Once
I saw my father cry;
Speaking of
Shaking buildings
Of
The beige hallway
Of
Fire and smoke.
Still a child
I turned away,
Not wanting to see
My unbreakable father
Cracked and hurting.
Now I look back,
Proud
Unashamed
Of my father
My hero
Who stayed behind to pull people
From a burning Pentagon.
I couldn’t be more honored
To be your daughter.
Daddy, I love you.
Except then I got on wordpress and looked and HOLY CRAP THEY CHANGED THE LAYOUT OF MY DASHBOARD.
Call me a traditionalist, but I like it when websites stick to familiar formats. Updates are great now and again, for fixing bugs or glitches or making things run faster. However, when I have to re-learn where everything is, it kind of annoys me.
Yes, I’m being a tad petty. There are a lot worse problems out there, like world hunger.
(To help reduce world hunger, use this website. It’s not asking for your money. http://freerice.com/ )
See? Now no more complaining from you.
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Everything’s so old
After thirty seconds of use
That we have to go out and get a new one
a better one
a faster one
a cooler one
one that our friends have
the people on TV have
the commercials tell us to buy.
Let’s get the new thing.
Let’s update update update.
Let’s keep up
Otherwise we’ll be left behind.
My phone isn’t just a phone.
It’s a camera, a TV, a computer, a GPS, a compass, a game console, a barcode-reader, a face-identifier.
My jacket isn’t just a jacket.
It’s sweatproof waterproof fireproof wearproof tearproof bearproof childsafe and is light as a feather.
What about simplicity has lost it’s appeal?
What about fixing what’s broken has become less worthwhile?
Why do we need a million books on one computer, if you can’t read them all at once anyhow?
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Or replace it.
Or update it.
Or try to improve upon something that’s just fine in the first place.
Call me old fashioned,
But I liked things just fine before they ‘required’ updating.
And why the heck do you need a bearproof jacket anyway?
No, this isn’t a Memorial Day post. I feel obligated to do one, now that I think about it, but it’s not the initial reason that I got on today to post.
BUT
Now that I think about it, it’s pretty important to note a few things about today. As some lady in “Dear Abby” said this morning, it’s important to note that Memorial Day is not about war. It’s about people. It’s about soldiers and families and sacrifice. And civilians have absolutely NO idea what soldiers and their families go through. It’s a very distinct, very different way of living. And I am so proud of my father, who serves his country every day, of my brother, who is ROTC and may or may not be military one day, of my friends Lauren and Nathan, both of whom are going into the Air Force, of both my grandfathers for serving, and of all the soldiers and soldiers-to-be. Cliche as it is, freedom isn’t free. It’s bought with lives and effort and lots and lots of time. Our men and women of the armed forces work every day, away from their families, to make the world a better place. They don’t just fight wars, they rebuild governments, economies, countries, so to better help the people and the world. And that’s awesome. They deserve our thanks and our respect.
The ORIGINAL point of this entry was to support this guy I know. His name is Matt Kon and he is a fantastic musician. He plays a wide variety of instruments and goes to my church, where he plays ukulele in for the choir. (It’s a college church. We’re welcoming of all contributions.) Matt is trying to build himself a recording studio for his home so he can record the music for the songs he’s written. This amazing dude has already written many songs and he’s trying to get himself out there. But he needs funding. I’ve posted a link to his video and the website he’s using to collect money for this project. Please take a few minutes of your time to watch the video, and if you can spare the money, donate a few dollars. It takes a lot of little donations to make a difference, but you can be one of those little donations. Please consider doing this; it’s making the world a more awesome place.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattkon/of-roots-and-their-hosts-matt-kon
Happy Memorial Day and God Bless America.
Sunny
[The format would not allow me to add extra spaces, so the lines are where breaks in the poem ought to be.]
Every once and a while
After you’ve closed the back cover
Let it spit you out
After you’ve been swallowed whole
And digested
You can still feel the words
Packed inside your skull
Shoved into each little crevice
Filling up your head
Until it’s heavy as a sand bag
Keeping out the river
_________
Words are crammed so tight
Inside my head now
That I wonder why they don’t spill out of my ears
Onto the floor
Staining the carpet
With clots of red knowledge
Floating in a sea of golden life
________
She knows things, Sylvia Plath
Wasn’t she the one who shoved her head in an oven?
If she really liked hot baths like Esther did,
I suppose that it might not have been all that bad
You’d melt into purity
Or dissolve
It’s a nice thought, dissolving.
________
Maybe I too will one day spill out someone’s ears
Maybe one day I’ll stain someone’s carpet
With gold life and knowledge-clots
________
She didn’t know if any of this was real, you know.
Nor do I.
I’ve discovered somewhere along my 19 (almost 19.5) years of life that a lot of adventures aren’t much fun while you’re having them. (I don’t recall if I mentioned this, but to those who’ve heard the story–Dover airport. That’s all I have to say. Dover airport.)
However, I came to a realization recently. I love going on adventures with people, but more often than not, I don’t end up going on adventures at all. I suppose I have little motivation in this department, or really lazy friends. So I have to try and make my own adventures. More often than not, I think that those adventures are going to involve me, myself and I. So the big important thing for me to do is to learn to find and make my own adventures. I recently signed up on the geocaching website, which I think could bring about a new hobby, and I’m working on a super-top-secret project to make a wedding present for my friend. It involves very little venturing outside my dining room, but I don’t think that it really rules it out as an adventure.
I’ve gone on those adventures where you pick a direction and just go–walk, bike, drive. They’re fun, but I don’t always feel like doing that. As much as I like going and getting utterly lost, losing myself in my surroundings, sometimes I don’t want to get lost. I want to be. And it’s extraordinarily hard to just be nowadays. Everyone’s trying awfully hard not to be, in their haste to go and to do.
So sometimes I stare at cloud shapes or stars. Sometimes I watch lightning and listen to rain. Sometimes I pray, asking and giving thanks and hoping for tomorrow. Sometimes I lay in bed in the late morning, before all the dreams have dissolved into the air and let myself fade away a little, just living silently for a few moments before the world comes rushing in. I listen to music that strikes a chord within me. (Pun intended.) I read. And I write. I think that people really are when they write because to write something real and true (even fiction is real and true, it’s just a slanted view) you have to be existing there and living and being. You can’t write if you yourself are not alive.
My very best friend and I played hide-and-seek in a Hobby Lobby today. It’s this sort of absolutely silly, very childish behaviour that makes me feel alive. Despite the fact that a number of my parents’ friends seem to think that I am unable to behave maturely in public settings, I can. However, when it’s me, my best friend, and absolutely no good reason that I should have to put on a false sense of dignity, I see no reason not to be silly. That’s not to say I can’t behave in public; I can and do a good amount of the time. Sometimes I do feel serious or calm or non-silly, but today wasn’t one of those days. Today I felt like being ridiculous. And I was.
I have a theory that we’re all children in adults’ bodies, but most of us are too convinced by our false dignity to admit it. I don’t feel particularly like being dignified my entire life. Since when have the dignified had any fun? As much fun as your superior expression is, I prefer my open-mouthed laugh and toothy grin. I prefer blowing bubbles and dancing in the rain and speaking in a fake British accent for no reason. I prefer singing as I walk down the street and doing bizarre things just to see the facial expressions they elicit. I generally enjoy life.
But back to adventuring. Sometimes it requires silence and tiptoeing, others silliness and a sense of giddy recklessness, others still an open mind and a willingness to have no idea where you are going. And I fully intend to start having more adventures, alone or not. Sometimes, when the plot begins to slow down, you have to take it in both hands and drag it along with you as you write the story yourself. (This is not always necessarily a metaphor, ha ha.)
That said, I’m going on a picnic with my best friend this Friday. Tomorrow I might go geocaching. Maybe I’ll work on that well-neglected novel of mine. Or work on my friend’s wedding gift. Who knows? Not me.
It’s all part of the adventure.
I think I’ve always been a quotes sort of person and I found these and compiled them into a list.
Some think that using quotes to express yourself is cheating because you’re using someone else’s words to say what you are thinking, but I think that oftentimes, quotes are a way of reaching back to someone wiser than you and allowing their wisdom to flow. I can never remember quotes, but I wanted to get these out there. You don’t have to read them all, there are quite a few, but I think that you might enjoy them, dear readers. And if you have a quote you particularly like, please feel free to share them in the comments. Happy almost-Easter!
Sunny
“I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.” –Maya Angelou
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” — G.K. Chesterton
“Well-behaved women rarely make history.” –Marilyn Monroe
“Apologizing: does not always mean you are wrong and the other person is right. It just means you value your relationship more than your ego.” –Unknown
“The greatest weakness of mose humans is their hesitency to tell others how much they love them while they’re alive.” –Orlando A. Battista
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” –Oscar Wilde
“I think everybody should be told they are beautiful until they believe it.” –Unknown
“I often talk to myself. I also play out situations that I want to happen.” –Unknown
“You are more lovely than you could ever imagine.” –Unknown
“Anger is just love dissappointed.” –Unknown
“I was enchanted to meet you.” –Unknown
“Friendship isn’t about who you’ve known the longest. It’s about who came and never left your side.” –Unknown
“The bliss of being young and innocent: we daydreamed without pain, without fear, without loss.” –Unknown
“I’m the type of person who pushes people away when I need them the most.” –Unknown
“I just want someone who’ll understand me, even when no words are spoken.” –Unknown
“I just want to be important to someone.” –Unknown
“You had me at hello.” –can’t remember
“I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” –Alice in Wonderland
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I ended up where I needed to be.” –Douglas Adams
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” –George Bernard Shaw
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” –Confucius
“Before God we are all equally wise and equally foolish.” –Albert Einstein
“Family isn’t about whose blood you have. It’s about who you care about.” —Trey Parker and Matt Stone
“Your friend is the man who knows all about you and still likes you.” — Elbert Hubbard
“Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” — Storm Jameson
“For most of history, ‘Anonymous’ was a woman.” — Virginia Woolf
“Women are made to be loved, not understood.” — Oscar Wilde
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” — Will Rogers
“Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.” — Lao Tzu
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” — Victor Hugo
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
“Love unconditionally” –oh a bunch of people
“In the midst of winter I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” –Albert Camus
“A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” –Unknown
“He’ll deal with it. I am a CATCH, darnit!” –Rachel
“I love pancakes; they’re like syrup sponges!'” –Brianna
“Two shots of vodka, you’ll be fine.” –British guy in an NYC shop
“Politics is inherently offensive.” –Matt
“It’s like your spirit is bleeding.” –Zack
“Put your hope in God.” –Psalm 42
“We have been created in order to love and be loved.” –Mother Theresa
“She’s crazy. And just when you think you’ve reached the bottom of her craziness, there’s a crazy underground garage.” –Unknown
“People say that there are all sorts of trick in life, ways to get ahead, you know? But I think that if life had cheat codes, half of them would be BS anyway. So I guess the trick is to play the game as hard as you can for as long as you can…and then when you die, borrow lives from a friend.” –Me
“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” –Unknown
So I just got back home for Easter break and on the drive back, my mom told me an interesting story. Apparently, she finally (FINALLY) took our vacuum cleaner in to be fixed. (It’s been broken for literally over a year.) Running the repair shop was an old man with a sandwich.
He told her a large portion of his life story, but after about 45 minutes, she had to go home because my siblings were getting home from school. (Also, he had to finish his sandwich.) Hopefully, when she goes back to pick up the vacuum, I can come along, because after hearing the first part of his story through her, I want to meet him and hear the rest.
I’m not sure how to tell you all the things she told me, and her 15-minute version was only some of what his tale was. But the point is, this guy was like someone out of a book. His story was the American dream story of hard-work and saving money carefully and true love and luck. It’s not really my story to tell, but there is something I’m trying to get at here. This man did what our ancestors came here to do–he made a life for himself, a good honest living, and now, at least seventy years old, he’s still working, still enjoying it, and he has stories to tell. I know that one of my ambitions in life is to become a great storyteller. Secretly, we all yearn for it.
When our lives begin slowing down and we age, have grown children, maybe even grandchildren, there is something I think we secretly all want. Stories. How many of us remember begging for tales of our elders’ childhoods and follies? How many of us asked again and again for stories of their lives? One of my favorite stories that my great-grandmother told was about my grandfather and a silk airplane. She’s gone now, but I can still remember that story.
My grandfather loved making models. He spent hours, days, maybe even weeks, constructing a model plane. (“This wide,” Babka would say, stretching her arms out to show a wingspan of at least three feet.) It had a running engine, a beautiful frame, and gorgeous silk wings that my grandfather painstakingly adhered to the frame. The story grows a little fuzzy after that, but it all ends up with my grandpa starting that plane up and the wings catching on fire. (She always laughed a little, perhaps recalling the look on his face as the silk wings flared for a moment and then disintegrated.) He cried. I would too.
It is through these stories that we learn not just something about our elders, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, even our ancestors. We also learn about people and humanity and empathy. That story always made me feel a mixture of sadness and amusement, thinking of my grandfather as a little boy with a toy plane.
When I grow old, I want to share my stories with someone. I think that it’s important, not only for me, but for them as well; for whoever it is I pass my tales on to. There is something so essentially human about stories. Whether they’re happy or sad, factual or fish tales, we communicate so much through stories. Aesop saw fit to teach us with fables and Grimm with fairy tales. Heck, Jesus even talked in parables. This man’s story, passed on to my mother, passed on to me, and one day maybe me passed on to others, may grow and alter and change, but it is a way of preserving him. Of preserving humanity. Of preserving a rose in a garden, or a perfect summer day. Through our stories, we remain, we connect. How many of us have bonded with Anne of Green Gables, Luke Skywalker, the Count of Monte Cristo, even Robin Hood? Whether real or not, there they are, there WE are. We tell each other about ourselves and through stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Each tale that leaves your lips is being planted and could grow into something bigger, into something more important.
Do you see?
These tales of the American Dream, of a childhood toy, of adventures gone upon, of failures and successes, are our culture. They are our past, present, future. They are us. And who are we not to listen? Who are we not to share? Who are we not to turn to our friends, our neighbors, our children, our strangers and friends-not-yet-made and tell them a tale?
The American Dream for many is a rags-to-riches tale. For me, it is an older me after a lot of years have passed, sitting on a porch, in a parlor, in a restaurant or bar, on a couch or a kitchen counter, telling. Telling of my family, my friends, my successes and failures. Telling of those I loved and those I lost; those who broke my heart and those whose hearts I broke. My American dream is sitting down after a long long day and telling the story I’ve been writing the whole time.
I hope that it will be worth telling.
Hello everyone,
I know, I know. Long time no see. I’ve been uber-busy with classes and clubs and the Catholic Center on campus, at which I spend literally all of my free time. I’m helping out with a couple projects there, plus I have a theatre project in which I have to direct a play. Talk about responsibility.
The main reason I decided to write today was for one big fat reason: money. I’m going to be a college sophmore next fall and I’m trying to figure out how I’m paying for all of this. No offence to say, the dean of my school, or anyone like that, but college is too darn expensive. I’m paying about $17,000 a year, and that’s in-state. I can understand paying for room and board and paying for individual classes, but where is all my money going??? Even if each student paid $100 per class they took, the school would have a good deal of money on their hands. One student would pay about $1,000 a year, and depending on the number of students at a school, that seems like a lot of money to me.
School shouldn’t be a business, at least in my opinion. I’m here to learn, not to line pockets or climb a corporate ladder. Not that I’m endorsing the government running my school or anything, I just think that $17,000 a year is pretty absurd. What am I really paying for here? As school prices go up and up, I wonder where I’m going to get the cash needed to pay for all this. It is with this question that I am brought to my title: glorified begging.
I’m going to beg. Scholarships, loans, grants, it’s all glorified begging, really. I dress up nicely or write a clever essay or have an obscure talent and for that someone pats me on my pretty little head and forks over a couple hundred dollars so I can go try and get an education. There has to be a better way. I’m attempting to get a job as a camp counsellor this summer, so that cash influx should help somewhat, but the point is, I don’t see myself earning $17,000 overnight, or even in a few summers. I’m a college student. I’m poor and expect to perpetually be that way for a large portion of my life. Let’s face it people: teachers get paid squat. I’m going to spend an obscene amount of money getting my degree and then spend a good section of my life paying it off on a minuscule salary.
(Summary of last few paragraphs: college is expensive. it sucks. rant rant rant rant rant.)
In other news, I went to sort books for a drive for orphanages in India. They were sorted into many categories, but there were a large number of books that didn’t fall into a category that they could ship over, give to soldiers, use in a school library. These were about 80% trashy romance novels, but also had many treasures. One of my friends found an old medical dictionary that we presented to our mutual friend, a pre-nursing major. One of the English majors found a gorgeous copy of Moby Dick and I picked up a smorgasbord of interesting-looking reads, from books on the BBC book list to a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, missing its front cover. My mother is probably going to kill me…more weight is coming home with me than the weight that I left with…and yet I can’t say I regret much. There’s something about a book, especially one you’ve discovered or rescued, that is special.
I could never resist the smell of books, the feel of their pages, running my fingers down a row of spines stacked neatly on a shelf. Books have the enchanting air of a treasure chest or a box of secrets. Inside them, the words of those dead and gone, the thoughts of those still living, all the worlds and ideas that people have dreamed of and recorded, are printed and bound. And by opening them up and reading their words, we are let in on the secrets. They are whispered into our ears and stored in our hearts for years to come. Stories can be told a thousand times and never grow old, because they always have something to offer you.
I have much to do and little time; not to mention my eyes are drooping and I think I could benefit from a cat nap before I try to focus on my next project.
Between my unfinished novel, my need for money, and my love of books, I should just get myself a publisher…anyone know somebody interested?
Sunny
So I recently saw my school’s version of “Arcadia” by Tom Stoppard. The play is a mass of language and math, chaos theory and the poetry of Lord Byron. It’s all a mass of references and intelligent conversations and I feel that though I enjoyed the play, I didn’t understand very much of it at all. I mean, chaos theory and the changing styles from classicism to romanticism aren’t exactly light entertainment or the sort of thing one expects when attending a college production. And yet, from what I gleaned from the details, the story that unfolded, (the extreme amount of Google-ing I did when I returned from the play), I think I managed to receive some of what the playwright was trying to say.
Normally I would tell you all about what I think the play meant, but there are two reasons that I won’t this time.
1) I don’t think I have a complete enough understanding of the play to try and convey what I think some of the messages and themes are.
2) I want you to see this play.
There are remarks upon sex, literature, math, art, science, history, and people. Stoppard is probably sitting somewhere, chuckling over our attempts to guess what he’s trying to say, but the important part is that all of us in the audience are trying to comprehend it.
Et in Arcadia Ego is Latin for “Even in Arcadia, I am.” The “I am” has been generally assumed to be spoken by the personification of death, and Arcadia to be a sort of classical, simple, perfect place. Stoppard’s play was originally to be titled “Et in Arcadia Ego” but for some reason or another, it was not. I looked to find the theme of death in Eden in the play, but I don’t think I’ve let it all stew for long enough. If nothing else, I’d like to see the play again. It was a good play, and I still don’t know what it means. Maybe I’ll read the screenplay.
Okay I know I’m a smidge late, but…
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
2011 is upon us.
I’ve resumed my schooling at college and I’m having a nice time here, getting back into the swing of things. If only my textbooks were here, life would be pretty dang ideal as far as college goes. I mean, yeah there’ll be work and scheduling and trying to figure out when to see my friends and when activites are as far as clubs and practices are concerned, not to mention actual studying, but considering those things are sort of a given as far as college is concerned, it’d be good.
Today in my Intro to Criminal Justice class, we talked about the fundamental difference (according to the professor) between liberals and conservatives and then how it related to the criminal justice system. According to him, the main difference is that liberal believe that people are essentially good and they do bad things because of their environment and the situation they were raised in, whereas conservatives believe that people are born uncivilized and must be tamed and taught how to control themselves. (I’m not entirely certain that conservatives feel ENTIRELY that way, but arguing with the professor over a key point of the class wasn’t something I wanted to do in class today. And seeing as I don’t know much about politics except my pro-life stance, I didn’t feel I was in a position to argue.)
This all brought my brain around to what I thought about people. My first thought on the subject was that people weren’t really good or evil, we’re just people. But I kept thinking about it.
I believe that we have original sin, but sin, though bad, does not mean that we are bad people, just that we choose to do bad things. I don’t really know whether we are essentially good or evil, just that our lives are made up of the choices we make and the type of person we are depends on our choices (as Dumbledore would say) and how we recover from the mistakes we make. So I don’t think the question of whether people are essentially good or bad can be answered because it’s made on the pretense that all people are the same. And underneath it all, we are. But we aren’t all essentially good or evil. No one is born bad, just with original sin. I can’t find a good way to word it, really. We’re complex is probably the best I can do. You can’t boil us down and distill us into essence of people. We’re like the Colenol’s chicken…but with more than 7 herbs and spices.
Anyway, that was just something running through my head after class. I hope that all of you have a great 2011!
Sunny
The (Mis) Adventures of Life as We Know It 