Some Other Beginning's End

(A minor gagging sound is made at the title of this post.)

Tomorrow is the day. I’m heading out for Madrid, Spain, and a life-changing experience. The bags are not all quite packed yet, but that will come in time, once I stop distracting myself with the computer. On the eve of every departure and new adventure, I dream some wondrous universe of possibilities, of whom I could be, what I could do, whom I could meet and impress. I did it before going away to college; now is no exception. It always seems so much more vague and glamorous in my head. The reality is decidedly more ambiguous because I meet people who are exceptionally more interesting than I could ever imagine, yet there are a lot of disappointments and setbacks and annoyances which are inconspicuously absent from my imaginary utopia. I don’t think I’m alone on this, dreaming of Edenic universes contained within the possibilities of opportunity – quite the contrary.

I took this last evening at home slowly by taking a walk with my mother and brother through the surrounding suburban neighborhoods. The night was darkening, and clouds brooded over the gargantuan mountain chains which shadow our valley. Savoring this last bit of home for seven months, I was surprised to realize I didn’t have many feelings on the subject, rather a dull emptiness. Tomorrow I’m going to Spain and will probably be shocked into feeling something, but that is far away from me right now. I cringe at putting forth this metaphor – I am an empty vessel waiting to be filled with experiences from abroad – but the part of my brain which filters out such constructions as that metaphor is not functioning at this hour.

Barring major disasters, I won’t be back in the States until Christmas. The world will continue to spin, and it will have gone halfway around the sun by the time I come back.

That’s enough for now. I can’t think of anything appropriate to say, other than that these next few months will be life-changing.

Everybody Loves Kittens

This next post has one common theme: kittens! Who doesn’t love an adorable, fuzzy, mewing little kitten? How many Youtube videos are out there of kittens playing peek-a-boo, riding Roombas, stalking the camera around corners, mewing for their dinners. Ah. On Friday, my mother and I went to the local animal shelter, and after almost six months of searching, we found a kitten that would complete our home after our old cat’s passing last fall. Not only did we find one kitten, but two. Because of their ages and the procedures that must be done, we brought one home, and we’re going to pick up the other one tomorrow. Everyone in the house has been rather enamored of the kitten, and if we were a manufacturing corporation, it would be reported that all productivity has ground to a screeching halt amidst paroxysms of squees. Amusing picture here. Anyway, my preparations for Spain are not coming along swimmingly because of various other attractive distractions, i.e. kittens.

An Open Letter to My Mother's Kitchen

Dear Kitchen,

I did a whole lot of growing up in you. I cannot count how many cookies, cakes, and pies I made using your admirable amenities. I’ve probably eaten a good five thousand meals in you and hand washed the corresponding dishes that couldn’t go in the dish washer. Kitchen, you of all entities know that is a modest estimate. Then all of a sudden, I go away to college, and boom, Mom remodels you. I don’t know where anything goes anymore. I’m a stranger in my own home. Sure, sure, you look all nice and shiny with your dark wood cabinets and matching stainless steel appliances – very elegant, by the way – but I know you’re up to something. You’re confusing everyone; shelves exist where they shouldn’t, appliances have changed positions. You even have a warming drawer for hors d’eouvres. That is un-American. And I don’t like the oven. It turns off when the timer goes off. To get that lasagna perfect, or to get the gooey tenderness of those cookies just right, the oven must remain at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, not pass by with a paltry 320! At least the pantry is marginally untouched, so that I can find a can of Chef Boyardee and make myself some ravioli. Now if only I can find the can opener…

The Leg Experiment: Confidence

So, in keeping with my tendency to post latently what I have experienced, on Sunday I went to Church. Let me reiterate that I have not shaved my legs since December, so the hair on my legs is quite fuzzy and dark. I had no stockings and no hose to cover up the hair. I did wear a longish skirt and crossed my legs at the ankles nervously, hoping that no one would see and comment. I’m torn between wanting someone to notice and tell me that they notice, as well as dreading the fact that someone might notice and then tell me – excepting those select few individuals who follow me. I consider it an unfair advantage. As always, if anyone saw my legs on Sunday, they did not comment.

Spain in 10 Days

I leave for Spain in ten days. Instead of running around like a chicken with my head cut off gathering all the things I may or may not need, and instead of attempting to teach myself Spanish, I picked up my notebook and started writing again. I started a story when I was a senior in high school, and I have been working at it on and off for two years. Two years with the same ideal of working on this special project has begun to wear on me. To remedy the situation, I took my notebook out and wrote for the entire hour-and-a-half plane ride home for Winter Break. An hour and a half isn’t much, but that amount of time can serve as a wonderful catalyst. When I arrived at home, I spent at least one day of break typing up what I had written, and then I went beyond what I had written, making stuff up without letting it flow out of my brain, through my hand, and into the ink. I was producing sentences and pages which seemed to make sense, and I added a good ten pages over break without help from my manuscript. Overall I added about eighteen pages, the equivalent of another third of the manuscript, which is more than I had done for many months. As Winter Break progressed and the holidays ensued, my project slowly fell off the edge of my to-do list. Then I got my wisdom teeth out and didn’t feel like doing anything whatsoever for a week.

All too soon, it was time to go back to college, and the semester started off at breakneck speed. Halfway through the semester, my computer crashed. Despite a techie friend’s attempt and a recovery professional’s assessment, recovering the data from the old computer’s hard drive would cost a pretty penny. The price climbed too quickly for my tastes just as my disappointment spiraled downward. Needless to say, I did not take the loss of my hard drive well; it had three years’ worth of photographs, music, and Word documents. Luckily, though, I had sent an e-mail of my typescript to my brother, so I was able to recover almost everything of that story – I’ll call it the N document. However, I did not recover the parts that I had put in spontaneously without writing them in my notebook first. For two months, even the prospect of writing was depressing. Now with unstructured time yet a lot of things to do in that time, I turn back to this creative writing project.

Triskele

At the beginning of the process of recapturing what I had written, I was not too thrilled. Trying to write what I had lost was like trying to make my baby teeth grow in again: painful, impossible, felt wholly unnecessary. I took out my R.S.V.P. Fine point pen and my Moleskine with the triskele sticker on it and began to write. (Actually, I pulled up the distribution of all the last names from a genealogical survey performed some time ago. At the point of the story I’m working on, there is an influx of characters, and I needed a gallery of ready-made character names from which to draw. They’re not terribly important in the story, and I enjoy making up names like Cylus Killary, Teigen Sivret Dunseith, and Mintaly Ehle. With an arsenal of names, I started writing, and the writing was good.) Instead of thinking that I have to rewrite and recapture perfectly what I had written, I decided to move forward knowing that I had already written it once, and now was an opportunity to remember and expand upon what I wrote the first time, making it better and better. I felt myself to be a creative, generative force, and rewriting has only unlocked that realization.

Rewriting in my notebook the ten pages I lost has been good for me, food and fodder for my imagination. If only I had thought that a few hours ago; my potential, my imaginative creation of the world felt like it had left me, and I probably treated my brother and his problems with indelicacy. A few hours ago, my outlook seemed pretty grim; now it is a bit more rose-colored. And I’m still ignoring the fact that I don’t know how to speak Spanish.

On an unrelated note, I saw one of my old French teachers today. Speaking French is like swimming in a kiddie pool; trying to learn Spanish is like a piece of (spoony) driftwood trying to swim against a riptide.

Rice Spoon

Other credits: "The Long Leg," Edward Hopper

Dreams Do Come True!

Okay, that last post was rather a downer. I've been doing that lately. I had forgotten that I had written this one up. After writing it, I didn't post it because I didn't want to appear too obsessed with writing and posting every day.

Anyway... I was browsing through my old posts, and I found a list of things I wanted to do with my life, posted January 11, 2009. This post was from over a year ago, and it’s interesting to take a moment and take stock of where I was, where I am now, and what I have done in the space between those times. In looking ahead to this summer, I realize that I have indeed fulfilled some of those things, but not in the way I expected. I’m going to study abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland, so check that off the list. I wanted to live in Australia; now I’m going to live for three months in Spain. They’re completely different countries, I know, but they’re still abroad countries. I wanted to learn how to fend for myself abroad, and I'm getting to do it. With this internship in Spain, I’m getting closer to my dream of writing and working for a publishing company, as well as gaining valuable skills in a small startup business. I’ve also read seven of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays this semester. I’ve read – or seen – more of his plays than I had thought, although I have left his histories largely untouched. Hey, I’ve even found this site which lets me take a better look at the Sistine Chapel than I ever could have while being in the Chapel itself, ironically enough.

So I may have overstated how much I have accomplished on that list, but I still feel like I’m well on my way in this adventure of ours called life.

Detail from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel

Yeh Dooriyan

I’m home again after having completed another year at college. I did the six-hundred mile drive with my dad and brother yesterday. It’s a yearly ritual; it is a pattern that must be followed. As the Moddey Dhoo once said, “The world continues to spin, pup.”

Obvious observation of the day: goodbyes are hard. I won’t see most of my friends until next January, and even then, I won’t see some select few of my friends until September 2011. I suppose my emotions are latent, because it wasn’t until I was driving home with my brother along the vast stretches of empty land between College and Home that the importance of the moment seemed to catch up with me. Oh, it hurts to be separated from people I care about.

When I was graduating from high school, I had a similar set of feelings. Pensive, melancholic, aware of a freshly-made emptiness. I’ve managed to keep in contact with the people I care most about from high school; it’s a simple transitive property action to keeping in contact with friends for eight months for summer/abroad instead of just three months for summer. I don’t remember the context of the conversation, but my aunt told me something that mounted to this: in every stage of life, you say goodbye to the people you’ve met and grown to love, but it gets easier over time. This time around, it has been easier, but not by much.

While still at college, I thought that the distances separating my friends and me would seem like nothing because of technology. I would be available by Facebook, on this blog, on my cell phone for a few weeks before going to Madrid. Even with all the technology, though, it’s still lonely.

On a more positive note, I’ve gotten a Spanish book! I’m [going to be] learning! Note to Self: work on putting up happier posts.

Almost Had... a Spanish Textbook

I almost had a Spanish textbook tonight. At college, we have an open e-mail chat list, and a lot of people use it to ask for favors, sell books, spread the word about an event. It's like a very poorly-run, time-lapse forum. Someone was selling a Spanish textbook, and I just happened to be in the market for a textbook, and I would have gotten the textbook except the purveyor of that fine good suddenly opened it up to auction because of all the interest in it. I'm a first-come, first-serve kind of girl, but I can understand the starving college student who wants to make a buck by selling to the highest bidder. The price went out of my range right right-quick. Even with first-come, first-serve, I wouldn't have gotten the textbook. So now I'm back to square one: needing a cheap, portable way to learn as much Spanish before May 29th.

The Spanish Expedition: In Which Lizzle Has Housing Arrangements

I have a place to live this summer! I will be living with a mother and a daughter in their apartment in Madrid, Spain. They are LDS, and they typically rent to Church members who are in Madrid to go to the temple there. However, they will get a tenant for three months! The girl is a few years younger than I am and has studied English. “Has studied” does not necessarily bode well for “being fluent and able to converse with me,” but I’ll just have to make do, learn Spanish, and probably get out of my little Lizzle-shell. I am hopeful I will be able to pick up some Spanish from her while helping her out with English. She seems super-nice! I have plans for this summer in Madrid – I want to learn how to cook Spanish food, how to get along with Spanish youth, how to figure out how to live like a Spaniard lives. I know those things are very broad, but I have more pressing things on my plate.

Right now, I have a short list of things I really want to do while in Madrid. I want to watch some of the World Cup in a Spanish pub. I want to go to Barcelona and see the Sagrada Familia and other buildings designed by Antoni Gaudi and museums on Picasso. I've been told I will become a connoisseur of gazpacho and tapas. I’m wondering if I should want to go see a bullfight. I don't wanna see a bull killed! It looks like I’ll be in Spain during the festival of San Isidro, which is known for its bullfights, as well as its music and street festivals. If I do end up going, it will end up right on this blog.

God = Apple = Manzana

Yesterday, Coyote Midtori, myself, and some other friends of ours helped Klotho move out of her apartment. Today she is off on her way, moving across the country for the summer. Klotho is a graduate student who has just finished her Master’s in Religious Studies and will be moving this fall to St. Andrews, Scotland, to get her Ph.D. Oh my, did I just say Scotland? That is the country where I’ll be next fall! Klotho and I are planning to get together during that time because we’re only an hour or so apart by bus ride. If you’re interested in Klotho’s adventures in Scotland, you should read this.

I have a special shout out to The Doctor for making me feel special on her blog. Today’s post was in response to a really long comment I left on her latest post – it was the story of a time she jumped over a bush and did not estimate that there was no flat, grassy space on the other side of the bush. If you’re interested in reading The Doctor’s adventures, read this.

If you’re interested in thinking about some of the things I think about, you should watch this. It’s Carl Sagan explaining the fourth dimension by first seeing how a two-dimensional square piece of paper would react to a three-dimensional apple. If anything, the background music is quite lovely and soothing. This is just a musing, but perhaps God lives and works in the fourth dimension, and part of His omniscience comes from the fact that He is like the apple; He’s there, we just can’t see Him. Or he can see in the fourth dimension, and somehow that means seeing inside of us. I don’t know as if I actually believe in anything I just said, but I’m really interested in the ways in which the natural world and academic disciplines can all come together beneath God, how He is God because He knows all things, from the arrangements of our atoms to how our minds/souls are attached to our bodies to why we like music or paintings or poetry. For another reference to God and knowledge, see the earlier of the two posts on Friday, April 23, 2010.

I’m not trying to be blasphemous, but it is amusing to think that God = apple... and apple = manzana.

"Orion Nebula," Hubble Telescope Images

Return of Summer, Return of Self

With that last blog post, I think I recaptured something I have been missing for the past two years. The summer after I graduated from high school was a golden summer; I don’t think I have ever enjoyed living so much. I thought I was on top of the world, knew all there was to know, left a trail of golden dust in my own image as I walked by. I thought that anything I touched became beautiful, that I only had to speak and everyone would fall at my feet in paroxysms of awe because I was so intelligent and knew how to write poetry, knew how to elicit an emotive response.

I went away to college, and college taught me a thing or two about my intelligence. Needless to say, I’m not as smart as I thought I was. I feel though, that I’m regaining the eye I had, the mentality I existed in during that golden summer, only without as much pride. I have a better sense of my place. I know there are people who speak and every word they say may be nonsense, or where beautiful words like, “she walks along the edge of where the ocean meets the land just like she’s walking on wire in a circus” is part of the daily lexicon. Perhaps it is the prospect of another summer, and my belief that everything is right in the world is simply the transition of spring to summer and all the endless possibilities which existed with the concept of “summer” in it. Perhaps this summer, with the hope of time to think and reflect, will be another golden one.

It’s good to feel like myself again, the self I had once lost sight of. I’m me again, or more me than I was for a while.

Also, for those who thought my last post was a little somber: “Death is an illusion, and so are pants,” Hue from Avatar the Last Airbender.

Try As I Might, I Cannot Be Enobarbus

There is something so simple and pure about a piano solo. I was listening to Jeff Bjorck’s rendition of “Be Still My Soul” earlier this evening, and listening to those notes resonate for half a moment in the air before the next key is struck touched something unnamable within my own soul. I first encountered “Be Still My Soul” in church; we sang it as a hymn. The lyrics are still imprinted in my head, and when I hear those swells from “Finlandia,” my soul seems to be caught helplessly in the rising wave of music, too.



It makes me think of the fragility of life. My friend Amphiarus was recently diagnosed with cancer. He’s twenty, the same age I am. We’re so young. We’re supposed to have our whole lives in front of us, aren’t we? The day after Amphiarus told me about his condition, one of my professor’s best friends passed away. The assignment for that day was related to her friend’s lifework. In that professor’s class, we have been investigating art and poetry, why we read poetry, and if art is really worth making. Is it worth it to spend a lifetime creating poetry, which is just artifice and illusion? What will be left after we die?

In the evening, after class, I was listening to Telemann’s “Soupirs Après la Princesse Dulcinée,” one of my favorite songs. It is so sweet, it is painful. My experiences over the previous days only heightened that feeling of bittersweet pain. I felt that the music, beautiful though it was, fell short of expressing what I was feeling. The sun was setting as I stared out the window and wondered why life was so damn beautiful, why it was that the greatest composers, the greatest poets and playwrights could not capture my feelings which reduced me to an immovable heap that could only wonder why death happened, why we live so long or even live at all, and how cruel and beautiful the very act of living is. I have not recognized that intensity of feeling and sense of unjust longing in any literature I have read, film I have seen, music I have heard. It could not encompass the range of my feeling. Perhaps that is all poetry is – one great big sham. A great big sham that makes us human and allows us to feel for another, to know another’s condition.

Yet when I watch “Pushing Daisies,” Ned’s pain and longing is my pain and longing. Perhaps I can understand everyone else’s story to some degree, yet when it really comes down to the very fiber of being, I cannot be Ned and Ned cannot be me. Neither can you. I cannot be Lessa Harry or Mara or Enobarbus or Oscar, however much I may want it.

I think my life, my friend’s life, Professor Greene’s life and her friend’s life, are beautiful because they will end one day. Keats had it right. In briefly talking with Amphiarus, he said that this change in his life has made him reconsider what is truly important. He has not elaborated since, other than trying to study abroad this summer in Paris, but I intend to find out what’s important to him so that, perhaps, I will discover more what is important to me. Antony and Cleopatra knew what was important: strolling the streets and people watching, letting the day go by, being a fool for love. Lying in the sun. Making friendships which will stand the test of time. Laughing at gilded butterflies and realizing how much your parents love you.

I know what poetry is – it is a specific lie which tells a greater truth. It makes us human because it blurs the line between thinking of ourselves and our own experiences into the experiences and thoughts of another.




In the vein of poetry, the following is a poem I wrote in response to an activity done in one of my classes. It’s on race and politics, and we did a free association with the terms “white” and “black.” Some words I got from this class, other words from other classes. It’s not very good, but it is my attempt to be poetic, too.

Sealed Seule

White black white,
Black white black.
Ash and dust and funerals
Don’t contemplate the tomb,
The darkness of the womb so
Close and tender, so rocky
And morose and warm.

Sinking beneath a thousand levels
Of grime and dirt and words
Into a place where black
And white
And all the colors in between
Are wiped away to nothing.

Carbuncle, onyx, obsidian
Thick and slick on the tongue
Like Moynihan.
A void which is not even a
Place which has no name
No sense no light no darkness
Just consciousness which isn’t
Even aware of itself.

Do not stopper up my eyes, for
They have no use in that darkness
Stringent, sealed seule.

What a life is that?
White and black and everything
In between come back again,
And all the pains and all the distinctions
Of a world that is not Zen, that is not round
Comes again the destruction of a unity.
I am not me, and neither is she.

Photo credits: "Untitled," Shevad Vadlen; "Inspired by 'Lovely Bones,'" Ambiaso; "One Could," Cole Rise.

The Cuil-Off: Update (and Other Updates, Too)

Coyote sent me a this link a few days ago. Since I am lazy, I have waited until now to post it.

In other news, the days are still counting down until the end of the semester. I'm planning on leaving for home a week from Thursday; we'll see how that turns out.

For those of you who are grammatically astute, I just used a semicolon. The sentences I used could have been more connected to one another, but I like semicolons too much to go back and change it to a period. Thursday evening, I spent a good half an hour explaining the difference between colons and semicolons, and I came up with an amusing little mnemonic to remember the difference between the two.

When you see a semicolon, it winks at you. That wink lets you know more interesting stuff coming up. "I use semicolons; I'm an interesting person."

When you see a colon, think "colonoscopy." Colonoscopies are painful and unpleasant. Now you know that a lot of painful, boring stuff is coming up. Like the kind of stuff you find on your grocery list. "I have so much to do today: wash my cat, tweeze my nose, get a colonoscopy."

I think I have cultivated the voice of the writer of TheOatmeal. Oh my, TheOatmeal has also a guide on how to use the semicolon. I was merely looking for that article about cats, which I found amusing. Well, I am happy to join the ranks in eradicating blatantly poor grammar and incorrect usage (even though I know my prepositions are all over the place - interesting use of prepositions makes for an interesting interpretation of life, m'kay?).