Bruise story—it’s tre-es bonnnn!

I promised them in my very first post, and here it is, at long last: a bruise story. And then some.

I’m waiting for the bishop…he’s about 45 minutes behind in his interviews. So I’m in that room in the MARB we used for testimony meeting second to last week, working on a blog entry. Life is gorgeous. The weekend was wonderful: we’re going over Lear in Shakespeare (Young Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear is on Thursday and I have some serious misgivings about missing The Office for a 45 minute rendition of Lear geared towards elementary school age kids. I bet they cut out the gouging of Gloucester...and lots of Lear's ravings...especially the part where he curses Goneril's womb into sterility) and my roommates and I were in the ward variety show Friday night. Heidi had someone film it and we watched it until 1 in the morning. It was one of those things that could either go very well or completely tank. I was a little nervous at first, but then I got over it real fast. I enjoyed it. That's new. I've never really enjoyed performing before. My ex-roommate said that she almost wet her pants laughing. That was gratifying. Made me feel warm all over. Our “cast picture” is my new wallpaper; you know something’s good when it replaces Fred and George Weasley.

A skit was probably not the best thing to do right before a date (I had beret hair, a purple eyeliner moustache [that's so ironic to me: I was feminine French person with a man's name and a purple moustache. Funny], and peanut butter all over my face to take care of), but whatever. We doubled with his friend and his friend's girlfriend (it's the second time since I've been here that I've gone with someone I don't know all that well and his friends whom I don't know at all, and his friends always include a lovey-dovey couple, and we go back to someone's apartment and play card games. Must be a Provo thing. But my ranting on BYU-style dating is for another post). Some people from the girl's ward came and recruited for a game of Dots (or Commando, depending on your geographical vernacular). We went and played for two hours at the Marriott Center. It was glorious...rural parkour. Jumping railings, rolling around in the dirt, climbing six foot walls, diving into shadows, dropping from six foot walls (or into six foot tall bushes, as Jason did), and running into trees. Ah. I love it. I was running to the very last base when the Dotmaster (DM if you will...oh, I can feel the hackles rising on that one) stopped counting. I was so close! I hurled myself at the tree and had to stop myself with my left hand. It hurt a bit. The pain increased throughout the night. The little veins in the heel of your hand under your thumb? Mine were black. And it was mad swollen. I had to apply frozen peas and carrots before I could go to sleep. Couldn't open jars the next day. But I won that game. It was glorious. Two hours of unrelenting adrenaline. It's all about knowing your abilities, getting the timing right, and strict self-discipline. And getting the angles right behind your covers. I wasn't caught a single time. My dad would be so proud. Now if I could just parlay such stealth, tactical brilliance, and prowess into laser tag, I'd be set for life. Then we had a freshman ward reunion (just the girls, the guys are still on their missions). 7 girls are married. We reveled in engagement stories and other love life tales and such. It's amazing, the older we get, the more mature our conversations. And I mean that in all senses of the word. Then I got to go to the Relief Society broadcast on a chartered bus and with a crafty little sack lunch. (Post break for the interview. My bishop said his wife was “just roaring” all during our skit. Half the ward quoted it to us today. We ARE famous. Back to post.) My roommates and I reminded me of those early Church history pioneer women who put on their bonnets and headed out to their meetings. We were on a chartered exodus to Salt Lake. All I can say is that I love being a woman in this church. I loved that conference. But the 6 hours of unmitigated estrogen…I wasn’t sad to see it end. It SNOWED yesterday and it was cold so I got to wear my red flannel PJs last night. Happiness is flannel PJs. (“I wear my pink pa-ja-mas in the sum-mer when it’s hot…”)

The only thing I can complain about this weekend is really gross. I was on a sugar craving all week long and I felt guilty about it. Then I found out I was completely justified. So instead of beating myself up, I embraced it. I needed to break a twenty so I could get quarters because my tires need air, so Friday afternoon before the variety show, I went to the gas station next to my complex and got a pint of Haagen Dazs butter pecan. I was a little paranoid to carry ice cream past my entire ward’s apartments, because everyone thinks they know what it means when someone at BYU buys ice cream. I went back to studying Steve Martin in The Pink Panther and eating my butter pecan. It was weird: half of it was creamy, half of it was all crystallized and gross. I didn’t have time or attention to spare to figure out what the deal was. I just wanted ice cream. I ate a quarter of it. Next day I had it out and before I ate it I was expressing my disappointment in the quality of “kitchen friendly” Haagen Dazs. I described it to her as seeming freezer burned. Then I thought, “Crest is a dirty little convenience store. I bet it IS freezer burned.” So I turned it over and read: “Best purchased by 4-13-07.” I almost died. 5 ½ months past the sell-by date. Disgusting. I feel really dirty now. If I die in the next week, you all know the reason. In my sock drawer, there's a treasure map that leads to the hiding place of my final will and testament. It's marked with an X.

By the man to whom I owe my love of words:

Background: San Francisco refused to let the Marine Corps film a recruiting video there...no, wait, they COULD, so long as no Marines were in the commercial.
http://www.theacru.org/blog/2007/09/marines_denied_right_to_film_in_san_francisco/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1901695/posts

Email response:
(The S/F means "Semper Fi.")

Subject: A letter to the leader of a bastion of tepid souls

Gentlemen, I put fingers to keyboard and let the following flow. I wrote it with the intention of sending it to the mayor of SF, and thought you might enjoy the read.
S/F
Russ
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Sir, I applaud your decision not to allow my brothers-in-arms access to your city. I support fully your freedom to be who and what you are. Furthermore, I am pleased to see that you recognize that your city is unworthy to presence such men. As such, do not expect to see me, my family, or any of my friends support your unpatriotic, non-supportive city, either. Until you and your ilk no longer represent the will of San Franciscans, and are duly voted out of office, your city will remain that: your city, not mine.

It seems time and distance work wonders; 911 is most likely just the emergency number in your city. For a lot of us, 911 was a wakeup call that your constituency seems to have forgotten. Rest assured, our enemy has not forgotten about your constituency. How do you expect Marines to come to your rescue, but not to your city?

The only thing that gives me hope for our future as a nation is the rising generation of great Americans that are currently getting their training in civic responsibility within the hallowed halls of the Armed Forces of this grand nation. They will replace the cold, callow, self-serving politicians and cronies that currently darken the doors of our public institutions.

As I have your ear, let me share a thought, eloquently expressed by one of my favorite presidents, Theodore Roosevelt. In his speech, we find this now-famous excerpt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.""
-- From "The Man in the Arena" given at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April23, 1910

It is for this reason that I still hold great hope for America, because"There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder." Today, men and women who wear the uniform of this magnificent nation know these "great and generous emotions."

At some point in the future, San Francisco may become infected with such enthusiasm. Until then, it must remain a bastion of tepid souls, unworthy of the presence of great and generous Americans like the Marines you did not allow to have access to your city. Keep up the good work.

By the way. That's my Dad. :D

A Celebration of "Sundry Sonnets"

I'm changing my Sonnet. Now it's 43. We had to read these random sonnets for Shakespeare today. I should have known my professor wrote them. You really have to have heard him talk to get the proper inflection that just adds to the hilarity. This guy named his son Lear. He's written 1,100 sonnets. 1,100!!! He wanted to write one a day for a year because he'd heard someone else did, then he got on a roll and did it for 3 and a half years. I really like him. I do believe I shall name my firstborn son Gideon, to pay homage. Here, I share the joy:

White Chocolate
White chocolate, oh oxymoron foul!
No cocoa bean did bless your candy vat.
We chocoholics taste you and we howl.
What are you? An albino slab of fat,
Hydrogenized and sweetened past remorse
Then peddled with hyperbole and fraud
To unsuspecting chocophiles of course
Who'd rather gargle liver oil from cod.
I've gnawed on better plastic in my day!
More flavor can be found between one's toes!
Perverse confection, fit to throw away
Unworthy of my chocolate sniffing nose
White chocolate, a joke not semi-sweet
Your coming means our end is near complete.

Love's Lungs
Back then balloons were not an easy matter.
In ancient times they had to kill a goat,
Extract its large intestine (or its bladder),
Some lumberjack would huff, the ball would bloat.
Today some wealking florist turns the gas,
And presto, a bouquet of mylar orbs!
Farewell to those rites of manhood to be passed
When gifts so swelled no time nor sweat absorb.
True valentines their own balloons must fashion,
Must find a cow or rhino to dispatch,
Must find the guts to well express his passion,
To show his love that florist's met his match.
She'll know your love by just how well you blew:
Believe me, this procedure's tripe and true.

Spam
Third cousin to a pig and twice removed,
It oozes, goopy, from its squarish tin;
Thick film conceals the lard with which its grooved,
Intestines pureed mottle its pink skin.
Would ancient man have glorified the spam,
In pictographs preserved its conquest sure?
Or would they shrug at its smoot texture, bland--
No boxy graphic to make spam endure?
In industry the spam is thrift itself:
No bones or organs spill aside as scrap.
Once salted, lives for decades on a shelf;
Discerning palates know its kind from crap.
Maligned, despised, yet all the while consumed
If spam's eternal, earth itself is doomed.

Shop Vac: A Sonnet
No kitten Kirby I, no devil red;
Such toys are made for sniffing dainty dust
A shop-vac I, by two horse powers fed
Inhaling concrete boulders is my lust.
Beware, don't leave your children in my reach
Nor in my range allow the family mutt.
Wet gunk or dry, my nuclear nozzle's speech
Persuades all matter enter in my gut.
Does gravel, nails, and muck fill your garage,
Embarrass you and cause no end of danger?
What if a stray ten-penny nail did lodge
Deep in the insole of some passing stranger?
If Santa brought you me, he brought you luck,
The present that will always, gladly, suck.

Mucus (not a good one to read over breakfast)
Lugubrious and patient as he slimes
His dark and viscous weight within my head.
He tugs his bitter taffy mass in crimes
Of pressured pain and dripping dread.
A hundred tissues bruised with blasting blows,
And yet he lingers, stranding strands of crust;
Gelatinous stalactites, grainy flow,
Replacing brains with miles of muck and must.
In sour thickness smears my throat and lungs,
His wiggling jelly clogs each passageway
I cough up gooey golf balls on my tongue;
I rasping pleas my alveoli pray.
My phlegmy enemy, you shall not run:
With antihistamines I end your fun.

Goodbye, My Love
I trusted you and now it's torn apart:
My happiness, and worse, my trusty truck.
You broke my new transmission and my heart,
And now cash skeedaddles with my luck.
Oh, Cherry, one part reckless, one part divine
You turned my motor once I do confess
But now there is the matter of this fine--
I'm dubious our gears again will mesh.
The wilted pistons are as good as dead
And so is my affection, dear, it's true
I picture your sweet face beneath my tread
These things aren't fixed with kisses and some glue.
Forget the church, I'm going off to Napa
And as for you and me--it's in the crapper.

-Gideon Burton (who, upon my recitation of Sonnet 73, asked me if I'd acted before. Good teacher.)

Enjambment staves off the sing-songy quality of rhymed and metered poetry

I purged on Saturday. Wrote some sonnets. And then I went and lived. I started temple prep lessons with the bishop yesterday. That was the happiest and lightest I’ve been in seemingly forever. Affirmations like that keep me going. Today is perfect: blue skies, no smog, and snow on the mountains. I’ve reconnected with my guys from winter. They bring joy to my inner tomboy. Life is beautiful. I love my ward. I just needed to stop pity-partying with myself and get involved with them. I’m actually giving of myself to them. No more corazón espinado. FHE was crazy fun and I love them. I realized I’ve been pouty, pining for a life that is not (ie, EFY-less campus, etc).
Screw that. Life is beautiful and I love it.
Expectations are preconceived resentments.
On, Teb. On.

Apathetic bemusement...ings. And two movies.

I’ve lost my fiery passion for the football games that I had freshman year. And I’m ok with that. I didn’t wake up early to go get blue homecoming pancakes. I’m not really feeling the need to meet all the new ward people. I’m only in this ward, come what may, another 2 and a half months. I’ve been soaking all of my time and energy into school: I live on campus and at the library. I didn’t use to be like that (which is why I’m surprised I survived freshman year with my scholarship intact). I think it’s because I’m subconsciously pining for EFY. Campus seems so dreary and empty with the youth, the polos, and the counselor sandwiches. The only purpose I can find is in class, so I’m throwing myself into it. So I feel like I should want to be more involved in my school and my ward…but I’m perfectly happy with life as is. Such is the apathetic bemusement.
Oh, I’ve seen two new-to-me movies recently: The Dance and The Bridge to Terebithia. The Dance looked promising (beyond the fact that K. C. CLYDE is in it): “The most accomplished LDS film since the ‘Work and the Glory’!” says Jeff Vice of the Deseret Morning News. (Not that stunning, if you think about what’s been done since W&G, but, whatever). As I was describing it to my roommate, postviewing, I realized it was a very good premise: 3 couples in different stages of their relationships, all with their own unique emotional baggage, encountering misunderstandings and such, and finally, share some very honest communication. I love honest communication. Very strong characters, great pasts, they would have brought a lot to it, had the execution been better. Some of the characters felt real, others felt overbearingly bipolar (Clyde; I have no idea what was up with his character or what I was supposed to get out of his story), others were portrayed with distracting acting, and there was no real closure…but I guess that’s life. It portrayed the courage it takes to open up to someone after being hurt (single mom whose husband left her), opening up to someone for the first time in spite of the fear of that person turning out to be fake (36 year old bachelor whose afraid to marry anyone for that reason), and the dangers of sarcastic communication (the married couple…that was sad. They both wanted to open up but they both kept defending themselves from each other’s sarcasm by using sarcasm). It was full of my favorite things: lots of Shakespeare, racquetball, handsome literary men…it seemed like a really good writer’s first film project. Worth a watch if you can watch it with someone intelligent so you can get deeper stuff out of it afterwards.
BRIDGE TO TEREBITHIA. One of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. That movie touched my soul. It makes me want to write again. In earnest. My friends (long-time, so it carries more weight) said they thought of me when they saw it, because of Leslie. That warmed my heart. I used to have that spark and imagination. What happened to it? School and social pressures, I bet. Well, forget that. I’m going to build a tree house and finish all those stories I have.
I am a new-converted fan of weight training. I used to think that people who went to the gym were silly. But wow, this stuff works fast. I LOVE IT. I will have a Soloflex in my future home.

(1:15 pm addition: We're watching the game on TV. Happily, I still get excited about football. Good. I spent too long figuring it out and playing flag-style to lose the love completely. It really is a fabulous game. Check out this fun football essay: Freud, Football, and the Marching Virgins: http://crystaloak.com/Gaijin/Essay/freud_football.htm)

"French people do this really weird thing where they compare themselves with food..."

I can't help but feel a little guilty. I feel like I should be killing myself over studying right now or something. But the only thing I need to do is memorize Sonnet 73. And that can wait.

I'm not doing another quote-filled deal. I think my major is ruining my ability to think for myself. Don't get me wrong, turning to really smart people is always good, but even I used to be able to turn a phrase. Now my mind is atrophying through reliance on others. Or maybe I'm just growing up and realizing I'm not as smart as I thought I was in high school. (Really, I had no idea how to write an essay back then. How I'm here today is a mystery.) Lately, I even frequently find myself at a loss for words. So what better way to try to reclaim my expressive abilities than by recounting a thoroughly mundane trip to Macey's?

I love grocery shopping at college. I love it especially when I take people and we go on a "shopping spree." ("Life's not about being happy. Life's about accumulating the most materials goods possible. Especially more than your neighbor has.") I love Macey's. It's this chaotic little food warehouse and whenever I go, I get the impression of some benevolent grocer who stockpiles and hoardes all this food so he can set it out in his store and offer it to the student population of Provo at drastically reduced prices. How I love the Macey's Man. (Or Woman, but I picture him as a guy. Like the Santa Claus of grocery store proprietors. Only, not old. I see him as just past middle-aged, 5'7" maybe, wiry but getting thick around the middle, bald on top of his head, constantly hurrying back and forth in a green apron, stacking boxes and slashing prices. I mentioned this image briefly to my roommate and she gave me a funny look. Maybe it's just me...)

This week, probably to celebrate homecoming (because everything in Provo flows in time to the heartbeat that is BYU campus life), Macey's is having a case lot sale. The flier was the only thing remotely exciting in the mail yesterday. $1.50 drums of oatmeal! $.39 canned vegetables! (What a deal! Canned vegetables contribute squat to your daily nutrition.) A wonderland of even more deeply discounted food! I needed milk. My roommate needed ingredients for her crush's birthday cookies. We sallied forth.

All went well until we hit the checkout line. We got behind an older couple, their carts stacked full of the 4 or 5 cases of canned goods. Shouldn't take that long.

After 15 minutes of negotiating the couples' accounting of the cases and hunting down the correct price codes on the special case lot sale sheet, the cashier finally just had the bagger take all of the cases out of the cart so she could scan each of the cases. The couple dropped a sweet $100 to stock their food storage and I got to spend priceless roommate bonding time as we waited, poking fun at the Provo culture that would put the plastic covers in front of The Globe and Fitness magazines. Scandalous.

I spent twice what I wanted to, but everything I got was essential. Even the Pilsbury casserole and slow cooker cookbook. (You may laugh now, but you wouldn't if you saw those recipes...wow.) As we were leaving, I thought I saw the exact same couple in the next aisle over. But it was just another older couple buying heaps of cases of canned goods.

My roommate asked as we got to my car, "I wonder if they're going to eat it all before they die."

"If not, they'll just leave it to their children."

"Mmm, food storage inheritance. I want to do that."

"Yes. Don't leave them money. Spend it all on canned goods. Your kids will thank you for it. It seems a sound Utah investment."

Until you figure in the fact that you're going to have to drag all of those cans to Missouri...

I also bought 3 Banquet entree dinners. Ooh, I'm pampering myself. $.89 a box. Tonight is the chicken nugget meal: 6 chicken nuggets and a tablespoon each of corn and macaroni and cheese. I'm even going to take it out of the sectioned black tray and put it on a plate and pretend like it's real. The enticing odor is wafting from our monstrosity of a microwave...I must hasten to answer the call. Soon, I will be lost in the rapture of chicken nuggety goodness. Spongey. Processed. Dark meat. Goodness.

The Meltdown

No other word can adequately capture the magnitude of today’s emotional and social roller coaster. What a mess. How disheartening to know that you have to repent only hours after taking the sacrament (though, if I were more honest with myself, I bet I would realize this more often the case than I would care to admit).

It’s ironic that such a day should happen after such a great weekend.

I’ve been concerned for several weeks now if I’ve been going too far with my barbed humor with certain people. I’ve been asking them increasingly if I’ve gone too far. Hm. The doubt should have been a key indicator that I had gone too far. Was I that addicted to sarcasm? Thinking honestly about it and my purpose, I don't think so...with this particular person, I realize I was using it to keep him at a distance. (We have something of a past. He's very much not my type and tried to jump into my life headlong last year and didn't bother to take the time to build any trust and I had to be very verbally explicit to stop him and then I guess the sarcasm-maintained distance was self-preservation, keeping him from feeling invited to pursue again). But I think Brother Merrill is right. Sarcasm is pernicious, and, further, teasing is always hurtful, regardless of intention.

So I feel very guilty that he's been hurt. But guilt is only a useful emotion inasmuch as it spurs you on to progress and growth. So what am I going to do about it? Being made sensitive is the best way to develop strength in these kinds of areas. I’m looking forward to talking to this one guy and working to clear things up. Shifting my way of interacting with him. I want to be kind to everyone...that's who I am (I should be nicer to those arrogant people, too, though. You know what. I tend to evaluate people pretty early on in our aquaintance. If someone rubs me the wrong way, I'm not going to spend any time around them. Life is short and you have limited time, so you should spend it around people you like. I think that's still valid, even if it sounds harsh and judgmental. But I do need to make more of an effort to be kinder to those I don't really want to spend time with when I am around them). I'm looking forward to some very honest communication so he keeps his distance and I can start being a lot kinder to him.

The Lecture

I saw Orson Scott Card yesterday. I felt like a sinner, not having read anything of his, but I've decided I like him. He's next. Here's some stuff I got from him.

“Every story is the product of an individual mind, from someone unique and ultimately unknowable.” Then he was talking about how you can live with someone intimately for years and still not know them because they’ll still surprise you, which is why God is the only one Who can judge, He is the only one Who sees people’s hearts, knows them better than the heart-stewards themselves. This is true. And it filled me with the icy dread of utter isolation. It reminded me of the following passage, which has always depressed me in its somber, unflinching reality:

“‘Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams…’
“He was silent for a while.
“‘…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone….’” (Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 24)

But the point Card was making was about stories: you can read a well-crafted story and come out of it knowing the characters better than anyone you’ve ever met, even better than you know yourself.

“Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.” (C. S. Lewis, from An Experiment in Criticism)

That is why we need to read: “…Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog.” (ibid.)

It gets us out of ourselves and molds us into partakers of human nature. “How much larger our life would be if we could become smaller in it…we would begin to be interested in others: we would break out of this tiny…theatre in which our own little plot is always being played, and we would find ourselves under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers” (G. K. Chersterton).

In written fiction, “the reader is a collaborator with the author. You let the author guide your experience of the world with authority…the successful writer teaches and moves readers. The writing becomes a part of your life” (rough approximation of Card quote). You let someone else into your mind and heart and recreate there their own world. That’s exhilarating as well as a heavy responsibility to be the vigilant gatekeeper of your own mind and soul.

When the shaggy, skeptical kid was asking his questions (rather, I felt, seeking a public audience to voice his own budding estimations of life) and saying how we don’t know anything, Card responded at one point with: “It’s easy to think you have an answer when everyone around you agrees with you, but if you haven’t asked the question, you don’t have an answer and therefore have nothing to say. You are only an echo.” I liked that. But then he went on about…something to the effect of…what we know now will be different when we know more (?). Whatever it was, it made me think of Blake’s “There Is No Natural Religion [b]”: “II. Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.” Dangit. I wish I could remember exactly what he said. Maybe I was just on a high that I was recognizing so many other writers in Card and I was frantically scribbling down all the echoes I heard.

He’s also Shakespeare (apart from the fact that he studied theatre and it shows…so many things added up to create a high initial impression of this guy) in that he counseled aspiring “creative career-people” to “know everything about everything.”
“The book-learning that Shakespeare displays here and there is far less impressive, in the long run, than his fund of general information. His frame of reference is so far-ranging, and he is so concretely versed in the tricks of so many trades, that lawyers have written to prove he was trained in the law, sailors about his expert seamanship, naturalists upon his botanizing, and so on through the professions. If this be paradox, it is resolved by Fielding’s remark that Shakespeare was ‘learned in human nature.’ So far as education has genuine meaning, he must be viewed as a genuinely educated man” (The Riverside Shakespeare, General Introduction, II. The Biographical Record).

Also Shakespeare in the fact that, apparently, he has worked at “artfully rendering established material” in some of his work (Joseph Smith story and Book of Mormon renderings), which is all Shakespeare ever did.

Card also talked about the “edgy and dangerous” authors being the tradition these days, those who attack the “culture of 1955.” I had this thought when reading the general introduction to the English Romantic period in Norton: “Seeking a stable foundation on which social institutions might be constructed, eighteenth-century British philosophers had devoted much energy to demonstrating that human nature must be everywhere the same, because it everywhere derived from individuals’ shared sensory experience of an external world that could be objectively represented. As the century went on, however, philosophers began emphasizing—and poets began developing a new language for—individual variations in perception and the capacity the receptive consciousness has to filter and to re-create reality. This was the shift Wordsworth registered when in the Preface he located the source of a poem not in outer nature but in the psychology of the individual poet, and specified that the essential materials of a poem were not the external people and events it represented but the inner feelings of the author, or external objects only after these have been transformed by the author’s feelings. Wordsworth in 1802 described all good poetry as, at the moment of composition, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Other Romantic theories concurred by referring to the mind, emotions, and imagination of the poet for the origin, content, and defining attributes of a poem. Using a metaphor that parallels Wordsworth’s “overflow,” and that Wordsworth would revive in a late poem, Mary Robinson and Coleridge identified some of their key poems of the 1790s as “effusions”—ardent outpourings of feeling. Coleridge subsequently drew on German precedents and introduced into English criticism an account of the organic form of literary works; in this account the work is conceptualized as a self-originating and self-organizing process, parallel to the growth of a plant, that begins with a seedlike idea in the poet’s imagination, grows by assimilating both the poet’s feelings and the materials of sensory experience, and evolves into an organic whole in which the parts are integrally related to each other and the whole.”

I couldn’t believe my internal definition of poetry had to have a whole literary period dedicated to forming it. But that makes sense. I live in a post-Romantic world. So, turning to their own minds, poets found fertile ground for creation. But human nature is inherently restless. New ground only stays new for so long. Then people had to get edgy in order to feel anything novel in their writing. Edginess translated into attacking social mores. Now the “rebels” are those who write about and support those values. Interesting.

Writers are to keep company with nonliterary types. “Stories about writers and artists are so boring and cliché.” Ezra Pound. Misogynistic Ivory Towerist. I don’t like him. Writing done just for the artistic community is exclusive and pointless. There was this one lady in the reception who, I swear, was arguing with Card in seeking justification to continue her membership in her writing group. Basically he said that writing groups are pointless and people in them never get anywhere. Your friends can’t help you improve your writing and you can’t learn from their good writing. (I can only take that so far: you can and do learn good writing from great writers, but emphasis on great. I also don’t agree that English is not a good major to prepare you to be a writer. Sure, you learn all these things that might convolute your writing, but you spend your university years in the company of great writers, tuning your ear to what great writing is and developing your own voice. Hard to do in biology or some like field, I would imagine.)

That bit reminded me of Wordsworth. He put forth a couple of revolutionary theories in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads:
“There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction; I have taken as much pains to avoid it as other ordinarily take to produce it; this I have done for the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men, and further, because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry.”

He talked about writing in the language of “real men,” “because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation.”

I’m excited to read this guy. He seems to me an amalgamation of many other people I admire and I love his “hit your right between the eyes” boldness…the essays should be fun to read.

Other exciting life news: Mission prep is amazing (Bro. Bott did tell the class to take Viagra on Monday…apparently, since we haven’t all copied the Abraham facsimiles, we need something to get us jumpstarted so we take our scriptures seriously). We went over facsimile 2 on Wednesday, with Kolob and all the other Egyptian names…he conservatively estimated, using verses in Abraham 3 and 4, that we existed about 13,000 years before we came to Earth, in which time we were helping to create the Earth (4:1), etc. We’re here in this brief stop-over of mortality to get bodies and pass the last test. 99.999999…% of our test was completed before we got here and we completed it diligently and faithfully. We’re here to make our calling and election to Godhood sure. Suddenly, with that view, everything else seems so silly. Why would you jeopardize or throw away all that for something fleeting? (Because the veil is there…that was a major selling point in Satan’s campaign, I believe: “How are you going to live the gospel when you won’t even be able to remember what the rewards are? Go and do whatever you want to do and you’ll all be exalted because I’m awesome like that.”) Wow. I can do anything.

“Practice seeing individuals around you as they are: individuals on the last page of an infinitely long final exam en-route to Godhood. And don’t sin anymore.” –Bro. Bott.

I have a sense of what it must have been like when we were intelligences being organized under God’s plan so we could progress…

In love again

William Blake.

“I must create a System or be enslaved by another Man’s.”

"There Is No Natural Relgion"
[a]
The Argument. Man has no notion of moral fitness but from Education. Naturally he is only a natural organ subject to Sense.
I. Man cannot naturally Percieve but through his natural or bodily organs.
II. Man by his reasoning power can only compare & judge of what he has already perceiv’d.
III. From a perception of only 3 sense or 3 elements none could deduce a fourth or fifth.
IV. None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions.
V. Man’s desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he had not perciev’d.
VI. The desires & perceptions of man, untaught by any thing but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense.
Conclusion. If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philosophic and Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again.

"There Is No Natural Religion"
[b]
I. Man’s perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception; he perceives more than sense (tho’ ever so acute) can discover.
II. Reason, or the ratio (Latin ratio signifies both reason and calculation. Blake applies the term derogatorily to the 18th-century concept of reason as a calculating faculty whoe operations are limited to sense perceptions) of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.
III. [lacking]
IV. The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels.
V. If the many become the same as the few when possess’d, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul. Less than All cannot satisfy Man.
VI. If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot.
VII. The desire of Man being Infinite, the possession is Infinite and himself Infinite.
Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ration only sees himself only.
Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.

"The Divine Image"
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress,
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is God, our father dear:
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.


This man is incredible. "Natural Religion" should prove to hold up to a week's chewing over, at least. Be still, my heart.

I love Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Smith, too. But Blake charges my soul.

Charlotte Smith:
From Elegiac Sonnets:
"Written at the Close of Spring"
The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove,
Each simple flower, which she had nursed in dew,
Anemonies, that spangled every grove,
The primrose wan, and hare-bell mildly blue.
No more shall violets linger in the dell,
Or purple orchis variegate the plain,
Till Spring again shall call forth every bell,
And dress with humid hands her wreaths again.—
Ah! poor humanity! So frail, so fair,
Are the fond visions of thy early day,
Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care,
Bid all thy fairy colors fade away!
Another May new buds and flowers shall bring;
Ah! why has happiness—no second Spring?

"To Sleep"
Come, balmy Sleep! Tired nature’s soft resort!
On these sad temples all thy poppies shed;
And bid gay dreams, from Morpheus’ airy court,
Float in light vision round my aching head!
Secure of all thy blessings, partial Power!
On his hard bed the peasant throws him down;
And the poor sea boy, in the rudest hour,
Enjoys thee more than he who wears a crown.
Clasp’d in her faithful shepherd’s guardian arms,
Well may the village girl sweet slumbers prove
And they, O gentle Sleep! Still taste thy charms,
Who wake to labor, liberty, and love.
But still thy opiate aid dost thou deny
To calm the anxious breast; to close the streaming eye.

And to top it all off:
8 p.m. in a thunderstorm:
I. (as relating to fellow mortals, not God):
I am
my own. I am
not so weak
as to allow
imaginary forces
to shape and define
me.
I am
my own force.
I am what
I think, what
I feel, what
I believe.
On my own, I am enough.

II.
As I sit in my valley in this rare windstorm,
I feel my kinship with this force of nature.
Who can summon the wind?
Who can tell it where to blow?
Who can banish it?
Who can mitigate its destructive gales?
Or strengthen its gentle caresses?
It is itself and can only be enjoyed
as its Self.
The wind is within me and without me.
The wind is me and is not me.
We are Ourselves, unique and alike and bound by
our Selves.

III.
The flash of lightning heralds the storm, just as
the stroke of insight committed to words
prefaces the downpour, the battering winds,
the exquisitely wild candor of utter catharsis.
NOW is all that matters, the raw and living moment
that so mercilessly claims the soul’s total investment
and returns the sweet amnesia of reckless abandon—
And I—palms and face tipped skyward and accepting
—I will dance.


GOOD NIGHT.

I've been using the WRONG SONNET! And, Why I'm Happy

Oh, NO! I've been using the wrong sonnet for two years!! Here and other various websites, like the Divine Comedy message board (I've decided I can't marry William Rubio). How embarrassing. Just so you all know...I have no connection with Sonnet 27. I was probably subconsciously seeking alliterative harmony. Anyways, Sonnet 23 is correct. This is me now. Don't get confused.

Wow, I was a real baby in that last post. I'm glad I decided to "put on my big girl panties and get over it." (Disturbing saying courtesy of the lovely ladies in my mom's office.) Let me tell you why I'm happy:

I'm sitting here again in the library in the exact location of many bloody, early morning struggles with my Heart of Darkness critical essay from last semester. This is a battlefield. And I was the victor. So I like it.
I have internet here, unlike my apartment.
Our toilet got fixed today. I love that guy.
I LOVE MY CLASSES (except maybe two, but we can't have perfection, can we?).
My Brit lit and Shakespeare teachers are real smart. And they're passionate about their subjects and they convey their knowledge in very human and engaging ways (unlike the psychotic American lit teacher...70 Powerpoint slides per class jammed full of text that she just read right off the screen. No human connection. No sanity. I wonder if she's still working after the reviews we gave her...)
My Shakespeare class is in the Shakespeare Room: the front of the class is slightly elevated as to achieve a stage-like effect and there is a beautiful painting of Ophelia on the wall. There's no other art anywhere in the JFSB classrooms. Special, indeed.
I have 2 months to read 1 Kings to Malachi instead of 2 weeks.
I can already tell my mission prep class is going to have me on FIRE.
My nerves get all fluttery and my stomach flipflops and my heart thrills when I read my Brit lit syllabus.
I know a whole bunch of people in most of my classes, so they all already feel like family (approximately half of the as-yet-unmarried/unengaged girls from my freshman ward are in my mission prep class. I find that humourous. To every thing, there is a season...)
We talked about Byronic heroes in Brit lit and one girl needed a more contemporary example of one (Frankenstein, his Creature, and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights just weren't striking a chord). I think I made some friends, or, at the very least, many admirers, when I suggested Snape. Mwaha.
It's been really, truly storming the last two days, on and off. North Carolina-quality storms. The thunder woke me up this morning. I got to be stuck in the rain yesterday. Glorious. (I was stuck because I had to stop to write...you must succumb when the muse strikes or risk peril of losing the words).
My Shakespeare and mission prep teachers are hilarious. Examples:
Shakespeare professor:
"If you're a real English major, you'll keep your Riverside Shakespeare and put it on your shelf and people will see it and it will become part of your identity. Or you can sell it back...for a few dollars...pay for a few lunches...but is it really worth...your soul?"
"When I was in high school, whenever I'd walk out the door, my mom would say, 'To thine own self be true!' and I got a little older and I told her she was quoting Polonius and he was a fool, and then I got older and said, 'Sorry.'"
"Literature is equipment for living. The more Shakespeare you know, the more you know about everything and then you can feel really smart, which is an aim of a BYU education."
"Before the mid-80s, we had some really dry BBC versions (of Shakespeare)...I mean, you'd put sick animals in from of them to euthanize them."
"Film helps popularize Shakespeare. Put Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in Romeo and Juliet and suddenly you've got all these 13 year old girls who wouldn't have known Shakespeare otherwise. I swear, I went to see it and I think I was the only one over 15 in the theatre. And the only man. There were all these girls swooning...it was great! Shakespeare's for everyone!"
And mission prep (some funny, some profound):
"If you cheat, double time in Hotel Hell."
"When you are honest with yourself, you take off at warp speed, spiritually."
About attendance policy: "If you get engaged and you can't keep away from each other and are constantly doing PDA's, don't come to class. It's distracting. And don't come if you're on your honeymoon. I had a guy take time from his honeymoon and he and his wife came to my D&C class...there are better things to do on your honeymoon! Get with it!"
"I'm a pragmatist, let's call it like it is: some of the General Authorities are really boring, but most of them are really good."
On our assignment to teach a discussion to someone and a warning to the girls about teaching their RM boyfriends: "You need to tell them before you start, 'If you make me cry, I will nuke you off my list of marital candidates.' And they will. They know the tricky questions to ask, they've had it done to them for two years. And it happens every semester, some sister comes to me, tears coming down her face, mascara coming down her face, and I say, 'You did your discussion, huh?'
'*sniff*Yeah...'
'RM boyfriend?'
'Used to be.'
'You didn't warn him? Then suffer, dangit!'"

Ah. Life.

"I am a legend in my own mind."

Title courtesy of my bishop's wife.

I accidently transposed two letters in my blog address the other day and it brought up "The Mega site of Bible studies and information." The link may or may not work. I have a screenshot of the site if the link is bad: http://ridethatthestral.blogpsot.com/

School starts tomorrow. I thought I'd be over the first-day-of-elementary-school-oh-no-what-will-the-other-kids-think-of-me-where-will-I-sit-for-lunch-type nerves. I didn't have this problem last year. But I didn't live here all summer last year. The major change was moving into a new place and meeting new people. I am an old people this year and there is no pressure on that front. So my mind needs to focus on something else. That's dumb. Mind, you can take a break. Chillllll. School is happy.

I think I'm nervous for my weight training class. I don't want to be in there alone with a bunch of meathead jock stranger types (but this is beginning weight training, so I think the risk of that is minimal. Not that there's anything wrong with meathead jock types. I just don't want to be in a weight training class with them. Does that make me a fitness-ist? ...You know what, I have to make a confession. I don't know that I've ever met a "meathead." I've just heard the term and so I hijacked it for its aesthetic quality. What I'm trying to say is that I don't want to be in a class with people who are better than I am at something I've never done before. Heaven forbid I learn something from someone). Again, that's a pointless fear: I took jujitsu last year with a bunch of strangers (I was the second smallest...the smallest girl was Asian and a karate champion. What a great semester) and we had to get waaaaaay closer and awkward in that class than any weight training class could make us. And that class has been one of my best because I was able to grow so much. I pushed myself. I hate having to grow but I love the effects. Go figure.

Perhaps the nerves are because I'm resentful because I was liking my easy life of doing whatever I wanted. This is some sort of physiological rebellion. Natural woman in me. That's lazy. Sinful, too.

OH, NO! Someone, stop the sinner's onslaught of negativity!

I'm very excited about most of my classes (not physical science, with its expensive book that is painfully lacking in color pictures...how am I supposed to stay awake and alert with black and whites? Nigh unto impossible...and back to positive--): I finished reading the Book of Mormon just in time for my Old Testament class. My teacher is a campus legend for his incredible lessons and killer tests. Those of us who reeeeally like him have to reign it in to avoid elevating him to priestcraft levels. A facebook group dedicated to him is the upper limit of non-priestcraft-admiration. Anyways, he requires the class to read the entire scriptural text in 2 weeks (this semester, that means the last half of the Old Testament...in two weeks. Ready-made daily scripture study). And, of course, there's Brit lit 2 and Shakespeare. And some other stuff. And I need to go to bed, but first...an adventure story.

I got a Provo City Library card on Saturday. That was so exciting. There were three styles to choose from: boring brown with an image of the library on it, a bright yellow one with a cartoon frog that said, "My Library Card" (the card said, not the frog), and a silver one with a purple dragon reading a book that said, "Imagination Passport." Guess which one I got!

Did you guess right? Seriously, who could pass up an IMAGINATION PASSPORT? It was hard to get a picture...because the card's so...shiny.

BREAKING NEWS. I have some Timp veterans in my ward and they and myriad others want to hike it again. Standby for further details. It'll be some Saturday this month, probably the 15 or 22. Which would be best?

"It's a long hike. No one does it sober."

I didn’t realize how saturated my life is with drug and alcohol references. This title is from my all-time favorite roommate, Suzi. She had a lot more when she was in her drugs and modern society class last semester. Even powdered sugar wasn’t safe from her ever-watchful and drug-tuned eye. Que te propones hacer con ese cochillo?

One of my current roommates planned a night hike on Timp for last night to celebrate her master’s program graduation. I was pumped to go until the reality of starting at 9 pm and having the goal of being done walking at 6 am hit me. I was tired last night. Plus, I’d heard that you can make the round trip in 8 hours, so one of two things would happen on this hike: one, the pace would be maddeningly slow and I would fall asleep walking and fall of the mountain and die; or two, we’d get up there in good time and have to hang around at the frigid (I assume) summit and wait for the sun to rise. Then we would come off the mountain by sliding down the glacier on the other side. That sounded cool. Until I heard that there are exposed rocks and like hazards on it at this time of year. And then I started thinking, Timp is a pretty big mountain. That would make for a slide down from it a pretty intense cruise. Even without the rocks. I conquered roller coasters and even made an adrenaline-powered place for them in my heart, but the sound of this plan held the ominous ring of foolhardiness. Plus, my legs were starting to rebel from the stairs. Like they were a bit sore or something. (Oh, but it was so worth it. Even figuring in the 16 year old who was stalking me because he thought I was 15. Kid broke my pack. Then he told me I was really short. So I shot him. With a laser, of course. Don't get the wrong idea.)

So I stayed behind to take my druggie former roommate to Café Rio for her birthday. We got back in time to see the hiking party off. My current roommate took Bob the turtle with her, safely packaged in a sandwich bag. (He’s not a real turtle. No animals were harmed.)

Since that roommate was gone all night, we got to turn on the A/C: as I was hanging the last of my pictures, I heard the air conditioner rattle and boom to life. My room-roommate, Erin, came bounding into the room with a bright and mischievous grin.
“I turned the air down to 72!” she exclaimed.
“Yeeeeah!”

So for one night, we reveled in cool luxury. 72 degrees. That’s 14 degrees below our other roommate’s preference. That’s no way to live. That’s a way to die. Uncomfortably.

(I reference death too much. Another Suzi quote: “Oh, no, I made another reference to death! I’ve been hanging out with Cassie too much.” I should look into changing that.)

So I don’t have a sunrise from Timp picture…just a good night’s sleep and a picture of my new and exciting room. Look and love.


Mmmm. 70s era wood paneling and whitewashed cinderblock.

I would also have a picture of my beautiful Riverside, but, alas...the bookstore only had two used copies. What! I've waited my whole life to buy my own copy and I am not spending $60 on somebody's used goods. I will not have marked pages and damaged cover edges. I ordered from Amazon. I will take the picture when it comes. Unfortunately, it's not as pretty as the first edition that my dad has.


OH! Happy September!!!!!