New Stages...

Friends, Family, Blogosphere-comrades, lend me your ears!  Or eyes...?  I never know how to write that.

Anyway, while I love this blog and fully intend to continue it (as much as I ever continue it...) I have taken up a "projects" blog, where I plan to impart the world with eloquent wisdoms on various topics such as books, movies, DIY projects, and cooking.  It's basically an expanded pinterest, only I've done everything I've posted.

the url is

2everythingaseason.blogspot.com

I've already posted a couple of things there.  I'll try to keep up with this one too, like I did last summer, making note of what I do each day so that I don't start going to bed at 1 pm and waking up at 10 pm, drinking at 7 in the morning, and wearing an astronaut diaper.  I tend to lose track of time during the summer.

Speaking to that, today I...

• blogged (a lot...not a great way to spend a day...)
• went to see Snow White and the Huntsman (more on that later)
• played Pokéshots with a friend.

So, it was more a recreational day, all-told.

Check out the new blog, tell your friends, and stay tuned here.

<3 spadeALLcross

I sure am excellent at pickingthewrongtimetoblog

Okay, so I have to leave to go to lunch in T-8 minutes, but I've been wanting to put some thoughts down here for a while, and I'd rather spend 8 minutes freaking out about my too-slow typing wpm and doing something semi-productive than sitting here watching the guy next to me in the library lab fill out job applications.

[January]

1. Three-year anniversaries are evidently the ones where the neurotic girlfriend learns how to stop being neurotic about an anniversary.  It was great.
2. I can snowboard for a whole day without sucking!  I cannot, however, snowboard for a whole day and then do anything the next day without pain.  That's my next, perhaps unachievable, goal.
3. I could actually be a history teacher and not hate it.  Good news.

 [February]

1. "But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
      The solve is this, that thou dost common grow."
2. Trying to learn how to be a healthy, active person in this world often translates to spending a lot of time around people who hate their bodies.  I am fighting an uphill battle with my 30-Day Shred DVD...in all manners of speaking.

I don't want to see your perfectly toned stomach, Jillian Michaels. 
Please stop working so hard to show it to me. 
I see what you're trying to do...but I'd really rather not, thanks.

1. I found sticky notes with cute dogs on them.  My life is a brighter place.
2. "Up Top!" "Gross me right out."  I love my once and future roommates.
3. Sheldon really does cure all ills.

[March]

1. Just finished reading "Children and Peak Oil: An Opportunity in Crisis" by Tranter and Sharpe and it is currently changing the way I think about raising children.  I love it and am scared by it at the same time, but it gives me profound hope for both myself and any children I may someday have.

By segregating our children in to parks and "children only" areas, we are teaching them that they are not apart of the adult community.

 

1. March just started; don't hate me for not thinking more quickly.

I swear I had more, but 8 minutes are up.

<3 spadeALLcross

The Cliffs of Insanity!

I've reached them, folks.  It's almost November, and if you've been paying attention to my facebook, my google+, the sidebar on this blog, or the crazed look on my face, you'll remember that November means NaNoWriMo.

For those [unlikely few] of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is November.  It is also the name of an event put on by the Office of Letters and Light, a Not-for-Profit organization that supports, encourages, defends, and champions reading and writing and literacy programs around the world, in schools, libraries, and homes.  I love it, and I love its people (those whom I know) and I love its annual Month of "Literary Abandon."


NaNoWriMo stands for a lot of things that are important to me, as an enthusiast of education and of books, and a firm believer in a person's need to communicate and express themselves.  Because of this, I am putting aside my blue-chip safety dance and strapping on the Lonsword of +5 to risktaking.

On the sidebar of this page, you'll see a big green "Donate!" button.  The following are the rules for using said button.

Certainly anyone is allowed to donate free of nefarious connotations: just go to the page and donate and I'll be happy, and you'll be happy, and writers around the country and world will be happy, too.  Everyone wins.

But if you're of a more competitive spirit, or you don't think I can do what I say I'm going to do, or if you want to keep me honest, then let's set up a little wager, shall we?

There are many benchmarks for NaNoWriMo that we could put some money on.  There's the obvious one, 50K by the end of the month.  There're also the challenges of getting 1,667 words/day, or 11,669 words/week, or staying above someone else's daily word count, i.e. Chris Baty (the head of NaNoWriMo.org).  The wagers set thereon would work as follows:

You bet, say $50, that I don't make the 50K by the end of the month.  If I do, then you donate that $50 to NaNoWriMo.  If I don't, then I donate it to an organization of your choosing.  Any organization: NaNoWriMo, the NRA, Scientology, or even your own checking account.

The same goes for any benchmark.  I'm going to ask that there be a $0.50 maximum wager made for every 1,000 words expected for the benchmark, because I'm not made of money, and I'm sure you're not either.

If you accept any of these wagers, or if you want to donate just for the good of the cause, let me know in a comment below, or an email, or a text, or via facebook, or any other of the numerous ways people can reach me these days.  I won't necessarily accept all of the wagers, but I may accept some--the more interesting, the better--and I will consider all of them.

Happy Thursday!  And Happy National Novel Writing Month!

<3 spadeALLcross

So...what's next? [Me: Part V]

So now...the exciting part.  Where do I go from here?  What do all these changes mean to me, and how will they affect me?

Well, my desire to travel has opened up new avenues for me, but because I'm still a little cautious about, in my fervor for adventure, getting in over my head, I'm starting small.  I've wanted to visit Asia for years now, and now that I've been to England, which I thought was my first love, I feel like Asia is next.  I found a company that works with college students, recent graduates, and other like-minded people to install them as English teachers in China and Mongolia for a one- to two-year periods.  They also happen to do a summer camp program in the same countries for a shorter amount of time.  I checked my summer school schedule and my other engagements for next summer, and I found out that it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to take part in that sort of experience.  So...that's on my short-term dream list.

As I've been through the teachers' education program at Calvin, I've learned that I, like many upper-middle class white kids from the suburbs, struggle with stereotypes and prejudices, and I've seen how important it will be for me to break those down if I want to be an effective teacher.  So part of my goal in traveling to China is to immerse myself in another culture, to feel stereotyped, to need to defer to other people and lose myself in the attempt to assimilate.  I had a taste of that in England, and it was eye opening.  I don't think it's healthy to do that, to try to dis-identify with the parts of your life that made you who you are, but I do think it's what many classrooms ask students to do (even students of the racial and ethnic majorities) and I want to better understand the challenges in resisting that so that I can aid my students later on in life.

But I don't want to stop with China.  I want to start there because I'm fascinated by Eastern philosophy and cultures, so the actual transitions and logistics of living there may be more enjoyable for me.  But I want to then move to places I'm both less comfortable and less experienced.  There are other international teaching opportunities in Central America and Africa, and I would love the opportunity to get involved there.  I haven't found any available in the Middle East, but there may be other short-term options that I can look into.

Realistically, the timing is not great.  I don't actually have all the time in the world; I have a life in the US I'm excited about living, people I don't want to leave behind for so long, and a teaching certificate that will probably not get shinier the longer I'm away from the US school system.  So I'm definitely still working out the kinks in my plan.  But these are the things I'm excited about.

On a similar note, I don't believe that I can teach to American children without knowing more American children than I already do.  I want to get involved in US cultures and societies vastly different from the ones I grew up learning.  My school has what they call "living-learning residences" on and off campus.  In my freshman and sophomore years, I lived on the Honors floor, which was one of those communities.  There are other dorm floors like my old one--the creation care floor which is involved in environmentalism and the grass roots floor which is involved in social justice and racial and ethnic equality--and there are off-campus houses called Project Neighborhood houses, which are rooted in the community around Grand Rapids, especially the urban communities of downtown.  Many of the houses pair with churches or schools and the residents are required to get involved in those pairings through volunteer opportunities.  They are also "intentional" (a sort of Calvin buzzword) about creating community within each house, with house dinners and communal food...stuff like that.  More than simply six college students living in a house together and sometimes going out for pizza.  It can be really meaningful if the students want it to be, and that's something I think would benefit from.  (If only because I'm a kind of hopeless nerd and I need more social interaction if I ever want to function well in groups of people.)

I love where I'm living now and the people there, but I've been silently frustrated for a while now that my whole community will be changing after this year as so many of my friends graduate and get jobs and maybe even move away, while I'm left here, still in classes.  Not all of my friends are going to leave, certainly, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of my close friends, including my boyfriend, went off to grad school and I was left to fend for myself.  Project neighborhood would keep me involved with people whether I liked it or not, which would be really helpful and maybe even necessary.  I don't know yet; I'm still thinking.

Basically, I just wanted to share that I have some new goals for my life, that my newfound desire to travel and my re-found desire for divinity has given me an excitement for worldly adventuring, from teaching overseas, to living in diverse and different communities, to branching out to people I don't know, to being a generally more open and inviting human being.  None of these things interested me (practically) in the slightest eight months ago.  Some of them haven't interested me for more than a couple days, some for more than a couple hours.  I wanted to share this with you because it's all thrilling to me, and I want to explore it.  As most of the people who read this blog are people I care about and who care about me, I really want to explore it with you most.  Even if you think I'm crazy, even if you're worried that I'm becoming someone you don't want to care about anymore, I want to hear from you if you have something to say.

Stay cool.  You're 2Good2Be4Gotten.  Don't ever change.  And all that stuff.

But really, just live your life.  In the best way you can think of.  If I were someone who tried to literally bless people, like a CRC minister, that's what I would leave you with.

Tune in next time when I'll talk about...maybe cheese.

<3 spadeALLcross

Where do I think I'm going? [Me: Part 1]

Yup.  As per usual, as most of you expected, it has been a while since I last updated here.  That's not for lack of trying, believe me.  It's just that, between my list of goals I wanted to complete over the summer, my time spent unavoidably (if not welcomely) separated from my computer, the revision of my personal priorities, and the onset of school this week, every time I had something to blog about, I was convinced that there was some better use of my time elsewhere, and I was not often wrong.

The unfortunate consequence to this is that I now have a lot of stuff to say, while you have not developed some über stamina that would allow you to read it all in one sitting.  So consider this the first installment in a long line of get-to-know-Mary posts.  Because that's what they'll all have in common: "About Mary."

We'll start with the beginning.  These past eight months have been the most renewing months of my life.  They have been the most unstable, the most disappointing, the scariest, and the most wonderful time I have ever spent doing anything.  Throughout the four months I was in England, I became much more like the person I've always wanted to be; I became more confident in myself, less reliant on the affirmation of others, and more open and willing to try new things and take real risks.  I struggled, especially against myself, while I was there--I was homesick very often, out of my element with almost every step I took, and fully aware 98% of the time that I was less than perfect in many significant ways.  My semester abroad was not different or special in comparison to anyone else's semester abroad.  It changed me, certainly, like any new experience would, and it showed me who I really was, and sometimes that reflection made me cringe.  But I think that's what those sorts of programs are designed to do.  And if not, they still manage to more often than not, in my experience.

Fourish months removed from that time, I think I can safely say I've finally gotten around to processing it, and I think the most noticeable development it started in me was my newfound desire to travel.  I've always wanted to be a "world explorer," meeting new people and traveling to exciting places, just so I could see the world.  But now that I've had the smallest taste of that, and I know at least some of the downsides to that kind of an adventure, I feel like when I say, "I want to travel the world," I mean it now.  I know what's at stake, where I didn't before, but I also know what glorious things can happen as a result, and that prospect is exciting more to me than the fears are scary.

Then the summer started.  There was undeniable culture shock as I moved back to the US, even just from England (which is not all that different), and that experience further opened my eyes, showing me what I felt I needed to change about my lifestyle, that, in some cases, it just wasn't a choice anymore.  It's one thing to say something is important to you, it's another thing to realize that you simply cannot live your life without it.  My transition back to the states, back to things, relationships, and interests that once felt comfortable to me made me see more clearly which pieces of myself I needed to put the effort into preserving, and which pieces I needed to weed out.  The process is ongoing and challenging, but as I said, I simply can't stop.  I believe there are certain foundational pieces of my personality and my life that, if I neglected them simply because they were hard, I would be lying to myself about who I was, which would make my life hard to live anyway.  It's a lose-lose, in a [pessimistic] sense, but I think the intentional, challenging way is the more sustainable and rewarding way.

So that's where I was around the middle of June.  Tune in next time to hear about July.

<3 spadeALLcross

I am not a doctor...and I don't play one on TV

(This post is not written by an expert in anything.  These are opinions and theories based on experience, not facts based on evidence.  If you have a problem with anything said here, please begin a discussion, as I would rather be convinced that my theories are wrong than have someone think they're wrong and not tell me.)

So, it's 6:21 am CDT, and I am awake.  This is an anomaly: do not be fooled into thinking I am a morning person.  No, I'm waiting for the registration to open pottermore.com.  There's been a window of about a half hour every day since Sunday, and the windows will officially close for a few months after Saturday, so I've dedicated the early mornings of the past couple days to waiting around for my opportunity to register for the site.

Yesterday was the first day I purposefully woke up early.  I got to the site, found the clue, realized I didn't have my copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban, where the answer to the clue could be found, so defaulted and used the audiobook, since iTunes just happened to be open.  (If I had had to open iTunes, it would have taken about five full minutes, if not more, and I think I would have imploded due to the building pressure.) I solved the clue, got to the website where the quill was supposed to be, and couldn't find it.  Registration had closed.  So I shrugged wistfully, yawned, and went back to sleep.

On Sunday, registration opened at 3 am in my time zone, on Monday, it opened at 4 am, and on Tuesday it opened at 5 am.  So, I set my alarm this morning for a little before six and hopped online to wait around.  Well...obviously, since it's 6:27 now, the trend has changed.  It irks me a little and I find it unsettling that whoever is in charge of this website is making the fans jump through so many hoops to get to it.  If it's just because they want the most dedicated fans to get on the site for this early registration dry run, I can maybe understand that, although I must point out that "Harry Potter Fan" does not directly translate to "Internet-Savvy, Scavenger-Hunt Extraordinaire" and that there are probably people getting on to Pottermore who were more intrigued by the process of getting there than they will be by the website.  But if the reason for the manipulations comes from the fact that, Harry Potter being what it is to so many people, this is one fan base who would put up with almost anything, and this sort of registration process is more fun for the people in charge...that's just sick and they should stop.  People are staying up egregiously late in some time zones, or waking up entirely too early, skiving off summer school or work...seems wrong to me.  Dumbledore wouldn't let this happen.


Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about really.

In the excess time that I've been awake when pottermore hasn't been open (it's 6:35 now) I've been browsing the internet.  It started on twitter where, since I'm following Pottermorefans, I was already sitting waiting for some news, perhaps on why regsitration wasn't open yet.  I perused the past tweets, the @replies, etc, and I noticed a fervent energy present in every bit of the online conversations that revolved around this twitter account.  People excited for pottermore opening, people preparing for each clue by quizzing themselves with similar clues they've made up themselves, people speculating about how access to the site is actually going to work, people sharing stories about the ridiculous things they've done for Harry Potter in the past, comparing Houses, etc.  To some degree, it reminded me of the sort of energy I always felt at Harry Potter midnight showings, the energy that kept me coming back to the cinema every year, even though I didn't like the movies anymore.

But I started following links, and looking at other Harry Potter fandom things, and I remembered a book I saw for sale called Dear Mr. Potter which is filled with letters from people to Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling, telling them their stories about how Harry Potter made their life better in some way.  A lot of them were touching, some were similar to mine, but a few of them sort of scared me in a way, and I stopped wanting to read them.

I've been called a nerd on several occasions, it feels like my mom calls me an "addict" every time I do anything for more than an hour for two days in a row (right now, this includes my obsession with ST:VOY), and I've gotten numerous questioning looks and scoffs, and even the odd demoralizing attack on my sanity from people who think I get "too" into things.  Most of the time, these things are fandoms like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Twilight, and others.  A few people have made fun of my T-shirt collection, but that's rare (because my t-shirt collection is universally awesome).  Some people say I'm too Christian, too, but that's a different matter from my perspective, if not from theirs.

Harry Potter is different, because it is the one series I constantly return to.  With others, I go through phases: I don't feel the same awe when I watch the Lord of the Rings movies as I did when I was in Junior High, I don't wish Lt. Commander Data were a non-fictional artificial lifeform anymore, and I certainly hate Bella Swan and her entire creepy family.  But I've always loved Harry Potter, from the time I read the first book to the moment the credits rolled on the eighth movie, a timeline of almost fifteen years, my love for the series has developed from a phase-based infatuation into a sort of foundational love.  Harry Potter is definitely a part of my life, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the same person if I hadn't read it.  This is not true of all the other fandoms I've been a part of, including Twilight, Star Trek, Eragon, or The Matrix: take those experiences away, and the change in my character and person would be minimal.

The other fandom that captured my heart so thoroughly was The Lord of the Rings.  I was in fifth or sixth grade when the first movie came out, and it took me a year to read the first book, but after that and until I got into high school, I was beyond obsessed.  But it was not the same kind of obsession I had with Harry Potter.  2001, the year the movie came out, was a pretty hard year for me.  It was a pretty hard year for the country, which certainly contributed to my year sucking.  2002 and 2003 were not much better.  For this period of three years, I didn't have very many friends, my family life was more complicated and painful than I was used to, and I was doing terribly in school.  The only thing that was going right, I thought, was The Lord of the Rings.  Between reading the books, watching the movies, and obsessing over the details of both, I could easily occupy my mind with things other than my own life, and for the most part, that's exactly what I did for three years.  I checked out of reality for the better part of Junior High, forgoing relationships with people around me, a better understanding of myself, and a first-hand knowledge of the world because there were things in my life that upset me and The Lord of the Rings allowed me to get away from them.

Sure, I turned out all right in the end, and yes, being a "fan" doesn't necessarily mean you're an escapist, and no, escapism is not always the same as hard drugs: sometimes it's just a coping mechanism, an outlet to plug in and recharge, and none of that scares me or bothers me.  But reading some of those letters to Rowling and hearing the way those people were talking about the series as if it "saved" them from their terrible lives because they were able to read it long enough to wait out their problems and not have to deal with them every day...it feels dangerous to me.

Dumbledore himself said, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."  Wishing Hogwarts is real, that you had friends like Hermione or Luna, that you could be a part of something special and important like Dumbledore's Army, that makes sense and I imagine is a natural response to a series that garnered so much love and attention for so long by so many.  But I think that believing the books changed your life when all that happened was that you lived them instead of it is just incorrect.  If thirteen years of your life you dwelled on Harry Potter, hoping it was real, living as if it was, and skipping out on what was actually happening around you, even if it was too terrible for you to live with, the series did not save you: it allowed you to lose thirteen years of your life that you will never get back.

I'm pretty sure I'm reading more into those letters than is there, since even my bout of living outside reality wasn't that deep or detrimental.  But I wanted to voice my opinions about escapism, I guess, because I do think it's dangerous, and I do believe it's similar to, if not the same as an addiction.  Some addictions are obviously unhealthy, and the family and friends of the user notice the signs and urge the user to seek help.  Some addictions are less noticable, either because they are easily hidden (pornography and x-rated romance novels, anorexia and bulimia, etc) or because they are socially acceptable (caffeine, nicotine, etc).  Some are more physically damaging than others (heroine, alcohol, etc) while some are more emotionally or psychologically damaging than others (eating disorders).

But all addictions are the same in that they give the addict a crutch to get through life, and the longer a person uses the crutch, the more the rest of their faculties atrophy due to lack of use or dependence.  A person can become addicted to anything if they let that thing control their desires, dictate how they spend their time, or keep them from doing other things they used to enjoy or taking care of their responsibilities.  The phrase "The more _____ you own, the more your _____ owns you" is not just a pithy attack on materialism.  When someone goes camping and goes through television withdrawal, it's not just a useful metaphor.  I'm not a psychologist, but in my personal experience, if there's anything in your life that you do regularly often without thinking, or because you "can't help yourself," or because you think it makes your life easier/simpler/better, you're forming a habit, and habits can easily become addictions.

The Lord of the Rings was my addiction.  It didn't kill me, and I don't even necessarily regret it, but I do sometimes wonder what would have been different about my Junior High and high school experience if I had had a more healthy relationship with the books and movies.  The difference, from what I can tell, is in the control.  If you honestly determine when, where, and how you do something, if you really can stop any time, then you're in control.  The moment you start feeling like you have to, like you can't afford not to, like it would be too hard to not do something, things start getting scary.

Aaaand I just went to the pottermore blog and realized that I didn't have to wake up until 22 minutes ago (it's 8:22 now) because they announced that registration would open sometime between 2 pm and 6 pm BST.  Ugh.  Obviously, I'm an example of an Internet-Idiot Harry Potter fan.  But evidently, those in charge of pottermore don't really want me anyway.

I'm going back to bed.  I hope I didn't offend anybody, but if I did, please tell me why.  I'm just postulating throughout all of this: as I said, I'm not a psychologist and most of my experience with addiction diseases is second-hand, so I am not an expert.

If, though, you think there are things that control you more than you'd like them to, my amateur suggestion would be to tell someone you believe can help you: not necessarily a friend or family member, but someone you think will have the wisdom and guts to help you work through it.  A counsellor, a mentor, a religious leader, a teacher...someone who either knows you or would know how to help you with your situation.

<3 spadeALLcross

EDIT: Wow...this post takes quite the journey. Probably reads a little strangely. I should edit it at some point, and I probably will later.

The time has come, [the Walrus said]...

It's been a few days since I saw HP 7.2, and I now feel solid enough in my opinion of it to review it.  Not in-depth, as I don't think anyone who reads this blog really cares about the play-by-play of a movie they could easily watch themselves, but at least enough to discuss the parts that struck me the most.

WARNING: Spoiler City up in hurr.

I walked into the theater last November for the midnight showing of HP 7.1 with very low expectations.  I've been to every midnight showing of a Harry Potter movie since Prisoner of Azkaban as a tradition, but have never actually liked the movies.  But after HP 7.1 was over, I was incredibly and pleasantly surprised by its quality.  The filmmakers had definitely made choices that I didn't understand, like not including the invisibility cloak, rushing through an introduction of Bill Weasley, and skipping over so much of Harry's Dumbledore-related angst.  But the movie did a much better job than its predecessors of staying true to the depth, vision, and feeling of the book.  Things were dark, scary, and hopeless, and the comic relief came in short bursts of smiles before nail-biting drama struck again.

So Thursday night, my expectations were high for a Harry Potter film for the first time in seven years.  And when the credits rolled, I was less disappointed than I could have been. I think the movie did as good a job adapting the book as it could have, given the circumstances.  Ending a series beloved by so many people and trying to include all of the bits that audience would expect--"The Prince's Tale," Molly-Bellatrix dueling scene, Neville's defeat of Nagini, many of the priceless bits of dialogue sprinkled throughout, etc.--while still creating an enjoyable movie that wasn't absolute Hell to sit through is a task that I do not envy.

Because the job was such a hard one, I'm quite happy with the way the movie turned out.  It does, however, solidify in my mind that the books outstrip the films in every way that counts.

The movie didn't really include anything about the Hallows at all.  It registered their existence and sort of nodded to the fact that Harry possessed all three by the end of the war for Hogwarts, but it didn't show the struggle that Dumbledore had faced, like so many others within and -out of fiction have faced, throughout his life of trying to use them to overcome death.  Dumbledore's ascension to the position of Hogwarts' Headmaster and decline of the position of Minister of Magic was hardly mentioned, if at all.  Harry's choice not to try to beat Voldemort to Dumbledore's tomb and take the Elder wand didn't happen.  Voldemort's fear of death was downplayed in favor of his fear of defeat.  These choices changed the entire point of the Harry Potter story.  The saga went from a relatable tale of young people overcoming internal and external obstacles by learning to think for themselves while still relying on others, a tale of friendship and bravery, of unity and mutual respect, of trusts lost and regained, to a coming-of-age story that no one can ever identify with, since it's set in a fictional world whose struggles are nothing like ours.

In the first book and movie, Quirrell/Voldemort says, "There is no Good and Evil; there is only power and those too weak to seek it."  This is the theme of the Deathly Hallows; the internal battle between action and inaction, the conscious decisions Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort each make in their separate quests to "win," and each person's individual definition of what "winning" means.

All three of them have different relationships and responses to power.  Voldemort obviously desires to increase his own power.  As a child and a student he uses his innately strong magical power to bully and coerce those around him, to make them see how strong he was, to make others see how week they were.  He also hones his social power to ensnare people who have more actual authority than he does in order to use their power to his advantage.  But the only reason he wants any of this power is his fear of death.  He fears the unknown that comes after death, and he spends most of his life ensuring that he will never have to face it.  It is his search for ways to overcome death that brought so much of his power, and once he believes he has achieved immortality, he knows that he is better, stronger, smarter than everyone else in the world, including Dumbledore.  Because, if anyone else were as talented and as driven as he was, they would have created horcruxes as well, they would have done the things he had done, because death was something everyone feared.  How could they not?  He could not see any other way of approaching the power he had discovered.  He could not see why anyone would not want to live forever.  What was the point of a whole and pure soul if it could be destroyed?

Meanwhile, Dumbledore also desires power his whole life.  Similar to Voldemort, he sharpens his magic and knowledge from a young age.  Perhaps it is Dumbledore's habit of (born out of his opportunities for) relying on other people that allow him to have friends at school who then keep him from becoming the lone-ranger that Voldemort is.  Maybe Dumbledore's quest is more for knowledge and study than it is for power.  But for whatever reason, Albus gets through school without attempting to take over the world.  However, once school is over and his mother's death forces him to settle back in at home to take care of his younger brother and sister, he feels trapped in an inferior life.  His belief that he could do more with his talents, should be allowed to move forward, fuels his friendship with Grindelwald, someone who agrees with Albus that he was made for better things.  Maybe Gelert has a more straightforward desire for power for the sake of power than Dumbledore does, but Dumbledore, blinded by love and a feeling of partnership he probably didn't feel with anyone else and isn't getting from anyone in his broken family, dares to dream with Grindelwald.

Dumbledore's crippling fear that made him seek power wasn't death, but stagnation, discomfort, and intellectual restraints.  Where Voldemort wanted the horcruxes primarily to ensure his eternal existence and only secondarily used the power he had gained from making them to subjugate those he thought were weaker than him, Dumbledore and Grindelwald wanted the Hallows primarily to place their superior intelligence and talent rightly on top where it belong, and only secondarily to allow themselves to live forever.

Albus is shocked out of his desire for power by the loss of his brother, sister, and best friend/boyfriend in one fell blow, and for a while, his fear overshadows  his guilt.  His grief over his lost loved ones and his knowledge that he is at least partly responsible keeps him from grabbing power where he can. But that fear of discomfort is something he struggles with his entire life, between desiring power over other, lesser people, as he exhibits when he borrows the cloak from James Potter, and wanting power over his grief, as he demonstrates by attempting to bring Ariana and his parents back from the dead with the resurrection stone. But he is always disgusted by his relationship to power, which is why the Elder wand is safe with him. He doesn't trust himself, and he doesn't trust the wand, so he remains headmaster of Hogwarts and keeps his own power and the wand's in check.

Unlike Dumbledore and Voldemort, Harry does not want power. All his life he is powerless, alone, and mistreated, much like Voldemort, but at school, he gains friends and fame, like Dumbledore. His fame does not treat him well; it makes him as many enemies as friends, and it gives him as many problems as solutions. Some of his fame is based on his own talent, and some of his success comes from skill, but he knows that an equal, if not greater amount comes from luck, chance, and the providence of others, and between this knowledge and the pains his fame gives him, he doesn't get as big a head as he could. Instead of focusing on overpowering others, he genuinely tries his best to do what he thinks is right. What he thinks is right is not always the most intelligent course of action, but he is only a teenager, and he is often dealing with the complex power schemes and magic of adults much stronger and smarter than he is. He knows that he isn't good enough to do everything by himself, but he also knows that doing something was too important to leave entirely to someone else. He is the perfect combination of Voldemort and Dumbledore, of relying on himself and relying on others, of choosing to act and choosing to wait, of having a will to live without putting it above everything else. If he has a crippling fear, it is that he was not worth dying for: that his parents and his friends loved him too much and for no reason. Instead of driving him to take power wherever he can find it, his fear dives him to be the best person possible, fighting for the best causes he finds.  His fear makes him constantly reevaluate his actions and his goals, to know himself...something Dumbledore learned too late, and Voldemort never learned at all. Because of this, he gets all three Hallows and learns what it really means to be Master of Death. Not to live forever, but to embrace the inevitable end, to know that it's coming, and to not fight it once it arrives.

So many themes regarding life and what it means to be human float in and out of Harry Potter: persistence in the face of overwhelming adversity, unlikely forgiveness, the importance of friendship, the need for humility, and so on and so forth.  A lot of them feel cliché when said aloud, which is probably why people call Harry Potter fans "nerds."  The story is a coming-of-age adventure; how could it not be with a group of adolescents as the protagonists? But its fan base is proof that its characters and plots speak to more than just adolescents and that the series is more than a mere didactic fairy tale about the ideal human being.

The major overarching theme of the whole series is not cliché or nerdy, but a real question that people ask themselves constantly, whether they take note of it or not.  The theme is expressed in that striking quote of Quirrell's: "There is no Good and Evil; there is only power and those too week to seek it." The question Harry Potter asks is whether Good seeks power, and whether not seeking power is a weakness. Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort represent three case studies in dealing with power that can show us our own feelings about the subject.

But the movies do not focus on that aspect of the books. It makes sense that they wouldn't: in order to do so, all of the movies would have had to have been much longer and probably would have included more scenes of exposition and talking than of action and excitement, and that's not exactly what a movie is best at. As it is, the movies portray a good story about children becoming adults and overcoming the obstacles their parents and mentors could not.

So, while I certainly can't say I love the movies as much as I love the books, I'm not surprised or upset by their inability to match up with each other. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey, and when I drink water, I drink water.

And I'm sad that Harry Potter is officially over, but I can't afford to care too much for too long.  Everyone has different experiences with literature, and I have confidence in mine and shouldn't worry for anyone else's, since I can't control it anyway.

Here's to you, Harry. And here's to many happy years of your own immortality, one you gained without Hallows, without Horcruxes.

Now...if only Hogwarts were real...

<3 spadeALlcross

Here we are now, entertain us...

Sorry about the lack of post last week.  Aren't you glad I was moved enough by my church service to post twice the week before?

I've been keeping two journals for my entire trip: one imposed by myself (in order to facilitate the recollection of fond memories and because I find that I am less likely to let days slip away from me if I have to own up to my own listlessness at the end of the day by writing it down) and one imposed by my Calvin professor to prove that I'm learning something while here.

In both of these, I sometimes write very interesting things (if I do say so myself) so I think I'll put some here for your perusal.  That way you don't have to put up with another itemized list of my week's adventures, but can instead enjoy a magnified bit of my life from one or two days that I found important.

Enjoy!

25th February, 2011

Tonight at the Bratts’, we watched The Young Victoria. Its main focus is the romance between Victoria and Albert, their courtship and early marriage, and how Victoria overcame the trials of her childhood only with Albert’s help.

A lot of the movie romanticized a life that was quite a bit more depressing than Hollywood would like it to be—the industrial revolution in England was a heartrending time for the people, and Albert’s early death, and the early deaths of many of their children were nigh unbearable for Victoria herself. But from what I’ve learned, Victoria and Albert were at least very close to being as much in love as the movie portrays, and they probably had something very similar to the courtship shown in the movie.

To think about that made me wonder about relationships today and how everyone pushes for compatibility while Victoria and Albert met twice and exchanged tons of letters before they decided to get married. How could they have known how compatible they were?

Maybe we should all care more about finding someone we love and learning, through patience, faith, and practice, to love the parts of them that don’t quite mesh with our own. There’s a minimum of compatibility that needs to be reached, a happy medium that must be struck, but maybe searching for perfect every time is just selfish and, ultimately, unsatisfying. What is life, and also love, if it does not involve conflict and resolution, as well as constant reform?

26th February, 2011

We went to Fountains Abbey today, the ruins of the richest Abbey in England before the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. In the 19th century, the lord of the neighboring estate took up gardening to pass the time, made the beautiful water gardens that are there now, and his son bought the ruined abbey to complete the picturesque landscape.

It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny day, perfect for wandering the grounds, and I was completely swept up in the place. I climbed trees and rocks and up muddy embankments and tried to walk over waterfalls…it brought out so much of an old, lost version of myself that has been lying dormant since early in high school. The me of my childhood that loved camping for the sake of playing in dirt, and who wanted to sit on the bank of every river and dip her feet in. Fountains made me miss my old spring breaks spent in Eagle Rock, Missouri growing up. Some of my fondest memories come from those trips, when the leaves were first beginning to turn, and the sun would work to burn through the clouds each morning, having just enough energy afterwards to keep the day moderately warm.

I’m finding that a lot with travel in England; it is turning me into a new person; a more culturally aware person, but also a more self-aware person. A person who knows who she is and all of what she can be, and is seeking to reconcile those two beings. England has taught me a lot about the world and about myself, and the sunlight and water sounds at Fountains Abbey helped me to actually feel that for the first time.


10 March, 2011

Yesterday, Josh D, Abby, Gabe, and I went to All Saints Church just before their Ash Wednesday service to look into doing it for our upcoming museum reports. The church building itself was a bit smaller than St. T’s and the congregation was significantly smaller—however, this being a midweek and seasonal service, and with there being the option of an Ash Wednesday service later that night, there was no way of telling how large the actual full congregation would be.

We walked in to look around, and a man at the back of the church who was sitting, waiting for the service to begin noticed us with our cameras and notebooks, and just stood up and gave us a sort of impromptu tour, delineating for us the whole history of the building, from the Medieval times all the way up to a fire in the 1950s and the beginning of his own attendance, some fifty years ago.

That’s something I’m noticing in England, and I don’t know if it’s just me or of it’s an actual cultural difference: people seem to have a better grasp on history, especially the general history of their country dating back to antiquity, but also specific histories of important buildings and cultures within their country. I don’t know how true this is of the younger people (although my flatmate who’s from Colchester did learn about Boudica in primary school and recalled making a portrait of her out of macaroni noodles on paper) but many of the older people are able to recount events from the Medieval times and earlier, specific details about the Minster and even Eboracum. I don’t even know when my hometown was founded, and I often forget that the Articles of Confederation ever existed.

It seems counter intuitive that people whose country has millennia worth of history have less trouble recounting it than people whose country is less than three-hundred years old, but that is a trend I’ve been noticing.



In other news, I posted a new snidget today.  If you missed last weeks...don't worry about it.  Not much to see there.

Have a stupendous weekend.

<3 spadeALLcross

How much is that doggy in the window?

Happy Friday, World!

This week has been a blur...I don't really know where it went.  But there were some definite highlights, so I'll just hit those up and let you go on your way.

Saturday, as I mentioned before, we went to Cambridge with the York St. John University international department.  We met up with Paul Chaplin, my RA from last year, who's been living there for five months, and he showed us around.  It was a great day, even though it was raining and freezing and I was wearing precisely the wrong shoes for walking around (I'd woken up five minutes after I was supposed to leave to catch the bus, thanks to my alarm clock being analogue and in Roman numerals...).

Sunday was church at St. Thomas with St. Maurice.  I love that church so much.  I wish I could take it with me back to the states.

After church five of us went to the Bratts' house for Sunday dinner/lunch.  So much food.  So much delicious food.  And I love those people.  Such a good day.

A little while after that was tea and toast (a fortnightly tradition at St. T's) which was mostly inhabited by Calvin students, but it was great to talk to everyone about their spring break plans, and talk to Stephen, Laura, and Hannah, who go to St. T's and organized the event.  Stephen used to work on the railways before he became a vicar, I guess, and he has some great stories about the old steam trains (including the Hogwarts Express!  He rode the real thing!) and is generally just a great and funny guy.

Monday, we went to Leeds.  [Insert excitement here.]  It was fun, but I'm kind of sick of talking about it. We saw the Royal Armoury Museum and the Leeds Art Museum, which were fun to see in conjunction with each other, because there was some interesting overlap between the wartime exhibits in the art museum and the parallel exhibits in the Royal Armoury.  And both were free.  Brilliant.

Tuesday...Wednesday...

Thursday! (This one's a long one...)
A bunch of us went to the National Railway Museum on Tuesday to ride the Hogwarts Express (just the engine was available, since the cars are just regular steam-engine cars, as I understand it), and while we were there, we saw that they had actors dressed up as Harry, Hagrid, and Dumbledore.  We didn't manage to get pictures with them, and some people had to leave to be on time for a meeting, so we left without any bounty.

But Lea and I weren't done trying.  We went back Thursday morning specifically to get pictures with Harry.  That's right; it's a half-hour walk one-way, plus we didn't know how long we'd have to wait for him...you only wish you were this hard core of a fan...of HP impersonators...

We got there around 10:30 because we knew that he would be in the 11:00 magic show and we didn't know if he'd be available for that first bit.  Turns out he wasn't, so Lea and I just hung around awkwardly, making jokes about how awkward we felt because this whole NRM wizard week was meant for primary school children on half-term holiday, and there we were, 19 and 21 years old, more excited about this than those kids, just because we wanted to take a picture with a guy who marginally resembled the guy who plays Harry Potter in the movies.

[The Magic show was awful.  Totally bastardized all the HP themes, made a fool out of Dumbledore, and made up all sorts of lies about Hogwarts and Muggle-Magic relations.  Very not okay.]  Then, after the show, the actors said they'd be right back to take pictures with people.  This was around 11:20.  From 11:25 to 12:00, we stalked Harry. Hard core (parkour! almost...).

[When they came back, Dumbledore was first, and he sot of knocked over the rope line around the little stage right next to where Lea and I were standing--everyone else had left--and he looked at us and said, "That's the Domino theory for you.  Except worse."  It was funny, but his voice was kind of creepy...]  Harry Came out eventually, and we just stared at him. Neither of us had the guts to ask him for a picture, so we were just staring.  [He asked if we were using "Muggle image capturing devices." Wtf?  Harry was raised by muggles.  He knows what cameras are...] He told Lea she looked like a Weasley.  Then he walked into the throng of children that had swarmed up behind us.  Lea and I, kicking ourselves for not being Gryffindors, followed him as best we could.  After a few moments, though, they said they had to go to the other end of the museum.  So they cut through the narrow path through the diner that stood in the middle of the room between Queen Victoria's train and a train marked "Winston Churchill" (whether it was his or not, I do not know).

The crowd of children was following them, so Lea and I made to cut around the diner.  As Harry Cut in front of us, he looked at us and said, "There are two girls who look just like you back there."  We started cracking up.  I felt so silly, but it was such a good feeling to laugh at myself for doing something stupid because of a book I've loved for half of my life.  I don't know how to explain it...

We walked around the side of the diner, which had half walls with frosted glass at the top that were just at the right height to make it look like we were trying to be sneaky.  We probably looked like such creepers as we kept perfect pace with Harry.  Once we got to the end, they started taking pictures again, and we tried to get in, but were too cowradly.  After a moment, they started working their way back through the diner, so we walked around again, crossed paths yet again, and got funny looks from Harry and Dumbledore.  Once they reached the platform stage thing again, they climbed up and started posing. So dumb.  Weird looking, too.  Like synchronized slow-motion disco.

Then finally, as they made to walk outside, Lea and I both, at least, managed to yell, "Harry!  Can we get pictures?" He said, "Sure, just follow us."  So we did.

Out into the sunlight, onto the platform of the Hogwarts express, where we finally got our pictures.  There were still crowds trying to get pictures with them, but Harry pointed at us and said, "These girls have been following us for a long time."  Facepalm.  As I took Lea's picture, Dumbledore asked her, "Where are you from?"

"Michigan."

"Oh, that's a long way to travel by broomstick."

Best. Morning. Ever.

Later that night, I made scrumptious homemade mac and cheese using real cheeses, mushrooms, onions, garlic, oregano...ahhhh.  There's some left over that I'm having for dinner.  I'm exited about that.

And last thing...I cut my own hair.  Below is my demonstration of what it looks like.

Tomorrow, we're going to Fountains Abbey and Ripon.  And next Thursday, Katri's coming!

There is so much to love about this world.  Being this far away from the people and things that I care about, from everything that's familiar, and watching other people's lives unfold without me while I sit in England, feeling like I'm not doing enough to experience the culture...there have been a lot of downer times.  With everything awful that's been going on in the world recently, in New Zealand, Libya, Egypt, and daily awfulness that happens everywhere, it's been so easy to see the terrible.  Life has never been a squeefest.  But this trip is teaching me to appreciate the little things, like the sheer ridiculosity that happens when you cut your own hair, because sometimes they're all you've got.

Granted, England, Harry Potter, Katri's visit, and macaroni leftovers are no little things.  We can't forget those, either.

Tell me how your life is!  This blog is all about me, but I don't want my life to be all about me.  Email me!  Facebook me!  Skype me!  Send me a link to your blog!  I want to know what is going on in your lives, too.

<3 spadeALLcross

Clarification, Qualification, yadda yadda

I've gotten some comments in the past few days (readership?  what?) on my disillusioned-with-the-world post.  The comments were confusing me, so I went back and re-read that post, only to realize that I sounded way more depressed than I actually felt or am about this whole situation.

I'm not living in a down-on-myself way because I have this wealth of opportunities and overall happiness that most of the world does not have.  I'm living in a frustrated turmoil because figuring out how to use my gifts and wealth and privilege in the best and most efficient ways possible is very...well...frustrating.  I suddenly don't know what I want to do with my life.  I don't know what's important to me or what I'm best at, where I should be investing myself and how best to serve a world that needs me.

Long term, this could mean changing my career plans.  I'm considering dropping education as a major, taking some art classes and going into marketing and computer-aided design, because that's something I really love and am fairly good at, and it's something that could be useful for companies, not-for-profits, starving artists, etc.  I really get into that kind of work, and fears I have with it are actually considerably fewer than fears I have with teaching.

Because, let me tell you, the idea of molding young minds is looking less and less fun and more and more like no one should be trusted to do it.  It's too scary to me, to have that much power over lives.  But maybe I'm over-thinking the job and underestimating myself, so I really am still thinking and praying through all of this.

Short term, this revelation means I'm reevaluate the way I live my life day-to-day, specifically how I treat and interact with people.  I'm a very selfish person (I think I hide it well, so if you disagree with me, you will not be able to convince me) and I need to work on that, because it gets in the way of loving others.

And right now, "loving others" is suddenly the number-one priority in my life.  Doing for others, being there for others, giving myself away in order to get myself back, if that makes any sense.  I don't like who I am when I'm all about me.

I'm aware that this doesn't mean letting people walk all over me.  It's much more challenging than that; it involves a change of the heart, a change of priorities.  And that's what's really getting to me, what's giving me the hardest time.  That's what prompted me to write that post a couple days ago.

Last week was like taking the lens cap off a point-and-shoot digital camera; it took a while for the exposure settings to adjust to a functional level.  That last post was a summation of the blinding white and painful haze of realizing that my world is too comfortable.  This week, and many weeks, months, years to come, is the slow adjustment into a life the knowledge I've gained from that haze.

This post may worry some of you as much as the last did.  But if you love me, give me the benefit of the doubt.  And give me time.  If we had but the world enough, and time...

<3 spadeALLcross

EDIT:

I came up with an idea last week for my second tattoo...and I'm actually actively pursuing it.  (By actively, at this point, I mean I'm passively and slowly saving money for it.)  My drawing tablet appears to have bitten the proverbial dust, so this is obviously not a final rendering (also, it is not a very good example of my skills in computer-aided design...) but this is the general concept.  The final product will still be this simple, but with better lettering and, you know, straight lines.

It comes from something in Tim Russert's memoir, Big Russ & Me, wherein he writes a letter to his son, Luke, as an epilogue.  "Lukeman, along the way you'll hit some hurdles and experience some setbacks.  I will always be there for you, as Grandpa was for me.  But remember, while you are always, always loved, you are never, never entitled.  As Grandpa likes to say, 'The world doesn't owe you a favor.'"

This is huge to me, especially right now.  I'm just thinking about it, because permanently marking up your body is one of those things you don't just do for fun on the weekends, but I am thinking about it.

All I know is my steak tastes better when I take my steak-tastes-better pill

Mary: So, Jared, how are the Timmer apartments?

Jared: Oh, they're great. Well, crappy in comparison to KHvR, but still pretty good. And I have an awesome roommate, so I'm enjoying myself.

Mary: Oh yeah? I remember you were worried last year about your roommate...

Jared: Oh, well, I got a different one actually.

Mary: Yeah? Why?

Jared: Well, he's still in jail, so he couldn't come.

Ahh, the first day of school. Quite enjoyable, actually. Things went generally well. I enjoyed my classes ("Intro to Creative Writing" and "Shakespeare"), and though they will certainly prove challenging, I look forward to their continuation throughout the semester. I got a ton of odd-jobs done that I needed to get done, and even made good headway on my homework.

In my creative writing class, the professors made some off-hand comment about workshop groups, and it made me realize that, in my brief history as a serious fiction (and ill-fated poetry) writer, writing groups have been the one thing that ensure that I write. Not only does the pressure of creating work for others to read spur me into writing just anything as long as it's something, but the pleasure of getting feedback from those others often spurs me to take new risks and really enjoy my writing in a way writing on my own never does. This revelation is...well, huge. It's why NaNoWriMo, though grueling, is so much fun for me. It's why my Creative writing class last semester (ironically a higher-level course than the creative writing class I'm taking this semester) was by far my best experience as a writer ever.

In summary: I need to find a [semi]-permanent home in a writing group.

Work started tonight, too. It was actually very fun. Evidently, I was put in charge of all the gym floors and the stairs in the Hoogenboom Health and Rec center. I dust-mopped all the gym floors, and then swept and mopped the stairs. I worked with a freshman media-productions major named Taylor and listened to a post-modernist philosophy lecture on my iPod.

Now to bed!

Well, first a word from our poor, neglected sponsors.

<3 spadeALLcross

P.S. I actually wrote most of this either before the end of the day, or during the day/night of the eighth. Sorry if my insincerity and outright lies bother you.

I need some sleep, I can't go on like this...

I've been having troubles staying asleep past five or six hours for the past few weeks, and the past couple of days it's been really catching up to me; I've been falling asleep at friends' houses, while using my computer, and even while eating. It hasn't been a whole lot of fun, so I decided when I got home last night, that I would try to catch up on all that "lost" (I went through most of the past school years on five to six hours of sleep a night without any problems, so I don't know why I can't now) sleep. I went to bed at 10:00ish and promised myself not to get out of bed until at least 9:00.

That failed. I woke up at 1:00 just long enough to look at the clock and roll my eyes. Then I woke up again at 5:30. If I had gotten up then, I would have gotten almost exactly 7 hours of sleep, and my body definitely wanted to get up then. My mind started churning about stuff I had to do today, expecting me to get up and start doing it. But I refused, and eventually, though it took a while, I got back to sleep.

Mistake. I had the worst dream of my entire life between 5:30 and 7:30 this morning.

In the dream, my mom and I went to a movie together. My mom had suggested we see it because she'd heard it was revolutionary film with a lot of really poignant social commentary, etc etc. (In real life, my mom would not recommend that kind of movie: if a movie is depressing, she doesn't want to see it. More and more, I'm finding that that is my view too. Revolutionize me with real life, don't make my escapism tragic) Anyway, so we went. But while we were watching the movie, we were in the movie. It was weird, and no one questioned it; dreams are like that.

In the movie, the US was going to war with Egypt for what ever reason, and the president had decided to fire a nuke at them. So, we fired one, and then everyone started preparations for someone to fire one back at us. The president went into his bunker and a bunch of people kind of stowed away with him (not the Vice President, oddly. He decided to stay above ground). My mom and I got into the bunker, somehow, and the First Lady showed us around, since she had been in charge of the décor.

For what ever reason, there were windows facing DC (which suddenly had rolling hills of open fields and camels...?) and holes in the ground to, as the First Lady said, "Let the smell out," whatever that meant. We were all milling about in the giant bunker, just kind of chilling. This part was funny; it felt like Dr. Strangelove a little bit; when dealing with the end of the world, all these people could do was fuss about the stylish curtains in the fallout shelters. While dreaming, I was thinking, yeah, this is quite the social commentary. Good movie, I thought. People should see how ignorant we all look.

Then the first bomb hit. We watched it out the window. For a dream full of surrealism and an American President of a different color, it got everything about nuclear warfare spot on. At least, the bomb that exploded maybe three miles away from the windows in our bunker acted exactly like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did, according to all the reports I've read. We watched from safety as the camels and random people who didn't have an in with the President were instantly incinerated, and the shockwaves tore at the landscape. Then the ground beneath us started to heat up, and (this part I'm not sure is realistic) the molten crust of the earth below the bunker started to boil and pop into the holes in the floor that the First Lady had been so proud of. There was a little boy there, I'm not sure who he was, but I grabbed him and he and I lay on the floor, my back to the lava pits that we were all too close to, me screaming in pain and promising him I would protect him. My mom got too close to one as it bubbled and popped and the skin on her arms...well it was gross. Then Ben's roommate, Luke Breems jumped into one of the holes. I'm...not sure why. Breems is probably one of the most sane people in that house he lives in...but it was a dream after all.

It was very gruesome, very vivid, and for a while, I forgot it was a movie. The President was scheming with his staffers on some way to escape the lava, and they recommended he lock himself away in the sub-bunker (that looked suspiciously like the fallout shelter from Blast From the Past) and he agreed to do so. Meanwhile, all the people who's started to burn alive were turning rapid, including the little boy in my arms, the First Lady, Breems, and my mother. I started yelling at my mom that I'd had enough, that I wanted to leave the theater, that I didn't care how revolutionary the rest of the movie was, I didn't want to see it or live through it. her eyes went wild and she bared her teeth at me and I started hitting her with pillows and trying to escape.

When I woke up, I started crying immediately and groggily made my way downstairs to my mom on the couch and started the slow process of forgetting the dream. But it's still as vivid to me now as it was when I was in it.

...

Aaaanyway...

After that whole fiasco, and while I battled the inevitable exhaustion that comes from waking up mid-REM-cycle, today was a full, fun day. I went out shopping with my mom, my aunt, and my niece: three generations of Rittenhouse women. We went to Meijer (yup...that's the fourth time this week) and then to the mall to visit the Apple store, f.y.e., Sam Goodie (or whatever...I wasn't there for that), and to let Annabelle play in their little play area.

Then we went home, put Annabelle down for a nap, and began watching the movie, Where the Heart Is, with Natalie Portman, among others. We didn't finish before my mom had to go to a party of a friend of hers who moved to Texas a while back, but is in town for a little while.

While she was gone, my aunt and I went to Barnes&Noble's, where I had an old gift card, and I bought far too many books...but they were all worth it. ... Hopefully. I really hate spending money, especially on books. It's all very counter intuitive, I know, because I love having books, and I love earning money so I can spend it. I struggle with the whole have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too thing. But boy, being around all those books, and holding them, carrying them around the store with me, smelling them, talking to them and about them to myself...it just put me in the best mood. And it smelled like fall outside; I love fall. I'm excited for when it decides to come and stay.

Then she and I went to Starbuck's, checked the air in my tires to discover that I may need to fill one of them up tomorrow, and came home. I played with Annabelle a bit, then put her down to bed, and my mom eventually got home in time for us to finish watching the movie. Very good movie; definitely recommend it. It's a chick-flick, but by no means a shallow, two-bit one.

Now I'm going to bed, with a full mind and sagging eyelids.

<3 spadeALLcross

It's nice to, at least sometimes, know what to expect

Today went mostly according to plan, considering I didn't really have much of a plan. Church was great; I haven't gone in a long time due to sleepiness/vacation, so I'm glad I got to go one last time before the school year starts. Then I came home and literally did nothing the rest of the day. Hung out with my mom, Annabelle, Dennis, and Patrick. Ate way too much food, in general, and played a half-hearted game of monopoly, where I was owning everyone. (No matter what Dennis says to the contrary.)

Molly made (makes? I mean, the comment is still there...) an interesting point about the similarities between the greek system and religion. And, dang, but going through and replacing the words in the paragraph she picked out is eerie.

I thought about it a bit, and I realized that the greek system makes me laugh because it can become a religion that doesn't really have a base to speak of: why is everyone so excited about being in frats and sororities, and why do they believe in the traditions that they continue through the generations? Probably because doing so makes them feel like they're part of something larger than themselves, and that they have a community they can count on. (Not coming from a greek background myself, this is all hearsay of the worst degree, you understand) But that is all their traditions are based on: the traditions of their community.

And that, at their simplest levels, is what some religions are based on, but from what I've gathered about the world's religions, that is not how they were designed to function. As far as my personal faith is concerned, it's not a bunch of traditions that I simply perform because someone who went before me told me they were a good idea. Nor is it a detailed list of appearances I have to keep up in order to make the world think a certain way about me. My faith is based not in the Christians around me or my relationship to them, and it's not necessarily at its strongest when I'm supported by them.

I'm a Christian because I believe in God, that He created the world and has a plan for me in it. Not only because the Bible tells me so, but because I've seen the hand of a higher power in my own life, and I feel that, after creating me and saving my life countless times, I owe such a higher power my allegiance. My parents and other Christian mentors don't dictate for me how I should live my Christian life--God does, though often times through such people. I have a personal relationship with God that I cannot get anywhere else, as well as a community of like believers who can support me in ways that any strong community supports its members. It's the pair of these that make up my faith, which is probably not true of any sorority I could join.

Maybe, like with rushing a sorority or frat, I chose God for one reason or another, and I could be living a roughly similar life had I chosen a different deity to follow. But, since I actually believe in God and don't just think of him as an abstract idea or analogy, I believe that that's not the case at all. I did voluntarily choose him, but my life would be drastically different if He weren't in the picture.

But yes, organized religion and many of its mindless followers can be a cult-like, confusing turn-off. And I don't understand that anymore than I do greek life and traditions.

It is also true that the greeks aren't the only ones with lavaliering-like traditions. People at my school do the same thing, except they call it Pearling, and I think it's equally ridiculous. I think it's ridiculous because I don't agree with the conventions of their relationships, but, yes, that's just my opinion.

I also realize that this was a bit of a lecture, and that Molly doesn't really care about any of it. I appreciate her calling me out on my hypocrisy, though, because I needed to do a little soul searching to get a response, and that's never a bad thing.

I feel weird addressing her in the third person, as she's one of five people who read this thing.

Hey Molly. You're cool. Stay in school, don't do drugs, and text me sometimes or something...like you have been...just...yeah. 2good2be4gotten.

Now I just look dumb.

Tomorrow = final day of packing. Woo...ugh. Almost done.

<3 spadeALLcross

Finally. Down to business.

The time has come [the walrus said]. I have enough time (and enough caffeine running through my veins) to tell you all about Seamus, who is now a week old. Well...he's actually a few years old, but today is our one-week anniversary, if you want to pull out that game.

There he is, in all his glory. This was before the flood waters of the Chicago river assaulted him. Now he's a bit dustier. But I love him just the same. He's a 2007 Prius. I don't know the package number, but he has JBL speakers. No navigation or bluetooth, though, so I think that puts him at a III, not a IV, though he has all the buttons of a IV. And he's got a back-up camera, which beeps when I'm in reverse, and is proving only a little helpful, and mostly annoying.

Here are some pictures of Seamus communing with nature, as Hybrids are wont to do.

Note: the leaf loves the windshield

Also note the comfort level of the robin with the car. They are part of the same circle of life, and so are inherently brothers...

Yup. I love my car. He and I have already bonded a lot over the past week. And he and Geoffrey get along...mostly. Geoffrey has a stand that I don't want to start sticking to Seamus, as he is rather fragile and shiny and I don't want to get him mottled and sticky.

Anyway. Onwards and upwards.

Today was great. I was still kind of in a giddy buzz from lack of sleep (I had to wake up at eight to clean my room before our cleaning crew got here) but I deposited money in the bank, met my new babysitting charge (the adorable nine-month-old child of my former English teacher) and took a nap. And I hung out with Cari, saw her new house, which is pretty sweet. And I replied to some emails.

Tomorrow I have to pack for camping next week. Beeteedubs, I shan't be blogging next week, as wifi is hard to come by in les mountains.

I think that's all there is to report. Our sponsors have been busy today, and want to share their bounty with you.

<3 spadeALLcross

But these are old-man shoes...

Movies are constantly disappointing me. Take, for instance, Despicable Me, which I saw yesterday. It was a great movie. Yes, a children's movie, with a children's movie's flaws, but a great movie once you get past that, which is pretty easy for me.

But real life will never get this cute.

A man's nose can't be that pointy, his legs can't be that spindly, and his adorable little adopted daughters would never be that spunky, nor would his minions be that...weird. Steve Carell doesn't even have an accent. Great movie...great disappointment.

Take, for instance, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which I just got back from seeing. Not as great a movie, but a much greater disappointment. So, it was another sci-fi/fantasy movie with half-baked explanations that greatly irk the actual sci-fi fan. Big deal. It was no Twilight-disaster movie; it was just a Nicholas-Cage-playing-opposite-a-tennis-ball-on-a-stick movie. But so much of me wished that so much of it was real...ugh.

I wish I could just be normal and detach myself from the fiction I love. I seem to have more troubles than most of my friends at settling for the harsh fact that books and movies are just that and little else. But I suppose, without that...feeling...that almost-pain I get after every time that harsh fact settles in again...without that, I wouldn't be as interested in books and movies as I am. And without those little faux realities, I don't know how much I'd like living in the real one. So, I'll just have to deal with the pain.

That's really all I did today. I watched Annabelle a bit (we went to the library again) and ran some errands, and then went to a movie with Cari. Good day. Tomorrow will be better (=D) By the way, if anyone is reading this and cares (fat chance) I probably won't blog tomorrow night. If I miss it, I'll recap on Sunday night.

Sponsors' Time!

<3 spadeALLcross

Sit by the firelight's glow; tell us an old tale we know...

My my my, I have been moody here, haven't I? It's unfortunate that I only think about blogging when I'm in a massively depressed mood. Let's see if we can change that now, yes? I think I'm in a pretty good place right now, and maybe even have some [relatively] interesting things to say. Granted, they are all about me, so your interest level may immediately slacken...

Second semester has started! Hooray! Actually, you know, it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I will unashamedly admit that I was not looking forward to this stage of my life--sophomore year did not treat me kindly until Interim, really, so starting a new semester looked like it was going to feel like having to get out of cool, ocean waters and stepping onto sun-baked sand with my bare, unaccustomed feet. But here I am, middle of week three, and still alive. And some might even suggest that I am thriving. Those people might be overreaching a bit, but I would definitely say I am enjoying myself.

The new classes I'm taking are as follows.

Creative Writing

Graphic Novels

Chaucer

Early American literature

History of the English Language

[Great Ideas, Great Texts]

That last class is only barely considered a class in my mind. It's my floor's class, and it's more like an extracurricular activity; you know, like that little-league baseball team your father wanted you to be on for seven years, even though you never found it in your heart to enjoy it. And somehow, every other kid on the team had been coerced onto it, too, so all you had was a baseball diamond filled with kids who would have rather been playing soccer, or maybe chess, or maybe just plucking dandelions in the outfield.

So...I only barely count it as a class.

I was signed up to take a jogging class, but after I sprained my ACL while snowboarding over Interim break, I dropped it.

And the end result of all this is that my semester looks like one giant book. Sometimes with pictures, and sometimes in an almost undecipherable version of the English language, but always open and always needing to be read. My, how beautiful it is to be an English major.

Dutifully, though, I refuse to complain too bitterly, because, not only did I sign up for this major, and more specifically, this course load knowing the page-count was going to break my slow-reading back, but I'm actually reading things I enjoy. I mean, Mary Rowlandson isn't exactly an energizing or exciting piece of literature, but I really do enjoy the conversation her writing prompts, and I'm glad to finally be learning the more private sector of my country's history after having lived in America for twenty years. And yeah, Chaucer's language is almost entirely different from my own, but it sounds beautiful (this is not the best recording I've found, but it gives you a good taste) and he's really quite imaginative.

My favorite class, though, has to be my creative writing class. It's set up in a workshop style, (which is bad for all the trees out there, because my professor insists that we print 16 copies of every story, all of which are 6-12 pages long...) and even though we've only gone over this one two-page character and setting development, I've already gotten a lot out of it and I really appreciate the class and the professor and how everything is working together. I don't appreciate that it's at 9:00 in the morning, but I'm beginning to consider it a good way to start my day, and since it's a MWF class, my week as well.

The hardest chore of my semester, I can already tell, is going to be trying to keep up with my "no homework on Sundays" rule that I implemented for the first time last semester. Last Sunday I had to break that rule just a little bit in order to proof and read my short story as well as finish a really quick-read graphic novel.

Generally, though, I'm really enjoying myself this semester. Amanda and I did a roommate switch with another pair of girls who weren't getting along, and that's really changed my dynamic at school. Carley, my new roommate, and I were friends before we moved in together, which is a brand new experience. Also, she's much more social than my other two roommates have been, so on the weekends, and sometimes on weeknights, our room is full of people. The first weekend we were together, that was really hard for me, because I was so used to having my room to escape to when I got sick of people. But I'm adjusting as best I can, and I think having a more social roommate has helped me get to know some people I wouldn't otherwise.

And Carley and I play fetus tag with a little plastic fetus that I inherited from someone who had had it thrown at him by some pro-life committee on campus or something. We call the fetus by a variety of "F" or "Ph" names (Carley's favorite is Philipe) and take turns hiding it in each other's things.

All in all, a good start to a new semester.

Even sunny days have their shadows though. There are some interesting discussions going on on my floor about our purpose as an "intentional community," and some of the ensuing conflict has caused rifts between people and caused more harm than good. Some people are working them through, and others are choosing to ignore them as a method of showing their apathy. It's hard for me, because I want to help mend the issues, but I realize they go deeper than people's beliefs about community into people's judgements about each other and all the tension that has built up over the past semester of living in too-tight quarters together.

In other news, I went and looked at an apartment for next year. I'm pretty (cough really exceptionally outstandingly unbelievably cough) psyched about that.

Anyway. Class now.

<3

So It Begins

I feel like, over the now-year-and-a-half that I've used this blog, I've probably used this title already. But if you'll look at your hand and pick out one specific flake of skin that's probably dry and itchy in this dry weather, you may note that its size is congruent to the size of my caring about using a title twice.

I don't know if that paragraph made sense to you, so to sum up, basically I don't care.

Tess, Ben, Guido, Gus, Martha, Mitchell, and Tamara hit the 50,000th word at almost exactly 10:00 EST last night. In case you were curious, the word was "noise" and it was in the middle of a sentence (I didn't even finish that sentence, either, by the way). The scene that I was in the middle of building was one where Tess and Ben woke up to find themselves in...shall we say...compromised positions. [Possibly] needless to say, if I ever do go back and edit that novel, that scene will be cut out.

The past thirty days of nigh nonstop writing have driven me to pick up some...strange habits. I'm discovering more and more how crippling they are, how detrimental to the continuation of a happy, scholarly, and sane life for me. I hit "apple + S" whenever I stop typing anything. Anything. Including this blog. I've tried to save this website somewhere on my hard drive probably four times now. Also, I would write an ellipse like this...then backspace so that it looks like this..then hit space so my complete ellipse looks like this.. and I feel dumb. (Try this in Word and you might better understand why someone who is trying to get as many words out of her document as possible would do this strange exercise.) I wince whenever I press the "delete" key, and then I count the words I'm deleting and then try to quickly retype that same number to make up for lost ground.

Secret's out: I've gone 'round the bend.

This month was such a great experience. I was a part of two "regionals," meaning I affiliated myself with two "home" locations. The one I focused on was my school region, as that was the one I could most easily participate in actively. We had a Municipal Liaison, a person who's on staff at NaNoWriMo and is in charge of regional pep-talks and write-ins. So I got emails from my two MLs, from program director Chris Baty, and even a few from famous writers who had been persuaded by NaNoWriMo to contribute to the cause. These emails alone would have made the month for me.

But what I loved most of all was the camaraderie. I felt like I was a part of something. The girl in the room next to me got into NaNo too and we kept each other going at times when each of us wanted to quit. In fact, she and I wrote out last 1500 words together and pressed "submit to win" at the same time, and then did crazy dances around the lobby, banging pans and cookie sheets together. And I got to know some of the other people in my region too. I could only go to the online write-ins because I don't have a car and no one would have been able to drive me, but I learned what other people were writing about, the characters that were giving them trouble, the sticking points they had hit, and the tactics they used to boost word count.

It was a really thrilling month. However, I definitely can wait for next year. That will not be a struggle for me.

I have a lot of other stuff to write about, but this took longer than expected, so I'm going to have to put the rest off for a while longer.

<3 spadeALLcross