes to mind. But really, the fact that I'm not dreading it is the biggest thumbs up I can give anyone at this point in my (romantic) life. Provo is a dating scene that will jade you, unless you're the cute little button everyone wants to date and you are also a cute little button who wants everyone to date them.

I will be putting up the most boring pictures ever on Fbook! If you want to know how nearby neighborhoods look and some of my favorite houses, you will be enthralled. If you don't, no one's forcing you to look. I took them on my way to CVS; I once again took up the opportunity to walk 50 minutes round trip to get a toiletry (ONE) instead of driving a car, which would've taken me about 15 minutes round trip. Exercise is great. I also played tennis with Lucy and Cam, which meant that had to put up with my complete lack of competency. For anyone who has played tennis as little as I have (maybe once or twice in my life?), let me warn you that it is counter intuitive and not as easy as it looks. I improved some, but it wasn't phenomenal. Still, I had fun. I also did 50 minutes of hatha yoga since I found a youtube video for neck and shoulder tension, which I get and causes me to have breathing problems. More GRE studying (less painful and I did better), but no Hungarian. Well, you're probably bored now. That's cool. Have fun, guys.