I Keep Wondering

What I Learned While Writing a Story for My Nephew

2012-01-24T18:31:00.002-07:00

In my creative writing classes, they always told us to write with a specific audience in mind. I never quite knew what to do with that advice back then. Then--and now--I would dearly like to write a story that appeals to a wide audience. And I couldn't conceive of writing to one single person until I received a text from my sister the other day.

The text simply sent her new mailing address and indicated that my oldest nephew wanted mail for his birthday--letters, cards, and whatnot. I'm mailing him a package (books, of course, no surprise there), but I found myself taken with the idea of writing something to send to him. Except that when I thought about what type of letter I'd write to a seven-year-old boy...I found myself well and truly stumped.

My sister--my wise and wonderful older sister--suggested he would be delighted if I wrote him a silly story. The sillier the better, or so I hear. Apparently he has reached a phase in his life where not much is ever serious and where he cannot sustain a whole phone conversation with my mom or dad without doing something ridiculous.

Anyhow. I found it incredibly easy to write that story. And do you know why I found it so easy? I know him.

When I sit down and start writing a story for the innumerable and faceless masses, I find myself inevitably cringing and backing away from the computer screen. Nothing seems good enough. Nothing seems wide-reaching enough. Nothing seems as likeable as it should.

But when I'm writing for one little munchkin: it's easier to focus. I know how silly I can get. I know how serious I can get. And if the story arc isn't exactly perfect, well, it's okay. He'll forgive me. He's seven. He'll just be glad he got mail.

Enjoy the Smudgy

2012-01-18T18:59:00.004-07:00

Lately, I'll readily admit that I've found myself wishing I lived in a fairy tale. Not, mind you, because I want to be some kind of powerless damsel-in-distress. Not, either, because I want a prince to happen by on his trusty steed and literally sweep me off my feet. Not because I have any problems with wardrobe, or with other people, or with anything else.

Sometimes I just wish that everything really were that simple. Good guys wear white. Bad guys wear black. No doubt as to who will be hero and who will be villain.

But really, what makes the world so interesting is that it's...smudgy.

I often find myself explaining to people that my favorite heroes are not those who are SO pure of heart and SO above it all that they manage to save the day. Those heroes: they aren't relatable. I'm not always pure of heart. And I'm certainly not above it all. If anything, most of us are always in the thick of it.

What, then, am I to like about someone who seems so much better than I am? (I inevitably end up hating the purest-hearted heroes. They're insufferable. And they're boring.)

The smudgy. I relate to the smudgy. They don't always have pure motivations, and they don't always know what they're doing, and dagnabit, they're fascinating.

I suppose the lesson must be: fairy tales are simple, and we like them that way. But we like them because we know they aren't real. Real=smudgy, smudgy=good.

You Say You Want a Resolution?

2012-01-03T20:02:00.004-07:00

I like the idea of New Year's resolutions. New year, new start, new beginnings, new ways...maybe even new you. And in theory, resolutions are great. They're wonderful at providing aims, at voicing accomplishments, at saying, "Hey, world, look here. This is what I'd dearly love to accomplish this year. And please try your best not to get in the way of my accomplishments, thank you very much."

Yes, indeed. The idea of resolutions is good.

But as is the case with almost everything in life--with the exception (in most instances) of how to put on one's pants--the idea and the practice are more than a little bit different.

My resolutions invariably become a laundry list of things I want to be better at and things I want to do better at. And all of a sudden, I find myself at some point in the middle of January wondering exactly what I like about myself. Perhaps that sounds a little extreme, but sometimes I make resolutions and realize I've done nothing but list what I feel are my failings in some strange, inverted way.

Last year I resolved to say yes to more stuff more often...and to be honest, I don't know if I've said no more in my life than I did in the past year. Some of it was necessary no-ing. But some of it...was just me kind of being a chicken.

It's that whole theory-and-practice quandary: yes, in theory, I'd love to be more outgoing. I'd love to be in the best shape of my life, to play the guitar, to travel outside the country, to write a novel, to actually list a publication. I'd love to be entirely reliable, to be always happy, to exercise all necessary follow-through to make all of these things I'd love to do and be come to life.

But it's hard. And yes, I suppose that's me whining a little bit. But it's nevertheless true. Change isn't as easy as putting on my pants. What's easy is gliding along comfortably in familiar patterns. I once said that I felt Anne-like, but these days, I'm afraid I go far too often without flying or thud.

So if I'm to make a resolution this year, I feel that the most honest one to make would be this: I resolve to actually make effort to change. And I permit failures. All sorts of failures.

In Which I Admit That I Failed NaNoWriMo

2011-12-05T17:47:00.004-07:00

This year, I thought I'd give into National Novel Writing Month. I thought I'd give into it in a big, big way. I thought, in short, I would SMASH it.

That did not happen.

If you do not promptly commence being shocked...well, you probably know me.

Writing stuff, I have determined, carries with it a lot of pressure. That's not to say I don't love it, because that would be a lie. And that's not to say that I didn't initially ask people to hold me accountable for any NaNoWriMo related promises. And also: words are cool. It's even cooler that you can string them together to form a sentence, then string those sentences together to form a story.

Writing stuff is also intensely personal. At least, it starts off that way. These words move from my brain into my fingers onto my pages, and then I want to keep them. At least for a little while, anyway. But after that initial wanting-to-keep them phase, I want to ditch them. ALL of them. Quite badly, really.

Was I going somewhere with this?

Ah yes, my NaNoWriMo Novel Attempt is currently 12 pages long, which means that it's several thousand words short of its goal. But it's also a number of pages I didn't have before I so congenially attempted to throng with the scribbling masses. (Okay, actually, that was when I knew it would be too hard: writing isn't congenial; it's actually fairly solitary. If you invite people to a writing party, it's not as though there's much partying to be done.)

So yes, I failed. But at least I started going somewhere.

Me and My iPod

2011-11-02T18:49:00.004-06:00

For a great long while, I was incredibly adamant that I didn't want to own an iPod. One of my biggest reasons for not wanting the iPod was that I saw too many people who too fully tuned out the rest of the world as soon as they placed the earbuds in their ears. I like being aware of my surroundings. As a half-blind person, it's never been a good thing when I've gotten so wrapped in something that I stopped paying attention to where I was going. I've had my share of bruises, cuts, and sprains to prove it. (Worse yet: the solid majority of these pratfalls always seemed to happen when there was an attractive, single male nearby to witness my moment of glorious clumsiness. The nice ones, I've learned, walk over to check that you're all right. The rude ones snicker and/or ignore you.)

Except that I caved a while ago and acquired an iPod (my first iPod was free, a brick of a thing handed down to me from my father--seriously, I think you could seriously have maimed someone with that iPod...when it died, I had to replace it with a Nano because I couldn't imagine life iPodless), and now I find that I love it for precisely that reason: it creates its own little world I can safely insulate myself in.

It's a wonderful tool when I want to be fully preoccupied with my own thoughts or with one particular type of action (like, say, writing...or cleaning). The music literally playing in my head becomes a background soundtrack for whatever I'm doing and allows me to fully ensconce myself in whatever I'm doing.

Sometimes I wonder if the me from back then, were she to see iPod-insulated-me now, would ruefully shake her head and mourn...

In Pursuit of...Something

2011-11-01T20:34:00.004-06:00

As I previously mentioned, I'm breaking down and participating in NaNoWriMo. I WILL write a novel this month, dagnabit!!! It seemed to be a good year for it. Ph.D. application plans have been placed on hold, and all I do right now is work and then come home and...do stuff that isn't always as productive as it should be. Not that I think I need to be doing something for every minute of every day, but let's just say that I could've been using my time more wisely and leave it at that.

As of today, 1,779 words--meaning I've surpassed the first day goal of 1,667 words. Go me! I applaud myself. (Yes, I'm so humble, I applaud myself. There may also have been a literal pat on the back. Or maybe I was just scratching my shoulder.)

Anyway, I'm finding that the writing goes far more quickly when I don't dwell on being perfect. I believe I also noted earlier that I thought this would be true. But now I can AFFIRM that it's true. It actually behooved me to pretend that my backspace key does not exist. Not kidding.

But I realized something today: in order to achieve something, I have to pursue a goal without pursuing perfection. Pursuing perfection causes me to freeze up and spazz out and stop even trying, because I know I can't make anything that's perfect. Pursuing something else (in this case, my 1,667 words or more) gave me an aim without making me feel bad about how I quickly or how well I was reaching that aim.

Seems as though there might be a life lesson in there somewhere...

All Right, NaNoWriMo, I Give In

2011-10-28T19:36:00.002-06:00

At approximately this time every year, someone inevitably asks me a question that--for me--had started to become cringeworthy. "Katie," they would say, "are you going to participate in NaNoWriMo?"

It's not that I want to not write a novel, mind you, it's just that...well, a lot of people seemed convinced that any creative mind worth his or her salt would attempt to scribble away and write something in the month of November. Jump on the bandwagon, most of them seemed to be saying. This month, we're all writing novels--so why don't you attempt to write a novel in a month as well?

But see, I have this perfectionism problem. I can be a tremendously prolific writer when I want to be: but just because I can write a lot when I want to doesn't mean that what I write is actually any good.

I realized this the other day when I knocked out a silly, grammar-related, four-paragraph (ish) e-mail at work in about...ten minutes. Probably less than that. I double-checked it for typos and such (because really, wouldn't it be super ironic to send out a grammar-related e-mail with errors?) and sent it off, not terribly worried. It's not that I wanted it to go unread, mind you, but I didn't have a lot of personal investment in that e-mail.

It's impossible not to create something larger without becoming invested in it. And that investment, in turn, leads to the perfectionism quandary: I don't want to let go of anything, even in a small way, until I'm more or less satisfied with it. If I tapped into my powers of prolificness (prolificivity?)...I have a feeling my initial result would look bad. If I lucked out, it might look not entirely bad...But it would be mostly bad.

Except that it occurred to me a few days ago that most things need to be a little (or a lot) bad, because we see what needs improvement--and then we can improve it. So this year, I'll actually participate in this November writing event to see what I can come up with. And I'll talk myself into not expecting things to be perfect right away.

We'll see how it goes.

Wandering Down Book-Memory Lane

2011-09-15T18:49:00.002-06:00

I have a default present-buying setting that automatically directs my inner compass to one specific place: the bookstore. This default setting becomes even more validated when my sister tells me that my nephew loves books that have textures in them. (In all fairness, she also told me he needs pajamas. But that is neither here nor there.)

Anyway, as I perused the children's book section today, I came across a book that has long remained in my memory and may possibly still be on my parents' bookshelf: Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel.

And for a brief couple of minutes, I felt just like a little kid all over again.

Don't you love that? Books are wonderful, wonderful things.

On Why Sometimes I Ignore People I Once Knew

2011-08-04T21:37:00.003-06:00

Today I walked past someone I used to know. At least, I'm relatively certain I used to know him: if not, he bore an incredibly uncanny resemblance to someone who studied poetry with me five years ago.

When you major in something such as Creative Writing and Poetry during your college years, you learn something in your workshops: there are other people as talented as you. And there are other people far, far more talented than you are. It's a good place to be, really, if you have an ego problem. Because unless you truly are amazing, the ego inevitably deflates more than a little as you help other people with what they wrote and realize Hey, this is far better than anything I've done yet.

Let's face it. Not all talents are created equal.

Anyway. As I walked into work today, this guy I'm pretty sure I once knew was walking in the opposite direction. He looked like...himself...from a distance. But when I got closer to him, I pulled out my cell phone and pretended to check text messages. I didn't want to make eye contact.

I always find it odd and sort of...disappointing...to see how many of my former classmates are living regular lives. Most of us haven't done anything exceptional since we left school. Only a small number of us have published--and that includes the talented ones. I don't know how many of us still try, or how many of us have simply relegated ourselves to living something different than what we imagined for ourselves just a few years ago.

And that's when I realized: I think I do stuff like this because I'm a little disappointed with myself. At what point did I opt to stop doing the brave thing and embrace the practical but not as gutsy thing? And was that decision really as wise as I liked to think it was at the time?

I think it may be time to dust off some dreams.

Mark Time, Mark Time, And...

2011-07-18T18:14:00.004-06:00

I had a realization recently. And, like most of my epiphanies, it was rooted in a certain amount of...nerdery.

In the course of a conversation with someone who shall remain nameless (let's say that it's because I'm protecting anonymity and not because I'm not quite sure who I was speaking with, in the name of niceness, shall we?), a common lament popped up. The sentiment expressed was this--that said someone was tired of waiting, tired of marking time.

And then came the sudden jolt: waiting and marking time are not the same things to me. They haven't been for more than ten years now. (Ok, it's been eleven, but who's counting?) And if you're wondering how I can be so exact in how long the two have had a distinction for me, I have exactly two words: Marching Band.

Hey now, I told you this is an epiphany rooted in nerdery.

When you participate in a marching band, marking time isn't a matter of waiting. Marking time is, essentially, marching in place as you play those glorious songs to which you'll be marching... and you can't tell me it wasn't a little glorious to play the music from Sesame Street. Okay, so maybe glorious isn't exactly the word I wanted.

Anyway. Back to my point. Marking time allows someone to understand how their marching coordinates with the music. It helps people know the rhythm and pace of things before making them worry about direction, movement, and actual spacing.

In short, it's preparation.

So I've decided while it's absolutely true that I hate waiting, I rather hope that I'm always marking time.

If the Ghosts Kill Me, I'll Be Productive

2011-07-12T17:54:00.006-06:00

So sometimes I go through bizarre phases wherein all decisions I make about prioritizing tasks while I'm at my house fall in the hands of... Pac-Man. You might think I jest, but I'm sorry to report it's the truth. I'm hoping that admitting to such sort of...shames...me into better behavior. (Then again, how much shame do I have if I'm admitting to it?)

Logic dictates that some things are more important than others: laundry; cleaning; writing; studying; cooking--these should trump, say, reading novels and watching television. Emphasis, of course, on should.

But lately I'm just lacking the motivation to do those most productive things and when I come home, my rationale works something like this: "If I can reach a score of 25,000 or more in Pac-Man, then I don't have to clean my room." Or do my laundry. Or cook a dinner. My expertise in keeping that little munchy man alive determines my responsibility level.

And then, when I'm in these moods, I feel entirely justified in saying that Pac-Man let me do whatever it is that I did. After all, if those things were truly important...wouldn't something intervene to harm my score?

It's silly, and I know it. But sometimes I like feeling as though my responsibility lies in the hands of something else. Even if it only last for a minute or two before I acknowledge that okay, after all, I am the master of my time. And it's probably not best spent playing Pac-Man.

I Judge You by the Company You Keep

2011-07-06T18:21:00.006-06:00

And when I say that, I'm clearly not talking about people. I find that I tend to make snap judgments about people I don't know not really by who they surround themselves with. Rather, I find that I make snap judgments when I can see their reading material.

I'm not a flirt. And I rarely talk to men I don't know.

But. Sometimes I'm tempted to start talking to men when I see them reading.

I never do, because I've never quite figured out how to have that conversation: "Hi! Clearly, you read. And clearly, you have marvelous taste in books. I, too, read. And I also have wonderful taste in books." I mean where else can you take that sentence, except to: "So would you happen to have any good reading recommendations?"

The temptation arises any time I see a decent-looking guy holding an actual book. Sometimes the temptation falls away quickly. You're reading Clive Cussler? No, thank you. (Random confession: on my last--blind--date, when my date admitted to what he read, he listed a litany of nonfictional genres. Which was fine. But then I asked if he read fiction, and he said: "I enjoy Clive Cussler." At which point it's about 145% likely that I said something such as: "Well, I wasn't judging you based on your reading habits before. But I am now.")

But sometimes. Sometimes I see someone sitting at lunch in the Gateway, eating a sandwich and reading a book called The Art of Racing in the Rain. And I don't start talking because of that whole awkward-book-conversation thing, but also because I don't know the book. What if I make the wrong judgment?! (Incidentally, I looked the book up and it sounds pretty darned interesting. I guess that guy gave me a book recommendation without even knowing it.)

And other times. Other times, I see an attractive man a few Trax stops past mine getting on while reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and I want to do all of the following, in this order:

1. Tell him he's reading one of the best things I recently read.
2. Acknowledge this means he's got really great taste in books.
3. Let him know that he won't be sorry.
4. Ask him to marry me.

What I really do is try to bestow a look of gleaming approval--you know, the sort that might come from a cute and beatific librarianlike type of person? It's highly ineffective. But safe. And my books like that look just fine.

You Are What You...Act?

2011-06-22T21:04:00.002-06:00

Lately I've been reading a lot about white collar criminals for research purposes. And by "research purposes," I mean I'm researching identity theft issues, etc. for a novel idea that's working its way out of my head and onto the page.

But there's an extremely interesting trend to all of my reading so far: all of the people I've read about who have successfully posed as something they aren't had one thing in common--they all acted the part.

I've grown up in a culture that encourages the idea of faking it until you make it, even though I'm pretty sure this isn't what they mean. But it's still intriguing to think that if you enter the right environment and simply act as though you belong there, there's every chance the people will accept you for what you say you are.

This whole concept would work better, it seems to me, if you have a certain amount charisma: but not necessarily, from what I'm reading. Sometimes you have to affect an air of snobbery and superiority to be accepted by the snobs. And certain sets of people seems perfectly willing to believe you if you look a part and if you act a part even when you aren't the part.

Anyway. I'm fascinated by this because it assumes a certain amount of trust I would presume isn't inherent in most cultures. But maybe we want to trust people after all. Maybe we want them to be what we see.

I'm My Father's Child, Too

2011-06-19T20:48:00.002-06:00

Toward the end of April, I sent my dad a text message asking when he'd be taking me out to lunch for his birthday. It's a move that, in any other family, might well have backfired. But not with my dad. He chuckled, I'm sure. Maybe ruefully shook his head. And then we figured out a day we could go out to lunch.

We're creatures of habit: we eat at Jason's Deli, and between the two of us, we probably rotate through roughly four or five of the items on the menu. If that. And then we sit and eat and talk, and it's pretty much a delight to know you're giving your dad firsthand information that your mother has not heard.

Just as it more or less makes his day when any of us call and say, "Hey, I was hoping to talk to you!" instead of asking for Mom.

I mock him for some of his habits of organization and tidiness, but let's face it: I inherited some of them. My DVDs are alphabetized. My books range from shortest to tallest. I have a tendency to rearrange the dishwasher and/or refrigerator and/or freezer when space isn't being well maximized.

Practically without fail, I arrive anywhere I need to be earlier than I need to be there. That's his fault. In a totally un-bad way.

And what I suppose I'm actually saying with all of this is that I'm glad he's my dad, and I'm glad that he taught me well.

This Rainy Day and Monday Might've Gotten Me...Up?

2011-06-13T19:19:00.005-06:00

I got caught in a microburst shower on my way to the library today to drop off some highly overdue materials. (For the record, I still feel immensely guilty whenever I take things back to the library late. It's as though I'm depriving people of opportunities. Although in this case... I wasn't terribly impressed with some of what I took back. But that's a different story.)

Anyway, I love summer showers--the type where the rain falls down, but the air's still warm. And they are a delight to watch, as well. I couldn't help but pause and watch as a bunch of trees near my neighborhood were misted...along with some people too. Many of the people looked less than pleased, but oh well. It's weather. What do you do?

There's a certain feeling of insulation that comes with the rain; I tend to feel as though I'm enveloped in my own drenched bubble and that nobody can see what I see in the quite the way I see it. I suppose that's actually true of most times, but the rain just seems to accentuate the sensation.

The smell. The sight. The feeling. They all make me feel like...me. Is that strange? That was one of the most wonderfully calming walks I've had in a long, long time. So perhaps Karen was wrong: rainy days and Mondays don't always get me down.

Despite Being an Adult, I'm Still My Mother's Child

2011-05-08T20:14:00.004-06:00

Kids have the most interesting conceptions about how the world works. To wit: tonight, my four-year-old niece kept retrieving books from the shelves, trying to find one that had my name in it. She had decided she wanted to read one of my old books. Anyway, once she found one, she said something about how my name was in the book because when her mom and I and our other siblings were little like her, we were Grandma's children.

"Wait," I said. "So we're not Grandma's children anymore?"

She gave me a funny look and said, "No, Katie, because you're BIG now."

I quickly found there was absolutely no way to reason her into believing that all of my siblings--including her mother--are, in fact, still Grandma's children. Even though we are big.

Perhaps in another ten years or so I'll explain to her that as I've grown bigger, my relationship with my mother has changed. But she has never stopped being my mother, and I have never stopped being her daughter.

When you are very, very little, it's very easy to expect your mother to take care of your needs. You don't really think about it. You're little; she's big; clearly, it's her job to take care of you since you can't do it all on your own. It doesn't mean you aren't thankful for everything she does, but you think she's required to do everything she does. If she didn't, where would that leave you?

But as the years pass by, I notice all of the ways my mother still takes care of us. Most people would probably say the things are little. Phone calls. Comforting talks after break-ups with boyfriends. Listening to someone who just needs to vent. Sending leftovers back with children. Quilts. Jewelry. Other creations. Scrabble games. Sharing recipes, with an added bonus of in-call support of the would-be chef. Jokes. Games. Sharing her washer and dryer. Baking bread. Planning birthday gatherings.

The list could go on. But I guess the point of all of it is this: she still does a lot for me, and I'm grateful. She's always been a wonderful mother. And if, as they say, I'll eventually wind up like her--I'm very much okay with that. Because she's one of the best people I know.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

Anatomy of My Hugging Tendencies

2011-05-05T19:06:00.005-06:00

The surest sign I have fully embraced a person as a friend: I will let that person hug me. And I won't even flinch.

You see, I'm not a hugger by nature. I never have been. And yes, I hug my mother. And my father. And usually my siblings (provided they don't smell bad--just kidding, none of my siblings have hygiene issues). And of course I'll hug my nephews and nieces, because hello!, who wouldn't want to hug the most adorable children on the planet.

But I've never been a Huggy McHuggerson...and thank heaven for that. To be labeled such would probably remind most people of diapers.

And yet, in the oddest turn of realization, I stumbled upon an interesting--not to mention true--thought about myself the other day. And by that, I mean that of course someone pointed something out. My good friend mentioned that I tend to hug (or want to hug) pretty much anything but humans.

I started to defend myself, then stopped when I recalled that I'd been telling her about how I'd hugged a book I'd found in the bookstore. It occurred to me she might have a point. So here, for your benefit, is a complete list of things that I have a) hugged or b) wished I could hug.

1. As mentioned, books.
2. Flowers (particularly the first hyacinths, lilacs, and tulips I've seen)
3. My DVD copy of The King's Speech
4. My laptop
5. Old poetry notebooks
6. Sunshine (yes, sunshine...the first truly sunny and warm day of the spring, I would've loved to be able to hug the sunshine)
7. The vacuum
8. My Harry Potter blanket
9. The most recent package of Bic pens I bought.
10. A load of laundry (because really...straight out of the dryer...who doesn't love to hug loads of laundry?!)
11. Blow dryer
12. Sweet potato chips
13. Sweet potato fries (clearly a wish...hugging the chips was easy, 'cause they were in a bag--since the fries weren't, I had to settle for imagining myself hugging them)
14. The mama-made quilt
15. My photo album
16. Caramel Apple Spice from Starbucks
17. Also from Starbucks: cheese danish
18. The most recent Josh Groban CD
19. Decorative pillows on my couch

Of all the things I hugged, the caramel apple spice was by far the trickiest. But I managed! And as an added bonus, it actually gave me a small measure of extra physical warmth to do it. Miraculously, no spillage occurred.

My conclusion is this: I'd be much more apt to hug people if I could somehow convince myself they shared a lot in common with my favorite inanimate objects.

Please Don't Quote THAT Tennyson

2011-05-02T22:11:00.006-06:00

I've always worn my English nerdery on my sleeve: after all, anyone who speaks with me for more than forty-five seconds will begin to suspect anyway.

But at work, this sometimes causes people to shake their heads--when I start discoursing to them about what I'm reading (the pun book, so far, is intriguing and fascinating!) to when I defend fiction (really, people, you can learn things from novels...I swear it!!!) to when I start talking about the nebulous definition of a word like "classic" (after all, it seems odd to be able to label things "modern-day classics" when usually the idea is that the classics have stood the test of time--almost as though you're making a pre-emptive decision that says to a book: "YOU WILL LAST FOREVER IN A MEANINGFUL AND VERY PUBLIC FASHION").

By far though, the best chuckle I think I've solicited from someone at work is after (on more than one occasion) he had been questioned why we were doing something, and he said: "Ours is not to question why." I grant that it's possible I physically cringed, or twitched at the very least, and almost begged that he not quote that particular line...

...because in "Charge of the Light Brigade," it's promptly followed by "Ours is but to do and die." (Not "or" die, mind you. "And" die.)

Since I value my life, I'll continue to question why.

School Nostalgia, or Why I Bought A Book about Puns the Other Day

2011-04-28T20:13:00.007-06:00

I miss school. (And if you think: "I see 'I miss school,' but what I really read is 'I'm a big, fat nerd'"...well then. You're probably right.)

Right now, in all reality, I feel pretty content with my life. I get along well with my roommates. I have settled into something of a routine in my new position at work. And even further, work has helped me learn that sometimes it's okay to accept the chaos and just join in the crazy. In an ironic twist, even, I'm learning that sometimes you have to join in the crazy to stay sane.

But there are moments that something reminds me of past school experiences and I can't help but get a little weepy. Yes, you read that right: weepy. (Again: Big. Fat. Nerd. Not denying it.) And there are some things that I can't completely resist when they remind me of such.

For example, a notable and lively discussion in one of my classes revolved around puns. Someone asked why puns were considered the lowest form of humor; in turn, the professor asked us to attempt to define exactly what a pun is. A dozen graduate students, mind you--a mix of Ph.D. and Master's candidates--and we could not reach any type of consensus.

We all agreed (at least as I recall) that wordplay was necessary, but that seemed to be the only point of agreement. We couldn't decide if puns were innately political, always subversive, or even if they inevitably resulted in humor. For crying out loud, you'd think we would have also agreed on whether or not a pun is funny. (Except that sometimes they are and sometimes they're not.) It was a stand-out discussion, the type of discussion that only happens in an academic environment that allows the luxury of spending fifteen minutes or more fighting about wordplay.

And that is why I teared up a little when I saw a book entitled The Pun Also Rises at the bookstore a couple of days ago. It's also why I immediately seized the book, hugged it, did a somewhat impromptu small jig, and added it to the pile of bounty I collected.

I'll let you know if it's any good.

Physical Acts=Mindset?

2011-04-27T18:52:00.004-06:00

I realized something today. Or rather, I suppose I remembered something today: when I feel a need to get right down to work, I roll up my sleeves (if they're long). And I pull my hair into a ponytail (provided it's long enough).

I used to do this when I wrote papers for my classes. Something about the actual physical act says to me: "Okay, self. It's time to knuckle under."

Today I was wondering to myself why I do this, when it occurred to me... the pushing up the sleeves and the pulling up the hair gets distractions out of the way. Trust me: if I want to put off working on something and my hair is down, I can twirl it for quite a long while. Or braid it. Or use it to make silly little mustaches on my face.

Yes. I suppose that means I'm easily distractable. So be it.

But if these small links are all I sometimes need to convince myself to get down to business, I wonder why I don't do them more often.

Also, I wonder if I have equivalents when my hair is short and I'm wearing short sleeves.

Please, Don't Make My Books Go Digital

2011-04-13T19:21:00.004-06:00

My dad keeps "trying" to convince me to purchase some type of e-reader--a Nook, a Kindle. I use scare quotes because the man knows me. He provided half of my DNA. And he knows that the apocalypse will come before I choose to read my books electronically. In this day and age of already plenty-enough staring at computer screens (after all, I get all my news online), I relish the physical interaction of reading a book. I like turning pages. I like New Book Smell, and Old Book Smell, and I even like You Found Me In A Used Bookstore and You Can't Place My Smell Smell. I like taking notes in my books when the whim hits me. Sometimes I dog ear pages. (But not often. It ruins books' aesthetics.) I recently read someone--and no, I don't remember who-- who wrote about the experiences we have that are associated with particular books. And she (yes, I remember it was a she! Hm, maybe it was from The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, now that I think about it) talked about how we are tied to particular actual material books--our copies. It makes perfect sense to me: it's why I resent that I had to replace the first copy of Ella Enchanted I owned--the one I begged my mother to let me read to her (and she complied, at least for a few pages)--with a lesser, less hammered version. It's why I'm always a little bit sad every time I pick up a new edition of Corduroy in the bookstore---the one I originally fell in love with as a young, young child had practically fallen apart. I have difficulty imagining waves and waves of nostalgia and untold reminiscences triggered by my touching an e-reader. And while I can "note" an electronic copy, it's just not the same as rereading 1984 and coming across my own handwriting with some note that 17-year-old me thought was such a revelation while 27-year-old me marvels at how obvious that revelation seems now. Not a revelation at all, anymore, except that it still seems that way when I see it in my own juvenile handwriting. Of course, to be fair to my dad: he knows I'll never go digital when it comes to my books. He just wants to keep from moving any more of mine than he has to the next time I change location. But books are supposed to be heavy: heavy with importance. And memories. And more stories than the words on the page readily show.

Choosing

2011-03-01T21:16:00.006-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about choices recently, probably because I just finished Matched, a novel that seems in some ways to be the child of 1984 and The Hunger Games. (Or rather, that's how I perceive its literary lineage. After finishing, I thought it had similarly dystopic elements to THG and 1984's insistence on the importance of controlling language--albeit more subtlely than 1984.)

Complete book review, by the way, will be forthcoming on the book blog. Tomorrow or the day after.

Anyway, one of the takeaway messages from the novel (unsurprisingly) revolved around the idea of making choices, i.e. there was an implication that we are defined by the sum of the choices we make.

One of the difficulties I have with books such as these is that if there are a limited range of choices a character can make, can that character only have a limited range? And what about choices that are neither good nor bad? Not all choices have a lasting moral impact.

Having grown up in an environment where I've been told that we are to respect and love people even if we don't expect and love their choices, I struggle with this conflation between character and choice. It's too easy. Too tidy. And ironically enough, entirely too complicated when put into practice.

I suppose that's an innate difficulty of assuming that any one element of a life affects character: we are all a conglomeration of choices, habits, and personality traits that we were just born with. Our interactions with others help define us in small way. There's no such things as a real-life, simply motivated human.

There can't be.

Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be

2011-02-13T20:48:00.003-07:00

"Next time you look back, I really think you should look again." --from (500) Days of Summer

I've recently come to realize something: very, very few people think clearly when they're reviewing the past. It's Nostalgia Syndrome--everything becomes incredibly good or tremendously bad--and all of a sudden, our past lives seem awfully black and white. We phase out the gray in order to achieve a better narrative. One more seamless and less messy than what actually happened.

It's one of the only ways we have of imposing order onto our lives: in any given moment of the present, we're far too aware of everything. Everything, including the things we wish we weren't. The stuff that, in the present, we want to wish away--the stuff that we hope might disappear if we ignore it for long enough. When we look back, we can ignore to our hearts' content...those things may as well not have been there.

But really, I don't think there are any moments in our lives that are absolutely perfect--not on their own. Not without help. And those moments are never perfect when we are in them, which makes us wonder when we look back why we didn't appreciate what we had at the magical moment we had it.

I suppose I've been thinking about this because recently I can't help but wonder if past versions of myself were happier than my present self can sometimes be. And in all fairness, I'm sure there were times when my past self felt much happier about life than my present self. Of course, I'm sure that there are times where my present self far outshines the happiness of my past self.

Nostalgia romanticizes the past: it acts as its own type of rose-colored filter. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I've always been me. I've always had strengths and weaknesses. Talents. I've always had happy times and sad times and mad times, it's just that I don't want to remember being sad or mad--so I usually choose not to. Don't most of us? We want to be our best selves, so we remember our best selves...and we forget the best selves we remember are a product of editing and some good mental production values.

Charlie St. Cloud

2011-02-03T22:51:00.006-07:00

It's been several months since I read the wonderful novel The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, and as I mentioned in the review: they made a movie out of it.

Let me say this, right here and right now: Hollywood doesn't get it right often. I mean, sure, they're smart enough to know a moneymaking plot when they see one. But that doesn't mean they'll do a good job of converting a masterful novel into an equally masterful movie. In rare instances, it happens. And I applaud them. But more often than not, the film misses exactly the mark the book hits.

And yet any time a book I've loved is made into a movie, I have to see it. I'm inevitably drawn toward the theater (or, you know, Netflix) and I find myself watching a visual adaptation of that work I so dearly loved when it was only printed word and all of the visuals existed in my imagination.

I found the film version of this book lacking. And this is why: it didn't allow for the idea that Sam, too, moves on in the end. One of the loveliest things about the novel's ending is that Charlie gets to see Sam one last time--actually see Sam--but it isn't the younger-brother-as-he-was. Charlie gets to see that when he moves on, Sam moves on. In the end, he sees a young adult version of Sam--someone that Sam simultaneously could have been but still gets to be, after a fashion. They both get to move forward. In their own ways, they both get to have futures.

And while yes, that makes the book ending more than a little sentimental and while yes, some people don't believe in anything after death and that makes the whole premise...difficult...I appreciate the impression Ben Sherwood left behind in the novel, which is that Sam does have somewhere to move forward and onward. He doesn't just simply stop existing. Charlie, after all, still lives. But it's difficult to think of Sam being a nebulous child-like entity, even if he's in heaven.

But those are just my thoughts. And maybe I just need to avoid filmic adaptations of my favorite works. They never turn out as well as they could.

Sunday School Thoughts

2011-01-30T20:16:00.005-07:00

I know that I shouldn't have favorite Sunday School teachers. Logically, I know that. But nevertheless: I do. I have favorite Sunday School teachers. Well, favorite Sunday School teacher--singular. It's not the others are bad people. It's not that the others are faithless or stupid or boring. (Well, okay. Maybe sometimes the others are boring, but I sincerely doubt they're trying to be, and I'm readily willing to admit that sometimes I don't have the best attitude about sitting through their lessons.)

Anyway, I've been trying to peg lately why I like this particular Sunday School teacher. The easy answer, of course, is to say that he's cute (true) and that he's intelligent (also true) and that he has a definable and well-asserted teaching presence (true to the truest degree). But today as I sat through his latest lesson, I realized that what impresses me most is this: he knows how to ask questions.

That might seem like a weird attribute to observe in a person, but it's nevertheless true. As a teacher, he's unwilling to settle for an easy question that I can almost hear the class collectively rolling their eyes at. (Ever notice that once you get old enough the questions that hardly ever get answered are the ones we already know the clear-cut responses for?) His discussion questions do that magical thing--actually inciting a discussion--and I suppose it would be fair to say that his asking the right questions is tied to a knack for encouraging participation. (Although whether it's the question or the teacher encouraging the participation is, in my opinion, a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario...)

One random note from the tail end of the lesson today--we ended up glossing briefly over the story of the woman at the well, mostly because our discussion had revolved around other equally good things. And perhaps I'm particularly dense, but this teacher pointed out something I'd never noticed before--the woman at the well did an excellent job of bringing people back to the well to listen. But then whether people accepted the message or not was determined by those people. Not by her.

She led them to the well, but she didn't remotely attempt to force them to drink the water (as it were). They had to drink of their own accord. This seemed to me an interesting lesson in missionary work--we, too, can direct people to the well--but we can't make them drink any more than she could. If I take this thinking to its extreme...which I do, because I'm me...I ultimately reach the conclusion that if we force someone too hard into the well water, they drown.

(I know. It's kind of a violent thought...but it nevertheless seemed pertinent.)

Does Anyone Share My Eccentricities?

2011-01-28T22:11:00.004-07:00

The other day, I finished reading a novel. And then I decided that I needed to peruse my shelf for my next reading material. These two acts, at least for me, are not odd.

When my one good eye alighted on Doctor Zhivago, I thought: "That's it! I've been in the mood for some unbearably sad Russian literature!" (A co-worker corrected me later, telling me that technically Pasternak would be consider post-Soviet something-or-other...)

But it made me wonder if any other people ever have such moments of clarity about a very specific taste in genre they are experiencing right then...

A Way to Be Invisible

2011-01-19T22:20:00.004-07:00

It struck me a few days ago, and I've kept meaning to make a note: the best form of invisibility would be complete visibility. But there's a catch: the invisible person has to be completely aware of the scrutiny. I don't know if they need to want to be watched. But they need to know they're being watched.

My reasoning works basically like this: if you know that you are always, always, always, ALWAYS being watched, you don't act like a person. At least, most people don't. Under severe scrutiny, I highly doubt many of us will be--essentially--ourselves. Instead, because we are so aware we are being watched, we would don a persona. Or several.

And the best part is this: those who watch us can't ever claim we're not us. Because if they even try to make an argument that we're acting against ourselves in some way or other, there can only be one response: "Well, you've seen me, right? You've watched me? How can this NOT be me?"

Questions, Answers

2011-01-18T22:11:00.004-07:00

I love hard questions. And I hate hard questions.

I have studied English and I have always been a reader, because many great questions found in literature are unresolvable. Or if they are not unresolvable, they are tangled. Knotty, as one of my professors used to say. (I always had to auto-correct the word in my brain when he said it out loud: Not naughty. Knotty.) It's possible to reach any number of conclusions about these questions. And if you can justify the logical path from the question to the conclusion, then you have made your case. That doesn't mean the story is over (literally or metaphorically). That only means you are one amongst many voices contributing to a dialogue. Changing your mind is allowed. Modifying your original conclusion is par for the course.

Life itself, I would say, is tangled. Knotty. Complicated. Filled with many great questions for which there may well be multiple answers. It seems too easy, too simple for there to be A Meaning of Life. Must it be singular? Can't our lives hold more than one meaning? Navigating through existence seems too much of a mess too often for everything to be simple. And all the questions in the world--in my brain--can't possibly only have One Ultimate Answer.

And still I sometimes find myself wondering if it isn't somehow calming to oversimplify everything. If all roads eventually lead to exactly one destination, all of a sudden, which road I take does not seem to matter so much. It's freeing somehow. But stifling somehow, as well. What if I don't want to be headed where all of the roads are leading?

I suppose this also means: I love easy questions. I hate easy questions.

Bishop's in My Brain, or Brief Thought on Loss

2011-01-06T21:34:00.005-07:00

I've always loved the Elizabeth Bishop villanelle "One Art"--but something new struck me about this poem today. And yes, I'm nerdy. And yes, I was thinking about this poem semi-randomly. And yes, I don't need to read it because I know it by heart.

That's because it's a most excellent poem.

Anyway, my thought revolved around the idea that certain things have an intent to be lost, because I'd never particularly thought about that until today. And really, that's an interesting intent to assign to certain types of inanimate objects. (I must admit: I quite like the idea of keys intending to get lost...)

But then, the whole point of the poem isn't actually that the art of losing isn't hard to master, it's the exact reverse: that the art of losing is hard to master. When I think back to the early idea of intent in the poem, I begin to think that Bishop may well have been onto something: our ability to master loss depends on our willingness to accept responsibility for the loss. Our ability to fess up and say: yes, that was my fault, I'm the one who let that go.

It seems to me that if we are able to do that, if we are able to acknowledge that we did the losing, that just may be the first step in regaining some of the things we've lost. Perhaps.

Being Dumber: A Svithe

2011-01-02T19:40:00.003-07:00

These thoughts are coming to fruition (or rather, attempting to come to fruition, if I'm honest), because yours truly did something unfortunately ditsy today: she left her scriptures at church. And didn't realize until some time within the last half hour or so. While she grants the following: that a) the church is literally down the street from her house which b) means she could easily walk there to see if it's open and if her scriptures are exactly where she left them, she c) has already changed into her pajamas and d) knew that she had an older set of scriptures she has had since, well, forever (they preceded her current set) that she could turn to.

It should be noted, right now, that the older set--currently the only set of hers residing in her household--saw her through most of Primary, Sunday School, Young Women, and her seminary days. Doesn't make them ancient, but certainly makes them much older than the set she's used for the past couple of years or so.

And now to bust out of the third person: whenever anyone asks me what I used to be like when I was younger, I inevitably tell them that I was more or less the same except dumber than I am now. In all fairness, I think this assessment may well be true of most of us, except that I realized something as I read through various bits of my old scripture set: while yes, I was not as intelligent then as I am now, I had much much more confidence in matters of faith.

In looking through the notes and the testimonies and whatnot I found within the pages of my scriptures (both those which were glued in and those which were written in), I saw something of a different version of myself. She had a clear--if somewhat vague--plan for her life, her expectations for herself were high without being tremendously so, and she had firm convictions. Firm like a rock.

Over the years, some of those convictions have wobbled. Some of them have eventually been righted again. Some of them, alas, are currently more like jello than anything else. And I don't know if I can blame my education for this, although I do correlate a certain questioning attitude with some of the wobble-age... Well, perhaps not so much the questioning attitude as much as the stubborn refusal to accept anything too easily.

I suppose all of this is to say that if I was able to have more faith, if I was able to trust more, if I was steadfast because back then I was indeed a little dumber--I'd like to learn how to be that dumb again.

Rows of Ducks

2010-12-31T21:49:00.002-07:00

On this, an eve prior to a New Year, I have stopped to ponder my resolution-making capabilities. And I have reached a conclusion: like many members of the worldwide populace, I've quite the gift for knowing exactly what resolutions to make--and an equal or greater gift for breaking those resolutions. In short, I'm abominable at sticking to my goals. (Did I have some at this time last year? Most likely. Do I remember them. Erm, well, uh.... in a manner of speaking?)

Anyhow.

With each passing year, I find myself marveling at one particular quality I have--my utter inability to get all of my ducks lined up in a row. Not actual ducks, mind you, as many of them are mean little biters (not, ahem, that I'd know or anything)... Let's just say that if my metaphorical ducks were forced to form a chorus line, they would just kick each other in the heads with their little flippers and knock each other out.

I fully recognize that there needs to be a duckherd--duckherderess?--at work here (i.e. me), who leads and channels and helps to organize the ducks. I'm ridiculously hopeful and optimistic that 2011 just may be the year where my ducks line up neatly and learn a perfectly synchronized can-can.

Sharing, Etc: Some Thoughts about Books and/or Reading

2010-12-22T22:13:00.008-07:00

In the room I shared with my sisters, a little framed cross-stitch project hung on our wall. It depicted two girls standing under an umbrella and said something like "Caring and sharing is what sisters are for." And that, people, is what I am--the sharing sister. Not that I resent it. I'm coming to realize that I quite enjoying sharing (provided that, at some point, what I share gets returned.)

When we all drift toward my parents' house for holidays or for family gatherings, I find myself hauling books and sometimes movies right along with me. And this is why: I believe in trying my darnedest to give people an opportunity to love the same things I love. To laugh at the same things I've laughed at. To cry when I have cried. And to enjoy an experience I've enjoyed.

While I grant that no two people ever have exactly the same experience with any book, I think two people can come to better understand each other by delving into each other's reading. Forget the whole you-are-what-you-eat idea, because I've always been far more convinced of the you-are-what-you-read idea.

Further, I like to share a variety of genres and styles and emotions of books, because I like to have various reading experiences. (Although I can definitively say that I really just don't enjoy reading things that gross me out. I mean, sometimes it's good for books to cause a visceral reactions, but I tend to stray away from anything that creates a reaction that visceral, you know?)

And herein, I would also like to posit something: a person who reads cannot be boring. At least, not totally. Everyone has their moments, after all. Not everyone can be a tap dancing monkey all the time. (Doesn't stop some people from trying, though.)

But here's something that I've realized recently: almost every genre has something to offer. And it's not always nice--or right--to snub a genre just because it has what I once considered an iffy past and it doesn't as directly trace its literary heritage to what have been dubbed "classics." (Side note: the whole idea of a "modern classic" cracks me up, as "classics" are supposedly time-proven works that still appeal to a mass audience after years and years and years...I think labeling a book a "modern classic" right when it comes out has to be one of the most simultaneously nervy and dumb things that marketers do.)

Comic books have quite a lot to offer, and so do graphic novels. And yes, I've grown nerdy enough that I'd sometimes--not always, but sometimes--draw a distinction between the two. Not all mass market fiction is utter drivel. (Jim Butcher, I'll admit that you and Harry Dresden drew me right in.) Memoirs are not all cheap tell-alls or embarrassing amounts of over-revelation scribbled out to manipulate a reader's heartstrings. Not all economics books are filled with unsubstantiated B.S. You catch my drift.

The older I get, I find myself accepting more types of books than I used to. Someone once told me that tastes narrow with age, but I find I'm experiencing the decided opposite... but that can't possibly be a bad thing, can it?

Oh, the Fickleness of Memories

2010-12-21T08:33:00.003-07:00

My grandpa's eightieth birthday is nearly here, and as part of a big celebration, my aunt requested that we write a memory of him. Only I've run across a problem: most of my memories of him are sketchy, at best. Prior to my grandma's death, most of my memories are of the pair of them--and to be quite frank, more of her than of him. Her player piano. Her: teaching me how to play Scrabble while my parents were insisting I was still too young. (The closest to a jolly, happy, little memory I get is thinking of the many times I played Scrabble with him, while insisting I wanted to play with Grandma. Grandpa, you see, has always had a tendency to add -er to any verb and insist that it's a word--the person, you see, who performs the verb. Frowners are people who frown, likewise smilers are people who smile. You get the idea.) Both of them taking us out to lunch on our birthdays, but Grandma insisting we eat everything, including the lackluster tomatoes on our burgers... "Katie, some child in Bosnia would love to eat that tomato." "Can't we just ship it off to Bosnia, then?" (I just dated myself, didn't I?)

Herein lies my problem: I have one absolutely concrete memory of him, but I feel less than comfortable writing it down and including it in his birthday book. Not too long after Grandma died, little teenage me strongly felt that Grandpa needed some company. He seemed so lonely and lost to me, leaving our family house in Centerville to return to what now seemed such an empty place in Kaysville. So I stubbornly insisted that I be allowed to spend some time with him, and he reluctantly brought me with him back to his house. I'm sure we talked, but I don't remember what about. School, books, all those things that were important to me. And when I say "we talked," what I mean is that I remember jabbering at him a lot. (Yes, yes. For all of you who know me well, some things don't much change. I still have a tendency to jabber.)

Anyhow. He opened the refrigerator to a myriad of prepared, packaged meals that my aunts had left behind with labeled instructions, and heated one of them for dinner. But what I remember most is that after I had gone to bed that night, I kept waking up periodically, and I could hear him pacing. Back and forth, back and forth. Every time I woke up. When I mentioned it in the morning, he said he wasn't used to sleeping without Grandma yet. And when he dropped me off in Centerville, he looked every bit as lost and lonely as he had when he left our house. And I felt...utterly useless. Like I'd tried to do something good and nice for him, and I'd absolutely failed.

So hopefully you can see why this doesn't really work as the type of 80th birthday memory one might want to include in a book otherwise full of happy stories. I don't want to say, Happy Birthday, Grandpa!, my strongest memory of you is when you were at your saddest, when you were having one of the hardest times, and when I felt I failed you. It hardly seems festive.

Scrabble's far safer a topic.

My Sister, David Archuleta, and Me: Or, A MoTab Christmas Concert Experience

2010-12-17T21:44:00.003-07:00

First off: did you know people didn't get in to the dress rehearsal Thursday performance? Did you? Because apparently, people/cars/ALL OF DOWNTOWN gets insanely crazy when David Archuleta comes to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Portions of streets are blocked off. Your assigned parking lots are nigh inaccessible. And then, inevitably (if you're my sister and me), you find yourself running to the Conference Center in less than ideal shoes. Just sayin'.

On top of that, when a random girl joins you (because she doesn't know where she's going, but clearly you guys do...which, yes, true) and declares David Archuleta to be the cutest li'l thing that ever lived and then looks at you funny when you say that you're really going for the choir...well. I suppose that wasn't surprising. This little youngling has, in fact, established quite the rep since the end of his American Idol days. And during them.

Except. It's not that I wholly disliked this concert, because that would be patently unfair to the choir and to the crazy-awesome dancers. So, right now, for the record. Choir: win. Pioneer theme: win. Richard Merrill--the organist--whose feet are fast like unto lightning!--playing a "Deck the Halls Hoedown" piece: win. Dancers, ballerinas and otherwise: win. (Especially the dancing at the beginning! Holy. Cow.)

David Archuleta? Not so win.

Maybe it's from watching About a Boy a few too many times, but it always seems odd and/or awkward when someone spends a great deal of their own concert time singing with their eyes closed. Secondly, I like his voice okay, but his expression needs some help. To wit, that "cutest li'l kid EVER" only has one arm gesture. I repeat: ONLY ONE ARM GESTURE. A gesture in which he vaguely moves his hand forward as though emphasizing something. And then does it again. And then again.

(He started off doing it with his right arm, but that arm must've gotten tired--because he shifted microphone hands and then started gesturing with his left hand. THE SAME GESTURE. Only left-handed.)

Also, dear lovely little Davey boy, we need to do something about that hair of yours. Something that doesn't look so...special.

I suppose that this much is true: the rendition of Joy to the World was lovely. The Spanish carol that he sang equally so. Would that he would not have done any of the following: strayed away from what the teleprompter on the back wall was telling him to say (yep, we could see it from where we sat); attempted any gestures at all (seriously--you know who gestured well?--Brian Stokes Mitchell, when he came a couple of years ago); frilled Christmas carols up with arduously and frankly unpretty pop-music runs.

And I (and my sister) really, really wish he wouldn't have doubled over in the middle of Silent Night. You know when you should double up? When you have the flu and you're about to be sick. Or when someone has just punched you in the gut.

For the record, the other special guest, Michael York, did a wonderful job with his story parts of the choir. Luke 2 was particularly lovely. But not lovely enough, I fear, to keep Megan and me from mercilessly mocking bits of Archie's singing on the way home.

Also: I'm sure that David Archuleta is a nice human. Unfortunately, I'm equally sure that I would never actually pay money to hear him sing.

A Self-Assessment of Sorts

2010-11-27T16:55:00.005-07:00

I remember this girl--a girl from a few years ago (four years, at the most...perhaps fewer than that, even)--who wrote prolifically. Mostly poetry, but I do mean prolifically. Every day. For many minutes of her day.

Of course, that girl had the luxury of being a Creative Writing student. She had a couple hours' bus rides each weekday (well, slightly less...but close to that). Toward the end, she used that bus time for conversations with a then-boyfriend. For infectious amounts of hand-holding. But even after he was gone, even after school was finished, she still wrote poetry--prolifically--for a while.

This girl is, of course, me. Or rather, was me.

While I have, yes, been writing, I don't remember the last time I actually attempted to pen a poem. (And back then it was, yes, always pen. A ballpoint pen, medium-tipped, preferably black. Blue was also suitable, but never had the same feel.)

And periodically I have these moments: moments where I think of something. A four-word phrase. A sentence that could potentially start a poem. And do you know what I do? I shy away from them. While I wouldn't say it's necessarily an active impulse, I avoid writing those things down. Right now, I'm trying to figure out why.

Part of me wants to say that I avoid these things because poetry presents more of a risk--that somehow a person who writes poetry reveals more of him or herself than someone who writes, well, anything else. And that's simply not true. Writers who have any sense of personal style are perennially revealing themselves in small ways.

I suppose the long and short of it is this: I need to stop copping out. Someday soon, I will sit down, suck it up, and write. A POEM.

One of Those Cheesy Thanksgiving Posts

2010-11-26T13:25:00.003-07:00

You know, the kind where I provide you a list of what I'm grateful for. Except that I'm not really feeling super listy today, so I'll stick to just one--the cheesiest (yet truest) of them all: I'm super grateful for my family.

I'm super grateful for a silly goober of a five-year-old nephew whose antics make me laugh, for a pretty-in-pink young niece who sometimes likes to cuddle up and read book after book with me, and for a two-year-old nephew who (usually) doesn't pout for long. I'm grateful for two new babies--one boy, one girl--who are equally adorable in their own individual ways.

For two excellent parents who feed me well when I visit them. Who play games with us and talk with us and laugh with us.

For an older sister who, in spite of recalling my own Thanksgiving clumsy moments of the past, still can make me laugh. And who was karmically repaid with a clumsy Thanksgiving moment of her own.

For a younger sister who makes an amazing young mother, and one of my best-book readin' friends.

For an older brother I can get along with quite well now, as was not always the case. As I told him after going to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, with his wife last week: I kinda like them both.

For the younger brother who willingly carts to these events--one, sometimes, two ways. For good car conversations with him. And the good music he shares.

And last but not least, for a good-humored set of grandparents. (Sorry, again, Grandpa, that I thought you were Grandma on the phone yesterday morning when Mom called with a turkey question.)

Going, Doing, Being: A Small Svithe

2010-10-31T21:07:00.003-06:00

Today's musical number in my parent's sacrament meeting was a lovely arrangement of "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go"--a former ward member arranged and sang it. He did something vaguely familiar that I believe I'd heard at the end before, combining all the key verbs from each song so that it ended with, "I'll go, and I'll do, and I'll be what you want me to be."

And it struck me: some (not all, but some) of the struggles I've faced are a direct result of my insistence on being, going, and doing what I want to do. And let's face it, someone else has better vision here. More eternal vision.

I hope to be better in the future at going, doing, being at the direction of someone infinitely wiser than I am.

The Future, Goals, Dreams...and Lostness, of a Sort

2010-10-26T23:16:00.003-06:00

Tolkien has invaded my brain. Okay, that's not a fair thing to say. Circumstances have been such that a few key words he wrote have been rotating around my head, weaving their way in and out of any given actual situation in my life, and repeating themselves over and over while still somehow--miraculously--managing not to sound too much like a broken record: "All that is gold does not glister. Not all who wander are lost."

I suppose that they've been on their own special rotation because my life plans have, once again, changed. And these things always change based on my feelings that it either is or decidedly isn't time to do something. Also, in a way, I think I'm wandering right now. And I'm hoping to heaven that I'm not lost.

A long time ago, I made the discovery (what seemed--at that stage--far too late) that when I act based on my feelings, I tend to feel much better overall about everything I'm doing (or not doing) with my life. So when I recently felt a need to halt my progression toward more school, my inital thought was "Huh?" Closely following on its heels, surprising even myself a little bit, my second thought was "Ok, then."

That promptly sent me into a tailspin of a sorts, except I didn't spiral downward so much as spiral all over the place. Mostly because I realized that this frees up a few possibilities that I couldn't pursue if I gave up the next four or so years of my life. The most important of these possibilities, I decided, is that it frees up some time for me to the write the novel that's percolating in my head. The one that has come out, to a certain extent, in choppy notes. The type of notes that could become something interesting. If I let it.

And I also realized something else, as I recently told a friend: I tend to use school like a crutch. Yes, I tell people, look at me! I'm achieving! But I'm doing it because, after my own initial impetus, there are people telling me what to do. What I need to do. And they're telling me how to do it. Bossing me around, in a way. I work very well within a system. My grades are good. I achieve (at least) the minimum requirements.

But I want to develop my own projects. Be my own boss (in some things, anyway) for the next while. See what I can do when I have absolutely no impetus but my own goals and dreams. I have a feeling this ride will be bumpy. But fun.

Having Multiple Areas of Interest

2010-09-21T22:35:00.002-06:00

In life, I'd have to say that all of the most interesting people I've known have always had multiple areas of interest. Many things they are interested in. While yes, reading and language and such-like are my primary interests, I like to think that I have multiple areas of interest and that having those interests makes me an interesting human being.

What I forgot about grad school (yes, in the approximately three to four ish months that I've been gone): graduate school requires, yea verily--demands--a narrowing of multiple interests to something finite that can be included in a statement of purpose.

To which, tonight, I say:

Crap.

Ways of Seeing, or Thoughts about Visual Representation

2010-09-14T08:22:00.005-06:00

Lately, I've been wishing that I knew more about visual arts.

I've always had a little bit of a preoccupation with sight: three guesses why. (If it takes you three, that's kind of sad. Not that I'm judging. Except that I am. Just a little bit.) And I've been thinking about visual representations for the last couple weeks(ish) for different reasons: Inception, for one. Maus, for another. The illustrated copy of Dante's Divine Comedy I recently acquired.

(To detour for a brief moment: I don't think it matters whether the top stops spinning at the end of Inception. Cobb clearly thinks he has found exactly what he wants, so even if he'll eventually wake up, he's still happy for the moment. That said, I thought the film was masterful. Props to Christopher Nolan.)
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Anyway, I have a lot of knowledge--some useful, some not--in my brain about literary representation. I've never felt uncomfortable analyzing my way through novels and dissecting different points of view, different descriptions, etc., etc. But I've recently found myself reading (Maus) or rereading (Persepolis) graphic novels, and I wish I knew more about analyze the artistic representations at work.

In some ways, I don't need to be able to analyze the art itself: writing a graphic novel, on its own, strikes me as an inherently interesting way to portray history and autobiography. Drawing a cartoony version of yourself acknowledges your own skewed self-perception, sometimes to a dramatic extreme. Persepolis actually features a page devoted to Marjane Satrapi drawing how she perceived her visual appearance changing as she grew older--and unsurprisingly, she's fairly hard on herself.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out the effects, either, of Art Spiegelman choosing to draw Germans as cats, Jews as mice, and Poles as pigs in his narrative. I don't need help with that part of artistic representation. But I also can't help wondering if the way Satrapi and Spiegelman draw holds other stylistic significance. Are they showing clear influences? How much does their artistic style correlate with their heritage? (From what I've read, Satrapi's style shows clear Persian influences... but I'm taking others' words on that.)

For now, it's a mystery. But I'm starting to hunt down more information about visual art, so hopefully it won't remain a mystery forever.

Some Thoughts about Possession

2010-09-01T22:32:00.003-06:00

And when I say Possession, I mean the concept and the book. Feel free to drift here if you'd like to actually read a book review, because I don't want to repeat myself in that vein. And if you're too lazy to read the whole review, just know that I wholeheartedly recommend this book and that I love it. I loved it the first time I read it several years ago, and I love it even more now that I allowed myself to revel a little in A.S. Byatt's amazing language artistry.

This book started me thinking about possession as a concept: what do we actually mean when we say that we possess something, and what does possession imply? For some things, it's very clear cut. Possession is, quite simply, ownership. When I say that I possess my books, I mean that I own them. I paid for them, and in many instances, I marked them. (In some circumstances, I'd say the markings indicate possession better than a receipt might.)

Yet there are other, far more nebulous things, we often talk about possessing. Knowledge. Talents. Sometimes even other people.

Possession like that becomes inevitably more tricky: just because I know something doesn't mean it's mine alone. Just because I have a talent doesn't mean I'm the only one who has it. And who, really, can possess another person?

The novel is about many things, but primarily it's about love and scholarship. I feel I'm a decent scholar, but I'm bad at love. That's neither here nor there, just a bit of a confession, I suppose. But I think I hesitate when it comes to relationship because of the concerns that are explicitly and implicitly addressed in the book: is it inevitable--must you--lose some of your own self-possession if you fall in love and choose to share your life with another individual?

Clearly, I don't know. While my relationships were successful, I rarely felt that I was relinquishing ownership over myself to aid in either relationship's success. But selves aren't really things to be owned, are they? They are things we simply are. Not to say they can't change, by any means, but isn't people-possession a little bit ridiculous? (I mean, we abolished slavery for a reason, right?)

The two contemporary-timed characters in Possession come to feel linked to each other because of a common pursuit. The two past-timed characters fall in love, but it's heart-wrenchingly complicated and sad because both of them already have attachments to others. But they also want, in some sense, to belong to each other.

Is belonging the same as possessing? I posit no. But I'm immensely curious if anybody has some imput about these rambles of mine...

Vicarious and Lived Experience

2010-08-27T20:56:00.006-06:00

"So much of what I see reminds me of something I've read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?" --from You've Got Mail

Books are wonderful things, non-fiction and fiction alike. They are methods of metaphysical and intellectual transport when actual travels are not a physical or fiscal possibility. Books have the ability to take us to new places, to introduce new modes of thought, to allow us to fall in love with the types of characters we usually think we hate in real life. (And let's be honest: sometimes they're exactly like real-life people we hate, but sometimes they're not. And liking a hateable character means that somewhere, we have the potential to like a hateable real-life human.)

Bookworm that I am, though, I sometimes worry myself: is it possible to become entirely too wrapped up in the imaginary and in my own thoughts? Do I ever occlude real-life experiences in favor of experiencing something vicariously?

The answer, I am sorry to conclude, must inevitably be yes.

And before you think I'm being too hard on myself, let me say that I think this may be the case for many of us. I grant that books may not be the chosen vehicle for everyone's vicarious experiences, but I think sometimes we retreat to various types of mediated experience--of someone else's experience, even--in order to experience something that we're too scared to experience ourselves.

Perhaps everyone doesn't experience things vicariously due to fear. In some ways, I think vicarious experiences are imminently practical. But I also think such vicarious experiences are not, on the whole, entirely satisfying: once they end, I don't feel they have changed me in the same ways that actual experiences have. And I worry, to use a horrendously awful cliche, that I sometimes let the fear of striking out keep me from playing the game. (Although for the record, I've played baseball. And I didn't enjoy it. I do, however, enjoy watching it. When it's live. Because the only thing more dreadful than televised baseball is televised golf. And the only thing worse than televised golf... oh wait. Nothing's worse than televised golf.)

I've decided that I need to keep myself open to experiences: new experiences, continued experiences, things I haven't experienced in a while and might just do well to experience again. And here, dear readership, is what I ask of you: what types of experiences (good, bad, and ugly) have you had that you've dearly grown to appreciate? And what types of experiences do you think I should have?

If your experience strikes me as something that I too should undergo, I'll do it. (Some of you may want to recommend experiences regarding--ahem--dating. I'll take them under advisement, but that's all I promise.) And then I'll blog about it. All I ask is that you bear in mind that I don't drive.

I want to live a braver existence. This seems to me a logical first step.

Blending In, or Thoughts on Spies

2010-08-25T13:56:00.005-06:00

These thoughts come primarily, I suppose, from following USA's Covert Affairs. Also from watching Alias when it was on NBC. And also from watching Chuck. (About Covert Affairs: I keep hoping that it's going to get better. It keeps disappointing me. And I keep watching anyway, because I think Christopher Gorham is attractive.) I suppose, too, my question is also somewhat influenced by The Pretender as well.

What, me, a spy-fic nerd? What are you getting at?

Anyway, I always wondered why all of the spies are always so pretty. To be clear: I understand the theory, particularly with female spies. They have to seduce their way into information sometimes, and that clearly works better if they are pretty. I would make the assumption that if seduction rates were translated into batting averages, I imagine the prettiest of women would be batting .360 or so.

But how much of espionage is about seduction? And how much is actually blending in? It has occurred to me that most run-of-the-mill sneaky work would probably be best done by people who have those faces. You know the kind I mean. The kind of people who look like dozens of other people.

What do you think?

Reading for Pleasure

2010-08-23T20:52:00.002-06:00

I'm not sure how it happened, but somewhere in the last two years of studying and research and analysis, I forgot how it felt to read for pleasure. And I do mean pleasure. I don't mean fun. I did a perfectly adequate job of reading for fun during my summer and between-semester breaks.

Reading for pleasure, at least my reading for pleasure, often includes a greater degree of absorption than reading for fun. When I read for fun, I want to whoosh my way through a plot line that I find entertaining. I want to like the characters, or I want to like to like the characters (all of the best characters--literary and otherwise--are, after all, works in progress). And I want to read quickly. Reading for fun can be done in a day. The analytical side of my brain doesn't tend to get terribly involved when I read for fun.

But oh! when I read for pleasure, I invest my faculties into the book. (And at this stage, I can't turn off my analytical mind. But I find my mind is always satisfied when it has some interesting topics to think through and I don't have to think them through on a timetable.) I like to take my time, to taste the language, to meander through the words. I like to pause and ponder, stop and wonder.

I like to read for pleasure in the same way I travel: I like to go where my whims take me, wander at will, and move forward at my own pace. It's soothing. It's calming. It's wonderful.

Cleaning and Control Freakishness

2010-08-16T22:38:00.004-06:00

As I have periodically observed elsewhere, I find a certain catharsis in cleaning.

I blame the control-freak aspect of my personality: when I find myself facing things that aren't entirely within my control, I begin to clean. It makes me feel better to impose order on those things I can't when I feel that other things are spiraling completely beyond my control.

Interestingly, I realized today as I scrubbed the bathtub that I enjoy writing for exactly the same reason: I revel in imposing order on random words. Writing allows me to take language and to impose my own control. I get to arrange the words; I get to make the statements; I get to express myself in my own desired fashion.

Given this realization, I am now wondering why I don't do both more often--both the cleaning and the writing. To be fair, I'm working out a large writing project and that involves writing notes about how to construct the final project.

But I think I might need to clean more often.

Then again, maybe not...

Faith and Knowledge: An Inquiry (or Something)

2010-08-15T09:32:00.003-06:00

I've been thinking a lot about faith lately, perhaps because in recent weeks I've been wrestling with my own. It's not as steady as I'd like it to be, but then again, I'm like everyone else in this regard--a work in progress. But I keep trying to think my way through what is becoming, for me, a rather tangled query: how are faith and knowledge linked?

Scripturally speaking, we're told that faith is hope for things which are not seen, but which are true. Knowledge, according to the Bible Dictionary, is one of God's attributes... and "knowledge of divine and spiritual things is absolutely essential for one's salvation." The difficulty is this: how does one know divine and spiritual things?

I recognize that there are different types of knowledge: some forms of knowledge are based on pure empiricism and actual experience--I know I will get sunburned in 100 degree heat if I don't wear sunscreen, because I've had that experience. (And even if I hadn't, I know that the sun is hot and that it can burn.) I believe there's such a thing as innate knowledge, i.e. I think that one of the talents we are blessed with is that we automatically know (or recognize) things when we hear them. And then there's learned knowledge, which, as near as I can figure, comes from listening to what we are taught.

The gospel includes all of these types of knowledge including, I'd argue, at least a small bit of empirical knowledge. But I still can't figure the link between faith and knowledge: when, exactly, does believing become knowing? And further (and probably more importantly), is there all that great a distinction between the two? After all, rhetorically speaking, we often hear the two used interchangeably.

And to throw in another monkey wrench, we're also taught that faith has to be based on correct knowledge for that faith to be effective. I grant that's the "which are true" part of the "things which are hoped for and not seen, but which are true" equation. But faith implies we are trusting those things are truth--at least initially--not that we know they are true.

I'm probably rambling a little, but I'm trying to sort out a relationship here. And it only gets more messy and muddled the more I analyze. Except for this: scripturally speaking, those who know often fall away because they skip over the having-faith. Laman and Lemuel, for example, who know they've seen an angel. Because they empirically know, they don't place any faith... and they eventually fall away. (Clearly for more reasons than that, but I find it an interesting link.)

The one thing I understand when it comes to faith and knowledge is this: if you conceptually know that God is an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving being, then you can easily place faith in Him because you have faith that He has a purpose for everything and that He knows exactly how to achieve that purpose--even if you don't understand.

Thoughts, anyone?

On Names and Naming

2010-08-11T16:20:00.003-06:00

There's an idea percolating in my brain. A story idea. Potentially a novel idea. But key to the idea is names and naming. (Beyond that, I'm not telling you the idea. You might steal it!!) I think Shakespeare is the most oft-quoted authority on names--"that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." And while I'm sure many people have had many other things to say about names, I'm too lazy to research those people right at this second.

My name means, more or less, 'pure.' (Although to be fair, my name is the diminutive version of a nickname of a name that actually means pure. Thus the 'more or less.') My younger sister's name means both 'pretty' and 'good.' So by definition, I suppose she's a pretty good younger sister. Or a pretty, good younger sister. Probably both.

What intrigues me most about names is this: we do not choose them for ourselves. Someone chooses them for us, and that someone sometimes has something specific in mind when they choose the name. Not always. As far as I know, my parents just liked most of our first names. But sometimes... it's why I don't envy people with family names.

And I really don't envy people who are named after virtues. Of course, I think the one guaranteed way to ensure I wouldn't live up to my name would be to assign me one like that. (Seriously, I think it's kind of mean to name your daughter Patience. Or Faith. Or Charity. People will call you on your name...both on whether you act your name and on whether you don't.)

Anyway, it's a system set up to favor parents. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Clearly, newborn babies aren't exactly equipped to name themselves. They aren't physiologically or psychologically capable of saying, "Hey, Mom. Please do not name me Prudence after your favorite great-aunt. Name me Michelle instead." But I often wonder what name I might choose for myself if I had the option. I've never minded being a Katie, but would I have opted instead to be a Lizzy or an Emma or...some other name that doesn't stem from a Jane Austen novel?

I firmly believe that we choose the significance of our own lives: we choose how to spend our time, we choose our own pursuits, we choose the company we keep. We choose where we go and what we do, but we don't choose what we're called. Our names do not determine our lives; I'd never make such a far-fetched claim. But I wonder, based on my life to date, if I wouldn't change the meaning of my name to better match the significance I hope my life will have...

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning...

2010-08-10T09:52:00.004-06:00

I realized something fundamentally important yesterday. When people ask if I'm a morning person, I tell them no.

That, my friends, is a lie.

Well, sort of.

Usually when I think of the term "morning person," I think of those people who wake up happy. The type who jump out of bed and starting bouncing around like Tigger. Boing boing boing. The ones who almost chirp "Good morning" to everyone they see, as though this new day is going to be the Best. Thing. Ever. because it's morning already!!

I'm not that type of morning person. That type of morning person draws out the curmudgeon in me.

Yesterday I had reason to wake up early, to leave the house early, and to be out and about around the city early. And I realized that I am, after all, a morning person. Just not the Tigger type. But I enjoy the cooler air, the quietness of the streets, the utter stillness in what eventually becomes a rather noisy place. I like seeing people walk their dogs, and I like it even more when they simply nod in acknowledgement of my presence instead of engaging in the boing boing boing of "Good morning! How are you today? Isn't this day amazing? Aren't you so glad to be awake?"

I suppose, in the end, I do consider myself a type of morning person. Just the type of morning person that loves when a morning allows me to revel (just a little) in some of my hermit-like ways.

July 4th Thoughts

2010-07-04T20:30:00.005-06:00

If you look back through my archives, there seems a trend to my Fourth of July posts: rather than feeling free, it seems I tend to feel lonely. And let's be honest: loneliness and independence are not remotely the same thing. You can be independent and still be around people; while you can be lonely and independent, I suppose, it's not nearly so rewarding.

This year has found me once again at my parents' house in Centerville. Wandering city festivities. Listening for a couple of songs to a less-than-wonderful band (swing this year, not 60s cover--do we consider this progress or just a genre change?) and then coming back and setting off fireworks at my parents house.

Thank heaven for niece and nephews. They make everything more entertaining and interesting. And it's impossible not to think that even the lamest of fireworks you're setting off are just a little bit marvellous when you have munchkins who ooh and ahh at them.

Interestingly enough, I don't mind being a lone child this year: but maybe that's because all of us were here for the city festivities on Friday. Or maybe it's because I like that I get to experience the moments when my presence causes my parents to suddenly lose years of maturity (my mom, in particular--it's delightful!). I have also realized that I don't mind playing a family role as observer; I like to see what everyone else does, hear what everyone else talks about, smile at others' jokes. In short, I like to be the fly on the wall.

I bring books for others; my mom recommends books to me. Sometimes it's quiet, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just me, sometimes there are more. Always, always, I feel a quiet sense of belonging here (perhaps I just didn't recognize it before because I was being too petulant about being a single amongst marrieds).

But I don't ever feel lonely here, because here will always be home.

On Trespassing, A Conversation Between My Five-Year Old Nephew and Me

2010-05-31T21:36:00.003-06:00

I like to run around with my two nephews and niece, don't get me wrong, but there's nothing as inherently delightful to me as sitting down with one, two, or all three of them to read a few books. (My niece has developed a taste for The Berenstain Bears.) Anyhow, there's something important for you to know before I tell you the rest of this story: my five-year-old nephew is a smart little cookie. And I don't say that just because I'm a doting aunt. He knows the age of the universe (10 billion years), was quick to figure out the chronology of his mom and her siblings when he looked through old photos with my mom, and already knows how to use words much larger than his age (and I'm not just talking dinosaur names, either).

Anyway, his sister and I requested that I read them Beauty and the Beast (the Disney-fied storybook version). When we reached the part of the story where the Beast throws Maurice into the dungeon, my nephew looked up at me and asked why.

"Why what?"

"Why did he have to go to the dungeon?"

Pause. How do you explain the idea of trespassing to a five-year-old, albeit an intelligent one?

"Well...do you know the word trespass?"

Nephew and niece both shake their heads no.

"Trespass is when you go into someone else's house without knocking. So the Beast got mad because Belle's dad didn't knock on his door and ask to come in first. Instead, he just came into the house without knocking or anything. He just invited himself in. And that's why the Beast put him in the dungeon."

Sudden look of enlightenment on nephew's face. "So Snow White was okay because she knocked first and said 'May I come in?' before she went into the house because nobody was home. Right?" Emphatic nod from my niece.

Me: "Um, sort of."

(How else would you explain the dungeon-throwing-in? Sadly, he's past the age where "because the Beast was mean" is a viable explanation...)

A Late Svithe: Good vs. Perfect

2010-05-31T08:18:00.004-06:00

I grew up around simple, sincere people. And when I say "simple," I don't mean by any stretch of the imagination those I grew up with were simple-minded. I mean instead that those I grew up around were not terribly concerned with material or with complicated things. They were people concerned instead with raising good, well-adjusted children. With providing for their families without needing to be the most apparently rich on the block. And I often forget--until I come home for a weekend such as this one--that they were, most importantly, second families. Other houses where I could wander in barefoot. Other mothers, fathers, siblings. Other people who cared then and still care now about what I choose to do with my life.

They have always been people who acted in accordance with what they believed, without slapping others upside the head with their beliefs (metaphorically speaking, of course). And if, as the scriptures say, "by their fruits ye shall know them," I find it impossible to disbelieve Church doctrines and teachings. Because the people I grew up with were not perfect, but they were and still are good. These people have flaws, mind you, and they know it. Some of them are impatient; some of them get testy; some of them gossip a little more than perhaps they should. But that doesn't make them any less lovable, and that doesn't mean they aren't trying.

Lately I've been struggling with some of my beliefs, perhaps because I have been thinking that it's all too hard. But I realized yesterday that I've been struggling because I've been thinking that it's too hard to be perfect and it's too hard to have perfect faith. So this Memorial Day weekend, I'm grateful for reminders that the aim is not to be perfect. The aim is to work (and it is work, but it's not as hard as I thought) to be good.

I Cordially Invite You

2010-05-29T11:28:00.002-06:00

To trundle on over to the book blog my sister started for my review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I have not dearly, dearly loved a book like this in a great, long while.

Not since Mistborn most likely, and well, that was a different type of love. Maybe you'll see what I mean after you read the review. Maybe you won't. But I know this much: I now desperately want Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows as friends.

Art and Narcissism

2010-05-20T11:40:00.004-06:00

A couple of months ago, I read The Picture of Dorian Gray for one of my classes. It wasn't the first time I had read the novel, and I'm sure that it probably will not be the last. But anyway, I found myself thinking about the book in a very different way than I had previously. When I read it as an undergraduate student, it had seemed an entirely moralistic tale: if you invest yourself too much in bad things, you'll become corrupt and eventually die. But this time around, I found it more difficult to read it as quite that moralistic.

That particular professor enjoyed summing up books in a sentence or so--a sentence that could essentially act as a thesis for an argument paper, if necessary. Her sentence was "Art: it's not about you." That sentence alone provoked an interesting discussion, because a fellow student stated it reminded her of a pop culture conference she had attended with her mother. According to the fellow student, she had been appalled at the sheer number of panel discussions centering around the topic: "What is the Twilight series doing to teenage girls?" She highly disliked that so much of the conference seemed not to be exploring anything interesting . . . or even aesthetic. (Incidentally, my answer to the question would be this: the series itself may be planting ideas, but the books are not actually doing anything to those girls. Reading the books does not automatically turn any given girl into an agency-less, susceptible fembot.)

Don't get me wrong. I think it's entirely possible for art to create an effect in its viewers. My enjoyment of reading does not come from the repetitive actions of page turning and eye scanning involved. And art, in some sense, is entirely reliant on its viewers. (It seems to me that with most art, it's sort of necessary for someone outside the artist to declare it art. Just like it's necessary for someone that's not myself or one of my parents to verify I've written something good.)

But I don't think that art can make its viewers do anything. In that sense, I felt my professor's blanket statement to be correct. But at the same time, there's a paradox at work for the reason I briefly mentioned above: whether or not art has an individual impact is entirely based on you. Your tastes. Your reactions. Your assessments. These are not necessary for definition, i.e. for the art to be called art, but they are wholly necessary for the art to be anything except words on paper or paint on canvas or a chemical process applied to paper to show an image.

In short, I personally think the sentence should be modified to: "Art: it's not entirely about you." Because enjoying art--feeling art--is an inherently narcissistic enterprise. Simply seeing it? Well, that's a different story.

And Before I Forget

2010-05-18T22:38:00.003-06:00

In case you would further like to dillydally about the Web, I recommend that you check out a book blog for which I will be a semi-regular contributor. (I've already written one entry, and more will soon follow. I hope.)

Also, if you would like to read some interesting thoughts from another recent ex-student, consider visiting my friend. He has a blog, you know. Just in case the URL didn't tell you.

Please feel free to return to your regularly scheduled programs without visiting either link. I promise that we'll still be friends, either which way.

Questions, Thoughts

2010-05-18T22:05:00.003-06:00

As of May 7, 2010, I have finished my master's degree. I read many books, wrote many papers, lost much sleep. I met people that I otherwise never would have met, I learned things that I otherwise never would have learned. And I found it all to be a worthwhile experience.

But I've realized something vital: I need a plan. Or a semblance of a plan. Or something that I can pretend to be a plan. Because somehow, during all of that studying and scribbling, I neglected to realize that life would again continue once the master's degree had ended.

I have the ability to throw myself wholeheartedly into things, but I tend not to think what will happen after those things end. My master's degree was infinitely rewarding; I want to continue on to the next rewarding thing that will take me.

But sometimes I wonder how much I inevitably hold myself back. I wonder how much caution, precaution, and safety nets are factored into decisions that I make. Sure, I think I could do any number of interesting things. But would I? Really? I've come to realize that it's difficult to be daring.

Random Writing Thoughts, after a Couple Months' Hiatus

2010-03-26T13:53:00.003-06:00

Something I--once again--realized when I spoke with a friend a couple of days ago: it takes guts to write. And it takes even more guts to write without the expectation of a reward.

Samuel Johnson famously said that "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." In a technology-steeped world where most anyone can write--can create a blog, a web page, what-have-you--a lot of blockheads are writing. And not writing for money. Some blockheads actually have valuable things to say, some don't.

It's interesting, I suppose: by typing this, right now, I'm not feeling that I'm laying much on the line. It's not a risk to tell you what I'm thinking. It's not scary to speak my mind. But maybe that's because I'm filtering. Maybe that's because I've never written in this because it felt like a risk. I've taken great pains to make this blog personal without being too personal.

If anything, I think I started a blog because it feels utterly safe: nobody can call me on not writing what I think, because nobody can know what I think outside what I write. (With the obvious caveat that, if you know me in real-time, you obviously have a far better idea of what's going on with my life.)

Where am I going with this?

Oh, writing. I decided that it has been too long since I've written something that has made me vulnerable: too long since I took up a pen to write a poem, scribbled out a story idea, attempted to write a novel. It has been too long since I took the risk of taking time to write something that practically begs for external validation.

I have a few poems to revisit--works from a few years ago that I still love, but works that need improvement. I have a few stories half-finished. Time for completion. And I have a few ideas floating around my head that deserve to be committed to paper.

Changes are good.

It's time to take some risks.

A Book Review, and a Goal

2010-01-11T08:58:00.004-07:00

I just finished reading The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance a few days ago, and I greatly enjoyed it. In reading feedback from others, I've found this memoir seems to be of the love it or hate it variety. Nobody who feels a need to discuss this book seems to be shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Meh. Didn't really care."

I laughed; I cringed; I groaned; I empathized.

Most of the camp who have hated the novel seem to hate Elna's portrayal of herself as Mormon, but as a Mormon who does not behave in the strictest sense of the stereotyped definition of our faith. (I honestly knew I would love the book when she dedicates the book, minus the swear words and a couple of racy scenes, to her parents.) She swears; she struggles with physical boundaries; she doesn't exclusively date men from her faith. More importantly, she questions: she's not always sure about how she fits into her faith and she's not always sure how to explain what she believes. Hell, she's not always sure what she does believe. That doesn't make her unfaithful; in his November CES fireside talk, President Uchtdorf defined LDS church members as a "question-asking people" because "inquiry leads to truth."

I enjoyed the book because it felt so utterly honest and it rang true to my experiences. (And mind you, I have yet to move outside Utah! But Salt Lake City has a liberal scene all its own; and as a graduate student in a liberal arts program, I often find myself purposefully avoiding most church settings except my Sunday meetings, because I believe the doctrines--but I don't think that the culture is true. In fact, the culture can be exceedingly difficult to swallow sometimes.)

That said, if swearing offends you (and it would offend you even more coming from a Mormon mouth) or if you can't handle a candid discussion of sexual boundaries (including a couple of racy scenes--that, to be honest, I didn't find terribly scandalous...but I'm an English graduate student, and after several years of studying literature, I probably have a more broad definition of "racy" than most), this book isn't for you.

Now, onto the goal part: after reading the book, I admire something she addresses in the book: an ability to say "yes" to many, many things. As she notes, there's a power to saying yes: you never know where--or what--it will get you. And I've decided that's my new goal--to say "yes" to more of the opportunities I'm presented. To stop rationalizing away opportunities. To live a little. (Or who knows? Maybe a lot.)

A New Year

2010-01-01T11:01:00.003-07:00

Another year has come and gone--far too quickly, it seems. I used to think time would never pass as quickly as I wanted; years used to feel eternities long. Now time passes more quickly than I wish it to, and I find myself expecting change. Welcoming change, even. And this year will be a year of change.

I should (if all goes according to plan, but really--since when has all gone according to plan?) graduate from my program this spring. And then I'm not sure what I'll do. Where I'll be. It seems like a time of infinite possibilities, I've decided. Sure, it's a little bit petrifying to think I should be planning on what to do with the rest of my life, but I figure that it's always served me best to make it up as I go along.

Last year I made a set of goals, and now I don't remember what they are. I can't decide if that means they weren't important enough or if I need to learn a little self-discipline. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

I can think of all kinds of idealistic goals I could make, but I'm not sure I want to make any of them; if I think of anything I actually feel an urge to express, I'll tell you. In the meantime, I welcome 2010 with open arms . . . preparing myself to embrace whatever life throws me at this year.

Or, at the very least, to catch whatever life throws at me--if only for a second, before I drop it.

Knowing It All

2009-12-29T09:10:00.003-07:00

So this is one of the funniest gifts I received this year from one of my roommates, who spent a week prior to our actual gift unwrappings telling me that she could not wait to see my reaction when I opened up one of my gifts from her.

If you know me well at all, you know I do have a certain predilection for being a know-it-all. In recent years, I've curbed back my tendencies because--believe it or not--I've realized that I don't know it all. I've accepted that I don't know it all. And I have never claimed, in recent days, that I know everything. (Because really, who knows everything? And to be honest, who on earth would be crazy enough to want to know everything?)

On a random and only semi-related note, after I introduced my Dad to the Harry Potter books, he spent three months or so teasingly calling me Hermione. Except he pronounced it Her-me-own, despite my insistence on its pronunciation of Her-my-oh-knee. Looking back, I realize that teenage me did not realize for far too long that I was reinforcing his teasing.

I'll admit I'm a wealth of useless information. I can still sing the entire theme song to Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers. I can quote pretty much the entirety of How the Grinch Stole Christmas verbatim. If I've seen it or read it, I can recall particular lines or particular parts of text that impressed me when I first read or saw it.

But recently, I've decided that my apparent know-it-all-ness tends, in my case, to lead to providing information for other people. To clarify: I don't mind. But knowing a lot of information leads to requests to either a) be provided information or b) be led to information. (And I'll be honest. I only provide information to a certain point before setting people free with a road map to the info. Teach a man to fish and all that.)

So I'm resolving, this year, to be stupid. Or to appear stupid. Or, at the very least, not to give the impression of having more knowledge than I actually have. We'll see how well it works out.

Ballerina Bunny Bag

2009-12-07T10:16:00.003-07:00

Oh, that I had a camera. Because if I had a camera, I would take a picture of my ballerina bunny bag and post it here. Instead, you'll have to settle with a description. I periodically forget that I still have it, but I can't help smiling every time I come across it.

My ballerina bunny bag is small. It's pink. And it has a lace-fringed heart stitched onto it. A cross-stitched ballerina bunny, more or less en-pointe, occupies the center of the heart. She's wearing a blue tutu, blue toe shoes, and she has a blue bow in her hair.

I have had this bag for almost twenty years. My mom made it for me when I started ballet lessons. (I believe I was five. Maybe six.) I used to carry my own shoes in it. And my, how I loved this ballerina bunny bag. Really, I still love this ballerina bunny bag.

Like my printer, it has served many functions. I didn't last very long in ballet, so the ballerina bunny bag became a book-carrying ballerina bunny bag I used to take down to the Bookmobile. As I recall, my voracious reading habits threatened to split the seams more than once. But my mom always mended the bag, and I kept finding inventive ways of packing ten or more books into it.

I've carried notebooks in it. I've moved it to every new place with me. Much to my dismay, if I couldn't find a different bag, it sometimes came with me to my first job. ("Really," she would say, "Isn't it time to get rid of that?") I've come to agree that it's probably not something to carry around anymore, but I will never get rid of it. And this is why: my mother made it for me.

She's a skilled seamstress and adept with a needle, so I'm sure that neither the cross-stitching nor the sewing took her long. But it was, nevertheless, an hour or two (if even that) that she took to make something for me. An hour or two when she had five little children, each of us with five different sets of activities.

This bag has a tendency to pop up, sometimes seemingly from nowhere, when I feel as though I've been ignored or as though I'm inadequate or as though nobody really knows me personally in quite the way I wish they would or could. It pops up when I feel disliked or un-loved. And every time, it serves as a visible reminder of one earthly person who has always loved me and who knows me and accepts me.

Any time I mention it, Mom begs me to get rid of it. But I can't. It's a visible reminder of a parent's love and I just can't let that go. I rather imagine that once I have a child, they will hear the story of a magically appearing ballerina bunny bag. And then they will see the proof. It's an odd thing to keep as a keepsake, I'm sure.

But how many tangible reminders do we get? And how easily can we let them go?

In Memoriam

2009-11-29T21:33:00.005-07:00

Today, I mourn the loss of a friend. Not a human friend, because I doubt I'd be able to blog about such a loss on the evening it occurred.

No, I mourn the loss of a near and dear piece of technology: my printer.

In a last brave attempt to provide me with the reading for tomorrow (yes, I procrastinated my homework for my tomorrow afternoon class, but hello! Thanksgiving break!), my dear HP Deskjet 920c choked on one last piece of paper. It sputtered a final farewell. And then, it worked no more.

I'll miss it.

You may think me strange, but this printer has followed me since the summer of 2002. The summer I headed straight down to BYU for a summer semester instead of reveling in my last days of being an irresponsible teenager. My parents gave it to me as a graduation present. This printer never left me. It moved down to Provo, it moved back home with me to Centerville. It moved to my friend's condo with me (in another part of Centerville) and then back home once more.

If I was a boomerang child who constantly bounced back home, my printer boomeranged right along with me. It endured the entirety of my undergraduate education and almost three-fourths of my master's work. My first real-life, full-time job in the corporate world.

It moved with me to my first apartment in Salt Lake City. And it's moved twice more, to different SLC locations, as I've moved on with my life. It printed faithfully (albeit slowly...seriously, I could sometimes straighten my hair, apply make-up, and change my outfit a couple of times before it printed my longer seminar papers) until this fateful evening.

This printer stayed with me through several classes, several boyfriends, and several roommates. It endured crowded space on the floor when I didn't clean; it suffered (unintentional) kicks as I moved back and forth across my messy room in the dark. It printed the poetry and essays of others, but showed fairness and equality in printing all of my poetry and all of my essays just as easily. As tidily.

Rest in peace, my fair printer.

Also, for the record, you chose a heckuva time to die. (Seriously? This close to the end of the semester?)

Random Conversations

2009-11-10T13:22:00.003-07:00

Sometimes, I don't even know how things pop into my brain. But sometimes they result in interesting conversations. To wit:

On Saturday, while I did some laundry, I bemoaned how long it was taking. And then I told my roommate that I wished I had Superman's powers because it probably wouldn't take Superman long to wash his clothes. My philosophy was (and I guess, still is) this: he could a) hand wash his clothes super fast and shake them around to dry them super fast or b) if he can fly around the world fast enough to go back in time, couldn't he fly forward in time...and just throw his clothes in the wash, make time speed by...and then throw his clothes in the dryer and make time speed by...and then voila, have his laundry be done?

I'm sure there's some sort of theoretical error to that, and I'm not even sure why it came to mind that if I were Superman, I could do my laundry faster... Anyway, my roommate put an end to the conversation when, as I continued to think out loud, I asked: "Do you think Superman has to do laundry less often because he wears his underwear outside his clothing?"

I don't know. What do you think?

Visiting Past Work: 10 Books That Have Had an Impact on My Life

2009-10-14T12:35:00.002-06:00

So all of you know I'm a book nerd. In reviewing some past writing, I discovered this list that I wrote for an undergraduate senior writing seminar. So here you have a list. Parts may look familiar, but other parts...

Muggie Maggie: It was the first book I ever owned, and the first chapter book I read. This clever little book by Beverly Cleary detailed the struggles of a girl trying desperately hard to learn to write cursive. I identified with the protagonist. She was the first character in a book who seemed real to me.

The Babysitters Club: Some of us may be ashamed to admit it now, but all of my friends and I were attached to these books in elementary school. It took me two years of reading to realize how formulaic and generic they were--and yet how successful. They gave me hope. (To clarify: I thought, "If stuff like this gets published, surely I can successfully publish something I write.")

The Chronicles of Narnia: Since the last two selections are series, I apologize if I am going beyond my limit. But I have read many books. These fantasy stories inspired me to write things that were pure imagination. I didn't know then that the Narnia books had deeper elements, but I still love them for just that reason.

Number the Stars: This Newbery award winner by Lois Lowry introduced me to historical fiction and led me to discover just how fascinating historical fiction can be. It started me on an almost yearlong stint of reading books about World War II and the Holocaust.

Bridge to Terabithia: I did not fully comprehend it the first time I read it. But the second time, the tears would not stop pouring. It was the first book (one of a select few) that elicited an intense, visible emotional reaction from me. 1984 was one of the other select few books that created such a response. It actually motivated me to act. Granted, my action was throwing the book across the room in a fit of anger. But it was an action nonetheless.

Harry Potter riveted me to my seat in a time when books were starting to bore me. I thought I had read them all, had seen them all, and that there was nothing new out there. And then this series fell into my hands. I hated eating, going to the bathroom, blowing my nose, and doing all sorts of necessary things because they pulled me away from my book.

I used to think that no book had it all. No book had managed to encompass all of the elements I liked: adventure, romance, good characters. It seemed to be a one-or-the-other type of choice--until I read The Princess Bride. What a lovely surprise! (Besides, I could not resist reading it after seeing the words "son of a bitch" on the back of the cover--words my mother gasped at when she saw it. Shortly thereafter, the library began taping over the blurb on the back cover.)

Wicked completely blew my mind. I have never read anything quite so inventive in my life (which may mean I need to read more*...not that I truly need any incentive.) Gregory Maguire took a well-known story and turned it on its head, making an already-used idea completely fresh, new, and his own. It is a book infused with commentary--while still being entertaining.

Finally, the one work of non-fiction to make the list: The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, a memoir about a mother who provided for her family by entering writing contests. It was a well-presented memoir that led me to realize how interesting real life can be. I forget sometimes.

*Three years later, I can definitely say that I've read things as inventive--or more inventive--than Wicked. Thank you, graduate school.

Another Slap in the Face from a Hymn

2009-09-21T09:47:00.003-06:00

"Be thou humble in thy calling, and the Lord thy God shall teach thee / To serve his children gladly with a pure and gentle love." Hymn 130

I often find myself called upon to play the "organ" in Sacrament meeting. (The "organ" is actually a digital piano--a finicky, finicky digital piano that will make organesque sounds when you push the proper button.) And so I often find myself playing preludes and postludes. I don't plan which hymns I'll be playing; instead I prefer a far more intuitive method of randomly flipping the hymn book open and playing whichever hymn my eye falls on first.

A bit of backstory here: I recently (well, recently ish) received a call to serve as my ward's family history co-chair. I teach a class, act as a consultant, and supervise a committee (which, right now, has one member aside from myself). With recent changes in temple policy, my bishopric members also hope for me to encourage the acquisition of names so we can perform baptisms for the dead at any given time of day. More specifically, they've requested I figure out how to have 75 family names prepared for a November temple excursion.

My male counterpart has essentially been a no-show, and the one remaining committee member has been a person I struggle not only to understand, but not to be annoyed with. I know that in accepting my calling, I essentially agreed to become a part of her life. And she's willing to accept responsibilities. She's enthused about family history work. And yet I've still struggled to figure out how to work with her. In fact, I've sort of avoided meeting with her lest I fall prey to hours and hours of story about her life troubles.

And then yesterday morning, I flipped to this hymn and felt roundly chastised: between my school load, my work load, and my calling load, I've felt more than a little stressed. Some of that burden lifted last week after Ward Council meeting when the temple committee co-chair pulled me aside to ask what he and his committee members could do to help; he (rightly, in my opinion) figures that the goals of our committees are intertwined.

But as I started reading through the second verse while I played, I mentally cringed more than a little. Part of the stress I feel has been directly correlated to attempting to be a one-woman committee, and I don't have to be. And it occurred to me that in making an effort to work with this sister, I have an opportunity to learn how to understand someone. Perhaps even how to love someone.

Um, May I Phone A Friend?

2009-09-19T11:33:00.003-06:00

Last night, I went with a friend and saw Up at the dollar theater. (The dollar theater where, ironically, movies cost two dollars on a Friday night. But still, that's a far cry better than paying eight. And since I dearly loved Up and I didn't pay for my ticket the first time around, I had no qualms about surrendering two dollars to see it again.) Anyway, really, the movie is neither here nor there except to say that when I came home from the movie, I heard a strange water-running noise. Our backyard, over the past few weeks, has undergone a transformation from untamed wilderness to extension of the dentist office parking lot and I thought perhaps some crazy person had turned on a hose out back to water the dirt. (You think I'm kidding; I'm not; I actually came home one day to see a construction man watering the dirt they'd piled up that day. Why? I really don't know. I didn't ask.)

Anyway, upon further investigation, I discovered that the downstairs toilet was continually making the noise a toilet makes post-flush while the tank refills. The noise was not stopping. I'd had a semi-similar experience with my toilet a couple of weeks ago, wherein I learned what the inside of our upstairs toilet tank looks like. Much to my chagrin, the toilet tank downstairs doesn't look the same...although, as I came to discover, it does operate on the same principles. Anyway, after looking at it a brief moment and subsequently deciding I was too tired to take action, I came upstairs and went to bed.

Didn't sleep very well. I could hear the stupid toilet from up here. So today, after I exercised and ate and showered, I went downstairs to investigate. And still found myself unsure of what I was looking at. So I texted a friend I felt sure would know about toilets and plumbing. No response. I called another friend--not because I had confidence in his ability to fix it, but because I hoped to high heaven he had a handyman friend who knew everything about toilets. No go. But he did, at least, know enough about the anatomy of a tank to provide a couple of things to check.

Those things were fine.

I called home to my parents to see if my dad were available; he wasn't. My mom suggested I jiggle the handle. A highly useful toilet tool, or so I've learned, because apparently jiggling the handle can help put things back into place...if they're out of place. And they weren't.

So I finally called my dad's cell. He told me what to look for. And I figured out--with his help--not only how to make the noise stop, but how to fix the entire problem. Not before, though, I called Friend #2 (the one I hadn't thought handy enough to fix the problem, but who proved not to be as informationally challenged on the topic of toilets as I thought he'd be) to whine that I couldn't see what I was looking at very well and could he please please please come be my second pair of eyes.

A few minutes later, I realized I had all but fixed the problem and I simply needed to tighten a screw. After completely finishing the job (and with nobody physically there with me, nonetheless!), I called him back to say nevermind, sorry, there was simply a screw loose. To which he replied, with a snort, "Obviously more than one!"

Nevertheless, I'd just like to take this opportunity to announce that I fixed a toilet! Also, that it's entirely plausible that I wouldn't ever be able to fix anything "on my own" without a roster of incredibly awesome people programmed into my cell phone.

The Wisdom of This Afternoon's Dessert... ?

2009-09-17T22:42:00.004-06:00

The office I work in is on the fringes of The Gateway Mall in downtown Salt Lake City, and I periodically find myself working my way down there long before my shifts begins. In my defense, it's kind of ridiculous to come home for a brief span of time and then leave again. And I often find myself unwilling to stay on campus and force myself to study (or do something even remotely study-like) after I have exhausted my brain with the work of sitting in a graduate English course. (You may think that's not brain-exhaustive; trust me, it is).

Anyway, when I find myself down at the mall with an hour and forty-five minutes before my shift begins (I almost eliminated the "f" in shift...accidentally, I swear!), I go to get lunch. Because I have this horrifically bad habit of not eating real food during the semester. Instead, I eat breakfast. And then munch periodically until I arrive home (late in the evening, I might add) and have dinner. Today I wanted Chinese food. And my fortune cookie--with that generic wisdom only fortune cookies and horoscopes have--told me that I "would take a chance on something--and win."

This has occasioned a question I'd like to address to all of you: if I should--on a whim, not because I really believe that the slip of paper inside my fortune cookie has a remotely good chance of predicting my future--act on the advice of the fortune cookie, what would you recommend I take a chance on?

Consider carefully. Then let me know!

Also, on a completely unrelated note, arriving too early proves dangerous because I too often wander around the bookstore and then talk myself into buying things. The guy at the cash register actually recognizes me! (Sad, I know. Of course, as he pointed out today when I purchased an anthology--the book type I fall prey to during the course of the semester because I can read short works, individually, as I commute--there are far worse places to be recognized: a crack house, a meth lab, the police station...)

Sometimes I'm Graceful...

2009-09-14T22:38:00.002-06:00

...but the other 90% of the time, I should earn a Klutz of the Year award. Such as today, when it rained, and I met the Puddle of Doom.

Most puddles, as I'm sure you know, are perfectly benign. Some of them are shallow, some of them are deep; some are wide, some narrow; all of them are great fun to splash around in if the circumstances are right.

But this was no benign puddle that rested in my way as I ventured to the Trax station after my American Lit class this afternoon: this puddle was not only wide, but indeterminately deep. After a careful survey, I decided that perhaps this puddle might be deceiving me. I optimistically predicted the puddle did not have much depth to it at all.

I was sort of right. The puddle did deceive me.

But it was deeper than I had predicted, not shallower.

The wedge (it's a type of shoe, people! don't raise your eyebrows at me!) on my left foot went one way, and my foot went another. My right shoe and foot magically managed to maintain a connection. But I still managed to wrench my foot somehow, even while it was in the shoe. (I know; I'm talented.)

And down went a Katie. I half expected for someone walking behind me to yell "Timber!" I admit, if they had, I would have laughed. At this stage, I'm mostly finding the experience amusing. Except when I stop to think about the pain in my left knee and my right foot.

Also, when I remember that I met a highly attractive man who asked if I was all right and I remember that all I could think to (defensively) say was: "I'm fine. Just a klutz."

I Have Finally Joined the Digital Age

2009-08-17T14:38:00.004-06:00

Once upon a time, I'll admit I felt a small sense of superiority when people would send me prompts or quizzes: answer these questions by setting your iPod on random! As I ignored them, I thought to myself how I was not enslaved to technology--and that though I blogged, Facebooked, and checked my e-mail almost neurotically too often--I was not a slave to Apple. I was just fine with my music being played on my stereo. And though I've technically had iTunes on my computer for a while, it was more as a favor to my brother than it was anything else. He, after all, has been enthralled with his iPod since he came home from his mission last July.

And then it happened: I acquired an iPod. But I'll have to admit to a small sense of superiority still, because I didn't pay for it. My dad passed his old iPod to me when he invested in his iPhone. (He's an IT director. He loves his toys. And really, after watching him watch my older brother play with his iPhone...well, we all knew it was only a matter of time.)

When my dad offered his, I accepted it in the spirit it was intended: both my dad and my younger brother, after all, felt that it was high time for me to join the digital age and listen to my music the same way everyone else does. I'll admit it comes in handy when I want to listen to my music but I don't want to disturb the others in my household.

But I'm scared, and this is why. I have a good friend who wears his iPod around campus-any time he's not in class and not at work, and he becomes completely oblivious to the world around him. He gets so absorbed in his music that he doesn't notice anything else going on. Short of a bomb threat (and I'm not so sure about that), I can't think of anything that would divert his attention away from his music once he's put his headphones in.

I'd like to be aware, personally.

And also, to be quite honest, I don't want to become so attached to my iPod that I'm like the guy I walked home behind (for part of the walk, anyway) the other day: jamming out tunelessly (although, to be honest, I can carry a tune) to my music so loudly that other passersby can't help but notice, stare, and a chuckle a little.

In short, I guess we'll see how this goes.

Also, I'll still probably ignore any prompt that tells me to set my iPod to random and then answer the questions based on the songs that crop up. I just might (might, mind you--I'm not making any promises here) feel a little bit guiltier about ignoring them.

In Which Into the Woods Causes Me to Have an Epiphany

2009-08-07T10:22:00.003-06:00

So there I sat on Tuesday night, "culturing my friend." That's what I call it, anyway. Because really, everyone should see Into the Woods just once. They'll love it or they won't, in my experience. A good friend from work despises it because it does not end neatly or tidily. I love it for exactly the same reason. And my friend hadn't seen it all, which I considered a travesty worthy of ramification. Therefore: Netflix to the rescue!

As we listened to Cinderella's "On the Steps of the Palace," I said something aloud about how I wished it were true that I could "decide not to decide." Unfortunately, I quickly pointed out, I didn't think that was allowed.

Without going into any specific details, I have found myself in quite a quandary lately. A conundrum, if you will, where I felt that I was being faced with a couple of different choices (between two situations and between two people, and no, you're not getting any more information than that) and where I continually felt as though I were constantly being torn between the two sides of each choice. At various times, all of the choices have seemed right: that, in itself, has made attempting to choose extremely difficult. To say the least.

And then, as I walked home from work yesterday, that phrase popped into my head again as the answer to my current quandary/conundrum: the very instability inherent in the choices themselves clearly demonstrates (to me, anyway) that now is not a good time to decide. Instead, I have a very strong feeling that I should live my life, keep myself busy, and do what I need to do. The choices, one way or another, will sort themselves out to a point where I can make them.

But that can't happen while I obsess about those choices. So I've stopped obsessing about them. I'm throwing myself into other things and keeping myself busy. And so far, I haven't had much time to think about them.

Hopefully, by the time I do, clarity will have entered the equation.

Awareness

2009-08-02T19:28:00.002-06:00

The theme of today's testimony meeting, if it were to be summarized in five words, would be this: "God knows and loves you." At least, that's what everyone kept feeling struck by. Or to be more specific, everyone who stood up in sacrament meeting today said something like unto it.

It's not a statement I would dispute.

But interestingly enough, that's not what I was hearing--or rather, what I was feeling--every time someone said that. Any time someone mentioned God's awareness of our difficulties, I kept feeling that I need to work on my awareness; after all, it is through other people that He usually blesses us. And I haven't noticed as much as I should have.

For someone who writes and reads as often as I do, I go through long periods of time where I'm oblivious to everything around me: there are times I barely notice the seasons changing, where I (unintentionally, usually) disregard the stress of those around me, and times where I become so focused on what I'm doing that I lose track of everything else I don't a passionate and intense interest in.

But I realized something today: I'm supposed to have a passionate and intense interest in helping those around me. I'm supposed to apply myself to the pursuit of awareness instead of oblivion. I'm supposed to become one of the instruments in the hands of God that helps other people come to realize His awareness of them.

As I grow older and as I serve in more capacities, I come to realize more and more that we are not a gospel of talking. I'm good at the talking. Far too comfortable, I think, with the talking. It's the walking that I have trouble motivating myself to do. But as Westley states in The Princess Bride when the six-fingered man pretends he will be taking him back to his ship, "We are men of action. Lies do not become us."

And when we talk as though we're walking, and we're not walking at all--well, we're liars. And hypocrites. And lies and hypocrisy do not become us, either. I'm afraid that I've been a liar and a hypocrite.

I'm going to try to stop that. I have roommates; I have visiting teachees; I have a calling; I have friends. I may not change the whole world by changing the way I look at things, but I hope that I can have the guts to work on improving my own little corner of the world.

The Book I've Most Recently Read

2009-07-24T09:09:00.002-06:00

You may remember that earlier this year, I blamed Schmetterling for making me read a funny book. A funny, funny book. Since it was hilarious, really, I'm not sure "blame" is the correct word. But really, I can't use too nice a verb: Schmet would become insufferable.

Anyway, said funny book has a sequel I recently read. Even funnier than the first. So if you haven't read Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, do me a favor and read it first before you read its sequel, Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones--because, as you'll learn in the sequel (after you've read things in a proper order, of coourse), one of the worst crimes a reader can commit is reading a series out of order.

Well, one of my co-workers at my new job (not quite so new now, as I've been there five weeks or so) asked me what I read when I job shadowed him. And he asked if I'd ever heard of Brandon Sanderson. Which started a quite animated discussion about our attachment to Alcatraz Smedry, my mention that I owned Elantris but had not yet read it... and the next thing I knew, I'd started reading it.

Elantris was slow, but I'd also promised to read Mistborn.

And let me tell you something: I read. I read quite a lot. And generally speaking, I greatly enjoy what I read. But I haven't gotten this immersed in a book since...well...probably Harry Potter. You must understand: I read my guts out during the semester, and I usually find my assigned readings interesting, but I never find myself so immersed in those books that I resent returning to reality.

Pulling myself out of Mistborn and back into reality inevitably made me mad. I hated going to work. I hated doing housework. I hated watching TV. In short, anything that drew me away from reading Mistborn seriously made me angry. I wanted to go back to Luthadel. Back to Vin, Kelsier, Dockson, Sazed, and Elend. Back to an insanely funny band of thieves who voluntarily admit they're crazy. A band of thieves who doesn't like to admit that they are, in fact, a band of revolutionaries who want to drastically change the government.

With both plot and humor in spades--not to mention a few twists I hadn't fully expected (Kelsier, the leader of the band of thieves/revolutionaries, is fond of saying that there's always another secret)--this book kept me riveted. I was almost sorry to end it. But it has two sequels, and the second is currently next to my bed, just begging me to open it.

I think I'll oblige.

TV That Makes Me Happy, Part 5

2009-07-21T21:14:00.004-06:00

Yes, I am one of many who chanced upon this show not too long after learning of its imminent demise: I watched an episode, and I wondered--"What the heck is wrong with Fox?" Yes, like most Joss Whedon fare, it's hyped. Possibly over-hyped. (I say possibly, because I'm still torn about whether something so many people inevitably end up liking actually could be overhyped...)

But Joss Whedon fare is usually hyped for a reason: this hodgepodge of genres and genre cliches is one of the wittiest shows I've seen. Though it has been billed as a "space western," among other things, it is full of many sci-fi/western/other genre cliches. In short, the show is a hodgepodge. (A good friend who recently watched the serious with me liked to joke at any screen shot that purposefully juxtaposed horses and spaceships--"It's a space western, I get it, I get it"...)

The hodgepodge does not, as one might expect, make the show become one big fat (and flat) cliched, but instead breathes untold amounts of wit, humor, and fantastic caper plots into an intriguing setting where the rebels/thieves/men of honor (depending on where they are, what they're doing, and why) attempt to pull off heists.

Be prepared to laugh. Lots. And lots.

Also, surprises will abound.

And also: if you don't like this cast, you're crazy.

In short, watch it. It deserves the hype.

A Late Father's Day Post

2009-07-17T08:19:00.003-06:00

In fact, it's rather ironic how late this is...my dad may well be the most punctual man I know. Just when we thought he might live down the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets debacle of 2002 (when he insisted that we make sure we arrive to our late-morning matinee in plenty of time, so we could get the seats we wanted...and then we arrived a full half hour before show time to a completely empty theater), my mom and I went and saw Up with him. And we were there early, too.

At least this time, he allowed us to wander around the Gateway and do a little browsing before going back to the movie theater. To be fair, he changed his excuse this time: this time, he wanted to be sure he bought our tickets in plenty of time. I showed him how to check how full a theater was online, but advised him not to buy the tickets online unless he really felt it necessary. Fees, you know. So when we left early that afternoon, my dad mentioned he wanted to be completely sure we had tickets.

When we saw the ticket display at the theater, we laughed. And laughed. There were oodles of tickets available. Dad later admitted he'd checked before we ever left the house, as well.

In all seriousness, my dad is always around. He's passing on some of his old tools to me, so neither my roommate nor I have to buy a tool set. (And so he can buy himself some new tools.) He took me out to lunch in my first couple of weeks of work. He set up the wireless Internet network at our house.

He often drives me home from family gatherings, and he always has something interesting on his mind. (The latest question he posed to me, based on something he had been reading, was this: "Is there anything that is truly a neutral choice? Anything we do that doesn't affect us one way or another, for the better or the worse?" I told him that I thought trivialities--what clothes we wear, what food we eat--they probably are neutral. But it's an intriguing question. Thoughts, anyone?)

And yet, my dad thinks he is boring. I cannot for the life of me figure out why he thinks such a thing. He reads widely--not just books, but the newspaper. And not just the Deseret News, but the Wall Street Journal, and often the online New York Times as well. He studies topically: and whenever he gets interested in something, he gets really interested and he dives right in.

Best of all, he knows when to be silly and when to be serious. And the silly moments usually outnumber those of complete somberness. He loves to make people laugh, and the older I get, the more I realize that his sense of humor (and my mom's, too) helped make our home happy. And never more serious than it needed to be.

TV That Makes Me Happy, Part 4

2009-07-14T14:39:00.005-06:00

There are few statements I could make on a daily basis that would hold true, regardless of the day--regardless of whether I was working, whether I was schooling, whether it was snowy, rainy, or sunny... One of the few subjunctive statements included in that list is this:

I would rather be in Stars Hollow.

I have never been as attached to a fictional setting as I've been to Stars Hollow. The city, home to the WB's Gilmore Girls--mother Lorelai and daughter Rory--has a small-town charm unlike anything I've ever experienced. I don't doubt that charm exists (according to pervasive rumors, series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino actually based it, to an extent, on a small Connecticut town), but a weekly dose of the Gilmores immersed me in that charm.

While the series followed the relationship between mother and daughter (and their respective romances), their tenuous relationship with Lorelai's parents, and the friends they all had...the story lines did not, as some have thought, stray toward the soapy. And this is why: all of these people are smart. Witty. Interesting. Quirky in the best possible ways.

Any given episode contains pop culture references below, indiscriminately disregarding divides between high and low culture: the episode, for example, where Rory receives her application references both "The Brady Bunch Variety Show" and Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls--in the span of less than a minute. They delight in wordplay; they read voraciously; they listen to a wide variety of music.

In short, I love this show because these are the types of people I would love to always associate with in real life. If you don't believe me, try visiting Stars Hollow someday. You may find that you, too, would rather be there.

The Sort of Person I Am

2009-07-13T21:45:00.002-06:00

Sometimes I stop and think about the sort of person I am. And then I find myself making a mental list. Then, because I'm nerdy, I find myself thinking that perhaps those who read my blog may find such a list interesting. Or maybe that's less me being nerdy and more being narcissistic--y'know, narcissistic in a way that doesn't invite foot injury (I think).

So without further ado, I am the sort of person who:

a. only dances around when nobody can see me
b. feels there is a very specific way to sing along to David Cook's "Light On"--it involves yelling very specific phrases at the top of my lungs
c. often hums whatever is stuck in my head...without realizing I'm humming till someone looks at me funny
d. immediately Googles the words "family history" when I get called to be the family history co-chair in my ward
e. knows my obligations, but sometimes willfully forgets them
f. cannot stand to have excess amounts of lint on my black pants
g. gets a drastic haircut at least once a year
h. doesn't feel ashamed in the slightest at laughing aloud when I'm reading something funny--even if I'm sitting in a public place or I'm riding public transportation
i. gets a sunburn every year, because I forget how easily I burn

And really, the first one I thought of, and the one I'll end with: I'm the sort of person who can't always remember what I ate for breakfast, but who can recite her library card number by heart.

Yet Another Reason I Read

2009-07-09T10:17:00.003-06:00

I have an incurable case of wanderlust. Even though, generally speaking, I love my life...I usually want to be somewhere else. If you've ever heard the music from Cats, I'm like Rum Tum Tugger: I'm "always on the wrong side of every door / And as soon as I'm home, then I'd like to get about."

Unfortunately, I'm also poor. I don't have the funds to even attempt a beginning at curing my wanderlust by actually going somewhere. At least, I can't sate my wanderlust by physical travels.

So I take mental travels instead. By reading, I allow my mind to take me to other places: sometimes to existing worlds, sometimes to worlds that only exist--ultimately--in my imagination. (In mine, you see, because even though the author's imagination created it, I'm the one who visualizes it...And I doubt I visualize anything exactly as the authors I read did.)

Reading allows me to forget, for a while, where I'm at. What I'm doing with my life. And allows me to wend my way through a different plot line, a more interesting time. I suppose this is why I find fiction indispensable. Fiction creates an infinite number of places for my mind to go when it wants to be anywhere but here.

TV That Makes Me Happy, Part 3

2009-07-07T10:50:00.005-06:00

Stargate:SG-1 is historic, in its own right. It ran for ten seasons on two different channels, spawned two films that followed the franchise, and killed one of its main characters off more frequently even than Joss Whedon chose to kill off Buffy Summers. (Poor Daniel Jackson, the PhD and archaeologist of the group had abominable luck with both life and with women: he died more frequently than anyone else on the show, and his women always seemed to die or become evil.) The show also made history by being the first--and only--show to write a character back into the show due to popular fan request. (Three guesses as to who came back from the dead.)

The four main characters--Jack O'Neill, Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c--with a one-season long replacement of Corin Nemec as Jonas Quinn after Daniel's character died--are a team of explores who use the stargate to journey to other planets in search of alien technologies that will help the US government. O'Neill, formerly retired, returns to the program after his son accidentally kills himself with his father's gun and his wife leaves. Carter, a scientist from the Air Force, provides scientific know-how. Jackson is an archaeologist/anthropologist/linguist, and Teal'c is an alien.

It does not shame me at all to admit I own all ten seasons, because this show never failed to be interesting and it never failed to amuse: nary an episode goes by without a subtle or not-so-subtle nod to sci-fi conventions (Col. Mitchell, who eventually heads SG-1, at one point says: "That was alternate reality. This is alternate dimension. Hell, all I need is a good time travel adventure and I've scored the SG-1 trifecta.") In addition, Stargate pays homage to Star Trek, Star Wars, The Simpsons, and a number of other pop culture icons.

A friend once observed that, obviously, the same thing must happen episode after episode: the team visits a planet, runs into difficulties, cracks a few jokes, resolves the problems, and then comes home. While this may be true, not all of the storylines are self-contained...and any mythology buff will be delighted to notice the mythological threads--from Arthurian legend to Egyptian gods--woven into the stories.

And, as the creators of the show observed in one of the commentaries (I don't remember from which episode, and I don't want to look it up, so you'll just have to take my word for it), Stargate: SG-1 did not survive for so long because it did well as a sci-fi drama. (I snicker, I admit, any time I hear people call it a drama...) It survived and thrived because it was a comedy masquerading as a sci-fi drama.

After all, all of the most interesting TV shows are like all the most interesting people: they refuse to take themselves seriously.

July 4th (Almost) Thoughts

2009-07-03T21:33:00.002-06:00

Last year, I wondered where I would find myself this year. And I find myself home. Not at my house in Salt Lake, but at my parents' in Centerville. Centerville usually does their fireworks show the night before the 4th; it's likely they don't want to attempt competition with the show that usually comes from Lagoon on the 4th.

We wandered around the booths, per usual. And the city festivities followed what seems to be one of those seminal unwritten (yet cardinal) rules of such events: the entertainment must be a cover band of some sort.

Since my younger brother has drifted to California to install security systems for the summer, I found myself once again in that lovely position of being the only single person in the midst of couples and children. And felt, for the umpty billionth time, as though my life is in limbo.

I wonder if I'll every actually feel free on a July 4th...

A Story About Walking to Work, or I Am A Big Fat Narcissist

2009-06-30T22:13:00.003-06:00

Now that I'm gainfully employed once again, I find myself wanting to walk to my job on nice days. My job is located several blocks away from where I live. Many, many blocks. 14ish or so. I'm trying to count in my head. Anyhow, when the weather looks delightful, I usually don a pair of flats (so I don't murder my feet by trying to walk in heels).

Yesterday the weather looked delightful, so I took a pair of brown flats (that had never before caused me grief or pain) out of my closet and slipped them on. They were perfect, because they coordinated with the brown accent stripe of my red dress.

Then I proceeded to walk. And walk. And walk some more. The longer I walked, the more often I noticed people looking twice at me. Periodically, I would feel something cold and wet hit the back of my right leg, but I just assumed I'd walked by sprinklers then.

I kept walking. People kept looking.

As I rambled down South Temple, several people honked. And because I am the narcissist I am, I thought, "Man, I hate it when people do that. But I do look good in this dress." Then, as I stopped to wait for a signal so I could cross the street, I happened to glance down at my right foot.

And was dismayed to realize I'd rubbed a good deal of the back of my heel raw. Not only that, but that periodic cold wetness I felt? Most definitely not sprinklers. Nope. It was my own blood. After realizing the situation with my right foot, I looked down at my left foot to find that it was having the opposite issue: the blood had run downward into the back of my shoe until it had started to run over. (Yes, my shoe ranneth o'er)

Once I arrived at work, I calmly requested a couple of Band-Aids and nicely asked that they call my manager so he'd know I'd arrived on time, but I'd been held up by the teeny tiny detail that the back of my feet were bleeding like crazy and I needed to please take care of it, thank you. And then I washed, cleaned, and bandaged.

They have stayed safely covered since then, and I have learned my lesson: next time someone honks at me, I will check myself for injuries before congratulating myself on how good I look.

TV That Makes Me Happy, Part 2

2009-06-30T09:07:00.005-06:00

Some stories never get old. People do not tire of their different incarnations. (Usually...) They carry on through years and years; sometimes they are told traditionally, and sometimes the storytellers see fit to tweak the original details. These types of stories, I think, may be the only things that have shelf lives longer than the shelf lives of Twinkies.

One of these stories, and today's topical show: BBC's Robin Hood.

I watched this show, from its beginning, back in the day when I lived at home and I had access to cable. (Specifically, to BBC America.) Its reviews were glowing; although it contains echoes of the original story, this Robin Hood isn't (to use a cliche) your father's Robin Hood. He's not much like the Kevin Costner incarnation from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, nor is he much like the Cary Elwes incarnation from Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

This Robin, originally a landed noble, has come back from the Crusades to an England much different than the one he remembers. And this Robin makes a choice to become an outlaw. While he could reclaim his title and lands, he also has a fine-tuned sense of justice and cannot stand to live in wealth while people around him suffer. Ergo, he becomes an outlaw and forms his "gang" of men.

His right-hand man, Much, fought with him in the Holy Land. And both of them have come back different men: the show recognizes the effects of PTSD anyone who has fought in a war may have suffered. And this Robin Hood, with his fine-tuned sense of justice, has come back wondering whether the Crusades themselves are justified: he wanted to understand his enemy, so he's read the Qur'an.

Maid Marian is delightfully anachronistic as a feminist character who has become independent; while her almost-betrothed fought abroad, she has been fighting (in secret, of course--she's not stupid) for the people at home. When he returns, she is far from ready to fall swooning into his arms and madly declare her love. (Instead, she tells him when he first starts fighting the sheriff, that he's being stupid. And she's right.)

But enough background. This is why I like this show. The Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne are just the sort of deliciously campy villains that you love to hate. (And, in the sheriff's instance, that you will often find yourself laughing at.) It plays out much like a traditional serial, with the exception of the anachronisms. (Which the show doesn't try to hide, something I find incredibly charming. The show isn't out to stay true to nitpicky details.)

The bad guys wear black. The good guys wear earth colors. The bad guys tend to use swords; the good guys rely first on bows and arrows, staffs, and axes. Nary an episode passes by without Robin delivering several cheeky one-liners and a few wonderfully bad puns. And Guy of Gisborne is delightfully complex: while he looks black and greasy (and I do mean black and greasy...the Sheriff frequently jokes that Guy should bathe himself and change his clothes periodically; Guy always sports greasy dark locks and a suit made entirely of black leather), he occasionally shows surprising spurts of humanity.

Very few episodes end in a surprising fashion, but I've found that the older I get, the far more I'm interested in how a show reaches its resolution. Not whether a show reaches resolution. And this show twists just enough in surprising ways that I can't help smiling.

And it's not just Robin, Marian, Much, Guy, and the Sheriff who are worthwhile characters. The other members of the gang: Little John (who wields a staff), Will (a handy carpenter who wields and ax), Djaq (a Saracen woman who joins them partway through the first season), and Allan (a cheeky thief who starts most of his sentences with the phrase "I'm not bein' funny, but...") each have their fair share of comedic moments (a personal favorite of mine is an exchange between Allan and the always-so-serious Will when Allan asks Will if he--Will--is thinking what Allan is thinking and Will doesn't hesitate at all before saying, "No. I don't think like you.") and of dramatic moments (a woman in camp, especially one as enterprising as Djaq, leads to problematic love triangles).

I readily acknowledge it's campy. But it's campy in the best way possible. Trust me. You'll see.

TV That Makes Me Happy, Part 1

2009-06-23T10:22:00.010-06:00

I've made an executive decision: for the next few Tuesdays, I will write a recurring series about TV That Makes Me Happy. To be more specific, individual shows that make me happy. I suppose, if I feel an urge, I could morph it after I've finished discussing TV that makes me happy into discussing TV that makes me annoyed, angry... or even TV that I find downright stupid. But that won't be nearly as fun for me. So I think I'll stick with TV that makes me happy.

To begin, I'll mostly be discussing TV you can find on DVD. (So, you know, after reading what makes me happy, you can add it to your Netflix queue. Or if you don't have Netflix, you can rent it. Or if you don't want to rent it--and you live near me and are reliable and trustworthy and won't keep my DVDs for twenty million years--so you can borrow it from me.) Because I'll be discussing TV that makes me happy no matter how many times I view the episodes.

Today's show: Psych.

The basic premise, once you've heard it, sounds completely ridiculous. In the pilot, Shawn Spencer (James Roday), who has called in one too many police tips, uses his hyperobservance to convince the police department he is a psychic so they won't arrest him. (Ergo, the first season tag line: fake psychic. real detectives.) Spencer has a track record: though incredibly intelligent, he has the attention span of a gnat (which, honestly, may be unfair to gnats) and has worked several jobs "for the experience." Or, in certain instances, "for the free hot dogs."

But as ridiculous as the premise may sound, it translate into a funny, funny television show that--deep down--is part cop show, part parody, part buddy comedy at its very best. In the pilot episode, Shawn Spencer ropes his buddy Gus (Dule Hill) into becoming his crime-solving partner, citing their desire--ever since they were eight!--of opening a private detective agency.

Each week introduces a new police case that Shawn and Gus manage to sneak into; in the end, they inevitably end up getting paid. Shawn and Gus, together, piece together details of the crime: as they reveal information, Shawn inevitably finds a "psychic" way of expressing their findings to the police. All of his comic "psychic" shenanigans are usually hilarious physical comedy (a particular first-season favorite involves him dancing a ridiculous "Dazzle and Stretch" routine around the police chief's office as he supposedly channels a cat telling them that a supposed murder victim wouldn't have killed herself, since she was due to open in a play entitled--you got it--Dazzle and Stretch).

But the rest of the cast--Maggie Lawson as Juliet, Lassiter's more trusting and believing partner, Kirsten Nelson as the sometimes skeptical but usually won-over Chief Vicks, and Corbin Bernsen as Henry Spencer, Shawn's retired-cop father who shares the love-hate-sometimes-vague-amusement-and-surprise relationship with his son--all play their characters with flair and surprisingly straight faces. (I'd be a rubbish actor; this show is so well-scripted, I'd be laughing every other line I attempted to deliver.)

And as I mentioned, the relationships are believable and they provide some of the best moments: flashbacks assist in the establishment of the long-time nature of the relationship between Shawn and Gus, and between Shawn and his father...and they also illustrate why the main character in this show inevitably proves so funny: while he has grown more intelligent, he steadfastly refuses to completely grow up. (Although by the end of the third season, he has made strides toward growing up--not so many strides that the show isn't funny, but enough strides to make his character that much more human.)

I don't promise that you'll learn any life lessons by watching this show; but if you find any of the following funny--clever cultural references, a willingness to mock anything and everything (including, periodically, it's own premise), sarcasm, wit, two grown men jumping up and down like little girls when they solve a case, comedic pratfalls, spastic movements of the best variety--then this show will make you laugh.

This show airs on the cable TV channel USA (when it's airing; since it's a cable show, it has an airing schedule that generally starts mid-summer, breaks off for a few week in January, and then runs roughly February-ish through April-ish...if I'm remembering correctly). Anyway, the channel (which also airs Monk) prides itself on being a channel with "Characters welcome."

And I, for one, think these particular characters should be welcome in everyone's home.

Princess Band-Aids and Prayer

2009-06-21T20:57:00.003-06:00

Yesterday my family gathered for Father's Day festivities. And since I don't drive, my older sister generously offered me a ride home. Anyway, my almost-three-year-old niece has a small blister on her toe, and not too long after we had entered the freeway, she asked: "Mommy, when we get home, can I have a princess Band-Aid?" My sister replied that they would see about the Band-Aid when they got home.

A few minutes later and a few decibels louder, my niece repeated the question: "Mommy, can I have a princess Band-Aid?" Again, my sister told her daughter that they'd see about it when they got back home.

A few more minutes and a few more decibels louder, we heard the question a third time. Megan repeated her answer again. To be honest, I have no idea whether or not my niece received the much-requested Band-Aid by the time she got home.

Someone mentioned prayer today in church, and it suddenly dawned on me: sometimes when my prayers go unanswered, I do to Heavenly Father the same thing my niece was attempting to do with my sister last night. I think if I pray longer, louder, harder, or more earnestly, that I somehow might speed the process of getting an answer to prayers.

Whether or not my niece received her Band-Aid didn't matter much until she got home; it's not as though my sister keeps Band-Aids in the car. Heck, it's not as though my sister even knew which types of Band-Aids she had left at home. The answer needed to be postponed to fit my sister's timing.

In the same way, prayers go unanswered until the answers fit into Heavenly Father's timing. And I just need to remember: sometimes I don't need that Band-Aid as badly as I think I do. Sometimes the blister, the scrape, or the perceived injury is not in need of the quick fix I want. Sometimes I have to wait to see if I even need the Band-Aid as much as I think I do.

And I need to remember that He always gives me a Band-Aid exactly at the time I need it.

A Guide to Romance--As Learned from the Bard

2009-06-18T09:43:00.003-06:00

Once upon a time, a naive first-year master's student (okay, fine...me) decided to take a Shakespeare class because a) she had never taken such a class and b) she likes Shakespeare. On those rare occasions she found the money to travel down to the Shakespearean Festival and take in a few plays, she always enjoyed them.

(So, incidentally, did her family. Switching out of the third person now: I remember my dad intensely worrying about understanding A Comedy of Errors the first time we traveled southward. But as I explained to him, Shakespeare done well doesn't sound like archaic language at all--the actors speak it so well and so naturally--and also include all sorts of appropriate comic shenanigans to match the dialogue--that the audience members forget they're watching Shakespeare. They come out of the play, and realize--voila!--they understood pretty much everything. I doubt the same goes for Shakespeare done poorly, but I've never seen a bad Shakespearean production with bad actors. I'm sure they exist somewhere. Maybe one day I'll try to see a really bad Shakespearean company just so I can compare and contrast.)

Anyway, my class--unfortunately--may have temporarily turned me against Sir William. I didn't want it to! Suffice it to say: that class may well rank among my least favorite classes of all time. After I established that I wouldn't be speaking much in that class, I started a list to pass the time. So here you have it.

All of the Different Ways for a Woman to Catch a Man: Shakespeare-Style

1. Cross dress
1a. Pretend to be your brother...which obviously involves cross-dressing
1b. Pretend to be a manservant
2. Mouth off
3. Argue (which could, I suppose, be a subset of "mouth off"...but not always)
4. Arranged marriage
4a. If you're clever, you can influence the arrangement
4a1. The cleverest always manage to get a king's say-so
4b. If you're clever, you can persuade an unfaithful arranged spouse to stick around
4c. If you're not clever, you'll probably opt for dying instead
5. Ironically enough, be clever
6. Doesn't hurt to be witty, either
7. Act as a crucial part of a treaty/alliance
8. Enter a drug-like trance

And there the list stops. Perhaps, someday, I'll add on.

Or better yet, you can!

P.S. I'm pretty sure I have another list about guaranteed ways for the men of Shakespearean plays not to impress the women they woo. I'm relatively certain number one on the list, in all caps, is BAD POETRY. . . Funny how some things never change . . .

The New Routine

2009-06-17T21:05:00.003-06:00

Time flies when you're having fun.

Or, you know, once you get a job and you start working again. Even though my training only happens for four hours in the afternoons, I forget how quickly time can pass. I've been good about keeping a routine since Monday. I wake up. I exercise. I eat a lovely breakfast.

Then I shower and get ready. After that, I do what needs doing. What needs doing varies on a day-to-day basis: invariably, I clean something. I edit something. And then, I find that it's time for work. After working for four hours, I come home to discover that I'm just as tired as I might be from working a full day.

On the bright side, my morning hours are occupied: I don't bum around the house. I don't feel as though I'm killing time until I leave. On the slightly more dark side, I'm all out of energy by the time I get home. Unless, like last night, I hit a second wind around ten and I start doing oblique crunches while I'm talking to my roommate. And then, once I tire of that, I decide to do some silly kicks.

Yes, yes, yes: I'm weird. And this schedule will become even more interesting once school starts again. But I just wanted to announce: I'm using my time wisely. And I'm proud of it.

Let's see how long it lasts.

A Recent Exchange with My Parents

2009-06-12T17:18:00.002-06:00

Last Thursday and Friday, I spent some time with the parents. Delightful time, really. Good meals. Good fun. Good movie. (We saw Up. And if you see it and don't enjoy it, please pay attention to what I'm about to say to you: you have no heart.)

Anyway, we discussed my master's program at least twice. One of the conversations was rather short, i.e. my dad asking "What happens when you're done?" and me shrugging rather noncommittally. I've decided I don't have to make any decisions in that regard just yet. I aim to make it at least halfway through this coming fall semester before I even acknowledge a future beyond my master's degree.

The other discussion was more a reminder. My mom, it seems, felt a hint of disappointment when I didn't walk for my undergraduate degree. (But seriously: December. 600-ish people. Or more. I hadn't the patience. Besides, they mail you the diploma, anyway. My mom would shudder if I told her I never framed mine, and I'm relatively certain it's occupying a very minute amount of space in one of my desk drawers.) Anyway, when I was accepted to my program, I promised her (I italicize, because I felt compelled to promise rather vehemently) that I would allow her the delight of seeing me walk then.

So she reminded me that, come next spring, I would be walking for her. And my dad said they'd be sure to cry.

I replied: "Sure. Mom will cry because she's proud. You'll turn to whoever you're sitting next to and cry that you wished I'd gotten an MBA instead of an M.A. in English."

Did I Move to Seattle?

2009-06-10T15:33:00.002-06:00

One of the perks of living in a desert should be that its residents need not cope with an overabundant amount of moisture; after all, it's a desert. Not, mind you, that I don't remember the drought years. The years where we were required to carefully monitor our bath water usage, where we were severely scolded if we left the sink running a second too long...

But I'm wondering where, exactly, my June is. Where is my sunshine? Where is my late spring and my sprouting sunflowers and my happy, happy brightness? Where is it?

It's been raining here. Rather a lot. And while, with the best of 'em, I dearly love a good rainstorm...well, you know what they say about too much of a good thing.

I want my Utah back!

The Extra Season in Utah's Roster

2009-06-03T10:57:00.004-06:00

The influx has started.

Every year, slightly after Memorial Day, my mail multiplies and replenishes. It's not bills; I don't annually feel obligated to receive myriads of catalogs; and it certainly isn't personal letters. (Does anyone actually write personal letters anymore? I write notes, but I usually write them to people I can just slip them to. Of course, I've always thought of postage as a hassle, and the range of communication options that are available to me only reinforce this particular idea.)

No, I'll tell you why my mail multiples and replenishes: it's the cost (well, to the senders, really... but I do have to look at the mail) of living as a young, single woman in Utah. I tend to have young, single friends. And they do not stay single (or young, for that matter) forever.

As I observed last week, Utah has five seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter, and wedding.

To be fair, I'm unsure whether wedding season should count as one entity or two: the shower invitations, announcements, and solicitations for gifts peak during all of the summer months. But they also peak in December, when people decide they'd like a Happy Wedding! to go with their Merry Christmas!es. Also, to be fair, people get married then because most of them--the sane ones, anyway--are not usually attending summer classes.

Some people enjoy this extra season Utah has gifted its residents with: they purposefully take long walks by Temple Square, they study various brides to see what their dresses look like, note what sorts of poses the photographers of wedding parties encourage... Don't get me wrong. I am not one of the people who does such things. But I know those who have. Those who do. Those who live vicariously.

Meanwhile, I sort through my mail. I put the important announcements on the fridge. To help me not to forget that I actually care about attending the festivities. I find that keeping reminders near food is a wise, wise idea.

And then I carry on my single life, wondering how much paper I recycle every time I put another announcement I don't care about into the recycling.

You Don't Want Me for A Yentl

2009-05-21T15:37:00.004-06:00

I am all too easily amused. With a sometimes devious sense of humor and a nigh-unending supply of sarcasm, it doesn't take much to keep me entertained. To wit: I like to choose men for my roommate when we are out and about. She knows I am never serious; she knows I take great delight in finding the most inappropriate and strange looking men I have ever seen; she knows I find it highly difficult to resist any impulse I have toward snarkiness.

Anyway, she told me yesterday that I most definitely not allowed to choose her future eternal companion.

Of course, yesterday I called her back into the living room so she could hear the bluegrass group from across the street. (They're good!) And I told her about them: how I was unsure if the whole group lived in that particular place, but how I was sure that the banjo player lived there because I often seem him out on his porch. And then, because I'm me, I told her that the banjo player doesn't look too shabby.

Please, let it be duly noted, this is not a lie. The banjo player doesn't look too shabby. A little fashion-challenged, perhaps, since I swear all of his shirts are plaids. Plaids that all basically have the same cut. Anyway, I told her that maybe I would sometime approach him to say how much his mad banjo skills impress me. And then to tell him he and my roommate should totally go out, because she would be able to appreciate his mad banjo skills even better than I would!

And then she had to go and interrupt my little fantasy by telling me that I am not allowed to choose the men she dates. Considering that my previous track record includes bald-headed motorcycle men, an older hippie man selling tie-dye, and innumerable tattooed and mohawked people... I'd think a banjo player would look good in comparison.

Better yet, I think he has a friend who plays the ukelele... :)

Summer Means Bluegrass

2009-05-20T21:59:00.003-06:00

The lovely weather this last few weeks has brought our neighbors outside. The people who live across the street and a couple of houses down from us are part of a bluegrass group. Sometimes when I walk to the store, I see the banjo player stretched out on the porch. Just him. Strumming. Sometimes humming. I don't usually hear him singing; I don't know that I've heard anyone from the group sing.

But it's a beautiful thing to open my window and hear twangy (but not too twangy) strings drift into my living room. It's a wonderful accompaniment for whatever I'm reading. So far, I've discovered it complements all of the following: Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, Hugh Nibley's Approaching Zion, Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue, and Cornelia Funke's Inkheart.

I also have a sneaking suspicion it will bring an added level of enjoyment to poetry reading as well, but I haven't tested that particular theory yet...

Thoughts Related to the Relief Society Lesson...

2009-05-17T20:45:00.003-06:00

When I requested that the sisters sitting on the far right-hand side of the Relief Society room move so that I could see their faces, I explained I was half-blind. I do believe my words were something like, "And since my right eye is utterly and completely blind, would you mind moving over to the center of the room so I could see your beautiful faces?"

I wasn't being patronizing, and I wasn't lying. But before they moved, a couple of the girls looked at each other with expressions that--to me--clearly said: "Couldn't she think of a better reason for moving us?"

A couple of sisters didn't move. I decided not to push my luck, and to do my best to look around the entire room after I asked questions.

And then I plunged forward with my lesson.

It took a couple of unexpected turns; that's how I knew it went well. But not such unexpected turns that we went off track. Good unexpected turns. The type of unexpected turns inspired participators have.

Anyway, I'm still convinced my approach for the lesson was as necessary for me as for anyone else: in a lesson about responding to persecution with faith and courage, I found myself emphasizing happiness. Happiness amidst trials. And I found myself exploring links between happiness, faith, and trials.

Faith and trials, for example, were easy to link. The gospel is full of cycles, and faith and trials form their own tidy little cycle: faith sustains us during our trials, while trials handled properly are ways of strengthening our faith. And happiness, it seems, is an almost-required attitude. No matter our circumstances. But happiness seems especially required during trials.

Happiness in the midst of difficulty proves we have the right perspective: not because we're absolutely delighted to be metaphorically whipped, stomped on, thrown into the fire, or otherwise (metaphorically) abused... but because we're absolutely delighted to experience something that will help us become more perfect beings.

To be frank, I have always been the type of congregation member who rolls my eyes at a speaker who proudly proclaims that she (or he) is grateful for her (or his) trials. I've never been grateful for my trials themselves. But I am grateful for what I have become by experiencing my trials; I'm grateful for lessons learned, for character shaped, for perspective granted, for faith built, for relationships with Deity strengthened. I'm grateful for the end product. But I'm not--and to be honest, I don't know if I ever will be--grateful for the agonizing process that creates the end product.

But here's a thought, paraphrased from President Eyring's talk on adversity from last General Conference: our trials prove how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love us. They love us so much that they tailor-make our individual trials to help us on our way to becoming the most perfect selves we can be. They love us so much they are willing to invest themselves in all of the details of our lives.

My Mom is Awesome, or A Late Mother's Day Post

2009-05-16T08:07:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, a member of my ward's Relief Society presidency asked if I would be willing to teach a Relief Society lesson. This Sunday. Tomorrow. I said yes.

And then, I promptly panicked. (Paniced? No matter how I spell that particular conjugation, it just looks wrong...) Not because teaching intimidates me. It doesn't, really. Like my dad, I inherited an actual liking for standing in front of people and talking. Alas, unlike my dad, I don't have the same innovative genius for object lessons. But maybe that comes with time.

Anyway, I promptly started to worry, because I'm teaching a lesson from the Joseph Smith manual. I've never taught from that particular manual before. In my former ward, I taught lessons from General Conference talks, and those were much more loosely structured. Or so it seemed.

And here we come to why my mom is awesome: she's totally willing to discuss these types of things with me. And she's very good at talking me down from irrational worries. (E.g. "The only way your lesson will be really bad is if you don't prepare at all and if you're the only one talking.") She spent a goodly amount of time talking to me, pointing out that I had been taught the same lesson last Sunday when I went to the home ward and that I now knew how not to teach it* (which is an absolutely true statement of fact), referring different Conference talks to me, mentioning a couple of thoughts she'd had when she first read the lesson... she did what any good tutor and helper would do. She didn't tell me how to present my lesson, but she provided me with a lot of places to look. A lot of things to think about. And the confidence in myself I needed to know that teaching from the manual didn't have to be terribly different from the way I taught Conference talks.

My mom is a pro at this: I've met few people in this world who are better than she is at building people. Particularly her children. And while I grant that she's biased about her children, and she sees many reasons and knows many ways to build us up because we're her children, I'm grateful for that particular talent of hers. So yeah, she's pretty much awesome.

*I felt very validated when she mentioned this. Last week, we both meant to ask each other if we understood what the teacher was doing with her lesson...what points she was making, etc...and we both forgot. But we remembered when we were talking yesterday. Yet another way, it would seem, we are a little bit alike. More than a little, depending on who you ask. But when people say I'm like her, I consider it one of the best compliments I can get.

Job Hunting. Again.

2009-05-13T22:41:00.004-06:00

And now it has come back to this: I am, once again, searching for employment. A job that will, at the very least, pay the rent this summer. I expect and need nothing more than that, really. I periodically looked during the second to last week of the semester, which is likely why I had to spend the entirety of the last week of the semester knuckling under and writing brilliant papers. (Okay, okay. I'll stop lying. I spent that time writing adequate papers that might have had semi-brilliant moments.)

Anyway, I've now re-immersed myself in a world full of applications and interviews and "skill sets." (I am, I've been told, "a good skill set"...more about that in some other post. If I feel like it.) And it's even more discouraging to immerse myself in this environment in an economically heinous time. The applicant pool, it seems, has grown several feet deeper since the last time I swam in it.

But nevertheless, I have decided to trudge on. To keep applying for positions. And to try to maintain as cheery an attitude as I can. (It was not easy to be cheery a couple of days ago. Slowly getting easier though...)

Veni, vidi...

2009-05-07T13:48:00.003-06:00

When it comes to my first year of graduate school: let's be perfectly frank. I don't feel that I can say "I came, I saw, I conquered." I did come. I very much saw. But I don't feel as though I conquered my first year of classes. Or maybe I did and I won't realize until later.

But this past two semesters has nevertheless been a learning experience. So without further ado, lessons I learned about graduate school this year:

1. Your professors want to help you. They don't want to sit back and laugh diabolically as you fail. At least, most of them don't.

2. Everyone suffers from feelings of inadequacy. None of you are stupid; the school would not have accepted you if you were stupid.

3. Because everyone suffers from feelings of inadequacy, it is highly advisable to befriend other students. Almost everyone feels as though they're drowning. And almost everyone feels better about that feeling when they realize almost everyone else feels the same.

4. Investing yourself in a paper results in a better end product with a better grade and better comments.

5. Investing yourself in a paper also means starting said paper in advance. Even if you only start thinking about it in advance.

6. If you want to fly under the radar--even for a day--sit as far away as possible from the argumentative attention-getters. If you don't want to fly under the radar, assert yourself.

7. Conferences are wonderful, wonderful things; they introduce you to people every bit as nerdy as you are whose eyes don't glaze over when you talk about your pet projects and your favorite areas of study.

8. Sometimes, you just need to step away from the homework. Don't even back away slowly. Just run, run, run. As fast you can.

9. Retaining the ability to talk with people outside your program keeps you well-rounded. More or less.

10. Just give up on your sanity. Provided you had any to begin with. You did, after all, apply to grad school...

Artistic Abandonment

2009-04-27T22:21:00.005-06:00

The more I write, the more I find I identify with Leonardo da Vinci: "Art is never finished, only abandoned." I make no claim about whether any of my writing qualifies as "art," but I can attest that everything I write never gets finished. It gets abandoned. I've written about this recently--how, when it comes to my writing, I am a bad mother. The sort of mother who throws her paper-children out into the world--sometimes without thinking about whether she has corrected their most egregious errors, about whether she has given them the proper vocabulary to express their ideas. The sort of mother, in short, who tosses her words out into the word and often leaves them to fend for themselves.

Inevitably, of course, my professors return the "children" I write for their classes--sometimes covered with pen in a good way (positive commentary, pleasant surprise) and sometimes covered with pen in a bad way (commentary about their utter confusion about what, exactly, I may be arguing, unpleasant surprise). And I am discovering that a part of graduate school involves revisiting some of these "children." In rereading them, I discover some of them didn't fare so badly when they were sent into the world. And others fared badly indeed.

The ones that do not fare badly have one characteristic in common: I enjoyed creating them. And it showed. The others? Well, the opposite. Obviously. Despite being a week shy of successful completion of a whole year of my grad program, I have not yet discovered how to invest myself in topics I don't care about. Perhaps the coming two semesters will teach me something in that regard.

Because apparently, when I care, I don't abandon my unfinished works too soon.

This post is part of the Blue-Beta Blog Coordination, a continuing series of content coordinated by theme or motif with posts from Confuzzled of I Keep Wondering, Gromit of The Dancing Newt, Redoubt of Redoubt Redux, Third Mango of Funkadelic Freestylings of Another Sort, Yarjka of Sour Mayonnaise, and Xanthippe of Let’s Save Our Hallmark Moment. This week's theme: 'Finished'.

Propriety and Impropriety

2009-04-13T20:55:00.004-06:00

I can think of a handful of reasons my parents used to supply about why I should do what they told me. "It builds character." "I asked you to." And the perennial parental favorite: "Because I said so." There were more, but interestingly enough, when my mom told the child-me not to misbehave and I'd ask why, she invariably gave the same answer: "It's not becoming."

One day I got plucky, and I asked, "It's not becoming what?"

She replied, "It's not becoming for a lady."

"But what if I don't want to be a lady?"

Desire had nothing to do with it. Proper was proper, improper was improper. Or rather, improper was unbecoming. Eventually, I settled on a compromise that often seems not uncommon to other members of my family as well. I try to be as proper as possible in public: it's proper to be quiet in a library, it's proper to be kind and polite to the people serving you in any capacity (including, but not limited to, cashiers, clerks, waitresses, and salespeople). It's proper to speak when spoken to.

It's improper, in public, to act too terribly undignified--although being charming and quirky is allowed. It's a tough tightrope to cross, but it's manageable. It's improper to talk too loudly, carry on a terribly long (non-emergency-related) cell phone call when in the presence of other people. It's improper to ignore people once they've said your name.

My compromise is this: I will be as proper and polite as I have been taught when I'm dead center in the public eye, when I'm out and about, and when I really don't know who might be watching.

But I will be improper as I please once I get home. Propriety, after all, becomes more fun when I treat it as I would clothes: when I try it on for auspicious occasions. And then, when I unceremoniously dump it on the floor of my bedroom as soon as I can pull it off.

Some Things in Life Are Bad, They Can Really Make You Mad...

2009-04-09T22:22:00.004-06:00

Periodically, I find I have to remind myself that I choose my attitude. In the midst of long, frustrating, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, it becomes all too easy to blame my tendency to slip into a dark blue funk on my external environment. On my current struggles in the land of academia. On anything, in short, but me choosing to let my environment and struggles drive me into a dark place. (Metaphorically speaking. But also, physically speaking. Sometimes I come home from school and crawl into bed while pulling the covers over my head.)

Funny how songs always seem to speak to me at times like this. But it has been a particularly trying week, and I felt a random urge to listen to the Spamalot soundtrack last night as I tidied my room up a bit. Mostly, I just wanted something to laugh at. But "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" reminded me of a recent resolution I made about being optimistic.

Needless to say, I haven't been the best about it lately. One of the lines in the song states that "Life's a piece of shit when you look at it," and while I don't think the line always applies, there are definitely times I feel that it's true. But not as true as the lines that actually struck me most: "If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten--and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing."

As I hurled things with a vengeance in my garbage can while dancing around to the songs, I realized it had been a while since I had done that: since I had taken time, on my own, to smile and dance and sing for no audience but myself. To act like an idiot for my own benefit instead of for the benefit of others.

It made me feel better. Less mad. Less liable to let the things in my life make me swear and curse.

Now, I Don't Normally Like Being Touched . . .

2009-04-06T21:17:00.004-06:00

. . . but sometimes, sometimes, sometimes . . .

I wish that someone (and I should probably qualify: someone who doesn't weird me out, someone I know well, someone who knows me well) would recognize how completely overwhelmed I feel without needing to be told.

And sometimes, sometimes, sometimes . . .

I wish that recognition would result in a hug.

Conferencing It Up

2009-04-04T00:58:00.004-06:00

So the title refers, I suppose, to two things: I'm greatly looking forward to General Conference, which will be starting approximately nine hours from right now. And also, I presented at my first academic conference on Thursday. Symposium, actually. Same/difference. But I'm glad to announce that I presented a paper to a wider academic community than those kind souls who currently take the same classes as I do. And I'm even gladder to announce that my paper was well received. They laughed in the right spots, were attentive to what I said, and asked highly intelligent questions about my paper topic.

I want to do it again. Right now. Mostly because it's just a great new way of learning interesting things and speaking with new people. Stepping outside of my comfort zone in the best possible way. I'm not going to lie: it's nice to have people ask me to talk more about a novel that is quickly threatening to become a pet project of mine. Without further ado, here's what I presented. (And if you ever decide to read the novel, beware: profanity abounds and there are mentions of sex.) It's titled "House of Leaves: How the Fictional Can Become Its Own Reality." I'll even italicize it for you.

In a notable and often quoted passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Thoreau discusses a moment when he was hoeing beans—how, at a certain point, he became unsure whether he was hoeing the beans or the beans were hoeing him. Readers of Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel, House of Leaves, may feel much the same. By the time they finish, many readers will likely wonder whether they read the book or the book read them.

House of Leaves ironically comments on its own genre-slipping nature when it describes the genre-slipping nature of The Navidson Record, a fictional documentary central to its plot. “If finally catalogued as a gothic tale, contemporary urban folkmyth, or merely a ghost story, as some have called it, the documentary will, sooner or later, slip the limits of any one of those genres. Too many important things in The Navidson Record jut out past the borders” (3). As a hypertext of a novel, House of Leaves continually expands and informs its plot through various interactions with its readers. Notably, readers are required to become physically involved in the process of reading the text; in doing so, readers occupy a position both inside and outside the narrative. This novel demands that readers become both intellectually and physically engaged. It also requires readers to make choices—choices that ultimately determine not whether the plot will bleed from fiction into reality, but that determine the degree that fiction will bleed into reality.

Five different narratives are simultaneously at play in this novel: The Navidson Record, a fictional documentary about the spooky house inhabited by Will and Karen Navidson and their children; Zampano’s text, which recounts and amends details about the making of The Navidson Record; Johnny Truant’s footnoted text, which both amends the Zampano record and tells Johnny’s story of how Zampano’s text begins infecting his thoughts; and notes from the editors which translate foreign-language passages and periodically comment on their interactions with Johnny Truant (interactions which significantly happen by mail—not in person or by telephone). The fifth narrative, of course, is the narrative constructed by readers themselves.

Readers must first choose which narrator (aside from themselves, of course) they believe and the extent to which they believe them. This choice is illustrated early in the text when Johnny admits that he has altered parts of Zampano’s manuscript in order to better correlate with his own narrative. Karen and Will Navidson conclude a brief conversation when Karen mentions the water heater has been acting up. In the footnote Johnny Truant amends to the conversation, he recounts a story about water heater problems of his own. “Now I’m sure you’re wondering something. Is it just coincidence that this cold water predicament of mine also appears in this chapter? Not at all. Zampano only wrote ‘heater.’ The word ‘water’ back there—I added that” (16). This admission forces readers to become hyper-aware of choices they make in believing or disbelieving the narrator, because Johnny could be manipulating any part of the text. Furthermore, if Johnny may be manipulating the text, a nagging suspicion arises: that any or all of the narrators may be manipulating the text.

Johnny Truant, as a narrator, seems the most suspect and he is certainly the most vulgar, but ironically Johnny also has the most personal narrative. He is the only narrator recounting his own story, and he is the only narrator who frequently uses second-person address. The repetition of the pronoun “you” leads readers to feel Johnny addresses them directly, assuming their involvement in the story. In this sense, readers become involved in the text because they are implicitly told to be involved. Other narrators are more subtle in their means of causing readers to inject themselves into the plot; Zampano, for example, provides blanks that are ready to be filled in whenever information from his gathered documents are missing. This applies equally to footnotes and to the text itself: sets of inviting lines beckon the reader to write in their own information. Not entirely unlike the game MadLibs, the words surrounding the blanks give readers enough context to have a general idea about the category of word (noun, verb, adjective) that should occupy any given blank. Adventurous readers may try to impose their own narrative, while other readers will simply skim the existing words, skip over the blanks, and move onto the next paragraph. In some ways, it seems like a strange sort of litmus test that defines how much of themselves readers are willing to invest in the novel.

The blanks, at least, give readers a choice about their participation with the text. Other interesting innovations require the reader to become more physically involved as the text progresses. Readers who want to follow the story have no choice but to start rotating the book when the main text becomes framed by two outside columns of texts that face in two separate directions. When the text begins to mimic the action of the plot, readers have no choice but to play follower to the text’s lead. As words become spaced out on the page, the book begins to dictate the rate at which readers’ eyes track the text and at which they turn the pages. After managing the tempo of the reading, the text becomes discontented with simple turns between two directions. Those who would like to follow the narrative are required to turn the book at every imaginable angle—upside down, sideways, and even at diagonals—in order to continue following the story. This constant twisting, turning, and reader-required manipulation disorients readers and serves to remind them they cannot always control their movement in relation to the narrative.

When boxed windows of backward text appear, readers who want to be able to read within the windows are required to hold the novel up to a mirror. The passages of the novel which require the reader to hold the book up to a mirror show not just a reflection of the writing, but also of the reader. As Will Slocombe notes in his interpretation of House of Leaves, “Within the text, mirrors force the reader to face the text and realize that they are seeing what they themselves place within it. The idea of the mirror is simultaneously a reflection of the reader and an image—an opposite image—in its own right” (99). The act of holding the book up to the mirror shows readers how connected they have become with the book: although they see a reflection of the book and themselves as separate entities, they are also watching themselves in the act of reading the book.

Readers, at this stage, have become simultaneously characters and observers. In a further complication, Navidson becomes trapped in the ever expanding “house” behind a doorway within his house and needs something to provide light. He discovers he has brought a book and a lighter with him when he set out to explore the five-and-a-half-minute hallway. By reading a page and then lighting it on fire, he provides himself with light. The book he is reading is entitled House of Leaves. His copy matches the exact specifications of the print copy, and reality and fiction blend even further as readers realize they are reading a character who is reading a novel they are reading. If, as Zampano mentions some critics believe, “the house’s mutations reflection the psychology of anyone who enters it” (165), such a scene certainly indicates the house’s mutations could reflect the psychology of readers. Such a perspective places readers in the same character position of Navidson, who seems to make few to no choices about the overall narrative structure.

Readers, however, still have other choices in regard to reading the text. House of Leaves also contains several appendices that extend the story—the appendices include letters Johnny’s mother wrote him from an insane asylum, a collection of photos and collage, information about the non-existent The Navidson Record DVD, a collection of quotes Zampano collected in the course of compiling his manuscript, and the Pelican poems—poetry presumably written by Johnny Truant. The first two-thirds of House of Leaves is the narrative text; the last third is the material in the appendices.

Throughout the narrative, readers have a choice about when they will refer to the information in the appendices: several of the editors’ footnotes in the text indicate times readers may want to refer to particular material in the appendices. These notes present two different ways of reading the text—by reading the referred-to appendices at that moment or by reading all of the appendices together at the end of the novel. Reading the appendices and then returning to the novel creates a different perspective than simply reading straight through the novel and then reading the appendices. Either way, it is possible to make connections between the narrative itself and the appendices that follow; however, whether or not the appendices become a part of the narrative—and to what extent—is a choice left entirely to readers’ discretion.

Likewise, the appendix full of quotes invites readers to create their own meaning for the novel they have read. (Or may, in fact, still be in the process of reading . . . depending on when, in the course of their plot, they choose to visit Zampano’s quote collection.) While reading this appendix, a variety of themes begin to emerge. Perhaps all of the quotes are meant to thematically tie to the novel and to indicate that any of the themes perpetuated by any of the quotes are valid. Perhaps some of the quotes are included as red herrings in the great mystery of what, exactly, the relationship between the narrators and characters of the book may be. These pages allow readers to choose their own epigraph for the novel. Instead of assigning any particular quote, this appendix leaves readers to ponder any number of themes that may or may not apply to the novel. This quote collection stands in stark contrast to what actually acts as the epigraph of the novel: “This is not for you.”

The distribution and continued discussion about this novel suggests otherwise. At the very least, it modifies what acts as the epigraph: this novel may not be for us as readers; it may become part of us as readers as we simultaneously become part of it. It was originally distributed online and via word of mouth. Its popularity in that forum led to its eventual publication as a book, but the Internet-influenced qualities of the book are inescapable. The printing of house in blue echoes a hypertext quality: the book taps into readers’ ideas about the house even as readers’ ideas about the house are adapting according to descriptions of the five-and-a-half minute hallway that is part of the expanding “house” within the Navidson’s house.

And just as the “house” within the house keeps expanding, an online Internet forum located at www.houseofleaves.com acts as home to 10, 218 readers who continually discuss several mysteries propagated by the text. Popular discussions include whether Zampano and Johnny may be related, whether Zampano and Johnny may be the same person, or whether this may all be one grand master narrative written by a mentally unstable person. Another popular discussion thread features nightmares, dreams, and reactions readers have experienced while reading the text (it seems laughable, to some degree, but readers become aware of their heightened experiences as parts of the text and often find themselves doing otherwise unjustifiable things; in one particular scene, the interior and exterior measurements of the Navidson house do not correlate—the interior measurement is larger than the exterior. I, an otherwise fairly rational human being, had recently moved into an older house prior to my first reading of the novel and had to fight from grabbing a measuring tape and making sure the measurements to my house were normal).

Some of these discussions have continued (some of them to great success; others, to not so much success) for seven to eight years. And they show few signs of stopping. House of Leaves creates a dimension of such fictive reality—or realistic fiction—that many readers find it difficult to stop discussing its vast potential and its many mysteries. Johnny Truant said it best in another statement about the documentary that applies equally to the entirety of House of Leaves: “the irony is it makes no difference that the documentary at the heart of this book is fiction. Zampano knew from the get go that what’s real or isn’t real doesn’t matter here. The consequences are the same” (xx)

So there you have it. Actual academic work of mine. Part of the reason I finally feel that grad school, though not as easy as I first imagined, is the right place for me to be after all.

Relationships with Writing

2009-03-31T22:41:00.004-06:00

This--Anne Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book"--is one of the first poems I was ever required to analyze in detail. (I'm telling you what "this" refers to, because if any of you are like me, you will think more than twice about following that link . . .) I'm sure I kept a copy of my analysis, but I'm not going to hunt it down just now.

But I do remember this: the writer who is narrator in the poem obviously has motherly inclinations toward her work. And I do remember this: I was perceptive enough back then to realize that motherly inclinations did not mean that she desperately loved everything about what she had written. In fact, it made her want to correct the faults.

And most of all, I remember the third line, about friends snatching away the work before she felt ready to show it to the world at large.

I remember this, because I have been writing a number of things lately. (English grad student writing a lot . . . go figure!) And my sentiments do not, in the slightest, echo Bradstreet at all. After a certain germination period, I grow anxious about kicking my work out the door and into someone else's realm.

At first, I thought my desire to get my writing out of my sight had some direct affiliations with how much I liked the content. But I have discovered such is simply not the case: I disliked the intermittent papers I wrote for my critical theory class throughout the course of the semester--the topics were, more or less, assigned--but the non-assigned final paper I fell deeply in love with? I wanted to drop that in my professor's mailbox just as quickly as I had rid myself of the other papers I had written.

If I am to adopt Anne Bradstreet's mother-metaphor, I suppose this means that I am the sort of writer-mother who likes to boot her child out of the house as soon as it has turned eighteen. I try to nurture it as much as I can, but there inevitably comes a point when it should strike out on its own. I figure that if I ever write and publish anything that receives the whole spectrum of reactions, then a) I have succeeded, and b) I can create and send a sibling of that paper out into the world to help keep that "child" company.

And who knows? If I have learned anything from re-reading things I wrote during my undergraduate career, I might even occasionally invite them home for dinner.

Discoveries I Make

2009-03-24T01:07:00.004-06:00

Sometimes I find things I've written that I've forgotten I've written. Case in point (it has no title and I'm not sure I like it, but I'm intrigued by it nonetheless...I really wish I could remember when, exactly I wrote it):

Drifting through memory to way back when
we were young and the best of friends--
I was always Barbie, you were always Ken
and we thought that all good women loved good men.

You outgrew playing dolls with me,
said friendship wasn't a possibility;
You patted my should awkwardly,
walked away before I counted three.

A few years after you said goodbye,
you came back in tears to ask me why
I kept my chin up, didn't cry.
Why not even a wistful sigh...
But don't you know I struggled getting by?

Now look at you with your girlfriend.
She looks like Barbie, you look like Ken.
I wonder why I can't keep good men.
Why can't I keep good men?

When I thought of childhood, I thought of the first stanza of this poem. Childhood seems so simplistic. Everything seemed so easy back then. And now? Well, now it's just not.

Or perhaps I'm making adulthood more difficult than it should be. Maybe I can choose to make my adulthood as much like childhood as possible.

In a good way.

This post is part of the Blue-Beta Blog Coordination, a continuing series of content coordinated by theme or motif with posts from Confuzzled of I Keep Wondering, Gromit of The Dancing Newt, Redoubt of Redoubt Redux, Third Mango of Funkadelic Freestylings of Another Sort, Yarjka of Sour Mayonnaise, and Xanthippe of Let’s Save Our Hallmark Moment. This week's theme: 'Childhood'.