how am i not myself?

new year dilemma

2012-01-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if it's really happened, but one of the goals of this blog is to grapple with issues of personal identity and life choices. It's kind of my favorite thing to think about, probably too much so. Every day I feel anxiety over who I am, who I am meant to be (and who decides that), what is meaningful in the world, the whole point of existence, etc.

For most of my adult life I've favored the idea of community and interpersonal relationships providing the most meaning, and probably too often I've relied on other people to give me purpose in life. This is dangerous for anyone, but especially for me because I am single and live far away from my family and closest friends. I'm pretty certain that if I were married I would take better care of myself and find more meaning and purpose in the things I do for me, because they would directly affect another person. Right now no body cares if I keep my bathroom clean or if I eat nothing but cereal for three days in a row. The problem with thinking and feeling this way is that I am doing a terrible job of taking care of myself, but I have no drive (except a vague guilty feeling in the back of my mind) to do any better.

I had thought of many goals for this new year, but I don't think the personal ones that don't directly affect other people are going to make it past February, and many of them I haven't even bothered to start.

But, you see, I hate this about myself. I hate that I assign meaning to some things over others, to the point where some things have no meaning and so are not worth my time. Right now the only thing that really matters to me is school. Last semester I did well in all of my classes while the rest of my life, happiness, and health crumbled down around me, and my greatest worry in letting that happen was that it would affect my school work. As the semester ended I felt terrible; physically, emotionally, spiritually terrible. I don't want that to happen again, and so my main goal now is to try to find a way to care about myself for the sake of myself.

Ughh, doesn't that seem awful? I don't want to baby myself and focus so much on me that I lose sight of the things that matter. (Wait, no, I matter.) I prefer the idea that in order to find oneself one must lose oneself in the service of others. But how does that help me keep my bathroom clean? How does that keep me physically healthy?

I don't know if I can find the answers. I know that being with other people and doing things for them makes me happier so I'll keep that up. But I hope I find some things that make me personally happy and feel good that doesn't necessarily affect other people. One thing I'm thinking of is playing the ukulele. I want to practice it every day because I love it, not because it matters to someone else. But I can't help but think "if it doesn't matter to another person then what is the point?" Bah. Why can't "Because I enjoy it" be enough?? Someone asked me if I have less interest or pleasure in the things that I used to enjoy, and I couldn't answer the question because I don't do anything that I enjoy. I knit, but there's no pleasure in that except for knowing that I'm making something for someone I care about. I cook, but I only like doing that when I'm cooking for other people.

Well, ok, as far as food and health there are some things I can do. I'd like to have less impact on the earth. I don't have a car, so that's good, and I just found a market near my house that is 100% local, so I plan on buying food from there. I also want to be less wasteful, especially with food. I found this poster that was used during WWII to encourage everyone to waste less food, and I think it's perfect for life now. I want to value my food, because it is valuable. I don't mind spending more money on food if I work hard to not waste it. I just love this poster. Buy food with thought, cook it with care, don't eat more than you need, save what you can, and don't waste it. So sensible, and yet it seems so revolutionary. I think this is a perfect goal for 2012 and something I can maintain past February.

Also, I like this video I saw last week. I have seen a decline in my health since I came back from London and I'm pretty sure it's because I have not been walking everywhere. Even though I don't have a car here, it's very hard to get around town on the buses so I usually find a ride. But, I want to walk 30 minutes every day and I'm pretty sure I can do it. Now that I found the food market so close to my house I can definitely walk over there once or twice a week.

So I don't know. Does anyone have any suggestions for changing how I value myself and start doing things that are personally enjoyable?

a year in review, 2011

2011-12-29T12:19:00.000-08:00

I absolutely love the New Year. I love the opportunity to make a cognitive break and compartmentalize the last twelve months into their own little box and open up a new empty box for the next twelve months. I love making new year resolutions; I always have improvements in mind but I usually need something to push me into doing them. The first three months of each year are consequently some of my happiest and most productive. I also like the opportunity to look back and take stock of how I've been living my life. This year I'm not too pleased with myself. I had so many great experiences, but something kept me from feeling happy for most of it, and I'm pretty sure that was my negative attitude.

Last New Year's Eve I was in Munich with my best friend. I was sick and we were exhausted from our Germany Christmas so we decided not to go out. We had spent most of the day in Salzburg Austria, where Mozart was born, and by the time we got back we couldn't even imagine trying to find something to do for New Year's. Fortunately our hostel had a pretty fantastic view of the city, and I have never seen so many fireworks in my entire life. As soon as midnight approached they started going off everywhere and didn't stop for a half an hour. It seems that every family in Munich had they own little firework show. So we sat there and ate fancy chocolate and watched the fireworks. It was a lovely way to start the new year.

Christmas and New Year's in Germany

I went back to London and had some productive few months. I spent nearly every day in the British Library, I went on long walks throughout the city, and I ate very well. But I complained all of the time, and there's proof of it on twitter and Facebook. In January I got the worst grade of my life on a paper. It was barely passing and it destroyed me a little inside. I didn't start the year off right in regards to my attitude and it just went downhill from there. I was lonely and put no effort into making friends. I let myself feel gloomy all of the time and I had a couple of little emotional breakdowns before the end of February. But the month ended on a high note when I did well on a major presentation.

My second home, the British Library

March was the best. I went to the most amazing concert and I met the band and some other really awesome people who I hung out with. I visited my good friend in Oxford and then I got ready to come back to the US for the month of April.

Me and Mary in Oxford

I was really happy in April. I found out about the fellowship awarded by University of Louisville, which actually freaked me out a little, and then things got a little rough again when I went back to London at the end of the month. But May turned out ok; I saw my favorite band again and I got to hang out with them after the show, which is probably one of the highlights of my life. I went to Scotland to present a paper, and the conference went well while the actual trip was pretty horrible. I have never ever stayed in a hostel so disgusting in my whole life, and it was cold and miserable. But I made up for it when I went back to Edinburgh with Brittany in July.

Me looking serious in a cemetery in Edinburgh

I think June and July were my favorite months. I went to Manchester to visit a good friend and I met Judy Chicago and had a fantastic weekend in the city. London was beautiful and I took weekend trips to Canterbury and the coast. I did lots of research at the British Library and I had some great spiritual experiences. June was fantastic, and then Brittany came out in July and we had a huge road trip which was just the most amazing thing I've ever done. We got to see some incredibly beautiful things all over the UK. I was so lucky I could do it. I feel bad about not really blogging about that trip, so I think I should do that sometime soon.

Brittany hiking in Scotland

I got back to the US on 15 July and then moved to Louisville on 15 August and had the most difficult two weeks of my entire life as I found a place to live, started school, injured my foot and couldn't get around, tried to make new friends, tried to be involved in church. I was thrown from lovely London to a train yard in a hot and humid little city I've never seen before. My attitude took a huge dip there, and that is what I need to recover from now.

Adjusting to Louisville was far more painful than I thought it would be. It was much more difficult than adjusting to London, funny enough. But I've learned some lessons. In London I could do everything on my own and I could spend days without seeing or talking to anyone. In Louisville I can't do anything or go anywhere without finding a ride from someone. I needed a place to crash before I found an apartment, I needed help when I hurt my foot, I even needed help with my Halloween costume. And there has always been someone there to help me out. I went from doing everything for myself to often feeling helpless and frustrated, and instead of being grateful for the people who there to help me, I just got bitter about the fact that I needed the help. But that is ridiculous, and I began to see how lucky I was in November to have people around me who care about me and are there for me.

Me (dressed as an Ionic column) and Brandon (as James Joyce) on Halloween

My number one resolution for 2012 is to stop hating everything so much. Looking over this year I can see how my negative attitude has made things more difficult for me, and I see where my positive reactions have helped not only me but the people in my life. I've had the chance to share a lot of my personal philosophies with new friends, and I know that I generally am a positive person and that those ideas have been helpful for them. I need to live my own philosophy more.

I have allowed myself to settle into a dark little crushing box of negative thoughts that I feel like I can't escape. But why? What more reinforcement, support, praise, love do I need? The last few months have been filled with some painful soul searching, and for a moment I thought I had completely changed, that I wasn't me anymore, and I didn't like who I was becoming. But the other night I spent a few hours with a couple of really close friends, people who have known me for years, and after that evening I felt like me again, like the me that they like and that I like. I was myself and myself was not bad.

So what will 2012 bring? What experiences? What adventures? What new friends? I already have a few plans: three conferences in one month and an article to publish. It will be a good year. Probably not as eventful as this last year, or even as eventful as 2010 (remember New York and London?) but it will be good. Hopefully I won't let the little things get to me, and hopefully I'll remember to be happy.

on community and existentialism

2011-11-26T07:12:00.001-08:00

Meaning is not relative, but it is relational. It is not based on one's experience alone, but on one's experience with other people. We may be nothing to the universe, but when we have compassion for another human being, when we sorrow for her suffering and joy in his success, we may see that we are all one and the same substance, not only with the person for whom we have compassion, but with all people, with the earth, with animals and stars and everything.

on community: fellowship vs. friendship

2011-11-23T18:39:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking and talking a lot about community these days. Theoretically community is extremely important to me, and I'm taking notice of how the theory plays out in real life, and it's not exactly what I expected.

I've been having struggles with my local church congregation, and I've also been having difficulties expressing my grievances. The congregation is small, just a little single's branch with 30 or so members. They are warm and inviting, and yet I feel left out. They are caring of each other, and they're friendly with each other, to the point that they spend hours with each other every day. They're friends. And I hate it. The thing is, I'm not looking for friends at church. I don't need a social circle; I need a community. I want fellowship, not friendship. And I'm realizing now what the difference is.

Each community plays a different role in an individual's life, and building a community does not necessarily mean building friendship. Friendship is good, but it is also messy and it often is reserved for particular people, people you trust and want to share close and intimate details about your life with. Friendships are built within communities, but not everyone in the community must become a close friend. And this is ok. We'd probably go crazy if we had to be close friends with everyone. Fortunately other needs are met by community, by choosing to associate with people who are not friends. That's what fellowship is about: finding value in people who are not your close friends, loving people who you wouldn't normally want to hang out with, serving them and allowing them opportunities to serve. I don't believe it's necessary to have friendship marathons in order to fellowship.

I've never been very social at church, and yet I've had few complaints in the last five or six years of my role and my place within the church, even though few of the people in my congregations were actually my friends. I rarely made friends at church with people who hadn't already associated with me outside of church, and yet right now is the first time in my life that I have not felt part of a community. I feel like my branch is one giant clique, and honestly I just am not interested, nor do I have the time to devote to making friends with these people. They overwhelm me. (Seriously, the one time I hung out with them it lasted from 6pm to 4am. I never spend that much time with my closest friends, let alone people I'd only met a few times before.)

But I still need a place where I can find like-minded people to talk about God with, and I still need people to take care of, and people to take care of me. Since I stopped going to activities and stopped hanging out with people, and since I've missed the last three Sundays, only one person has contacted me, and no one has tried to find out why I'm not going to church. I know there are people who are responsible for me: home teachers and visiting teachers, the Relief Society president and the Bishop, and yet, no one seems to want to know what's up.

On one level I am perfectly fine with this. On another I feel as if I've simply opted out of a social group and no one particularly noticed. I don't think this is what being part of a community of Christ should feel like.

Now, I know that I am being a) prideful and b) lazy. If I want a community I have to build a community. I have to take part and put energy into it. The thing is, I am willing to do that. I want to do that. And I've tried and felt like my efforts were not being equally met by the community. It's hard when no one seems to notice whether or not I'm there. It's hard when I try to talk about the church, about Christ, about people's troubles and joys and am met with silence, and the people I'm talking to go back to their flirty banter. It's hard when I never received a calling or responsibility when I came into the ward, despite vocally expressing my desire for one to people who have the power to give me a calling.

One time not long ago I held a friend's hand. I wanted to show him that I cared about him. I wanted him to feel a physical manifestation of my willingness to be there for him. He never responded; his hand was a cold dead fish. It hurt; I felt that I wasn't needed there. I've tried repeatedly in other ways to put myself out there to connect to him, and my efforts are often met with that same coldness. We do connect in other ways, but I always feel some sort of dissatisfaction in our relationship.

I was listening to a song today that reminded me of this feeling I have with this friend, and suddenly I realized I felt the same way about the church. "I'm tired of trying when I don't get nothing back." I am in an unhealthy, one-sided relationship with the church. It doesn't want or need me, and my efforts are met with coldness. That is not right; this cannot be a one-sided deal.

So the church community is not really available to me right now, and I'm tired of trying. Fortunately there are other communities. I have a school community that appreciates my efforts to connect to them. I have a roommate who trusts me and shares with me. I have internet communities and a family community and old friend communities. I'm not giving up on the church community. I hope things change with this one, or I hope I'll be able to find the community I need some day, but right now I just don't know what to do.

Today while out and about with a friend I saw a flock of sparrows. It's a bit unnerving thing to watch. They look like a swarm of bees, a big black cloud moving together as one. I was close enough to look at them more individually and it appeared to me that they moved in relation to one another. They fluttered around each other, and as they focused on the individuals in the flock, they moved as one across the sky. I think that's how communities work. If we all just moved on our own in our own direction we fly off in a million different directions, but if we focus on our relationships with the individuals in our group, we stay together and we move together. That's what I want. I don't want to flutter around a group of people and never be heard or seen. I don't want to care for some one and be met with coldness. If that's the case, I'd rather flutter somewhere else.

UPDATE: I just read a post on Feminist Mormon Housewives that I think really illustrates to me the kind of fellowship I wish I felt in my ward right now. The author doesn't have any close friendships in the ward, but they clearly look out for her and her family in a moment of need.

on fence-sitting

2011-11-14T20:45:00.001-08:00

It's hard to be a Mormon fence-sitter. You're either in our you're out, and there seems to be little room for the inbetweeners. Part of the reason is that we have set up a fantastic system for checking up on people through the home and visiting teaching programs. We are assigned to look out for one another, and a monthly quota of home visits must be met. It's funny how isolated some of us still feel. It's also funny how defensive I get with my home and visiting teachers. When someone I knew from my ward, someone I thought I was becoming friends with, told me that he was my hometeacher I felt like something had been lost. Now he is obligated to me. I don't think we're friends anymore. I certainly can't tell him about my struggles. I must make up excuses for why I haven't been going to church and tell him all is well. I'm happy. Smiles. No there isn't anything you can do for me right now, maybe take out the trash? Yes, I'll let you know if I need anything. See you next month.

That doesn't seem right, but I'm used to doing it that way. I'd like to stop but I really don't want anyone in the ward, and certainly no one who has "stewardship" over me, to think I am "going apostate" by giving myself time to think about some things. It's scary to admit that you're not the perfect Mormon you've been making yourself out to be. I only got good at it a few years ago. As I've mentioned before, I was always a fence-sitter growing up and it wasn't until I was living in Provo, in a very dense Mormon community, that I finally learned what it meant to be really faithful, to never miss a meeting, and to be your cutest every Sunday.

I don't mean to disparage my experiences at BYU because they were some of the happiest and strongest times in my life. And I was lucky to be surrounded by likeminded Mormons, those who moved against the grain. I'm just going through a new stage of my spiritual life and it's a scary time. I want to relearn things. I want to study the scriptures because I am searching for an answer and not because it's a habit. I want to change my heart, not appropriate a style of dress and speaking and voting that does not represent my life and experiences. I want to know Christ, not take part in practices that exclude my brothers and sisters from knowing Christ. I want to participate in organizations that promote justice and equality and that are filled with righteous anger at those who harm and oppress, not take part in that oppression. And I want to do those things within the church that I love, surrounded by people who love God and not money, who give everything they can to ease the suffering of others, who serve out of love and not obligation, and who do not feel entitled to eternal exaltation because they have some babies.

I'm feeling a lot like I did as a child. I love Jesus but I'm just unsure of my place in the Church. So, I think I'm going to chill out on this fence for a little while, and I feel good about that.

some girls are bigger than others

2011-11-12T16:17:00.001-08:00

I was at Target today and there was a rack of $5 tights, really cute tights in all different colors. There were golden tights and some in dark teal; there were pink, red, green tights. I was ready to buy a pair in every color. Only, the XL tights were limited to black and gray, and they were very nearly gone. The mediums and smalls in the lovely colors were piled high. I guess fat girls aren't allowed to buy golden tights? Maybe they think they'll sell fewer of them because fat people don't shop for anything but sweatpants? Funny how all the XLs were almost out of stock.

Before that I was with some friends at Kohls and I thought I'd look and see if they have any jeans. Again, they had them piled high in sizes 4, 6, 8, 10, but very few in 16 and none in 18. I looked around the store and saw a lot of larger women and I wondered where they bought all of their clothes. You'd think that of all the places that would stock larger sizes in misses would be the place where moms shop for their momjeans. Why are fat women exiled to fat lady specialty shops? I personally can't shop in "plus size" clothing stores because a) all the clothes there are ugly and b) I lack girth in the hip and thigh area. A size 18 in misses will fit me fine, and a size 18 or a 1X in "plus size" will fall off of me.

I suppose it's a good thing that it's nearly impossible for me to find clothes, because, as a friend told me recently, I'm kind of addicted to shopping. I guess it's better to shop and shop and shop and never find any thing to buy than to be surrounded by cute clothes that actually fit. It's saving me money.

Remember, some girls are bigger than others...

In other fat news, I just bought a yoga DVD for fat people. I'm very excited for it because it modifies a lot of the poses to help those of us who have bellies that tend to get in the way. I'll blog about it if it's any good.

I've been thinking about my body a lot these days. My friend shared this really interesting blog post about bodies and sexuality, and it's making me think about and pay a little more attention to my body. I haven't been taking the best care of it these days, mainly because I run on Diet Coke and macaroni and cheese, but I think that will change as I start looking at it differently. A few months ago a friend posted on her blog a really stunning and inspiring letter to her body, and it puts forth a kind of relationship between us and our bodies that I would like to try to cultivate.

Another website that is teaching me how to love my body is called Adipositivity. Before I post the link I want to warn you that this website contains nude and beautiful photos of fat people. If you don't like nude photos or beautiful fat people then don't click on it. Here's the mission statement of the website:

The Adipositivity Project aims to promote size acceptance, not be listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather, through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that's normally unseen.

... The women you see in these images are educators, executives, mothers, musicians, professionals, performers, artists, activists, clerks, and writers. They are perhaps even women you've clucked at on the subway, rolled your eyes at in the market, or joked about with their friends.

This is what they look like with their clothes off.

Some are showing you their bodies proudly. Others timidly. And some quite reluctantly. But they all share a determination in altering commonly accepted notions of a narrow and specific beauty ideal.

This website has had an enormous affect on me. It's so easy to hate our bodies in this world; there are so many photoshopped images being pushed down our throats, so many messages telling us that we are ugly, fat, and that no one will love us unless we buy their product. There are so many things about my body that I just can't stand, things I have no control over and feel bitter and angry about. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, but sometimes I feel like I am. Looking at this website has first off made me realize that many bodies do resemble by body. I am not a freak of nature. Secondly, these bodies are beautiful. I honestly kind of wish I could have someone take beautiful nude photos of me. Maybe some day.

Finally, in relation to my revelation that there are so many different shapes and sizes to the human body, I want to talk for just a minute about vaginas. I watched the most remarkable documentary about vaginaplasty last week and how there are millions of women every year who have cosmetic surgery done on their vaginas. I was absolutely appalled that such a thing could be so popular. I definitely recommend the documentary, but again, a warning first about the number of vaginas you'll see if you watch the video and second, and most disturbing, they do show the surgery being performed on a young woman. It made me kind of sick, and it happens towards the beginning. I suggest you look away.

Anyway, the point is, every body is different and every body is a miracle. One of the most interesting aspects of this movie is something that I actually experienced a few years ago. There is an artist in the film who is collecting 160 casts of vaginas to make into an installation, a whole wall of vaginas. I saw a similar work of art that had about half as many photos of vaginas all lined up on a grid. I was absolutely stunned: every single one is different. It's like looking at 100 faces. Each one is so unique; no one is exactly like the other. I was taken aback at, again, the beauty and the miracle of the human body.

So I hope you're developing a good relationship with your body. I hope you love it, and I hope you take care of it and get to dress it just how you'd like without someone dictating to you what you can and cannot purchase (like golden or teal tights) based on how large or small it is. I hope you can recognize how unique and amazing you are. I hope I can too.

a string of randoms

2011-11-12T06:57:00.001-08:00

I've decided that if I blog things instead of just posting stuff on facebook it would be more accessible to me at a later date. So here are some of those things.

This video brings me endless joy.

Also, I've found this extension for Google Chrome that will switch out gendered words: he for she, him for her, man for woman, woman for man, etc. I'm excited about this because it's an extremely useful tool for seeing how strongly our culture favors masculine pronouns, and it's already something feminists have used to point these things out. We do it all the time in my feminist religious philosophy class.

Speaking of that class, I am currently working on my final project and I've decided to focus on the issue of priesthood in the Mormon church and discuss what Mormon feminists have been saying about it for the last thirty years. I've really been on a journey this semester as I explore religion from a feminist perspective and really dig in to the issues that have been bothering me for the last several years. I'm figuring out where I stand on those issues and how I want to move forward in my spiritual life. I don't want to do or believe things simply because I have in the past. I want to be purposeful in my religious actions, not just move through the motions. I'm thinking of doing a blog post highlighting some of the books I've read this semester, but for now here are some links to some really important articles:

"If I Hate My Mother, Can I Love My Heavenly Mother? Personal Identity, Parental Relationships, and Perceptions of God" by Margaret Toscano. I've read most of Toscano's articles and this one is by far my favorite. It's not one of her "controversial" articles on priesthood or Heavenly Mother, but is instead a very personal and touching exploration of how we relate to ourselves, to our family members and to God. One issue in feminist theology is how to name God, who has, as the scriptures show, many names. People like Elizabeth Johnson point out that since God has so many names it is unwise to only address God as Father. God is also mother, friend, brother, sister, and all of these reflect distinct roles and relationships that we have in this life that we can then use to relate to God. I think Toscano asks a very important question, and a version of one I've frequently asked myself: If I don't have a relationship to my father on earth, how do I know how to have a relationship with a Father in Heaven?
"A Critique of the Two Trees" on Zelophehad's Daughters This is a really fantastic review of a talk that has been causing a bit of a stir in the Mormon feminist communities, especially the people I know at BYU. This critique is well researched and extremely thorough and approaches the original talk with solid feminist scholarship. Just because someone claims to be a feminist doesn't mean we have to completely reject or completely accept what she is saying. Feminists must always be critical, must always examine what the words are actually saying. It's easy to say "everyone is equal, everything is fine" and this may make a lot of people feel better about their support of a patriarchal institution, but I don't believe that anything that is easy to swallow is helpful. The world is complicated, people are complicated, God is more complicated than we can even imagine, and sweeping generalizations that aren't supported in scripture, history, or actual experience, should probably be left to Sunday School. /end mini rant.
"Addressing the Divine" on By Common Consent This is a bit of a dense linguistic article talking about how we address God in prayer. I love his conclusion that it is impossible for us to lie or deceive or spin when we pray, that prayer is a direct conduit to the divine. I have been having issues lately with prayer and this helped quite a lot.

So there are some articles. I also wanted to mention that yesterday was Armistice Day and today is Remembrance Day in the UK, the holidays initially commemorating the end of the First World War (the War to End All Wars). Since a bulk of my research is on WWI I thought I would post a little snipit of the project I just finished for the London Consortium. The title is "Negotiating the Forbidden Zone: Boundaries, Bodies, and Politics in Women's Writings of the First World War" So yeah, I don't really expect anyone to read this snipit, but if you're curious about what I was doing for a year in London, that's it. Let me know if you're interested in reading the whole thing.

Mary Borden seesthrough the structure of the war machine and understands its business. “It is all carefully arranged,” Borden explainsin her sketch “Conspiracy”:
Everything is arranged. It is arranged that men should be broken and that they should bemended. Just as you send your clothes tothe laundry and mend them when they come back, so we send our men to thetrenches and mend them when they come back. You send your socks and your shirtsagain and again to the laundry, and you sew up the tears and clip the ravelededges again and again, just as many times as they will stand it. And then you throw them away. And we send our men to the war again andagain, just as long as they will stand it; just until they are dead, and thenwe throw them into the ground. It is allarranged. (79)
Borden recognizes the war-body as abroken and disposable object, an abject thing, what Brown may refer to as an index to “a certain limit or liminality,[hovering] over the threshold between the namable and the unnamable, thefigurable and the unfigurable, the identifiable and unidentifiable" (5). In its thingness, the war body occupies both aliteral and figurative forbidden zone. Physically the body hovers between life and death, between fragmentationand wholeness. Its borders have beenpenetrated and its working parts are mangled and useless. Metaphorically the war body is constantlyhovering between a certain, ideal symbol of the state for which it fights, andan uncertain symbol of the outcome of war.
Brown explainsthat as “they circulate through our lives, we look through objects…becausethere are codes by which our interpretive attention makes them meaningful,because there is a discourse of objectivity that allows us to use them asfacts. A thing, in contrast, canhardly function as a window” (4). Theobject of the masculine body within the war machine, as a container of socialand cultural ideals, embodies those ideals, becomes those ideals, becomes afact. He is not a composite of parts, ofarms and legs, but a whole man, a symbol of masculinity, bravery, and all ofthe political ideals which he contains within his body. Brown goes on, “The story of objectsasserting themselves as things, then, is the story of a changed relation to thehuman subject and thus the story of how the thing really names less an objectthan a particular subject-object relation" (4). In her memoirs Borden recognizes the shift inthis relation between herself as a subject and the soldier’s body as an object,a once functioning object now asserting itself as a thing, a composite ofbroken parts. “There are no men here,” she writes, “So why should I be awoman?” Instead of whole men there are merely parts, pieces, fragments:
There are heads and knees and mangled testicles. There are chests with holes as big as yourfist, and pulpy thighs, shapeless; and stumps where legs once werefastened. There are eyes—eyes of sickdogs, sick cats, blind eyes, eyes of delirium; and mouths that cannotarticulate; and parts of faces—the nose gone, or the jaw. There are thesethings, but no men; so how could I be a woman here and not die of it? It is impossible to be a woman here. One mustbe dead.” (43-44).
In his injury the soldier’s bodydeposits the ideals he contained, the masculine ideals revered by the societyand culture of his country. Hisfragmented body can no longer contain those ideals. “Certainly they were menonce,” Borden writes, “But now they are no longer men. […] Once they were real,splendid, ordinary, normal men. Now theymew like kittens” (44). The oncesplendid, ordinary, and normal man turned soldier is wounded; he becomesinfantile, and his body draws attention to itself as a composite of defectiveparts, similar to the cast away limbs and parts which Borden encounterseverywhere in the field hospital. “Atmidnight I will get up and put on a clean apron and go across the grass to thesterilizing room and get a cup of cocoa,” she explains, “At midnight we alwayshave cocoa in there next to the operating room, because there is a big tableand boiling water. […] Sometimes there isn’t much room. Sometimes legs and arms wrapped in clothshave to be pushed out of the way. Wethrow them on the floor—they belong to no one and are of no interest toanyone—and drink our cocoa” (41). HereBorden’s prose exemplify a matter-of-fact, and yet ironic tone, reflecting howshe sees herself and her own body as an object within the war machine. Sheadmires one fellow nurse (likely Ellen La Motte): “Blind, deaf, dead—she is strong,efficient, fit to consort with gods and demons—a machine inhabited by the ghostof a woman—soulless, past redeeming, just as I am—just as I will be”(43). In the Forbidden zone women are not women,and men are not men. In this space theirbodies are cogs in the same war machine: parts that mend, and parts that aremended.
Not only doesBorden compare the bodies of injured soldiers to things, she focuses on theabsurdity of the things that surround her life and work inside the ForbiddenZone. In her sketch “Paraphernalia” shedescribes the uselessness of the objects and instruments scattered about anoperating table of a dying patient. “What have all these queer things to do with the dying of this man?” sheasks. “Here are cotton things and rubberthings and steel things and things made of glass, all manner of things. What have so many things to do with the finaladventure of this spirit?” She thenproceeds to inventory the myriad objects used in the futile attempts to savehis life, and again asks why. “Why doyou rub his grey flesh with the stained scrap of cotton and stick the needledeep into his side? Why do you do it? Death is inexorable and the place of Death is void. You have crowded the room with all manner of things. Why do you crowd all these things up to theedge of the great emptiness?” (83). The objects of the operating theater donothing but crowd, and in their uselessness they call attention to themselvesas mere things. Elizabeth Grosz explainsthat "the thing is the provocation of the nonliving, the half-living, orthat which has no life, to the living, to the potential of and for life"(125). The instruments that the nursesand surgeons use in order to save life are in themselves lifeless and theyclearly provoke Mary Borden. “You keepon doing things. Why do you keep on doing things?” Borden asks, “Death isannoyed at your fussing” (84). Theuselessness of the medical paraphernalia provokes the living, just as theuselessness of the now irreparable body provokes the living bodies surroundingit:
“What do you say? He is dead? You say he is dead? Andhere are all your things, your blankets and your bottles and your basins. The blankets weigh down upon his body. They hang down over the bed. Your syringes and your needles and youruncorked bottles are all about in confusion. You have stained your fingers. There is a spot on your white apron; but you are superb, and here areall your things about you, all your queer things, all the confusion of yourprecious things. What have you and allyour things to do with the dying of this man?” Borden asks a final time,“Nothing. Take them away” (84).
That which is left of the dead man,a spot of his blood on her apron, a stain on her fingers, is a provoking thing,an indictment against her still living, “superb” body, the body that containsmeaning and a potential for continued life; perhaps the thing, the spot ofblood, is an indication of the guilt she still feels despite her attempts tobecome herself a thing, a soulless cog in the machine of war.
Bordenalso recognizes and struggles throughout her work to accept the role she has asthe mender. Like the things thatsurround her in the Forbidden Zone, the bodies of wounded men, she attempts torecreate herself as a soulless and subjectless thing so that she might workpainlessly within the machine of war. However, the Forbidden Zone is a space where no meaning is or can befixed, and just as the bodies of the soldiers hover between life and death,between political significance and insignificance, Mary Borden’s own body andidentity hovers within the same interstitial space of negotiation andabjection. "No longer the clear outline of an autonomous body, this borderis a disturbing liminal state between subject and object….And if this describesthe corpse it also describes those living persons who look up on its contoursas a dark mirror of their own state." (Schwenger 158). Women are not spared the abjection that comeswith the broken state of the bodies of wounded soldiers. Borden never describes the state of a soldier’sbody without reference to her own body and her own struggles within the spaceof the Forbidden Zone. Her collection offragments reveals the struggle of the human body to assert itself as a subjectfrom within the machine of war and shows how it instead becomes an abjectthing, a piece of broken machinery that in the end cannot be mended, especiallyas it continues to live within the space of abjection, within the ForbiddenZone.

And finally. This may be the best thing you ever see on the internet.

I'm quiet because I have been thinking.

2011-11-10T19:01:00.001-08:00

I'm finally really in the school groove again. The struggle to stay focused and keep up with my readings is turning into a joy for having the opportunity to spend all day reading and researching. There's so much to do and so little time! I love it!

I am liking Louisville more, or perhaps disliking it less. Sometimes I go eat sushi and share my life philosophy with people I like. Sometimes I hang out with my nineteen year old roommate and laugh a lot. We make fun of things, like bad horror movies and dweeby lead singers of crappy local indie bands. Last night she and I drove to Lexington to see a noncrappy, nonlocal, but kind of dweeby band, Beirut. Life is always worth living when there is a concert to go to, I think. Especially when all of the band members are adorable and someone is rocking out on the tuba.

This isn't proof that we were at the show, but it is proof that we were in Lexington, just like William Clark was once.

Beirut

Here's a video I took myself. We were in the little hornplayer's home town, with his family taking up the first three rows of the theater, so I think he was showing off a bit.

I'm reading Dante (again) and I've decided that my all time favorite line is the last one in the Commedia: "l'amore che move il sole e l'altre stelle", the love that moves the sun and other stars. This, the last line of poem, its apex, is Dante's vision of God, and the words have been stuck in my head for days now. God is the love that moves. If I were to ever get a tattoo, this line would be it.

past life as a blast

2011-09-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

So I live in Kentucky now, and nearly every day I wake up a little panicked and think "What the hell am I doing in Kentucky?" Some days I wake up and think I'm in London and then remember that no, I am in Kentucky. On those days I have a difficult time getting out of bed. I don't have anything against Kentucky itself. I'm sure it's a lovely place. I just don't get to see much of it these days since I have no car and I live in a train yard. A train yard next to an airport, landlocked and trapped without a car. Oh, and there have been a series of break-ins and muggings in the neighborhood. Last week a group of people went through the apartment complex, broke in to places, stole car keys and then stole a bunch of cars. The other day some guys forced their way into someone's house nearby and robbed them. Yesterday 2 people were mugged in broad daylight next to the campus.

Fortunately I have a lot to be grateful for. I haven't yet been mugged. I don't have a car for anyone to steal. And I don't hate trains or train yards. I kind of like them actually. I like standing on the bridge that I take to school (not only is my apartment surrounded on all sides by train tracks, so is the campus), and watch them come or go. They're usually filled up with shiny new Fords. One time I saw a pick up truck pull up nearly to the train tracks and a guy jump out, then the train stopped and he got on. Curious.

I do spend a lot of time thinking about the things I am grateful for these days. I got very lucky with my roommates. Both are young (19 and 21) but only one of them is crazy (she talks to herself most of the time). The other one reminds me a lot of myself, and we get along fantastically. She's easy to talk to and her stepdad owns a cattle farm so now I get to eat fresh grass fed beef. It's awesome. She's also incredibly kind and fun/funny. I seriously lucked out, and I enjoy coming home, making dinner, watching tv and chatting with my roommates. It definitely helps fight off the loneliness.

Roommates (and boyfriend). We went apple picking last week.

School is going well too. I read a lot. I'd say it's what I do most often. Apart from the writing and watching Spongebob Squarepants (it's always on and it sucks me in)

I also just finished my London Consortium MRes dissertation (remember how the UK is bizarro land? Over there PhD students write theses and Masters students write dissertations). I posted it last Friday and it got to London yesterday. This is cause for rejoicing. (yay!) Now I wait to see if I pass.

So I've been in Louisville for the last 6 weeks and it has been difficult for me. But on the 30th of every month I get a check (that's today! another cause for rejoicing!) and I don't have to do anything for it but study. It's a dream come true. Also I've met a lot of nice people with cars, and so I haven't been entirely trapped in the train yard. Maybe Louisville will become home soon.

I'm trying to not be too nostalgic for London, but the video for Okkervil River's song "Your Past Life As a Blast" was released today and it's the song that reminds me most of London. I don't remember if I blogged about it, but I got to hang out with Okkervil River in London. I met up with them in Trafalgar Square at midnight and walked with them to a club in Soho. No, really, that happened. I swear. Here's proof.

Patrick the hot bass player with his arm around me (and my lovely Italian friend) at a swanky club in Soho.

And in case you doubt that he is the hot bass player, here is another picture of him being hot and playing the bass. Oh, it was a magical night.

So here's their new video. It's lovely.

Your Past Life As A Blast from Okkervil River on Vimeo.

living on the boundary, part one: the feminist/Mormon paradox

2011-08-26T21:53:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about boundaries a lot in the last several years: interstitial spaces where meaning is suspended, liminal spaces where meaning is not yet realized, broken and fragmented spaces where meaning is renegotiated. Because boundaries are so much on my mind, I'm expecting I'll be blogging about them more in the future as I try to sort certain ideas out in my brain. That's why I'm calling this post "part one". There's more to come.

I'm currently reading a rather radical feminist theology by Mary Daly called Beyond God the Father, and while I'm not entirely convinced of all of her ideas, I do appreciate the point she makes of living on the boundary. She's referring to feminism and patriarchal, hierarchical, and sexist religious traditions, and about the choices we have as feminists to continue practicing these religions. She suggests the possibility of living on the boundary of a patriarchal organization by "weighing such factors as the positive merits that the institution may have in spite of its sexism, and judging how strong are the possibilities of changing and/or using it without losing a disproportionate amount of creative energy in the effort." I believe this is what most Mormon feminists are doing, or what we must do in the end. Some decide it costs too much creative energy and give up looking for the positive merits of the institution. Some decide to live perpetually on the border "transferring the center of activity to our new space on the edge of such patriarchal space." I like the visual image this offers. The center of our activity is on the edge, and so we move around that center, in and out of the patriarchal institution.

My plan is to build a little house and settle in on the edge. I like interstitial living; there are few dull moments when you're living on a border. I've always lived on the boundaries of Mormonism. I did not come from an actively participating family in the church and was never particularly pressured into conforming to the teachings or the culture of the church. I went to church when I felt like it, not when my parents dragged me. I often sat in the foyer during services because I was quiet and shy and didn't have a family to sit with in the chapel. Nevertheless I felt content sitting on the soft couches and listening to the talks over the speakers. (A lovely feature, I thought.) I had few friends growing up, so even though it was a predominantly Mormon community, I was never fully conditioned to behave as proper Mormon children behave (which is actually rather judgmental and cruel, I always thought). In Primary I was always making exceptions to teachings and songs (which I still do): "Families can be together forever" never really meant much to me. My family wouldn't be. I wasn't broken up by this fact; the phrase just didn't apply to me. I did my best to earn my CTR rings, to memorize the Articles of Faith and participate in songs, but again, no one expected me to do so. I did it for me, and even though I made it to church on a fairly irregular basis, I felt proud of myself for making the effort.

I went to seminary because I felt like it, and because I really enjoyed it. I learned some basic doctrines there that inspired me, that gave me hope for a future beyond this life. One year because of a timid teacher and rowdy class I didn't feel like it was necessary for me to get up at 5am so I could sit and color pictures of the Old Testament prophets, so I stopped going. No one cared, and I went back and finished the last two years, again because I wanted to. I went to BYU because it felt right. No one wanted me to go. I continued to live on the boundaries even in Provo, where I lived for eight years, as I chose friends who also lived on the boundaries. My faith grew there because of those like-minded people.

I'm trying to figure out now what it means to live on the boundary. I've always criticized the structure and culture of the church, which I feel is entirely right and proper to do, but I have also always been drawn to it both spiritually and as a means of self-discipline and personal growth. I am drawn to its radical doctrines and its radical history, and my place within that history. My younger sister chose to stop attending church because of the scripture warning us that we can't serve both "God and mammon". There's not one way to serve God. I believe she does serve God even though she's no longer part of the church. My intention is to serve God, even if I am a fence-sitter, even if I live on the boundary and constantly move in and out. I can do that; I've been doing it all my life. What that might look like in my future is hard to tell. I don't intend to change my lifestyle in anyway. I will continue to not drink or smoke, I will continue going to church on Sunday, I will continue to read the scriptures and pray to God, and I'll probably continue to struggle for answers, to figure out my place in the universe, and to ask the hardest questions I can think to ask. So far the only difference is my intention to be more vocal. Mary Daly warns that there are risks living on the boundary of a church, and those who do so must have courage, courage to speak up and not be complicit in sexist practices. Very tricky indeed.

the walk of life

2011-08-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, enough of this not blogging. It's been two months and if I let it go any longer I'll never blog again. As most summers go, I allowed my brain to shut down almost completely in June. I stopped reading, writing, speaking coherently, and thinking academically. Maybe not entirely, but for the first weeks back from London I was certainly in a haze, and I'm pretty sure I spent most of my time staring blankly at a wall.

Yes, I am back from London. And not only am I returned, I've also moved to Kentucky. Isn't that weird? It feels weird. I spent exactly one month in Utah, from July 15 to August 15, and I didn't particularly want to leave it again. How can I go from London to my home, and then move on to Louisville, Kentucky? A place I've never seen, where every one is a stranger, and now I suddenly have to live there for four years? It's very weird.

So I've been here since Monday, and honestly I'm not really loving it. That's probably not fair. I suppose I should just say it's been a difficult week and not take it out on Louisville. I'm sure it'll be a lovely city once I get to know it.

As I've mentioned before, I'm in Louisville because they gave me loads of money to be here. I'm excited about the program and I feel confident that I'll do well. The PhD is not an issue. What freaks me out are the practical things, the moving to a strange place where everyone is a stranger, where I have to be dependent on strangers. It's been slightly hellish. Finding an apartment was hell and I don't have my car with me because I couldnt afford to fix it and then drive it 1500 miles so I've been walking around so much that I injured my foot the same day I found an apartment. I suppose that was lucky.

I think there's been an equal measure of good and bad since I flew in. It has been very difficult trying to situate myself in a new city without transportation or a place to live and try to get ready to start school on Monday. (I don't remember it being this hard when I moved to New York or London.) But on the other hand I have been welcomed warmly by my coursemates. K picked me up from the airport and brought me to B's house where I've been sleeping for the last week. B is an extremely gracious host and his roommates have also been so kind and lovely. They've fed me, taken me to a karaoke bar and given me rides when I hurt my foot. Other people in my department have also been extremely kind and helpful. I hate feeling so dependent on people I hardly know, but they really have done everything they can to help me out.

I was hoping today would go smoothly and not be stressful and dramatic, but that was a silly thing to expect. I almost didn't get into my apartment. The paperwork had taken too long and since it was the weekend none of the managers were in the office, so they told me they couldn't put me in the system and give me my key. I'd have to come back tomorrow. I could hardly hold back the tears and I stormed out of the office. I'd just walked a mile to the complex on my hurt foot in 100 degree weather, 100% humidity, and I was in a very fragile mood. I walked back to my friend's house, crying. Two hours later they called back and said they had spent the afternoon on the phone with the manager trying to get me into the system and I could move in. Then I found out that my mom had called them after I'd talked to her and gave them hell, arguing that the lease was signed and notarized and that they couldn't keep me from moving in. So they worked it out. I guess that's what moms are for.

So I'm in. My roommates are very young but also really nice. The apartment is extremely nice. My room is huge, I have a walk in closet and a giant private bathroom, and I bought a book case and a great lamp for it. I should also mention that it was a very sweet deal. I found someone on craigslist who was looking for someone to take over his lease and he agreed to pay for almost 3 months rent for me to take it. (It wasn't that much at first, but I drive a hard bargain.) I didn't have to pay a deposit or an application fee either, and it's furnished, so even though I'm in a "luxury" apartment it ended up being the most inexpensive place I could find. I'm lucky, and I think I'll be happy here.

Here's a song that's helped me get through all of this. It came on my ipod when I was flying over, and it reminded me so much of the happiest times of my childhood that I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming happiness. It made me feel like everything was going to be ok. On Thursday night I sang it at a karaoke bar. It was silly, but fun, and it made me happy. My favorite lyrics are at the end: "And after all the violence and double talk, There's a song in all the trouble and the strife, You do the walk, do the walk of life" That's what I'm doing, the walk of life.

until the spirit new sensation takes hold then you know

2011-06-12T16:45:00.000-07:00

I hate the fact that I haven't been posting regularly. So many things have been happening, and I feel like I have a million excuses to keep me from a blog. One is school. I spent most of last week in the library and most of the next couple of weeks will also be in the library. I have an essay due in less than 2 weeks, and I need to get all of my research done for my dissertation in 3 weeks.

Because I only have 3 weeks left in London.

This makes me want to cry.

I'm just now beginning to realize what an amazing place this is, what a fantastic opportunity it has been for me to be here, the things I have learned that are even now changing who I am and how I see the world, lessons I'll take with me to my PhD program, that I'll take with me throughout my life, I hope.

But there is more to life than the big city, its museums and parks and theaters and cinemas, its Costas and Prets and M&S's and Tescos, its pubs and libraries and protesting students. I'm really torn between two worlds. On one hand I've never felt more at ease than I have in London. For the first couple of months I loved nothing more than sitting on the Tube, flying in the dark below its teeming narrow streets. I don't know why but I felt a tremendous sense of calmness there, so unlike the constant feeling of anxiety and nervousness I'd grown accustomed to last year. Perhaps it was because I was moving so quickly, caught up in the action of the city I always wanted to be part of. I was literally inside the city. I couldn't get closer to it. It had swallowed me up and I was part of it. Sometimes I was tempted to miss my stop and just huddle down deeper into the warm, rocking carriage as it flew through the city. I remember telling my mom about this early on, how I had felt so happy, so fulfilled and content on the Tube. Who knows what she thought of that.

I don't take the tube as often now. It's allegedly summertime, although you wouldnt know it for all of the rain and the winter clothes I'm forced to wear. I walk and I take the bus when I need to get anywhere, and I've had a similar, but not quite, content feeling flying through the city on the top deck of a bus, listening to Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, and seeing all of the people and the streaming lights and the rhythms of a living, breathing city.

On the other hand, I'm craving something else, and I'm starting to grow a little restless again. Sometimes I think it's wanderlust, that I need to travel and see the world and I start getting a little antsy, but I don't know if that's it. I do love travelling, and i just spent the weekend in lovely Manchester with some lovely friends. I even met Judy Chicago, which was awesome, and I learned more about the career I hope to have, and the awesomeness of my experience in the UK really dawned on me as I spoke to my close academic friend who was familiar with all of my professors and extremely impressed with a few of them. But it's not travelling I'm craving, it's a lifestyle that I've been working out in my head for the last 10 years and I'm starting to get a bit anxious about living it.

I grew up in the country, on the most beautiful piece of land. I know I've talked about this before. I need to go back to something like that, and I need to do it right. Just like I felt the need to live in the middle of a big city and I moved to New York and then I moved to London, now I need some land, some space, some fresh air and time to start living the life I really want to live. That life involves fresh food from a garden, home made bread, home spun yarn, home made jam, home made pasta (lots of home made stuff. I basically need a food processor), some small and cuddly pets, some regular exercise, and a community. This last year I needed time on my own in a big city. I've been thinking about it and I'm kind of glad that I did so much on my own, that I spent so much time with myself to think and consider things, that I have so many special memories that are only part of my reality, that aren't shared. How selfish that sounds I know, but I'm glad that it happened and that I have stories of the things that I did on my own. Those memories are already dear to me.

The next step in life is 4 years in Kentucky, and to be honest, I'm kind of looking forward to it. I hope it will be a quiet life, and 4 years is the right amount of time to settle into a place and buy some furniture. And once I've bought a book shelf and a food processor then I'll know I've made it. I will have become an adult. I hope I can find a cute flat to rent on my own, and I have visions of reading groups and study groups and movie nights, or nights on my own cuddling with my small furry pet.

Still, 3 weeks left in London is not very long. I thought of trying to stay an extra couple of weeks but I realized I will have no money left. I'm right on schedule to run out. I guess it's time I bought my plane ticket home.

I know I've posted this before, but I'm going to again because it's my favorite song to listen to on the bus in London. Maybe I'll make my own video to it...

a Canterbury tale

2011-05-14T02:31:00.001-07:00

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open eye-

So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

And specially, from every shires ende

	Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,
	The hooly blisful martir for the seke
	That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke

Cathedral and St. Augustine Abbey ruins

If you don't know already, those are the first lines from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. I had to memorize these first lines in Middle English and recite them in a class I took on the 14th Century, and it was actually really fun. (If you've never heard anyone read these lines in the Middle English before, I've included the youtube video at the bottom of the page.) For the few of you who don't speak Middle English, here's the gist: Once spring comes along in April, and the weather starts getting really nice, people grow a little antsy and start thinking about leaving the house and going on a pilgrimage. A lot of those people, from all over England, head out to Canterbury to visit the cathedral where St. Thomas a Beckett was martyred. And there you have it.

Today I joined in that very long tradition of pilgrims to the shrine in the Canterbury Cathedral. Just like Chaucer explains, once the weather turns nice and the warm breezes blow I get antsy and feel compelled to leave the city, enjoy the clean country air, and visit some cathedrals. Today was the loveliest day I could have chosen for such a pilgrimage. My journey was actually quite short. Since I took the fast train from London, it was only a 50 minute, rather comfortable and boring, pilgrimage. There certainly wasn't enough time to tell any tales (and I was alone anyway), but I did enjoy the beautiful countryside.

I met up with a friend for lunch and he asked me what on earth had brought me to Canterbury. (I guess like most people he doesn't see the value of his hometown.) "I just wanted to see the city and the Cathedral," I said. "Ohh. Are you doing research?" He still seemed puzzled that I would make a trip from London just to see the Cathedral. I had to explain that no, I've wanted to see Canterbury for most of my adult life. I honestly couldn't imagine a more pleasant afternoon than wandering around Canterbury Cathedral. I guess I'm a nerd that way.

After Sam and I parted ways I went to the Roman Museum and saw some very interesting Roman ruins under the current city. When Canterbury had been bombed in the war they discovered the floor of a Roman townhouse with the mosaic tiles still intact. I loved it. Roman ruins are always a treat. (See? I'm a giant nerd.) Then after getting lost for spell, since I decided I would not need a map for some reason, I finally found the ruins of the St. Augustine Abbey.

Red Roman brick used to build St. Pancras Church

Although my pilgrimage to the city was for the cathedral, the ruins of the Abbey were actually the best part of my day. After the nervous and friendly cashier sold me a ticket I wandered around the ruins completely alone. There's something rather melancholic about ruins, but in the bright sunshine I had a difficult time feeling anything but peace and pleasure at being alone on the spot where Christianity had been established in England hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I love being in places that contain a depth of history. It fills me up and grounds me to the place where people lived, worked, and prayed hundreds of years ago. That's why I love being in London. The history of a place fills my soul. Plus, unlike inside the Cathedral, there weren't a million French school children disturbing the calm mood in the Abbey. I wish I had stayed there longer.

The reason the Abbey is in ruins is because of lovely old Henry VIII who, once he took over the Church of England, set out to reclaim all of the wealth that the abbeys in England had built up. He tore this one down and then built a palace using one of the church's walls. Someone inherited or bought the property afterwards, buried the rubble and made the space into a lovely garden, and then the next generation just kind of abandoned it. The city people used the land for grazing cattle, and also for parties and all kinds of debauchery, until a man in the 18th century realized what that land had originally been used for, bought it, excavated it and tried to preserve what he could of the abbey. And now we can visit it! I highly recommend doing so if you ever get the chance.

Finally I spent a few hours in the Cathedral and on the Cathedral grounds, wandering about the cloister, walking up and down the nave, meditating, sketching, writing. Despite the annoying French school children, the beauty and history of the Cathedral really inspired me, and by the time I left I felt incredible. I've taken classes on Medieval architecture, religious architecture, and 14th Century literature and history, and I feel that I have some grasp on what that building is all about, what the experience of the pilgrim might have been like to go there, and what sacrifices the townspeople and the workers made to build such a magnificent church. It's one thing to study those things, and quite another to be there, to be filled with the history of a place, the thousands and thousands of people who have walked there over hundreds and hundreds of years.

some huge news

2011-04-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

Oh dear.

It has been 2 weeks since I last blogged. It has also been 2 weeks since I've been in Utah, and only 5 days before I will be leaving Utah. The visit has gone by very quickly, and it has been slightly adventurous, and I got to see almost all of my favorite living breathing people. There are a lot of them here in Utah. One of the highlights of the trip was a long hike in the snow and mud and darkness. Well, making it out alive was the highlight really.

Guys, I have some news. I've only told a handful of people about this because I wasn't sure how to react or what I would do, but I'm getting a little used to the idea so I want to share it now. I got an email on Monday informing me that I had been awarded a fellowship from the University of Louisville. The award is full tuition, health benefits and an $18,000 stipend for 2 years. After the first 2 years I will receive a Graduate Teaching Assistantship for the same amount; for the first 2 there are no work duties.

Like I said, I haven't been sure how to react to this news. I'm a little scared, a little overwhelmed, and slightly convinced that they've made a huge mistake.

On the other hand getting $18,000 with "no work duties" sounds like my kind of job. And really, it is a dream come true. It is a prayer answered.

Guess I'm moving to Louisville this fall.

my favorite person in London

2011-03-30T01:59:00.000-07:00

I first met Sara in New York in November, 2008. She was packing around a sweet potato pie and we saw Daniel Radcliffe naked. Fast forward to June, 2010. Again, in New York, but this time randomly on the subway, I found out she was moving to London in the fall and we talked about her research interests. I envied her, because I had applied to a program in London in April and hadn't heard from them yet. I didn't have hopes of going. Fast forward to July, 2010: I'm moving to London.

So before coming out here I only met this girl twice, but I liked her. Not only was she carrying around a sweet potato pie the first time we met, she also climbed onto someone's shoulders for a better view of DR coming out of the stage door after the play, while I held her pie. I don't think we saw him, but the girl made me laugh really hard. When I came out here I knew no one but Sara, and we had been corresponding a little over our blogs and email, but I didn't expect her to become such an important friend in my life.

I love Sara. I really do. She is an angel. I mean, come on, look at this face!

She really is an angel though, and I think I opened up to her and told her my whole life story the first time we ever hung out. She's hilarious, but serious. Silly, but thoughtful. I've learned that it's ok to argue with her, and she'll still like me even if she yells at me. When I hang out with her I turn into one of those loud Americans that everyone hates, but I can't help it because she's so funny. And she's been the best London friend I could have hoped for. I came here knowing no one and Sara was there the whole time. I'm leaving tomorrow for a few weeks and while I don't think I'll miss London too much while I'm gone, I already miss Sara. We've had some pretty great adventures, including dancing like mad women at an LCD Soundsystem show, and then there was that whole Brighton/Bath fiasco that ended up still being fun. We've walked all over the place, and last week we met at Primrose Hill and realized that London is really ugly.

Ugly London, Lovely Sara

She also loves Jaffa Cakes. In fact, we just finished off a box of Jaffa Cakes right before I took that picture of her on Primrose Hill. And for that, she has my heart forever.

Love you Sara! Happy Birthday!!

maybe my life is a movie: Will Sheff's soloish show at Old St. Pancras Church, London

2011-03-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to think all day long about how I can blog about last night. When I got home and skyped with my sisters I utilized squeals, clapping hands and other visual aids to convey my excitement and joy. It's hard to clap my hands and squeal in a blog post.

I've loved Okkervil River for a lot of years now, and this was the 4th time I've seen them in some form or another. It's too bad that the whole band wasn't there, but the intimacy of the venue and all of the things that happened because of that marks this show as one of my favorites of all time. It was at Old St. Pancras Church, a tiny church that has been there since the 4th century and which if you recall I recently blogged about, and I got there pretty early, as I do, and got a seat right at the front.

The show itself was nice and quiet. Everyone stayed seated for most of it, which was great because I've not been feeling well lately and i didn't have to stand up that whole time. I sat next to a girl from Italy with a really lovely thick British accent (who I will refer to as L.), who happens to be friends with Patrick, Okkervil River's bassist, who was also there with Will. She and I struck up a friendly conversation that made the hour or so wait fly by, and Patrick kept coming over to talk to her, which was exciting for me.

The performance was fantastic. The lighting and sound were crap but it didn't matter because we were all so close anyway. It was very intimate, and at one point, for "A Stone", one of my favorite songs, he started wandering into the audience and was standing directly in front of me. Like 2 feet away. And the song was beautiful. He sang it slowly and sumptuously and even added an extra verse. Everyone was enthralled. I couldn't help but me tremendously moved, and after the song everyone exploded in applause that lasted forever. It was such a perfect moment.

For the encore Will came out and played "For Real" on a little old piano at the back of the church. Everyone got up and gathered around the piano and L. and I were standing on some chairs. I had left my coat and scarf on my chair, and when i came back, underneath scarf was the SET LIST. Someone put it there! You can imagine my delighted surprise. Who put it there? and why? I thought maybe L. did but she was with me the whole time. So i folded it and put it in my pocket, with a stupid grin plastered to my face.

After the show Patrick and Will were out talking to people, including L. so I kind of pushed my way into the circle and L. introduced me to both of them. (I didn't tell Will that we had met before in Salt Lake when I chased him into a bathroom). But it gets better. After I met Will, Patrick asked me if I liked the little gift he hid for me. After a second, it clicked. The set list! he put it there!! Happy birthday me!!! I stuck around with L and some american dudes and after Patrick had helped pack up the gear he came out and talked to us for a little while. As he was saying goodbye to us and he gave me a hug and said "I'm happy I got to be your little elf." I think I died right there.

Best. Gift. Ever.

It was a lovely night, a lovely show with fantastic people. I was smiling the whole time and couldn't help but think how awesome my life is right now. I did record some video, but it didn't turn out so well so I'm not going to post it. I wish the lighting had been a bit better, and I also realized this morning that I should have got a picture with Will, and it never crossed my mind. Oh well. Next time. And there will be a next time because they're going to be here in May! And hopefully I'll get to go with L. Can't wait.

I'm stupidly happy, like the words to that song

2011-03-16T02:32:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of in love with my life right now, and it seems to just keep getting better. And even though there are parts that don't seem to be getting any better, I feel like I am getting better. I feel like making a list of all the great things that are happening.

First, church. I love church. I love it. For the last couple of months I've felt like the only thing going well in my life was church, which has never happened before, and which made all the other crappy things that were happening feel less crappy. I have two callings, Sunday School Teacher and Volunteer Temple Worker, and they have kind of changed my life. We're studying the New Testament this year, which is my favorite book of scripture, and I love being able to study it closely and teach about it. I love reading about the life of Christ, the things he taught and did, and I am
SO excited to get into Paul's Epistles, because let's face it, Paul was a little crazy, and a little bit genius. I can't wait. This week I taught about parables and why it was important for Christ to use metaphor, narrative, and other poetic devises to teach. It was so much fun! I also love working in the temple. I work in the baptistry a couple of Saturdays a month, and there is just nothing like working up a sweat in the temple. I love how exhausted I get. There's so much to be done, so much organizing and running up and down stairs, and talking to lovely little British ladies who tell stories about their cousin's dogs.

I've also had the opportunity to go teach with the missionaries and to see some people baptized into the ward, which growing up in Utah and living in Provo I've never really experienced before. The faith of these new members is astounding to me, and I've recently witnessed a miracle that has increased my own faith. The church has never been the best place for me socially, but I always do seem to make friends with the most awesome people, and I'm doing it again here. I don't mind going to activities as much as I used to, and I feel like I'm part of a family, which I have never felt in a ward.

With all of these good church experiences I've been learning a few lessons. First, the little things that are part of living in the world, the constant entropy that we're always fighting against, the annoying things that never stop happening, they don't matter. I used to let them rule my life, define who I am and what I want. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if I make mistakes, or if someone doesn't like me, if I get a bad grade. You know what else doesn't matter? The opposite side of that coin. It doesn't matter if the world loves me, if academia approves of me, if I can make a lot of money, if I go on lots of dates (or any dates for that matter), or have a lot of friends on facebook or twitter. In a nutshell, I cannot define who I am based on what the world thinks of me or does to me, good or bad. I know who I am and I know what matters, and that is based on the fact that I know God loves me. I don't care if that sounds naive or ridiculous, because it is a realization that has taken years of work to get to, and has been solidified in the most beautiful ways in the last couple of months. It is a realization that has helped me love better, be kinder, be less selfish, work harder, and be happier. So, I think I'll stick with this whole church thing. It seems to be working out for me.

As this part of my life falls into place and I feel more grounded and happy, other things seem to be working out ideally. I've just strengthened a friendship that I thought was completely lost, and I finally feel like I'm actually in a position to help this friend. My family relationships are stronger, and my sister and I have been working really well together building our Arch Editing empire. I am completely excited about this. I'll have to write another blog outlining all of our progress, but it really is moving along quite nicely. Yesterday we had over 250 hits to our website. What exactly is the point of this website? Well, we're building a resource for writers, for every writer no matter what style or genre. We blog every day, incorporating writing tips, grammar and editing help, book reviews, and cultural lessons aimed at inspiring writers. We are also an editing service, and we edit anything and everything. Oh yeah, Haley also wrote a book. It's a writing guide for college essays, a supplemental book designed for classes that don't have time to teach or remind students how to write papers, like most courses in most Humanities colleges. It's a really great book, and it'll be part of a series that will be in print in August.

Oh. And we have interns. That's right, interns. Do you have an intern? I think not. /brag. We realized that we have so many plans and Haley and I are just not capable of doing everything ourselves, so we've enlisted help. We're still looking for someone to write SEO content for us, if any of you are interested? AND we need guest bloggers, for anyone who'd be interested in sharing your talents. :)

oh dear, it's all too much. I'm so excited about all of this. I'm going to the library today and write blog posts for our blog and do research and read awesome books and be happy. Oh, and I will also blog about my latest trip to Oxford, don't worry.

how many holes does it take to fill up Albert Hall?

2011-03-10T07:50:00.000-08:00

For most of my life I've been trying to convince people how important art is. I've been preaching that art is good for the soul, that it will bring you to a heightened sense of self awareness, world awareness, people awareness. Art can make you a better person. I believed my professors when they told me this, and I hoped my students believed it when I taught them this. But honestly? I don't know if I ever really felt it, and sometimes I wondered if I was straight up lying to them.
I've always loved art; looking at it, thinking and talking about it, researching it, I've made art my whole life. And yet I always wondered why it never moved to me tears, why I felt an intellectual pull to it, but never an emotional one.

Well, I'm getting a bit more emotional in my old age, and I'm seeing a correlation to how I experience art. Part of me wonders if maybe all these years of trying to figure out why art moves people has taught me how to approach art, and it's finally all clicked in place. Somehow I doubt that. Somehow I think it's just evidence of a cold heart melting.

You know what the strangest thing is? I crave art, and when I encounter it I let it take over me and it renews me, it really does. Last Friday I stood and stared at a Greek statue in the British Museum for 20 minutes, and then I left without looking at anything else because the beauty of that one piece just filled my soul. I'm beginning to think that all that stuff I fed my students that I suspected might be total malarkey wasn't, isn't.

So for the past few weeks I've been craving the opera. If a Greek statue can move me to tears, then the opera might leave me in a puddle on the floor, which is just what I needed. A catharsis. I was talking to a friend on Sunday and one of us mentioned opera (forget who) and the other got excited and somehow we ended up at the Royal Albert Hall last night to see Madame Butterfly. It was just what the doctor ordered.

I don't understand why or like how opera is perceived in our culture now. Opera was never really supposed to be "high" culture, well not Italian opera. Wagner pretty much changed it all. Wagner turned the lights down and made opera a serious aesthetic event. He really was the first one that insisted the lights be dimmed. Before that opera was a social event. All the lights would be up, people would be walking around and talking to their friends and hanging out. Of course the music, story and singing would rapture them at the right times, and they would burst into applause and shouts, "Bravo! Brava!" Old men would be crying and yelling and carrying on. You know why? Because opera is pure, raw, base emotion. It's not subtle by any means, and it's not particularly intellectual either. It grabs you by the chest and it pulls you out of your seat and makes you want to shout at the stage.

Opera was popular. It wasn't high brow. Imagine if in 150 years from now people would be spending $200 to tickets to see Doctor Who or The Office shown on a 2D television set. Wagner operas, yes, that makes sense. They were written and designed to be shown in dimmed theaters and have elaborate stage design and virtuoso performers. They are the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art. But Italian operas? I saw an Italian opera in Italy once and it was a completely different experience from the one I saw last night. There were old men shouting at the stage, people standing up at the intense moments because they just couldnt stay in their seats, and the performers were definitely not virtuosi. I wish opera could go back to that a little bit in the UK and America. I was really sad last night when I looked around and saw I was the only one giving a standing ovation.

I apologize for the digression, back to Madame Butterfly. The liberetto was in English, unfortunately. I do prefer supertitles and the original language. You can't understand anything anyway, so it might as well be in Italian, right? Despite that the performers were as astounding as expected. We were in the cheapest seats available and I was still moved by their actions and sound. The set was amazing; a Japanese water garden (in the round so it didn't matter that we were on the side and not the front). The only problem was that there was an annoying rail right in front of us, but the seats next to us were empty so we shifted over.

I always told my students that the best way to enjoy an opera is to read a synopsis and listen to the music before going, so you're not wondering what the heck is going on with the plot (which isn't usually too complicated. Remember how opera is pure base emotion?) I'm going to have to rethink that advise. I didn't know anything about the opera, and I was definitely surprised on a few occasions, which seriously helped to heighten the emotional level of the performance. I gasped, I clapped with joy, I hung my head in disappointment. The Italian in me almost got me to my feet shouting a couple of times, but the repressed English in my won that battle. By the end I was reduced to a puddle of tears. The intensity of the music with the intensity of the emotion and the sadness of the story just took me over. When it was over I was to my feet, cheering. Unfortunately I was surrounded by repressed English and no one else stood. I wish I could have transfered that experience to the tiny opera house in Rome, and I would have felt completely at home.

Well, I think I can say I get it now. I get why people love this stuff, and why I was trying to convince all my students to love this stuff. I wish opera didn't seem so inaccessible, especially when it can have such a strong pull on your emotions, and not on any particularly sophisticated emotions either. The story last night was simple, the themes were love, betrayal and humiliation, something we all can relate to. And yet somehow I felt totally renewed, totally alive, after this abundance of emotion.

Oh dear, I think I may have just become addicted to opera.

NB: A version of this post is also posted on the Arch Editing blog. If you read my blog and you're interested in seeing other content by me and my sister (stories from our childhood, book reviews, writing tips) please check it out!!

what a way to make a living...

2011-03-06T06:39:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, what have I got myself into?

Something you need to know about be is that I can be incredibly lazy. I know a lot of people say that about themselves when it's not true, but I seriously think I'm allergic to work, like normal people 9 to 5 kind of work. You know that song by Dolly Parton? Yeah, that scares the hell out of me. I'm idealistic and lazy, and that kind of work is just not for me. This is why I want to be an academic. My idea of "work" is when I spend three or four 12 hour research/writing days in a row, followed by a couple of weeks of "thinking time". I do consider thinking time to be working time, coming up with ideas, mulling them over, going to class and museums and movies and reading novels and watching BBC documentaries. All of these things are important to me when it comes to those intense days of work, but to most people it's nothing more than decadent leisure time, the kind of time people have to carefully plan for in the busy working lives.

Don't worry, I feel guilty about it. I know I'm living the life, and essentially avoiding "real" work. I really don't expect anyone to pay for me to live this lifestyle, and as much as I hope to someday be a famous scholar and professor at prestigious university, I really kinda don't want to work for anyone, especially a university. Most of my like-minded friends decided to become school teachers, which I would have done if I didn't have such a problem with authority and administration. I saw academic life as a life of freedom, but I'm not so naive these days; I know I won't be able to get through my entire life without it being taken over by work.

I really just don't like people telling me what to do. I know what I need to do and I just need space and time to do it. I'm a huge brat that way.

Bearing all of this in mind and adding the fact that I come from a long line of entrepreneurs (my great uncle invented the franchise system when he joined up with Colonel Sanders to start KFC, my great grandma owned a beauty salon, my grandparents owned a business building horse trailers, my mom started several business when I was growing up), plus the fact that I have a very like-minded sister with the same aversion to authority, and it almost seems inevitable that we'd try to start our own business.

And so now I'm in it, and it's just like a real job except that I'm not getting any pay (as of now). We've built a website, written a book, and work several hours a day trying to build an online presence, and now I must write content for a blog to post every single day. (It takes me hours just to prepare a post for this blog, and I only post about once a week.) Plus, you know, it is an editing business and we're hoping to get some clients so that I can do more work editing manuscripts.

Holy crap! What is going to happen to my museum days and matinée films and long leisurely walks through the city? On top of school, no less. And you know what's just around the corner? Spring, that's what. Spring and picnics and long leisurely walks through the park, and concerts and then summer is going to be here and how can I possibly work 8 hours a day in summer??

Oh goodness, it really is time for me to grow up and join reality, isn't it? Really though, I love Arch Editing, and I'm confident that it will work out. I love the website and the blog and the book and I love editing, and even if I do have to work 8 hours a day, I can start those 8 hours after I go to a museum, or I can take a 2 hour lunch to walk through the park. There is freedom in that.

flapjacks, research, libraries, blogs, loos, anti-fashion, and horror (or, just a normal wednesday)

2011-03-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

Did you know the British Library has the tastiest apple crisp bars in the entire world? They're inexplicably called "apple blackberry flapjacks." There aren't any blackberries in them, and they definitely aren't flapjacks. I don't know if the British know what a flapjack is.

Yes, I am in the British Library. Again. I live here, I can't escape it, even when I try it lures me back with its delicious apple crisp bars (and its books).

I bought a really expensive notebook today and decided that I would do some research in the BL the old fashioned way, just me and a book and an expensive notebook, oh and a pencil. I read the book and took notes without the use of my computer. It was tricky at first. My hand was definitely unsure of itself as it tried to write words, constantly skipping letters and forgetting how to form certain shapes. It's true, I don't do much handwriting these days, and it took a while to get back into it.

Before coming to the library I worked all morning. Like, proper work. If you know me, you know I have an aversion to work. But, as much as I hate working, my aversion to authority is even greater, and if I don't work hard on the business my sister and I are starting, then I'll have to work for someone else some day, which sounds like the worst thing imaginable. So I started a new blog for archediting.com. We want it to be a writing resource, covering everything from proper grammar to getting published. We'll review books and blogs and write our own handy little articles. I am excited for it, but I know it's going to be SO much work.

Also, this is brilliant. http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2011/03/02/a-map-of-londons-public-toilets/ This guy has mapped out all of the public toilets in London! Apparently there's more than 800 here, which is awesome considering there's 3 in Rome. It's handy to know where to find them. What a clever idea.

Oh, and I did this to my hair the other day.

I felt the need to dye it, and I initially wanted to do bright pink streaks, but I decided to be a little more conservative and go for the red. But there is an old lady who I see at the BL and she has the exact same hair as me, so I'm thinking I will do the pink as soon as I find some good hair dye. I didn't do it try to be cool or anything...in fact I feel like it's probably really uncool for a 27 year old to dye her hair pink. I did it because I don't really care. My hair doesn't need to be perfect, and I don't need to try to preserve its pristine state and color. It can look like crap, which it definitely does today. I've probably been reading too much about punk anti-fashion. Or maybe it's because I've realized none of it really matters: clothes, hair, make up. It doesn't matter and I don't care. There, you can believe that or not. I'm not sure if I do completely, I just know that the easiest thing for me to do is dye my hair, wear lots of black eye shadow and start making my own clothes because I can't buy the things I like anyway because i'm broke and nothing I like fits. When I go home in April I'm going to go through all my old clothes, or go to the charity shops, and make skirts out of anything I think will work. I'm excited about this. I also have some sweaters I've worn all winter that could very easily be turned into summer skirts.

Finally, I'm going to admit this, I started reading Crash by J.G. Ballard. Woah. I don't know if I can make it through the whole book...I'm surprised I got through the first chapter. It is definitely disturbing and painful to look at, on so so many levels, but there's something intensely compelling about how it's written that makes me want to finish it. It reminds me of watching a really awful horror movie where you can't get into the horror, you just float above it, paying more attention to how it is all crafted than to the actual terrible things that are happening. That's how I watch horror movies anyway, and probably why I love them so much. I haven't seen a good horror movie in months, and I really need to sit down and watch something soon. I miss Susperia and The Shining and The Omen and all of those wonderful movies I used to watch all of the time. It's time to get back into that. Remember how I wrote my Masters thesis on zombies? yeah, those were good times.

And there you have it. That's my random blog for the day. thanks for enduring, if you did.

kisses!

wherefore Joy Division? or, why I am prepared to devote my life to writing about a band

2011-02-27T11:46:00.000-08:00

The first time I ever heard Joy Division was in a tiny kitchen in a tiny apartment in Rome. I was doing a study abroad at the time and my (very cool) room mate had just received a cd in the mail from a close friend back in Utah. Back then we still listened to cds, and because supply was limited, we made each other lots of mixed cds. It was 2004 and not only was it the first time I'd heard Joy Division, it was also the first time I'd seen an ipod. I'm glad I lived at a time when acquiring music was so difficult and such a special event. I only brought about 10 discs with me, and I listened to theses over and over, so it was a huge treat to get more cds in the mail. I remember my friend being very excited about these particular albums, and we all sat around the table listening to them one evening. It was probably raining outside, and we were probably eating crepes with nutella.

The only song I recognized by Joy Division was "Love Will Tear Us Apart", but the rest was completely new to me. My friend told us the story of Ian Curtis, how he had epilepsy and had killed himself when he was 23, and how the band had turned into New Order. I didn't quite get Joy Division at the time, or why my friend was so moved by the songs and so excited about them, but I did know that there was something there, something worth further exploration. Apart from when my friend would play the cds in the kitchen, I didn't listen to Joy Division much until I came back from Rome and somehow acquired their entire discography, probably from my little sister.

Joy Division is a band that never stops giving. I became really interested in punk in 2005; I listened to the Sex Pistols all of the time and I did my final project for a class on the carnivalesque in punk culture, and I remember when I realized that Joy Division had been a punk band called Warsaw before they were Joy Division, before they were New Order. I'm telling you, this BLEW my mind. How could New Order be so directly connected to punk? What were all of the other connections to punk that I didn't know about? It turns out, a lot.

In 2007 the film Control came out. Control is a black and white biopic about Joy Division based on the book Ian Curtis's wife wrote. I don't remember when or where I first watched it, but I remember crying and I remember how beautiful the film was. In the October 2008 I was in bit of a car accident and my sister's friend wanted to buy me a movie to watch while I was home recovering. I requested Control, which might not have been the best film to watch as I healed, since I was feeling quite down at the time, but it did help me, the beauty and the music and everything about it that I loved.

And so for the last few years I've been listening casually to Joy Division, loving their music and their story and their fascinating place in music history. When I couldn't think of a topic to write about for my last class my professor directed me to the book Gothic which has articles about contemporary gothic in art, literature, music, etc. In is there was an article about Goth music and culture in the 80s and the author wrote that Joy Division was what Goth could have become. This really struck me, making it sound as if this band was something that could have happened, could have had a major impact on the world, but some how stopped. Their understated and restrained style didn't fit in 100% with the Goth aesthetic and so it passed them up in the end. Goth is never going away, and it used to be quite mainstream in the 80s and 90s, but it's gone a lot more underground recently, in my experience anyway. But Joy Division has surged in popularity. My friend in 2004 who loved them was not a Goth and was not unlike a lot of young people who were really in tune with what was happening musically. This girl knew what was going on, and Joy Division was taking a very strong hold on my generation, 25 years after Ian Curtis killed himself. From what I know about popular culture, which I feel confident enough that I have a good idea of what's happening right now, Joy Division is what Goth has become, in a manner of speaking. A working class, restrained melancholy, timeless music that influenced some of our huge indie bands in 21st century, a very cool and understated style that spoke to a post 9/11 generation, in short everything that Joy Division embodied is what is happening right now.

And so I wrote my melancholy paper on Joy Division, on the myth surrounding them, and on the culture that influenced them and that exists now because of them. I loved researching it, I loved writing it, and I'm going to turn it into a book, because I have so much more to say about it.

I turned the paper in last Thursday and I thought that I would just be sick of listening to their music since that's the only thing I've listened to in the last two weeks. But I can't stop. When I put on Unknown Pleasures I am just giddy and in awe and in love with every song and how it surges and the strange tones and sounds that come from it, and Ian Curtis's voice and words and it's just everything that I want in listening to an album.

Like I said, Joy Division is a band that keeps on giving. I will continue to research them, continue to read about them, continue to listen to their music, and I know that I'll keep learning and loving them more and more as I do so. I'll post a PDF of my paper soon if you're interested in reading it. In the meantime, here are a couple of videos for you to enjoy. :)

(there are some F-words in this video)

When they were a punk band called Warsaw

getting back into the swing of things

2011-02-27T10:29:00.000-08:00

It's been over two weeks since I last blogged, which is no good. When I don't blog it means several things: I'm too busy, I'm too tired, and I'm not doing anything interesting. This was all true in the last two weeks. I had a paper due on the 24th so I basically checked out of the living world and set myself up a home in the BL (my very cool nickname for the British Library). I didn't do anything but research. I didn't take any interesting walks, I didn't go to to any museums or concerts. I never hung out with any people. In fact I went for least 4 days in a row without speaking to anyone but the librarians.

A few things about the BL. After being in there every day you start noticing the regulars. One is a man dressed all in black with a black fedora and a spaghetti mustache (I'm sure they're not called that, but you know what I mean). He has a very elaborate set up and even finds a big black office chair from somewhere. On some days he has stacks of books about guitars, and on other days he has stacks of books about the mafia. I think he's the official historian for the mafia, but that doesn't really explain the guitars.

My favorite librarian is a very tall, thin man with long grey hair, a funny little accent and an amused grin on his face at all times. He's Dracula. Count Dracula made it to England, set himself up and works at the British Library. He's my favorite librarian.

Also, there's another J. Stokes in the library and I keep getting their books. I wonder if they get mine and what they think of me when they have to send back 21st Century Goths and Famous Suicides.

I'm going to make a separate blog post about the research I've been doing lately, but I will say it has been incredibly fun. I have yet to find a topic that is so engrossing for me, and I'm considering expanding my last essay into the larger project I have due at the end of summer.

under slate-gray Victorian sky, here you'll find my heart and I

2011-02-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

I haven't been feeling my best these last few days, emotionally or physically. I still managed to get some nice walks in, despite the lack of sleep and the moping. I seriously have been mopey, like wandering in the rain listening to Morrissey kind of mopey. It's ok, you can laugh at me. I know I'm dramatic. I almost feel compelled to walk now, especially knowing how hard my sister is working to get ready for our long hike this summer. I feel my best when I'm walking, even if it is gloomy walking in the rain, it feels better than sitting at home feeling gloomy.

London is the best place for gloomy walks, too. Yesterday I walked north, not knowing what I'd expect to find. The area, Camden and St. Pancras, is relatively new compared to the places I had been walking in the City earlier this week. The buildings are all newer, and the oldest ones I saw where Victorian. I walked past this great, very old, mortuary: Leverton & Sons, since 1782, it said on the window. That's right when burying people became a viable business. A lot of people began to be buried outside of church yards in the late 18th century because of overcrowding. There's a Georgian cemetery by my house that I've blogged about before that was the first cemetery in London not in a church yard. It took a lot of years for people to get used to the idea since their ancestors had been buried next to, or under, a church for the last thousand years. Also, the Victorians really loved a show when it came to funerals, so these "funeral directors" were quite important and ended up making a lot of money.

Speaking of cemeteries and church yards, I discovered the loveliest little church on my walk. It's the Old St. Pancras church and has been there since around 300 AD, or at least some form of the building. It was set quite far outside the city in a lovely little field next to the River Fleet, which the Victorians filled up and made into a road. Those Victorians really drive me crazy. They had their meddling little fingers in everything.

Anyway, the most interesting part of the church was the cemetery and the most interesting part of the cemetery is what they call the Hardy Tree. The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy didn't become a writer until late in his life, and when he was a young man he worked for an architectural firm. They were putting in the railway that would lead to St. Pancras train station, and needed to go through part of the St. Pancras church yard, so Hardy was given the task of exhuming and reburying all of the bodies in the church yard. This was a lot of bodies. I don't think people realize how full church yards got. They would literally be overfilled with bodies, there were more people than dirt, and this is why they started trying to promote cemeteries outside the city in the last 18th century. There just wasn't enough space. So, Hardy was in charge of moving all these bodies, and then he had all of the head stones to contend with, which because of the lovely English weather had been corroded beyond recognition. There was no point in trying to keep them with the bodies, so he stacked them around this tree.

You can see the Old St. Pancras church behind the Hardy Tree. It's tiny. I just loved this little area, and I was surprised at how large the church yard still is. You can definitely imagine what it would have been like out in a field by a rushing river. Just beautiful, and the perfect gloomy walk.

btw, the title of my post comes from the deliciously melancholic song called "Come Back to Camden" which I just love listening to when walking through Camden. You must watch this video.

the wall

2011-02-09T15:54:00.000-08:00

The history geek in me took over my body today and spent three hours tracing the ancient Roman wall of Londinium. I love the word Londinium. It sounds like I made it up, but I didn't. That's what the Romans called it. They came here in 43 AD and stuck around until 400 AD or so, and they didn't even build a wall until around 200 AD. Some say that they don't really know why the Romans decided that they needed to build a wall. I think it must have been that they were Romans and Romans need to build massive things.

It was originally 20 feet high and 2 miles in length, and it did end up being useful to raise money since most of the gates were tolled gates. Most of the wall is gone now, except for little bits, but it didn't get torn down until the 17th and 18th centuries, and a lot of it simply got absorbed into buildings, or used as foundation, and in most spots it's buried 15 feet under the road. After the blitz in 1940 a lot of the west side of the wall became visible, and all of the awful rebuilding they did in the 1960s (Barbican...ugh) was done around the exposed wall. I bet they just loved building super modern ugly buildings next to those ancient ruins. I bet they thought it was a really powerful contrast. It's kind of funny now that some of those areas seem to be falling themselves into a bit of a ruinous state.

It was a bit tricky to find all the parts of it. I had to use a walking tour podcast that I didn't really care too much for because it took way too long to do, and a lot of times the guy just read off the plaques that were right in front of me. But, now I know where to go to find the wall, and I hope I can show other people because it really is a neat thing to see.

Now, ruins trouble me a bit. I remember when I first saw the Forum in Rome and hating it. I couldn't see the point a bone yard in a beautiful vibrant living city. I've since learned that the hot, empty boneyard of the Forum used to be a mosquito infested swamp with some grassy areas where cows lived. And the horrid bare Colosseum was up until the late 19th century covered in hundreds of plants that weren't found any where else in Italy and had likely been transported there by all of the wild animals they brought from throughout the empire to slaughter. It used to be a place where poets and lovers would wander and explore and bring picnics. It's a shame those ruins don't have the same wildness to them anymore.

Another reason why ruins trouble me is because I think I always just took them for granted. They were there in and of themselves. I never thought of them actually becoming ruinous, or if I did it was in a romantic sort of decay. It bothers me when I find out their actual histories. Rome's Colosseum and Forum became stone quarries, the Parthenon was blown up by accident in the 17th century, the Roman wall in London was fully intact until the 19th century, when they decided to just tear it all down to make room for more buildings.

Although discovering these facts bothers me a little, in reality, I love that cities adapt, get rid of the things they don't need, recycle and reuse building materials. That's a living city, and I think that's why I found the Forum in Rome so bothersome. The bone yard, the sepulcher, is out of place there.

I'm glad I went out today to look at this. It is a fun walk, but my favorite part was not actually the wall. I promise to blog about that tomorrow.

nice day for a walk in the dark

2011-02-05T01:40:00.000-08:00

Lord Nelson and Big Ben

I love to walk. (I've blogged about it before) Well, I have more of a love/hate relationship with walking, similar to that of my love/hate relationship with reading. In both cases I hate how annoyingly slow it is; isn't better to watch a movie or fly down the road? I guess in many ways it is, but I think being forced to take things slowly opens up a whole world of thought, introspection, and experiences that you never would have thought you could have. That's why, even though I hate it, I'll spend two or three weeks reading a novel or force myself to walk a couple of miles when it would be infinitely easier to get on the tube.

On my way to the British Library the other day the sun was out and the sky was a remarkable blue, especially with the red brick against it.

Walking forces me to look at things, not just glance at them. I think I like glancing at things. That's how I go to museums, I walk quickly through them and feel an odd sense of accomplishment if I've only spent an hour or so and seen all there was to see. (This is why I really need to visit museums more than once).

I went to the National Gallery the other day and took this picture before they yelled at me. I loved the entrance and the little dome.

I also like to do that when I shop; I size up the store, have an idea of what's in it, and then go back to the things I want to look at. When I am forced to look at things they start to become more interesting. They aren't just shapes and colors.

I walked past the Burlington Arcade by Piccadilly Circus last night after it closed and it was so ghostly to see it empty with all the lights still on.

Walking forces me to spend more time with me. I love listening to books on tape when I walk because walking focuses my mind, but I also like to just spend time with me. I think about who I am and what I want and where I want to go. I address issues or insecurities I've been having.

I walk past these buildings on Marchmont Street every day.

So I've made a huge decision. I'm going to keep walking, but I'm going to take it to a bit of an extreme. I have a goal to go on two long distance walks this summer. One is the Coleridge Way in Exmoor where he used to wander about. It's 36 miles long, but you do it it 4 days. I'm trying to get my sister to come with me. I think it will be magical. The other walk is 70 miles through the Scotland Highlands. Maybe this is madness, but I know that it would be an experience of a life time, plus I don't want to visit Scotland and just stay in the cities. If I go up there I want to be outdoors and hiking across mountains. I love living in London, but I don't really want to visit cities anymore. I don't care about museums and buildings. I want sky and rocks.

So, in order to get ready for these trips I'm going to save my money as best as I can (and good news this week I got the rest of my loan so I actually have a little bit right now) and start doing long distance walks around London. There are actually a few "trails" set up called The Big Seven and I'm making it a goal to do all of them. One is actually 150 miles in total, but you take it by 8 miles or so in 24 increments, and it loops around the whole of London metropolis. It's actually called LOOP (London Outer Orbital Path)

I'm really excited about this. I'm excited to walk and see everything. My first long walk will be a 6 mile walk through London tracing the routes outlined in Virginia Woolf's novel Night and Day which I just finished reading. Walking is a major theme in that novel, and most of the events happen when the characters are walking by the river. I've been to most of the places in the novel, but I think it would be good to make a morning of it and stop by the Tate Britain since I haven't been since last week.

St. Martins-in-the-Fields by Trafalgar Square.

Emil Alzamora's Stretched Figures

2011-02-04T00:26:00.000-08:00

I love these sculptures by Emil Alzamora, seen on Beautiful/Decay Cult of the Creative Arts. I love how they stretch and manipulate the human form to create such beautiful, and disturbing, shapes. And I love how with each one, no matter how odd the manipulation may be, the beauty of the human form shines through.

take me down to the country, honey

2011-01-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

I miss animals. I miss the country. I miss the desert. I miss my family. I miss good Mexican food. I feel like I'm torn between two worlds. I love London and all of the art, the libraries, the beautiful old buildings, the museums, the history and the culture, the myriad of languages and accents I hear chattered outside my window, but half of me is in Utah. As much as I love Utah, however, I was never satisfied there; I never felt at ease. I was always anxious, always ready to leave, to travel or move far far away. I was always anxious about friends too. If I didn't spend quality time with an array of people throughout my week I felt lonely and miserable. In London I'm alone 80% of my time, and I don't notice it. I don't feel lonely and miserable. I may miss everything I left behind, but I'm finally at ease. Surprisingly, I feel most calm on the Tube. Shoved into a crowded Piccadilly train headed to church or to a museum, I know that all is right in the world and that I am where I want to be. Odd, I know.

my little sister Lindy with some puppies. the North Hills are behind her

I love being in cities, and I love being in the country. My earliest, most formative years were spent in the country, surrounded by beauty and sadness, life and death. Living in the country can be as busy, beautiful and tragic as living in the city.

Some of our doggies. the border collie in the middle was my puppy Bobbie. I loved her more than anything.

We lived even outside the small town, and I'm grateful for that. There's a distinct difference between small town life and proper country life. I'm pretty sure I blogged about it before, but outside of small towns you live a little more distanced from the local politics and gossips. I rarely played with neighbor children, just my sisters and my dogs, and I think it gave me a spirit of independence I wouldn't have got in the small town nearby. I had 20 acres to explore. I was the luckiest girl in the world, and I know that that is what made me who I am today. Like Wordsworth above Tintern Abbey,

Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,

And what perceive; well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

As cheesy as it may sound, that's what nature is for me: the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, guide and guardian of my heart, soul and moral being. And yet, here I am in London. Is that strange? Will I ever be able to go back to the country and feel as satisfied there as I do here? I hope so. I'd like to bookend my life with the country, with animals and gardens, fields and mountains, and hard physical work keeping it all from falling apart. If I have a family I'd like them to benefit from life in the country like I did.

yeah, we played in the mud

mom liked to dress us up and take pictures of us in the garden

Tomorrow I'm going to the London LDS Temple and it will be nice to get out of the city and enjoy a bit of the countryside. I'm looking forward to some peace and quiet. I think they also have some geese and ducks by the temple, and I just love ducks!

P.S. My post title is a reference to a T. Rex song I like. I love T. Rex.

i love London: the British Library

2011-01-26T01:04:00.000-08:00

My life is changing. I'm becoming one of those people who spends all day, hours on end, in the library, eagerly and frantically reading and taking notes because there simply is not enough time to learn everything. I never understood before how people could do it every day. I only ever did it at the end of terms when final papers were soon due, but never without anything impending.

And yet, here I am in the library, reading page after page without break, because there's something I must uncover, and I'm not sure yet what it is. There's no time for a break, but I'm at the point where the words I read don't actually go into my brain, so I thought maybe that means it's time I start pouring out some of the extra words so I can start filling it up again.

I had a bit of a crisis this weekend. I was supposed to go to Oxford to visit a friend, and since last week had been a little awful, I wasn't feeling so great. The stress was building and then I found out that I might not get all the loan money I need this term and I just snapped. I started crying in a puddle on the floor and ended up missing my train to Oxford. It was dumb, and I was very mad at myself. But, it pushed me to start working on finding a job so I spent the whole day looking. I applied for 3 jobs on Sunday night, which I was proud of myself for doing, but I haven't heard back from them yet. I desperately need an income, so I'm really hoping something will work out.

Moving on the important part of my post... I love London. And I love the British Library. It's really not the most charming of buildings, especially squatting next to what I like to call the Gothic Monster (St. Pancras train station).

But I still love it. I love the big terraced courtyard, and when it gets warmer it will probably be a nice place to read a book in the sunshine. I also love the inside. I love all of the natural lighting and the tall ceilings.

It's really a beautiful space. I couldn't take pictures of the readings rooms, but they're similar. Large, open, with vaulted ceilings and lots of natural light. They also have large desk space and big comfy chairs to sit in. I love the reading rooms. Here's another view of the main entrance.

I forgot to take a picture of it, but there's a painting on the wall by the entrance that is just the word YES over and over and over again. I love it. It's very affirming.

So this is where I've been spending most of my time lately. One of the other perks is that it is literally a 2 minute walk from where I live, so I can come home for lunch very easily, and it's only 4 train stops from where I plan on living in the summer. I'm so glad I get to spend so much time in this building. I love it.

you are not my typewriter, but you could be my demon moving forward through the flaming doors

2011-01-20T06:22:00.000-08:00

I've found that when I title posts with lines from songs I can trick the people who are looking up lyrics to read my blog. So, if you're here looking for lyrics to Wilco's "War on War" you're still in luck! They're at the end of the post, along with a nice video from youtube. I hope that means if you're a Wilco fan you'll love me and start following my blog.

Anyway, I thought of this particular song because, as you'll see, I mention a book in this post called Krieg dem Krieg, which translates into War on War. It's a hard book to look at, so I don't recommend looking it up, but it's basically a propaganda book published by a pacifist to show the horrors of war. It's very gruesome and unpleasant, but I think he drives his point home well enough. Anyway, on with the post.

I went to see the doctor today. It was my first experience with national healthcare and I have to say that it so far really hasn't been that much different from my experience with privatized healthcare. I did have to wait for twenty minutes, but I can't remember ever being directly ushered into an examine room in the States. The appointment was for only 10 minutes, which is quite short, but I felt that it made it far more pleasant for me. The doctor was kind and efficient, he listened to me and referred me for blood tests and then I left. The best part was that I left without having to settle a bill.

Did you know that the NHS was established in 1948 so that healthcare could "meet the needs of everyone, be free at the point of delivery, and be based on clinical need, not ability to pay"? Such insanely radical, communist, ideas that can undo the entire economic and social system of a once great, and soon to be fallen nation. oh. wait. The NHS was started in 1948? And it's 2011? Where are all the death panels? Am I missing something?

Also, why is it that in the US we rarely hear about national healthcare and its successes? I didn't even know that the UK had national healthcare for so long. I know the system is far from perfect, but it seems to be functioning. I wish I'd known more about it during the healthcare debates last year.

Anyway, I'm blogging now during my lunch break because I've decided that I need to compartmentalize my time a little bit more, and after lunch I must focus on researching at the library. I've realized last night that if I want to stay in London to finish this PhD I must work much harder than I have been. I need to submit papers to conferences and journals and I need to show that I'm using my time very wisely on my thesis research. I have to give a presentation in a couple of weeks on my research and I want to blow their socks off.

I've shifted the focus of my topic and I feel a lot less anxious and restrained now. I'll keep talking about World War One and the body depicted in art from the time, but I've decided to expand the view into other wars and at the same time narrow down the kind of bodies I'm interested in looking at. The type of body is the grotesque male and female body, and I'll look at stuff from Walt Whitman, to Goya, to the war poets, to Dix, to the Dada movement, to Catch 22. I'll look at these depictions of the grotesque body often as a type of anti-war protest and also as means of healing and transcendence. That sounds nice, yeah? Yeah, I thought so. Here are some images I am considering:

Dix, "Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack" from Der Krieg, Intaglio etching, drypoint

Goya, This is worse 1812-15 Etching and wash, 157 x 207 mm

Janco, Mask, 1919

Wounded Soldier from Krieg dem Krieg (War on War) 1924

I know that these aren't the easiest things to look at, and I apologize for that, but I think they are extremely compelling and necessary for us to be aware of. Also, I personally love what this artist has done with the idea of facial reconstruction, and I will definitely discuss him. So now I'm off to the British Library to do some nice reading about the body in wars. My goal is to spend the next 4 hours in there and come out with some great ideas.

War on War

by Wilco

It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
There's a war on

You're gonna lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die

Just watching the miles flying by
Just watching the miles flying by
You are not my typewriter
But you could be my demon
moving forward through the flaming doors

You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive, okay?

You have to lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive

You have to die
You have to die
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive, okay?

living with a painting, day one

2011-01-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

I was thinking the other day about how much I hate museums. I think I hate going to museums the same way I hate reading books: I get overwhelmed by the content and the time it takes for me to get through it all. I hate that you have to "get through it all" at a museum, like there's a time limit. You have to see everything in a couple of hours. I personally can't be in a museum for longer than a couple of hours. I go mad and get angry and want to run away. There's just too much stuff. I hate how I can only give each painting a quick glance or, at most, five or seven minutes contemplating its lines and colors and textures and context and subject so superficially that I might as well not even look at it. I forget it the moment I leave, unless I find a postcard of it in the gift shop, but the postcard is merely a reminder of its existence, a reminder that will probably find its way to the bottom of a pile of postcards, or tacked to a wall with fifty other reminders.

A museum is no way to view art. Art should be lived with. How can I possibly understand a piece of art if I only glance at it, if it's not there with me to return to when I'm not thinking of anything in particular? It's funny how I thought of this and then when I started reading a book by Stephen Fry called The Ode Less Traveled about writing poetry, he says: Poems, "as with a good painting are not there to be greedily taken in at once, they are to be lived and endlessly revisited. The eye can go back and back and back, investigating new corners, new incidents and the new shapes that seem to emerge." Clearly I need to live with a painting.

I've had this idea before but have never taken the time to see it through. So I decided now was the perfect opportunity. I would go to a local museum, find a painting and visit it every day for at least a week. I would spend at least an hour in its presence, not necessarily staring at it for an hour--I would write, listen to music, read, and the moments when I pause or get distracted I would look at the painting, and allow my eye to slip across it, lingering on a particularly lovely line or shading, sweeping through its figures and focusing on a bit of color I hadn't seen before. This is how I want to experience art, not rushing through a museum so that I can say I've seen it all.

So today I went to the Tate Britain to meet my painting. My criteria for choosing a painting were pretty arbitrary: 1) it had to be something I'd consider putting on my wall at home, a painting I wouldn't object living with, and 2) there had to be a soft seat near by. That's all. There were some early 20th century paintings I quite liked but not a soft chair in the room, so I moved on to another room Finally I chose this painting:

It's called Theseus and the Minotaure (Interior at Minos) by Keith Vaughan finished in 1950. I don't particularly love the painting, but that's one of the reasons I chose it. It's like when you meet someone at school or church, and you get along fine but they're not your favorite person, and then you get to know them and sometimes you become pretty good friends, or at least you understand them better and can appreciate who they are. That's kind of what I'm hoping will come of this experience.

One interesting thing I noticed about the painting is that I counted 78 crescents in it. That's a lot of crescents. That's pretty much what I got from it today, but I have a whole week to acquaint myself with it and think more about it. Today was just the initial meeting. I think this is going to be a fun experience.

Remember when...

2011-01-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

I made this dress for Halloween...

and my lovely friend and brilliant artist Brock used it for a fashion show and this great photo was taken?

And I forgot he was going to use it and when it came down the runway I gasped? One of the best moments of my life. Check it out on the photographer's website here.

papers, travel and melancholia

2011-01-15T04:58:00.000-08:00

This week has been a good week. The paper got done, with an hour to spare, and even though I hate it, it was accepted to be presented at the Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association National Conference this April in San Antonio. On Wednesday I registered for the conference and booked a nice, inexpensive hotel room in San Antonio and found some really cheap plane tickets that will take me from London to Utah, Utah to Texas and Texas back to London for only $980. Incredible. I also applied for funding with my school for the conference, and I should hear back about that in about 3 weeks.

So that's pretty much set to go. I'll be leaving for Utah on March 31 and I'll be back in London just in time for the Royal Wedding and research juries. I haven't bought the tickets yet because I am a little worried about taking that much time off before the juries, which will decide whether or not I can be upgraded from the MPhil to a PhD. But this is where I am extremely grateful for that wedding because it sounds like the juries will have to be pushed back, hopefully more than a week.

This week I also started classes. One is a research methods class, and I found out that I have to give a presentation on my somewhat non-existent research on February 8th. My other class is about melancholy, how it shows up and what it means in culture. We had a somewhat interesting discussion on this etching by Albrect Durer called "Melancholia I" (no one has ever found "Melancholia II" or "Melancholia III", but it's supposed that this might have been part of a series originally)

The image is of a very heavy, weighed down angel, solemnly musing with a darkened face and curious bits lying around it. Apparently some German art historians spent decades trying to figure out what it all means. I think the satisfying conclusion is basically that melancholy is not a useless state of being, but a noble state, especially for the scholar and philosopher. It's a balanced paradoxical state, as evidenced by many of the images in the etching: the angel with wings who is too heavy to fly, the unringing bell, the hourglass with equal amounts of sand in each half (time that has stopped), the starved dog at rest (the dog was often a symbol of lust, apparently, which was also associated with melancholy, and yet here he is docile and conquered). It is an image of paradoxical movement and stasis, and I guess that's what melancholy is. I don't know, that's basically what I got out of the hour long lecture. I'm excited for next week because we'll be talking about the Gothic, which is kind of my thing.

I'm really struggling right now with my own research. The idea I had originally is not proving very fruitful, and I keep discovering book that have done all the things I thought to do. I'm stuck and I'm falling into that overwhelmed state where I'd rather sit and stare at a wall than spend a day reading a book that might end up being useless to me. I'm scared of wasting time when I'm doing the research, so I'd rather do nothing. Plus I might not be as interested in the topic as I thought I was. I'd rather be doing anything than reading WWI history. It might be time for a refocus, but it might also be too late for one.

On a final note, Stephen Fry has been making a documentary and tweeting his locations, which for the last week have been in my neighborhood. Alas, all of my attempts to find him, including a sprint to the British Museum this morning, have been fruitless. Maybe I'll get lucky this week. I've been listening to his The Ode Less Traveled, a book about writing poetry. He has exercises in the book that have been very challenging and fun, and I'm hoping it will help me think more creatively.

overcoming the long dark teatime of the soul

2011-01-09T15:10:00.001-08:00

I typically hate Sundays. They're always the worst days of the week for me, days when I feel the most tired, the most lonely, the most bored. Maybe it's because I have high expectations for them, or maybe it's more psychological and goes back to the times when I worked Saturday nights until 6 AM and still managed to get up by 11 to go to church. I usually managed church ok, but Sunday evenings just killed me. I don't think I ever really shook that feeling. Also, I often got frustrated, years after I quit that job, when I would want to hang out with people on Sundays and they would all be napping in the afternoon when I never could nap. Maybe that made me bitter.

I'm sure most of you have heard me complain about Sundays before, and I'm sure many of you have heard this quote, which is one of my favorite quotes of all time. It's from Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe and Everything and it describes my Sunday afternoons perfectly:

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

I remember the day I read this. It was a Sunday, believe it or not, and I had just taken a bath (the second of the day) and decided that maybe I would just read to try to pass away the rest of the afternoon. I almost fell out of my chair when I came across this passage.

This isn't the first time I've ranted about how much I hate Sundays and it probably won't be the last. However, today was one of those rare nice Sundays. It wasn't the best Sunday I ever had, but it also wasn't the typical Sunday where all I want to do is stab my eyes out because I'm so desperately bored. Since I had been so lazy yesterday, I decided to go for a walk this morning. The sun was shining and it was such a lovely day out. I walked around my neighborhood, which isn't the most interesting place in the world, but I found a few lovely spots to stand and enjoy the sun. When I got back home I felt good and I was actually excited to go to church.

Church went well; we talked about some wonderful principles, about faith and temples, and I felt renewed and ready for my week, and I even did

an uncharacteristic thing and stuck around after the meetings to chat with people. I found out that some were going over to St. Paul's to attend a service and since I had been thinking of doing just that thing earlier today I decided I would tag along. It was quite a nice service, and the church is just utterly amazing. Even the little sermon was quite nice and made me think of Christ and my relationship to God. I love learning and feeling the spirit in other churches; it helps me appreciate my own beliefs and religious practices.

Then I came home and talked with my family, watched a little Top Gear, and skyped with my best friend. And now it's nearly time for bed and I never once fell into that horrid long dark teatime of the soul.

I honestly think that the fact that I forced myself to be a little more laid back and take my time after church to talk to people really made all the difference. I think the thing I hate most about Sundays is being alone. I feel like Sundays are meant for people, to relax and talk and enjoy the company and good conversation of friends and family. I do believe they are sacred days, but when they are spent alone, watching telly, being bored, Sundays just awful. So, I hope that Sundays like today will be characteristic of my future Sundays, and I'm going to put a little more effort into making them special like I want them to be.

won't you please please help me?

2011-01-07T00:06:00.000-08:00

Today is officially the last day of winter break. Although it never really felt like the end of a semester around here because it really wasn't. Right now the libraries are packed full of kids studying for their finals, because finals come after winter break. I have been staring at my computer all week trying to write a paper due on Tuesday. So that wonderful feeling of everything being done and being able to relax over the break never really happened for most of us.

I'm glad life is starting back up anyway. Next week will be busy and wonderful. I'll have turned this horrid paper in, classes and new projects will begin. Then it will feel like a new year.

Oh this paper. It really is killing me. I feel that it is rife with problems, that it is convoluted and uncertain of itself and I'm being stubborn and refuse to scrap it and start over. If I've learned anything from all the massive amounts of television I consume, starting over never worked in Project Runway, not this late in the game, and I have Tim Gunn in my head right now telling me to "make it work". I'm 1/4 way through my word count and I have 4 more days before it's due, so I think that's plenty of time to make it work.

One of the main problems is that I'm kind of not so much in to the topic as I thought I was at first. I tend to go with my gut on topics, and if something catches my interest and I think about it more than twice then that's what I go for. Typically that involves something with horror or gothic stories and movies, and that's what happened this time. We were talking about science in the nineteenth centuries and I kept thinking about Poe and his interest in science, and about Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft and it just seemed to me that so much of the horror genre was born out of this anxiety with science that existed in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, and I wanted to explore how and why these authors used science as a theme in their horror novels.

I think one of my biggest problems is terminology. Even though they are so obviously connected it's hard to bring these three people into one 4000 word paper, mostly because of annoying differences in labels. I hate to have to categorize them all. Is Shelley a Romantic or a Gothic? Is Poe a Gothic? I don't think so, but everyone says he is. Lovecraft surely isn't Gothic, but he kind of is? Some people say they all wrote science fiction, while technically science fiction isn't supposed to be a genre until the 1920s. They certainly didn't write horror stories, right? Even though they are the predecessors to modern horror. They all come from very different social backgrounds and all have very different experiences with science, whatever category someone puts them in. I guess labels don't matter in the end. What matters is how I connect them and what conclusions I can draw from the connection. The connection I've chosen is the poles, meaning the arctic and antarctic poles. They all have moments of discovery in the poles. That's the key point I think.

I hope it comes together and I can make it work. Part of me really doesn't like the fact that my life consists of me agonizing about a paper, but at the same time nothing is more satisfying than finishing a paper and feeling proud of the work I've done. I'm going to try to keep doing this, and maybe, just maybe, someone someday will pay me for it.

If they don't pay me to write papers, maybe they'll pay me to read them. My sister started an editing boutique recently and I've joined up. We're a two lady operation now and hoping beyond hope that we can get some fishies to bite. The thing is, I've been reading/editing/grading papers now for the last 7 years. I started grading papers before I even knew how to write papers. And after all of these years of writing/reading/editing/grading papers I think I've finally grasped the elusive beauty of the academic essay. I don't mean to boast, but it's basically the ONLY thing I am good at.

What we're doing is offering a whole range of editing options, from Global and Substantive Edits (content and rhetoric) to Copy Edits (grammar and punctuation) to Proofreading (cleaning up typos and making the format pretty). Anything any student or writer could need. And we both have years of experience and we are both really really smart people.

So, I'm asking all of my 3 readers to help me get the word out about our editing boutique. It's called Arch Editing, and you can find us on Twitter and Facebook under that name, and here is the lovely link to our lovely website: http://archediting.wordpress.com/

happy new time

2011-01-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

It's a new year! And with new years comes new plans and new goals and a whole new feeling of life. Or it should, and it usually does for a few days. But it is now day 5 of the new year and it doesn't feel much different from the old year in many respects.

I spent the end of the old year in Germany with my best friend, traveling around in the frigid temperature, splurging on dinners and chocolate and spas, and I've returned with no money. It was a good time, except for the fact that I was ill throughout most of it. A cough turned into a cold half way through and I could hardly keep my itchy watery eyes open the three days we were in Munich. At the time I didn't think I was having much fun, but I miss it now. I miss being with my best friend who makes me laugh and smile and who loves me. I miss the expensive dinners and the chocolate too. I don't miss the cold however, and I think we probably could have had just as nice of a time in a warmer climate.

I was very happy to come back to London. The weather has been nice the last couple of days, and it's London for crying out loud. I always forget that I live here. There's still so much I haven't seen yet of this place, but I'm kind of holding out for warmer weather and a little more money in my pocket before I make too many excursions. I can't wait to see London

in the spring.

For now I'm trying to write a paper, and not doing a very good job of it. I'm not sure if I like my topic, and the research I'm doing isn't sparking any new and interesting insights. I am slightly worried because I submitted this paper topic for the Popular Culture Association conference in April, and it got accepted. Also I need to try to impress my professors so that they'll help me figure out a way to finance another 2 years so I can finish the PhD. I'm a little stressed out, and I haven't really written anything these three days. Tomorrow will be it though. Tomorrow will be the day of writing and I'll get 2000 words done. we'll see.

I've been reading blogs and people do such a good job of making their lives sound fun and interesting. How can I do that? I thought maybe I should just have a more fun and interesting life, but then I realized that it doesn't matter as long as I can make it look fun and interesting. Sort of like one my friends who always said that the pictures of our adventures made us look like such fun people, even though we didn't really feel that fun. Enthusiasm is the trick, you see. So my number one goal this year is to be more enthusiastic, and to blog enthusiastically about my boring life. Maybe if I do that I'll start seeing my life as not boring but totally awesome. I have an inkling that it actually is kind of cool.

Want some pictorial evidence? Here ya go:

That's me on Christmas day in Rothenburg, a beautiful little city in Germany. It was cold and snowy but very picturesque and lovely. That's neat, right?

Here I am eating lunch at the Schloss Nymphenburg palace. That was kind of cool. I ate venison that the waitress called Bambi (she forgot the English word). mmm Bambi.

the ubiquitous Christmas curfuffle

2010-12-22T01:37:00.000-08:00

It's been a weird week. On Saturday it snowed and snowed and snowed. The airport couldn't handle it so it shut down and people have been stranded at Heathrow ever since. I've been obsessed with the weather because I'm supposed to fly to Germany on Friday morning, which means I haven't really done much on my essay that's due after the break. To be honest I haven't really done much of anything.

Everything feels odd right now, right on the cusp of Christmas. There's a lot of stress in the air, especially by the British Library, which is right next to the main international train station. There's a queue wrapped around the block, people waiting to get on a train to get home for Christmas. There's also people stressing over the holiday in general. People trying to get to parties, trying to buy gifts, trying to stay happy. There isn't really a lighthearted Christmas cheer in the air, but there is a quiet perseverance, a stubborn resolve to stay cheerful for the holidays. That's admirable, really. Maybe that's what the true meaning if Christmas is: a stubborn resolve to make it through to the New Year.

It's an amazingly difficult time of year. The weather is at its worst right when most people want to travel. Everyone is sick (including me. I've had this stupid annoying cough since Saturday). No one has any money, and yet we're all expected to buy gifts for the people we love. People who are alone feel especially lonely. And yet we're supposed to try our very hardest to stay Christmassy. In an article for the Observer, David Mitchell, one of my favorite comedy actors/writers, comments on this issue I think rather astutely:

Santa knows I'm not the first person to say this but the problem with the mass-produced goodwill of the modern Christmas, where we're constantly wished happiness by carrier bags, receipts, coffee cups and TV channel idents, is that it can feel like a denial of all the things we're fed up or angry about. Charities exhort us to "think of those less fortunate than ourselves" while corporations rub our noses in goodies only affordable by those more fortunate. We're expected to endure stressful family gatherings and gruelling catering tribulations and count ourselves lucky in the process.

It's a tricky thing to do, and I'm not sure why yet we do it. Well, I'm trying my damnedest to stay Christmassy and cheerful, even though I'm freaking out about my trip falling through, not seeing my best friend, and losing all the money I've put into it. Saturday and Sunday were Part A and Part B of a nice Christmas party. We got full, had loads of leftovers on Saturday and so decided to come back on Sunday and finish it all up. The only downside to the weekend was that horrible storm on Saturday. I was out in the snow for 2 hours, not wearing enough clothes, not having an umbrella and getting completely soaked through. Someone smacked me in the face with their umbrella, I got lost, the plans I had made for the afternoon fell through. All of that was pretty stressful and I don't think I was able to flip my mood around and be super happy the rest of the evening.

I remember at one point, however, when I was finally on the homestretch to my friend's apartment, trudging through the snow, I thought "This what Christmas has always been about: trudging through the snow, being cold and miserable, on the way to a warm house full of friendly faces. People have been doing this for hundreds of years, I can do it now."

Another attempt to stay cheery may have worked a little better. I got the last two tickets to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play a Christmas concert last night, and it was just delightful. The music was lovely, the company was lovely, the dinner before hand was super tasty. I finally got to see Harrods all lit up and pretty and I got to see a part of town I haven't seen yet. The concert was really fun, and it was partly a sing-a-long which I just love. It ended up being a really nice, Christmassy evening.

The next few days are probably not going to be so cheery. Fortunately, it looks as if the airports and airlines are finally getting back on track. Lufthansa Flight 921, the same one I'll be taking on Friday, was not cancelled today and actually arrived before schedule in Frankfurt. It looks as if all the Lufthansa flights are going, so that's very promising. The one thing I am worried about now is that the flight leaves at 6:20, and the earliest I can get to the airport by train is 5:00 am, which I think would have been enough time if there weren't 60,000 stranded people milling about the place like zombies. So, if my flight is confirmed, I think the best thing would be to take the tube out there on Thursday night. This is going to suck really bad, but I have to give myself plenty of time to get through the whole mess. The crappiest part of that plan is that I'm getting sick and have already not been sleeping much the last few nights because of a cough. Well, I guess today I'll be cold medicine shopping.

As far as doing anything else today, I don't think I will. I'll just carry on as if I'm flying on Friday and get all packed and ready to go. If I do decided to take the tube out tomorrow night and I'm all ready, I have a ticket for a screening of Scott Pilgrim with a Q&A with Edgar Wright. That's in Brixton at 8, and it might be good to have something distracting and fun for a couple of hours. I can do that, come home and get my stuff and head to the airport.

So there you have it. The ubiquitous Christmas curfuffle. I noticed last night some of the original lyrics to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" were interesting: "Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow, until then we'll have to muddle through somehow." And so that's what I wish for all of you, may you muddle through this Holiday Season with as much stubborn resolve as possible. We'll get through it, it will be over soon. I promise.

I still believe in Santa Claus, even if no one else does.

2010-12-15T10:59:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a few weeks since I last blogged, but that's ok because it was a bit of a dark and slightly unhappy little moment in my life. But I think things are turning around, more or less, and so I've decided to blog about the last few interesting days of my life.

First I'll sum up the last few weeks by quoting a tweet from British comedian Bill Bailey (taking my own twist on it). Into week 10 of studying in London "thru protests, riots, tube strikes, perishing cold, Camilla prodding -yet I will not submit!" There, that sums it up! Well, I guess I can say that in the middle of all this perishing cold and riots I've been struggling with my research, I've been sad and homesick and worried about my future. It hasn't been pretty.

Anyhoo. In contrast, the last few days have been SUPER. First, I got really high marks and kind feedback on my first essay of the term. This restored faith in my research abilities. My professors loved my topic (I wrote about the Ice Palace as a liminal space in a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Kubrick's The Shining) and they praised how I balanced the historical and cultural aspects of the topic. It was broad, but also very well contained and focused. My specialty. Secondly, during my feedback session I got a little bit of hope in staying here to finish the PhD. It seems that they want to keep people in the program and they might help me find a way to pay for the next couple of years. I need to go talk with the director at the start of next term, and he said we'd figure something out.

The highlight of the week was definitely seeing The Boy Least Likely To live last night. In fact, that is what I'd like to really focus on writing about tonight. I've blogged about them before when their second album came out, and I've loved them for a long time, ever since the first album was released some 6 years ago. I knew they were a small band from a small town in England and being from a small town in Utah I never ever thought I'd actually get to see them. So last night ended up being extremely special for me.

I don't think I'll take the time to explain what TBLLT are all about. A recent review of their new Christmas album (which is awesome) does a great job of that. I'll just get to the show for now: I was surprised at the small venue, and not being a drinker and being from Utah I was also surprised by how badly the bar smelled like piss and vomit. (After asking around I've found out that this is how most bars smell. guess that makes sense.) I also got there way too early because the tickets just said 8:00and I didn't know if that was when the doors opened or when the first band went on. I was a bit annoyed with myself at first for getting there at 7 when the band wouldn't be on to 9:45, but I forced myself to stick around and fortunately Jof was there selling his own merch. I was really pleased to talk to him and have him sign a Christmas card for me, and he was very nice and gave me a couple of buttons to go with the tote I bought. I loved how when I asked if they were actually not going on until almost 10 Jof's eyes widened and he asked "Is that going to be a problem?" Haha, no, I thought, I'm just an old lady who likes to go to bed early. After buying my tote and talking to Jof I still had another hour and a half before the opening band went on so I just stood around and waited. I went in to the venue when it opened at 8 and realized I had my camera with me and should have got a picture with Jof. I knew he was sitting outside and I knew I had loads of time to kill so i thought, why not, and I went out and asked him for a photo. It ended up being a really awkward photo, which is ok, but I also got to talk to him for a little bit and that was nice. I'm actually proud of myself for asking since I'm usually really shy and reserved in those sort of situations.

The show itself was fantastic. The band had loads of energy and Jof was pretty adorable dancing around on the stage. They played all of their best songs, and I kept feeling a little sad every time they started one because I knew it would end soon and I wished they would play them a couple of times in a row just like how I listen to them on my ipod. The only things that kept it from being a perfect show is: 1) I wish they hadn't had so many long pauses when they played their cover of Faith. I love that cover; nothing makes me happier than to listen to it and dance around my room. The song has always been my #1 guilty pleasure, and when I found out they had covered it I about died. They were cute when they paused in the song and bantered a little bit about it, I have to admit that, but still I wish they'd played it all the way through. 2) I wish they had played more songs from the Christmas album. It's odd, people usually hate it when bands play too many songs from their new album, but this is the only thing I've been listening to the last three weeks. It's got me through that little bit of dark time I mentioned before, and I would have loved to hear them play The Wassail Song, Jingle My Bells, Christmas Isn't Christmas Without You, and The First Snowflake. What better time and place to play such awesome Christmas songs? Well, as I said before, if it were up to me I'd have them play all their songs in their discography and twice over.

The crowd was small, which made my wild dancing right at the front feel kind of conspicuous, but I ended up not caring. That's how I do concerts, and I make no apologies for it. Nothing beats the restorative properties of dancing to fantastic live music. I came away from that show feeling like a new person. My head was cleared of this terrible cloudy feeling I've been carrying around all week, and I felt deliciously sore from dancing and standing around for hours. And happy. Oh I just felt so light and happy, and it's carried through today.

I think things are starting to turn around for me here in London. I was worried before that I had no place here, that nothing I do was going to matter and that I'd come back with nothing to show for my time spent but a massive load of debt. But maybe not. Maybe I do have a place here, maybe I can create some good work, and maybe there are going to be the opportunities I've hoped for. I'm feeling really optimistic. I hope nothing comes along and destroys it all...

Oh, I nearly forgot. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

now that's Brighton, not Bath

2010-11-28T23:49:00.001-08:00

This last week my friend Sara and I decided to go to Bath to see a play done by her favorite theatre company. She was busy during the day on Saturday so we left around 2pm. It took 2 hours to get there and by the time we did all of the things to do and see in the city were closed. I didn't get to go into the abbey church, which was one of my favorite buildings to study when I did gothic stuff, we didn't get to go into the Roman baths or any of the museums or anything. Fortunately we could do a tour of the bell tower of the church and there was a Christmas market going on in the church square that we could hang out and walk around in before the play at 8pm.

So I asked Sara if she knew where the theatre was yet, and she said she hadn't looked it up and figured we could ask someone. So she pulled out the tickets and they said, "Brighton Ballroom, Brighton UK". "uhhhh..." I said. "Are we in the wrong city?" Indeed we were in the wrong city. We ran to the nearest internet cafe we could find and discovered that Brighton would be a 4 hour train ride away from Bath and we would miss the whole play altogether. So we tried to make the most of it. We at dinner and walked around the little city like 6 times, tried to do a little shopping at the Christmas market, and finally found a carousel, which isn't the worst thing to find on a cold winters night. The lights were cheering, and it was fun.

We eventually got on a train around 9pm and got home just after 11, and even though I was cold and tired I didn't get to bed until 2:30. I don't really want to blog about it, but I should note that I had a conversation that night that probably changed my whole future. Isn't it interesting when you want something so much, and you pray for it and hope and work for it, and imagine just what life will be like when you get it, and then when you don't get it you're entirely relieved? That's happened to me twice this week, and I've really never felt so unfettered and hopeful in my whole life. Even though I lost something and that makes me sad, something better is going to come along, and I know that in my heart.

I also realized a very important thing last week: I am in a research program. I should be doing more research. Stupid realisation, I know, but it might just make everything different. I struggled so much with my last paper because I felt like I hadn't got enough from my course, but really I just hadn't done enough research. One of my professors said the other day that it's not what you know, but how well you can find what you need to know. I need to take that to heart. So today I'm going to try to get entirely caught up with my course reading so that I can start getting ideas and move out to do the research that will lead me to an excellent paper.

mission: accomplished

2010-11-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

I've had such a good productive day so far that I thought I would blog about it. First I got up early and actually got some exercise in before breakfast, then I finished planning all my travel arrangements for my trip to Germany this Christmas. I made sure all the hotels and hostels were booked, bought German rail passes, and figured out how much the whole thing is going to cost us. I'm pretty proud of myself. The most we pay per night for a hotel is 30 Euro. After that I studied for German for an hour, then I went out and got some cash and lunch, then went to the Student Union and got my National Union of Students card, filled out an application for a National Rail Pass and walked over to the train station nearby and got the Pass. Easy peasy. Then I went to the British Library and got my Reader Pass so I can go in there and study and do research when I want. I'll order all my books and they'll be waiting for me tomorrow to start reading. I'm so proud of myself for getting all those errands done in 2 hours. It was only my third try getting the Reader Pass and just my second try getting the Rail Pass. I also now have a bank card, my loan money in the bank, and all my fees and housing paid.

My collection of cards since I got to London:

3 Student ID cards

4 Library cards

1 Oyster Card

2 Rail Pass cards

1 Bank card

Hopefully I'm done with the cards for a while. This will be an exciting week. I have an interview at the British Library for a PhD Studentship and I'm super nervous about it. I am terrible at interviews and I want the studentship really bad. Then on Thursday we're going to have a little Thanksgiving dinner and on Saturday I'm going to Bath to watch what sounds like will be an incredibly awesome play.

Now, even though I'm proud of myself for all I accomplished, it's only 3 and I have made a goal of doing at least 3 hours of research reading a day....so I better get on that!

a new friend

2010-11-15T04:27:00.000-08:00

This is my new plant. It's a gardenia and I love her. I always thought it was dumb when people got "pet plants" because I'd much rather have a cat or a dog, but when you can't even have a little mouse or a fish, a plant just has to suffice. I can't think of a name for her yet (again because I've always thought it stupid to name things that don't cuddle with me and so I'm out of practice), but I do have some ideas.

I just love this plant. Gardenias have always been one of my favorite flowers. I love the way they smell, I love their thick hearty petals and dark heavy leaves. It just makes my room that much more livable to be able to look at her in my window sill.

Go and dance yourself clean

2010-11-13T09:51:00.000-08:00

It's been a slightly eventful week. I didn't have any classes so it was technically a vacation week and I managed to get some fun stuff worked in there. On Wednesday my Only London Friend (or OLF) and I went to see LCD Soundsystem. It actually turned into quite a little adventure, and it was my first time out of my Zone on the Tube (and I did it wrong so it cost me like 8 pounds in fees). OLF had class until 6 and the show started at 7 and so I met up with her at her school, then we got some delicious Chinese take out (I got the roasted duck on rice, of course) and headed to Crouch End and the Alexandra Palace. When we got there, there was seriously a mile long queue. I have never seen a line so long in my life. I decided to walk to the front to see if I could find a different line for picking up my tickets and I walked and walked and walked, leaving poor OLF behind. (Ha, ok, I'm sorry Sara, if you're reading this, I'll stop calling you OLF. I just thought it was really funny. It's probably not.) Anyway, FINALLY we got in, right in the middle of Hot Chip's set. Sara and I immediately started dancing and didn't stop until the end of LCD Soundsystem's set, but we decided to leave before the encores since there were probably 20,000 people there and we wanted to make sure we got on the bus before everyone else decided to go. I figured since this was my third time seeing them that I'd live, and I did.

I really loved it and I will see them again if I ever get the chance. I love how much fun everyone has at their shows and how much you can dance and totally lose yourself. I love how their songs have a proper amount of tension leading up to a fantastic moment of release. It's euphoric, and I'm totally addicted. I think I liked this show better than the one in New York. They played all my favorite songs, and I was in GREAT company (instead of totally alone like the NY show). Sara seriously is the funnest person.

Also, I have a total crush on this guy. He is adorable in concert.

So the next day on Thursday I went to see a taping of the Graham Norton Show. It was supposed to be the highlight of my life and it turned out to be rather meh. No one makes me laugh like Graham Norton, and so even though the guests sucked, I thought I'd still have fun. I just found out that Stephen Fry and Bette Midler will be on next weeks show and it broke my heart. I LOVE Stephen Fry like no one else. Instead I got stuck with Colin Ferrall (who told nothing but the most boring stories. He has no personality at all), Daniel Radcliffe (who was late and then really annoying, and just ugh) and then a comedian I've never heard of and then Rihanna, who was cute and everything, but I just genuinely don't care about her music. Also I had to stand outside in the freezing wind, and those who keep up with my Twitter area already familiar with the fact that I was not wearing the proper clothing for such an event. It was really really horrible. It hasn't been that cold or windy in London since I've been here. I honestly don't know if it was worth it.

Anyway, on my way to the show I saw this poster in the train station. It made me laugh, because it obviously does not work.

I don't think it does a very effective job of pushing polite behaviour because the Tube is still full of fools who refuse to budge from their convenient spot right next to the door and impede anyone from coming in or out of the train. In New York I seriously got yelled at for doing that one day when I wasn't paying attention. The poster is just too polite, and I think this one will work much better.

Fortunately at the Graham Norton show I was able to fight my way to the front of what had been a very long queue and had turned into a throng of people rushing the door, and I got the best of the worst seats!

HA! The suckers I had to push over to get to the door didn't get to be on the telly at all, but I DID!

So, since Wednesday and Thursday were exhausting I decided to stay in and work on my paper on Friday, and it didn't turn out well. Friday will be one of those days to forget forever.

Moving on, today I took my FIRST real train ride out of the city! I went with my ward to the London Temple. We took the train from Victoria Station to Lingfield and then a short taxi from the station to the temple. I mention this because it was also my FIRST time in a British taxi! And the first time ever driving on the wrong side of the road, and yes, it is the wrong side. Seriously, driving on the left side is totally counterintuitive, and it's the one cultural difference I'm having a hard time getting past, especially since I've almost got hit crossing the street several times because of it.

Anyway, the temple was lovely and I got to talk to more people from my ward, and hopefully made a couple of friends. I enjoyed myself immensely. Here's a picture of me and Sara in front of the temple. We stood a bit too far from the camera, so you can't really see us well, but that's ok because I didn't get a chance to shower this morning and was a bit of a mess.

And that's it for my week off of school! I start back up again on Tuesday and I'll be killing myself trying to get this paper done. I think i might have made some headway in brainstorming with my sister for a bit, but we'll see!

Jasie's Guide to Navigating Bureaucracy in the UK

2010-11-08T02:07:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader,

I was going to impart my wisdom on how to do Banking in the UK, but I realized that these steps will work for basically anything you need to do in order to survive as a student. Receiving loans, applying for privileges to read at the library (yes you have to apply for that), registering for classes, enrolling (which I think is different from registering), opening bank accounts, closing bank accounts, doing any kind of banking at all, etc, etc. I hope if you find yourself trying to live in London these tips may come in handy:

Banks and other institutions open at an obscenely late time in the day, so don't attempt any type of bureaucratic adventuring before work or an early class. Wait for a day off, go ahead and sleep in, grab your umbrella and head out (it's always raining on days you need to get forms signed).
Queue up! Queuing (or standing in a line) and drinking are the national past-times here, and so it is expected that you quietly take your place in the queue and not bother the 5 nice people who are working hard or chatting at their open stations. They're not open, please join the queue.
Make an appointment to come back later. Of course, after the queue you're not likely to actually talk to anyone who can help you, but you might talk to someone who can write your name down so that you can come back later and join the lunchtime queue.
You'll never have the right documents, so bring everything. Load up that satchel with every proof you have of your existence. Did the bank send you a letter to your house and so will obviously not demand that you bring a some proof of residence (like a letter from a bank to your house)? No chance! Make sure you bring an additional 5 letters, plus your passport, plus the proof of your address at home, plus your passport, plus your birth certificate, and driving license (fun fact! they don't call it a drivers license here and will likely correct you if you do).
Repeat steps 1 through 4, ad infinitum. Like I said in the last step, you're not likely to have the right documents on the first try, or even the second or third. But keep trying! That's how the British developed their plucky spirits and won two world wars.

a message in a bottle

2010-11-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

I told my one friend in London last week that I wouldn't blog anymore, that blogging was just an exercise in vanity. Why would anyone want to read my blog? and yet, what's the point of blogging if no one is reading it? Well, I guess I don't know the answers to those questions. I don't think many do read it, and I wouldn't know why if they did. But perhaps it is healthy to write even for a pretend audience, especially if I intend to write academically for the rest of my life, which I do.

That pretend audience may have noticed that I haven't been uploading photos every day like I said I would. This is because uploading photos has been taking up too much data and I have a limited amount allocated to me on the school network, which sucks. I went over last week and they punished me by reconnecting me with a 1999 modem speed connection for a week, so I learned my lesson.

The whole month of October everything has been green, and now things are finally starting to change. The weather has basically been the same every day since I got here. Temperature from 50 to 60 degrees, cloudy, a little rainy and really lovely bouts of sunshine. It's so humid that I sweat all the time no matter what and my hair is a big frizzy mess. I don't even know what to do with it.

I've had quite the time getting adjusted. Well, most things haven't been a problem, but the libraries here drive me crazy. I've had to shift my whole style of research, and research I have been doing, or trying to anyway. I'm applying for a PhD Studentship at the Open University and the British Library and I've been freaking out about it for a week. I'm in a fairly good mood now because I think it is mostly done and I just have to print the proposal, the cover letter and writing example out and send it in tomorrow. I have been struggling though, thinking and feeling like i know nothing and have nothing to say, and then magically it all came together this afternoon while I was in class. I was lucky actually because we were talking about argument and we had to try to present an argument to a partner, and since this is what i've been working on all week I attempted to explain to him what my argument is. Here I realized I never had an argument, and that is probably why I've been struggling so much this week. So talking about it was helpful and I finally formulated something and then finished up my proposal. It feels good.

I like my classes. The professors are wonderful. One them is someone whose work I was already familiar with and his classes are just a delight. He is a delightful and kind person and I really must go and talk to him in office hours sometime because I'd like him to be my friend. I have to write a paper soon for one of my classes and of course everything we talk about makes me think of horror movies. So I'm writing about coldness in films like the Shining and Dead Snow which create a world outside of time and space whereupon the horror can be acted out. It should be fun.

I'm skipping out on a student led discussion class thing because the last time i went the instructor did nothing but confuse me more about philosophy. It's hard enough to get Kant and Hegel, and when the person trying to teach you is just as confused as you are it's useless. So I've decided tonight to stay in, study German and finish up this application. I've been pretty good with my German studying. I do an hour a day every day, and I'm thinking of pushing it to 2 hours.

20-23 October 2010

2010-10-23T06:09:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 20 October

Wednesday was my "day off" after the trauma of Tuesday running errands in the rain. I didn't do anything except walk to the store and back. Therefore the only photo I took was this weird one of my foot. The reason I took it was because I w

as trying to see if I could document the weirdest injury of my life. On Tuesday I noticed this piece of hair stuck on my foot. I couldn't brush it off. It was a hair from my head, possibly from when I cut my hair the other day. I grabbed it and pulled and it was stuck IN MY FOOT. Like it had somehow been there long enough for the skin to grow over it. It was disgusting. I pulled it out and it left a little open wound that has since scab

bed up. So so gross. My only guess is that it was stuck in my sock or something when I had worn shoes for the whole of Monday. Who knows?

Thursday 21 October

I decided to be a little tourist on Thursday and go see the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. This is the Cenotaph on Whitehall, the World War One memorial. I didn't realize that I would find this hear, so it was a bit of a pleasant surprise for me.

Friday 22 October

I did a little bit of walking around Bloomsbury on Friday and snapped this photo on one of the side streets.

Saturday 23 October

Today is the Bloomsbury Fair and this morning I went on a walking tour of one of the local cemeteries-turned park. It's actually what the Victorians called an "outdoors sitting room," for the poor I suppose who don't have sitting rooms in their houses? As many already know, I LOVE cemeteries. Oh I love them. They are my favorite places to go next to parks, and since this one is now a park I was in heaven. Our tour guide was charming and informative and I learned a lot about the history of the place. It is an early 18th century cemetery, the very first one used by Anglicans in London that was not a church yard. It took a few years for people to start using it because it wasn't next to a church, but from 1715 to about 1850 over 50,000 people were buried in the 3 acre plot. I loved to see the rotting tombstones, so very gothic. It was my first English cemetery, the first of many I hope.

15-19 October

2010-10-20T02:55:00.000-07:00

I was having internet/body issues the last few days so I didn't upload anything, but I still took some pictures! I'm feeling better now and so is my internet so I thought I'd put up the photos I did take.

Friday 15 October 2010

This is the copy of the book that Simon Pegg signed for me! I'm happy he didn't spelled my name wrong because for Haley and Lindy's copy he wrote "Linda & Hayly"

Saturday 16 October 2010

This is the very first real life Jenny Saville painting I've ever seen. It was at the Freize Art Fair in Regent's Park.

The sky was also remarkably blue that day. Every time I see the sun and blue sky here I am just blown away. I have a feeling it's not something I'll be seeing a lot of this winter.

Sunday 17 October 2010

After church I went for a walk in Hyde Park. I really liked this giant raven perched on the fountain of Diana.

18 Monday 2010

I spent most of the day in futile search for shoes, internet, and offices, so here is a picture of me on the go, looking for things I can't find.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Yesterday I got caught in the rain and it was kind of a mess so I never pulled out my camera until I got home. I decided to take a panoramic view of my room.

14 October 2010

2010-10-14T14:35:00.001-07:00

Let it go down in history that today the 14th of October, the year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Ten, I met Simon Pegg, shook his hand, got his autograph and made an ass out of myself.

Simon's book Nerd Do Well is officially released tomorrow and today he had a book signing in London. The signing was at 5:30, and I left around 1:30 so that I could run some errands before finding Waterstone's off of Piccadilly Circus. After I bought a phone I found myself slightly off my intended course, but I suppose this is bound to happen when I don't use a map and make my way around London based only on my instincts and keen sense of direction. Instead of being on the street where I would find my beloved Birkenstock store, I found myself in Soho surrounded by sex shops, walking down seedy looking little alleys where I'm sure prostitutes must have worked probably not too long ago. But I pushed on and finally saw Piccadilly Circus, what I suppose is London's answer to Times Square. It was not yet 2:30 and I was three hours early to the signing, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to wait since I didn't have anything else planned. So I found the line, which was only 4 people long at that point and queued up, as the Brits like to say. I immediately met a very nice young man, Sam, who was quite friendly and talkative. We were joined by a girl who was quite mad and extremely talkative. She was first in the queue, having got there at 9 in the morning. It was cold, smelled of urine, and a pain to wait for three hours, but the time went by quickly as I was surrounded by amusing geeky British people. And here we are!

Sam and I hung out a little bit after the signing and now we're Facebook and Twitter friends! My first British friend!

So finally we were moved upstairs to spend the last hour waiting indoors, which was welcome but the stench of urine followed us up. At that point I overheard one of the old guys in line, which was hard to help since he was shouting, go on and on about all the celebrities he's met. He collects autographs, apparently, and has 600 signed books. It's interesting because the lady who was second in line was telling us about how she's seen him at several book signings (she also is apparently a bit of a collector) and she thinks he's mad. Which was obvious, of course, but she told us stories about how rude he is to celebrities while in pursuit of their signature. The man himself even told a story about one celebrity who didn't sign her name quite to this man's apparently rigid specifications and he tore the card up and said "if you arent going to bother with a proper signature, you might as well not bother at all" and walked away. I'm sure the celebrity was crushed.

Anyway, finally the moment came to meet Simon and I was trembling. He signed my books. "Are you Linder?" He asked, "No, I'm this one. Jasie" I said pointing to my signed copy. (Incidentally he spelled both of my sisters' names wrong on their copy: Linda and Hayly). "I wanted to tell you I wrote my master's thesis on Shaun of the Dead" I said, "Oh really?" he asked. "Yes, they let me! I'm even publishing an article on it" "Oh, what aspect did you write about?" I wanted to tell him. I desperately wanted to say "spiritual transcendence" but the words were lost. Instead I said, "I cant think of words right now. I'm very excited. I'm very happy to meet you" "Oh" he said, "that's ok." and I shook his hand. As I walked away, feeling also very stupid he said, "Let me know when that gets published, somehow. Twitter me!" "Ok," I nodded eagerly and walked away. What a sweet man. I just love him.

So that was it. It was pretty incredible and I'm very happy. It's honestly one of the highlights of my life. Well, that and @MrsStephenFry on twitter retweeted one of my comments I sent to her. I think that might rank highly on my list of achievements. I've gained 6 new followers since that! What a day!

13 October 2010

2010-10-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

I decided to spend most of the day in today since I overdid it a little yesterday and I'm still a bit jetlagged. So I decided to take a picture of my bathroom. It is very yellow.

12 October 2010

2010-10-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

I got lost in the Gordon Square building looking for my class room and entered this very interesting hallway. I kind of love it.

11 October 2010

2010-10-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

I made it to London in one piece, and this is the view of Cartwright Gardens from my bedroom window. London so far is just too adorable. It's killing me.

10 October 2010

2010-10-11T13:05:00.001-07:00

Tara T. Cat loves to sleep on my luggage, so I left it in Salt Lake for her.

9 October 2010

2010-10-10T08:01:00.000-07:00

I'm posting more than one picture today, and the first one was taken probably 5 or so years ago. I am fortunate to have a very tightly knit group of friends who have been consistently blessing my life for years now. Amazingly, we have all managed to stay in Utah for the most part, and have continued to spend time with each other whenever we had the chance. On Saturday we all spent one last time together before I left for London, celebrating Brittany's birthday. It was a really special couple of hours for me, and I'm so glad I made it down to Provo.

(So the boy in the middle was Amanda's boyfriend, and the girl on the top right was a roommate we never really kept up with. The core 5 of us haven't changed that much. We're just old now.)

8 October 2010

2010-10-10T07:59:00.001-07:00

View from my mom's back door.

7 October 2010

2010-10-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

Got that email today. I'll be flying out on Sunday. WOO!

6 October 2010

2010-10-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

5 October 2010

2010-10-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

4 October 2010

2010-10-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

I'm at my mom's house right now, and while there is a gorgeous view outside the back window and lovely flowers in the yard, there is also a crazy little dog named Jackie and when I was outside taking pictures she shoved her nose in the camera. I liked that one best.

3 October 2010

2010-10-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

On Sunday after General Conference Igor and I went to Ensign Peak just above the capitol building in Salt Lake. The view was stunning.

October 2

2010-10-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

I went to a little Greek restaurant on Saturday with Darci on State Street in Salt Lake. The food was good, the owner was crazy (he's been in close vicinity of 9 people dying, and he gave us lots of free food), and the view from the terrace was lovely as the sun went down.

October 1

2010-10-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about doing a photo a day thing on my blog for a while now, and I decided I would start on the first of October when I got to London. Well, I'm not in London yet, but I decided to start it up anyway. I couldn't put the photos on my computer until today, so i'm starting late, but I'm still going to do a separate post for each photo. For October 1 all I have is this blurry walking photo of my friend Amanda. I was trying my hand at kinnearing, a surreptitious style of taking photos of celebrities to avoid them noticing. It's a real word, coined by Yarn Harlot after she took a bunch of photos of Greg Kinnear's feet at an airport in Canada.

any day now...

2010-09-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to wake up this morning to an email informing me that my visa has been approved and is on its way to my house. Alas it wasn't there and my stress level increased by about four points. It's making me think about patience. What the heck is patience anyway? Am I waiting patiently when I know I can do nothing and so I try to distract myself while my stomach grows increasingly queasy and I want to chew off my own hand? Is patience the ability to pretend that you are not waiting for something or that someone is not actually driving you crazy? Is it an innate internal stability and calmness when everything around you is completely out of your control? A couple of weeks ago when I was waiting for the last important document I needed before I could apply for the visa I made myself sick, imagining all the things that could have gone wrong and what I could possibly do to fix it, and it was so bad that when I did get the letter I didn't actually feel any better and a capillary burst in my eye making it blood red for two weeks. This time around the waiting is far worse and I'm wondering what will burst.

Maybe I just need to be more positive. I will get the visa, I will get to London. I might miss the first week of school, all of the orientation meetings and the graduate party in the Tate Modern, but that can be ok. I'll just have to let them know that I'm coming a little late because of the visa issue. Worse things could happen.

On another positive note, I got an amazing new little toy. This year has been the year for gadgets for me. I got an ipod and a new little computer and now my friends chipped in to get me a kindle for a going away present. I love it. I think it's the best thing that has ever happened to books. I already have 200 books on there and it still only weighs a few ounces! I can do searches, I can make bookmarks and notes and now I have books that I thought about reading but never wanted to buy or try to find at the library. It also works well for my scattered brain to switch from book to book without having to pack 3 or 4 around with me all the time. I might even start reading for fun.

Ok, so no worries. Everything is going to work out fine. I will get there, and it will be soon.

still not in England yet...

2010-09-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

I'm spending one of my last few nights in Provo tonight, and I'm doing it with mixed feelings. A few months ago when I decided to go to New York for the summer I felt especially anxious, and when I was there I couldn't shake that anxious feeling, so I came back home. This time I'm going to London, and part of me fears that I feel the same as I did in New York: anxious, homesick and ultimately not too happy. But, there is a dramatic difference this time around. I'm excited and more or less at peace with the decision I've made. I'm also committed. I can't just come home when I start feeling lonely. When I went to New York I was running away. Now that I'm going to London I am simply starting a new chapter in my life, one that needs to begin.

Last week I went to see a band I've loved for several years now, Casiotone For the Painfully Alone. It's basically one guy who writes and performs beautifully sad music that has been the soundtrack for most of the anxty moments of my early 20s. This is his last tour under that name and he said that when he's done he'll put the songs away and never play them again, expect when he's feeling sad. I could kind of relate to him. This is a time of change, to put away the past and move forward with a new perspective on life. Maybe I should also put those songs away, those songs that remind me of lonely wanderings through Provo.

I've enjoyed myself the last few weeks in Utah. It's been perfect, and I feel as if I'll have no unfinished business or regrets when I leave. I've focused on spending time with the people I love, going on adventures, and I think have spent my time well saying goodbye to this place.

So now I just wait. I sent out all my documents to the UK Border Agency and they sent me an email last monday saying they received them and that it would take 5 to 15 working days for me to get my visa back. So far it's been 7 working days, and I'm praying that I will get it within the next five so that I have time to buy my plane ticket and get out there before classes start. So unless there's some big hitch I will be in London sometime during the first week of October. It's too bad I still haven't bought a plane ticket and it still seems like a dream.

waiting and crashing

2010-09-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

I should be moving to London in 20 days, but it certainly does not yet feel like it's going to happen. The main reason is because I haven't got my visa yet and so have not bought a plane ticket. Everything else is set up. I put my deposit down on my room, enrolled in classes, bought new luggage and new clothes, and still I don't feel like I'm going. As long as I don't have something as definite and sure as a plane ticket, I can't really get too excited.

I have, however, been watching a great deal of British television, and if the place is anything like its tv I think I will be a happy person in a month from now.

Gah. My first class is on October 4th. I sure hope I can get there before then.

The last few months have been good and bad, as I wait and wait with a significant lack of patience I can't seem to bring myself to do much. My job right now is to wait, and so what's the point of reading or knitting or embroidering or writing or anything but sitting and thinking about how I have to wait for documents? I have to wait for emails. I have to wait for things to go through. I know it's ridiculous, but the waiting is incredibly distracting. The document I am waiting for now is the final key to the visa, and it was sent from England 11 days ago. Who knows how long it will take to get here, but I'm hoping I'll receive it tomorrow or in the next few days.

Although my life has been pretty much the most boring thing imaginable, I do have a story. Today was a really lovely day. It's starting to feel like autumn; there was a cool breeze all day, but the sun was nice and warm. A friend of mine came to visit me at my mom's house and he and I went shopping for some clothes and shoes, and since it was Labor Day the roads in Park City were particularly busy. I managed fine until on the way home I made a left hand turn at the end of an offramp from the freeway just as a guy was running a red light from the right side of my car. I didn't see him until he smashed in to me. It was scary, but it didn't feel like it did much damage, and when I pulled over and got out I saw that the guy was ok and that he only had a flat tire, and my car just had a scratch on the right front. Apparently, the corner of my car hit his tire and caused it to explode. We were both driving fairly fast, and I feel extremely lucky that his car didnt plow in the side of mine like it easily could have. There wasnt even a dent in my car, just tire marks and a little scratch. I love my big monster of a car, and I'm really glad the little incident wasn't any worse.

So tomorrow I need to do more than just wait around for the mail. It'll be difficult, but I have things that need to be done, and I need to just do them. I'm going to take the dogs for a walk in the morning and then start working on figuring out which clothes to pack and take with me and which things I'll be forced to leave behind. Then I guess I should figure out some other productive things that need to be done and just do them. I know the next few weeks are going to go by super fast but right now time is killing me.

a little favor.

2010-08-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging specifically tonight to try to help a friend out who is participating in a competition done by Logitech. His name is Austin Craig, he's awesome, and if he wins he gets to live in a swanky apartment in LA for a couple of months and host parties to show off cool techy stuff. It's a dream job, and he is perfect for it. The voting ends tomorrow night and he's going for the final push, so go check out the link and click on the little VOTE button. It's very easy.

so close

2010-08-13T23:43:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine reminded me tonight that the anxiety I feel over going to graduate school in London is not that far removed from the anxiety I felt over staying at BYU for my Master's degree. I constantly questioned whether or not I made the right decision, and in the end it became one of the best times of my life that I would never trade for anything. I had forgotten this, but I'm glad I recall it now. I always second guess the decisions that I make, and I am always wondering if I could have made a better choice, and yet overall I'm not that dissatisfied with my life. It is full of people and experiences and everything I could ever want or need. Why do I spend so much time regretting the choices that I make?

Some good news for today: I got 2 important emails. One was the housing office offering me a place to live, and the other was the enrollment office sending me an official notice about my acceptance. I am now one step closer to going to London than I was yesterday. It's a good feeling. Now, I have 2 more important emails to receive before the end of next week if I want to get my student visa on time. I'm not going to get too excited or too anxious, and if things work out then they work out.

blogging instead of playing spider solitaire.

2010-07-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

Hi, I'm going to tell you a little about how my life is going right now. Not that you asked.

I'm in limbo again. Actually, I've been stuck in limbo for a pretty significant amount of time. Neither here nor there, waiting for this or that to finally happen. Recently I've been waiting for news on whether or not I'll be getting a very important scholarship for the program in London, and it makes me anxious. I've been back from New York for a month now and time is flying, but I'm finding myself growing bored again. The excitement of the last two weeks of my trip, coming back and visiting with family and friends in Salt Lake, Kamas and Provo were exhausting and I was totally grateful for the chance to chill out and babysit a kitty in a cute apartment and have time again to think. Well, it's been a week and I'm bored.

I watch a lot of tv these days, and I noticed tonight when I was spending some time with friends that television is all I talk about. While I watch tv I knit. I just finished a hat that is much smaller than I was expecting to be, so maybe I'll try to sell it as a children's hat. Today I started a shawl with some $20 golden yarn that I bought in New York and I worry it won't be as pretty as I had hoped. Yesterday my little sister came over and I took some gorgeous pictures of her modeling some recent projects.

Guys, my sister is beautiful.

I've also been baking pies. After watching the entire 2 seasons of Pushing Daisies in the last week I have an uncontrollable desire to bake delicious pies. So far they have been perfection. Perfect crust, perfect filling. I'm in love with my pies. So far I've only made banana cream and a berry pie, but I plan on getting some more fruit and experimenting.

Not to brag, but I make a perfectly tender and flaky crust. And this berry pie was a divine conglomeration of three distinct berry flavors, all tied together with a little sugar on the flaky crust. Those were my sister's words, not mine.

Let's see... Oh, I also recently finished editing a 90 page thesis and got paid a little for it. I wish I could get more jobs like that. Anyone need an editor?

On another note, I've been feeling a little lonely lately, missing my Provo peeps and the new friendships I made in New York that never had the chance to develop to their full potential. I miss Alexis and Liz and Andy. I hope I can be friends with them again some day. I was lonely when I was in New York, and these people totally made my time there worth it. Tonight I spent time with three of my most favorite people, and I realize what joy friends bring me in my life, and I love the thought that I have no idea how many wonderful people I am set to encounter in my lifetime and how they will change and shape me and my existence on this earth.

Well, I think that is all for the night. Thanks, Internet, for listening. You're great.

summer reading

2010-07-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

I have a bit of a habit of marking up books when I read them, probably from the 20 years of schooling and 2 Humanities degrees under my belt. It is always handy when writing a paper on a novel to go back and find interesting passages already marked up. The problem, however, comes when I am borrowing a novel and my fingers just itch to write all over it and I can't. And so then I usually type out the passages that interest me to look at later if I need to. Now, the problem with this is that I rarely go through and open random word documents to look at, especially when I always seem to misplace the important documents I have (I have no idea how this happens, but I can't tell you how many times important things have just disappeared from my computer). Solution? I will blog my favorite passages as I work through my summer reading list. This may prove helpful for me, and possibly entertaining for anyone (or any two or three) who actually read this blog.

I'm currently working my way through On the Road by Jack Kerouac and I am thoroughly enjoying what for many is the American dream: cross country road tripping. My Brazilian friend is also reading the book and said that he would love to hitchhike across the United States but would never dream of doing something like that in Brazil. Of course, I said. This sort of travel is an American institution. Who doesn't want to see this continent, from sea to shining sea? I know that the need to travel across this place is an itch I someday hope to scratch, and I have always wanted to read this book and the adventures outlined here. And at this point in my life, I feel like I can relate to Sal Paradise as he abandons his day to day life and sets out to see the country. I'm at the point now where he makes it from New York to San Francisco, has run out of money and has to find a job, and when he gets into trouble for not doing exactly what he should on the job he thinks, "he was right; but all i wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go and find out what everybody was doing all over the country" (60).
Me too, Sal, me too.

I love how getting a job to make ends meet for a time becomes part of the adventure, as it has been for me this summer as I take on odd jobs and move about the country, sleeping on couches and just trying to get by until the next chapter of my life begins.

And so, here are some passages I enjoyed tonight as I continued reading On the Road, and expect more to follow as I finish up the book.

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was--I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon" (15).

"I spun around till I was dizzy; i thought I'd fall down as in a dream, clear off the precipice. Oh where is the girl I love? I though, and looked everywhere, as I had looked everywhere in the little world below. And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhere far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded--at least that's what I thought then" (71).

London calling

2010-07-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

It's coming on a month since I blogged last, and even though this last month has probably been the craziest and most eventful in months, I haven't felt stable enough to sit down and write a blog. Or maybe I should say I haven't felt like I could give my full attention to such a task. Until right at this moment: the first time in nearly a month that I have been totally and completely by myself.

I had 2 goals I needed to accomplish this summer. The first was to live in New York and the second was to not pay rent for at least two months. New York: check. Being homeless: so far so good. Since I wrote last I have spent part of a week in a hostel in Boston, a night in a friends apartment in New York, part of a week in a lovely home in Maryland, a night in my old apartment in New York, a few nights on my sister's couch in Salt Lake, a couple of couches in Provo, a bed and a couch in Kamas, another few nights back in Salt Lake and now I am house sitting for a nice girl with a lovely cat while she enjoys a cruise. I'll be here for 2 weeks and then I'm back to couch surfing.

I kind of really don't mind this lifestyle. I don't mind living out of a suitcase and I don't mind sleeping on couches. The best part is that I haven't paid rent for a month now, and I'm getting paid to stay at this girl's house for the next two weeks. Sweet deal, yeah?

After the summer is over I'll hopefully be starting one of my biggest adventures yet: moving to London to do a PhD at the London Consortium (part of Birkbeck College) in Humanities and Cultural Studies. If I can find the money to go it will be a dream come true. Last week I had an interview over the phone with the professor I would be working with and they emailed me two hours later telling me of my acceptance. I honestly couldn't believe it. I was slightly worried about the interview because I could hardly understand the British accents over a speakerphone, and I was uncertain of a few of their questions, even though I tried to answer as if I did understand what they said. Thank goodness for the last 15 years of my life watching Beatles movies, Monty Python and Doctor Who, or I may have been completely lost in that interview.

Guys, I'm moving to LONDON!

Well, maybe. I hope. It depends on a lot of things that I'm working on right now. My goal is to get all the paper work figured out this weekend and send it all in on Monday.

I was looking at the courses I'll be taking this fall and I got all giddy and light headed just thinking about them. Here are some of the course titles: "Coldness: Toward a Political Thermodynamics of Culture", "Down: Meloncholy, Depression and Regeneration", and "Scratches, Traces, Spacings". Does that sound awesome or what?? Ok, maybe I shouldn't get too ahead of myself. I still have to raise thousands of dollars to go.

I was just thinking the other day that I didn't want to wait a year to go back to school and now I may not have to. It feels good to think that I don't have to put my goals on hold. I'm excited.

goodbye new york

2010-06-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

Today is my last full day in New York City. Tomorrow I'm going to Boston for a few days, then I come back on Wednesday and leave again early the next morning for Baltimore. I get back from Baltimore on Monday and then fly home Tuesday morning. It's sure to be quite the week, especially with the 22 hours of travel time I'm set to endure.

So how did I spend my last day in New York City? I refused to leave my apartment. I watched a World Cup game, did laundry, packed, ate, and watched episodes of Merlin and the new Doctor Who. I might go out in a little while to get ice cream and say goodbye to this city, but who knows. I feel no remorse for staying in today. I rather enjoyed my time alone, and I had a hell of a time sleeping last night so I just wasn't feeling up for the fight that is going out into the city.

Yesterday was the perfect way to end my time here. I spent most of the day laying out in the sun at the beach, then I went and saw a CocoRosie concert that was pretty amazing. I seriously had to recover from it all today before I go to Boston. I have some great pictures from those two activities, but I seem to have lost my camera cord and so I can't upload them right now, but I will when I get back to Utah.

I'm not sad about leaving, but I feel bad that I don't feel more sad. Granted, I only spent about two months in New York, but that love/hate relationship with this place has stayed pretty balanced, and I'm excited to go back home. I think I have a better understanding of what home means now, and I'm glad that I have been fortunate enough to grow up attached to a certain piece of land called Utah, to have roots in a place. I recently finished reading The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, a thoroughly depressing novel, and one that left me weeping, but there was one passage near the end that struck me and made me feel extremely grateful that I have a home to go back to.

That was the feeling that possessed her now--the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spendthrift on the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown hither and thither on ever wind of fashion, without any personal existence to shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up without any one spot of earth being dearer to her than another: there was no centre of early pieties, of grave endearing traditions, to which her heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and tenderness for others.

This I felt was the saddest moment of the book, and where I started weeping. Unlike Lily Bart, I had grown up with a spot of earth being dearer to me than another. I have roots, and I plan on establishing a place where my children feel that they have roots. This is a point I have actually thought about for years, since I read Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of American: Culture and Agriculture where he talked about the importance of being tied to the land, and how our American nomadism is actually harmful to us. I think there can be a balance. I love to travel and to see different places and sometimes I wish one place or another could be my home, but it's not. As dumb as people might think it is, I am pulled back to Utah because it houses my dearest memories, it was the "centre of early pieties, of grave endearing traditions to which [my] heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and tenderness for others." It's true, and I don't think many people deeply understand this principle unless they had a very special piece of land which they could call home. I know that my experiences growing up on a ranch shaped who I am, living so closely to a beautiful piece of earth gave me balance and established my moral center.

And so I'm excited to go back to my homeland, and I'm extremely happy that I've been able to spend this time here. I needed it. And I plan on coming back soon because I've met amazing people and established what could be long lasting friendships. I guess in a weird way I've set down roots here to which I can return. I've become acquainted with a remarkable city, and I'm lucky I had the opportunity to do so.

So, goodbye to you New York and your trash, your loud and obnoxious people, awful smells, and oppressive heat. And goodbye to your wonderful food, your museums, the beautiful Central Park, and the kind and remarkable people who call you home. This was fun, but I gotta go back home now. I have family, friends, pets, mountain thunderstorms, sunsets, fishing, swimming at Mona, my car, and cheap delicious Mexican food waiting for me back in Utah.

if we wait until the weekend, we could miss the best things to do.

2010-05-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

So 95% of my interactions with people yesterday were with men. Seriously, it was very weird. I talked briefly to one woman the whole day. I went out with an old friend for lunch and he and I walked around the Upper West Side for a few hours. We went to Ulysses Grant's tomb, which was very cool, then I went to my knitting class which was taught by a man. After that I went to a concert and on my way home I ran into a guy I met a few weeks ago and hung out with a few times. He wrote a book and gave me a copy and I've read and it was the weirdest run in with a person. I was getting off the train and there were only men surrounding me. I didn't see one woman, and I thought "this is really odd" and I started looking around to see if there were men behind me as well and I turned and this kid was walking right next to me. We were both a little shocked, especially since those sort of run ins don't happen often. So we took the same train home and we talked the whole way and set up a time to hang out next week. Then when I got home I talked to 2 more guys before I went to bed. Weird.

So I was thinking of blogging about today because I had another awesome day, but then I realized how boring these posts must be about me listing the stuff I do. I decided to make my perfect day into a walking tour so that if any of you find yourselves in New York you can retrace my steps and perhaps find yourself having a perfect day.

I call this The Lazy Hot Day in New York Tour:

The next time you find yourself jobless in New York City with a lot of time on your hands, a couple of nice people to hang out with and weather that is less agreeable on the temperature side (preferably 90 degrees or more) there are plenty of relaxing and low impact activities. A nice picnic in the park is the perfect way to start.

1. Take a three hour picnic in the shade in Central Park. Start at the corner of 96th Street and Central Park West entrance to the park. Walk about 20 feet into the park and find a nice shady spot on the nearby hill. It's hot out there. You don't need to be doing any trekking any further when a perfectly shady hill is available right next to the entrance. Set yourself down and talk and eat with the couple of nice people you brought with you for the next two to three to four hours.

2. After snoozing in the shade, lazily stroll down Central Park West until you find yourself a refreshing drink. If you are lucky enough to be with someone who lives in the Upper West Side you can stop by their house, use their bathroom and freshen up with some cool water from their kitchen sink (it's free!)

3. Without exerting too much effort, ramble down Amsterdam and stop in Pretty Angel Nail & Spa (between 81 and 82nd) for a $24 mani/pedi. Super cheap and they also have great massage chairs.

4. After your mani/pedi hop on the train and head down to Chinatown. On Mott St. there are a number of places to get a cold tapioca drink. I got a passion fruit with little bits of coconut jellies floating in it. So refreshing. I got it at a place that was also a bakery where I bought a 98 cent piece of chocolate torte. 98 cents!!

5. Around the corner at 68 Bayard St. is a little place called "Nice Green Bo Restaraunt". They have delicious dumplings. You can share 3 orders between 4 people and only pay $5 each to get filled up with yummy food. Across the street is the Ice Cream Factory where they have an impressive array of flavors such as avacado and red bean. I got the lychee flavor, and it was delicious. Only, be aware that you can only sample 2 flavors of ice cream.

6. After dessert walk east down Canal Street (towards the East River) where you might just be lucky enough to run into some sister missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who sit outside the high school with big signs in Chinese offering free Book of Mormons and English lessons and try to talk to passers by. They're adorable girls and speak excellent Chinese, and if you crowd around them people will get interested and actually come up and talk to them.

7. Continue down Canal Street until you get to Allen Street. Cross the street and turn right. Just before you reach Division Street is a genuine Bansky painting on a wall. It's been tagged with silver paint, but what can you expect? Stand there and admire the piece of art which, if it had been done on a canvas would be worth thousands of dollars.

8. Walk down Allen Street towards the river until you pass under the Manhattan Bridge and actually get to the East River. The best time to go is at evening with a full moon when it's still 90 degrees and a cool breeze blows off of the river. You get a spectacular view of the Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridges and of Brooklyn and the Financial District.

9. Now if you're doing this walking tour right you'll be with someone who actually lives in a high rise luxury apartment in the Financial District. If you don't, well then you can't really finish the tour, so enjoy the view and then go home to your crumby little room that isn't actually a room at all in Harlem. Otherwise walk along the river towards the Financial District, try to navigate its charming crooked streets until you get to Two Gold St, advertised as "Downtown Manhattan's most amenity rich luxury resident rental". Take the elevator to the roof and enjoy the view of the river and of downtown Manhattan, or you can hang out in the club house with several private lounge areas and pool tables, or you can go for a swim in the pool or do laundry in one of the TWO on site laundry facilities. Two. On site. Not down the street, but in the same building. Unheard of. Or you could just hang out in a sweet apartment and watch tv on the giant flat screen.

This is where your adventure ends, but you'll find an A train near by that will take you to your (still 90 degree hot) room that isn't really a room in Harlem. From Central Park to the Upper West Side to China Town to the Financial District, you've seen a lot today and you deserve a nice cool shower.

an imitation from New York, you're made in Japan from cheese and chalk

2010-05-23T12:49:00.001-07:00

I've been sick since Tuesday night after I went out into the rain to see the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop which was thoroughly enjoyable, fun to watch, thought provoking and kind of awesome. I couldn't help feel like someone was messing with me, which really only made me enjoy it more. I don't feel like giving a plot summary or review, but there are plenty out there to read. I like how the NY Times calls it "a film that looks like a documentary but feels like a monumental con."

So while the beginning of the week was fun, the middle was a little annoying since I wanted to try to get better quickly so that I could resume my rock 'n' roll lifestyle in the Big Apple. So I stayed home, sniffly and miserable. On Thursday I went to the Whitney Biennial, an exhibition they do every other year of up and coming artists. I thought a couple hours there would not be too taxing on my virus infested body, but I didn't realize that my brain had ceased functioning until I found myself lost in Central Park. I had been meaning to simply walk across, to get from West 72nd street (on 8th Ave) to East 72 street (on 5th Ave), and I was little alarmed when I exited the Park at 59th Street and 6th Ave. If you don't feel like trying to picture the geography of this mistake, I made a map to give you an idea:

The black line is my intended route and the red marks my actual trek through the Park.

So I effectively walked a mile out of my way, which is no big deal, but because I was sick and it was a really hot day I thought that I was going to die by the time I made it to the museum. Plus I was also disturbed by the fact that I thought I was walking in one direction the whole way and I was so totally off track and I didn't know until I came out of the park.

As fun as that all was, and the Biennial was actually pretty great, Saturday was my really interesting day of the week. I was scheduled, or thought I was, to work at Coney Island at noon, so I decided to leave a little early and go to the temple to do some work. I had a very lovely experience there, and because I had been trying to write the talk that I gave in church today, I felt that my mind was in the right place to allow myself the kind of spiritual learning that can occur there. I left feeling very good and not concerned at all that I might be late to my job. I'm glad I didn't worry because when I got there my boss was surprised. "You're not on the schedule," she told me. Now, the fact that I was only scheduled to work twice in the whole month made me feel pretty sure that I was on the schedule, but I guess not on hers. I'm a little annoyed since her boss scheduled me and called her (while I was in the room) when she was out of town and told her when I was supposed to work. I told her not to worry about it and that I would go home and not come back, but that if she needed extra help in the next couple of weeks she could call me. I really just wanted to get out of there, especially because I was sick and had other plans for my Saturday. So I left and it took me an hour and a half to get home. I left for Coney Island at 10:30 and was back in my apartment by 2:30. It was a fantastic waste of time, and on the way back I sat next to a little old asian man on the train who proceeded to clip his very very long fingernails and leave the clippings on the floor. Lovely.

When I got home I rested and finished writing my talk and then I went to the LCD Soundsystem show, which I was very excited about. Needless to say, I had an awesome time. The only thing that bugged me was the crowd, especially the people near me, who refused to dance. One girl was positively frowning. It totally killed my concert buzz. Here is a video of the last song from the show that I went to, and if you look closely you can see me!! (I'm in the lower left hand side right in front of the two bongo-like drums)

I seriously had so much fun. I was exhausted by the time I got home but it felt good to dance and let myself go a little.

Well, that's it for now, but I have more to write about this week which has been far more enjoyable.

week three

2010-05-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

I'm at the end of week three of my time here in New York, and so far this has been my favorite week. I came out here because I felt like it was the right thing to do, and I was terribly disappointed when things seemed to not go as well as I'd hoped. I was feeling lonely, homesick and constantly jerked around by the city and the people in it. But, in my time alone my thoughts have gathered in little puddles. Maybe that's not the right metaphor. It reminds me of those little bacteria I had heard about that when they run out of food they congregate into a solid mass, millions upon millions of them, building on one another until they look like a small plant. I'm not sure why they do this actually, and maybe this whole description has been totally unnecessary, but my point is that my thoughts seem to be doing something similar, seemingly random but building into lessons and insights.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of my realizations, despite the fact that they are probably quite cheesy and it's very late and I'd like to go to sleep but my roommate is in the shower and will probably be there for the next hour at least.

First, I undervalue myself. I think most of us do, and I'm beginning to see that this undervaluing, which we tell ourselves is modesty, is bullshit. I may not have had lots of conventional experiences in the work force of the world, but I have had done a lot of a great things that I simply don't give myself credit for. I have to build on those things and those experiences.

Second, I cannot find happiness in a place, or rather because of a place. When I was in Provo I fantasized about being in New York, and when I got here I fantasized about being back in Utah, and when I go back I know I'll think about being here. I've got to learn to be happy where I'm at, whether it is in Harlem or Provo or Louisville. I have to find things that bring me joy in that place, but not because of the place itself, but because of how I am looking at that place. Today it was people's dogs. Oh I love the dogs in New York. They're like tiny happy little people, and they bring their owners such joy. I saw one little guy trotting along with his owner and her baby with such a bounce in his little step, and every five paces or so he would look up lovingly at his owner. Then I saw a little old lady walking with her walker and her little shiatsu whose long hair was brushed out perfectly, but she was very fat and moved slowly and I could tell she was old as well. "She's so adorable," I said, unable to help myself. "She's my baby," said the old lady, "Or I guess she's my old lady." I think I'll have to dedicate a whole post to the dogs I see around here. They amuse me so.

Lesson three: last night I started my job at an installation at the Armory on Park Avenue (which I will also have to wrote a whole post about soon) and part of my job is to talk to strangers about the piece. Me? Talk to strangers? If you know me, and have known me for a long time, you know me to be shy, to run away from strangers, to avoid talking at all costs, but deep inside I'm not really like that, and for the last couple of weeks I have been aching to talk to strangers, to all the hundreds of interesting people I see every day on the bus and the street and the subway. So this job is my chance to do so. And I realized last night that if I didn't talk to people I would have to stand there bored, and I would rather do anything than just stand around bored, so I pushed myself and I talked to as many people as I could, and we stood there, close together, and analyzed the piece, and I answered questions and I was in heaven. It was like teaching again. I loved it, and I realized this morning that I have to be just as deliberate in living my life. It's either push myself and get out of my comfort area and do something interesting or be bored and stand around and never get anywhere. I can't be afraid of people, I can't shy away from helping someone or from talking to a stranger when the opportunity comes up. And so when I left the apartment today and walked down the street in Harlem it felt like I was in a different place, and I felt good and comfortable and ready to go and talk to people and do so without being afraid but also without being naive, because I'm not going to undervalue myself anymore, and I know that I am a smart and capable human being.

So my whole point is, the last few weeks have been difficult, just as I knew they were going to be, but I can't believe how quickly I am learning lessons that will hopefully change the way I live my life. As I said before, these are all just random thoughts coming together and forming something bigger and more tangible, and they may continue to grow and change. I just hope I actually use them. I'm going to Coney Island tomorrow to work, where I had had a bad experience a couple weeks ago, and I hope things will go better with my new epiphanies in tow. We shall see.

New York I love you but you're bringing me down

2010-05-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a lady today who is serving an LDS mission with her husband here in New York. I asked her what she thought of the city and she said that she has a love/hate relationship with it. I instantly knew what she was talking about. Now, I have only been here for a week so everything might change by the time I leave, but if today is any indication then the relationship I have with New York is definitely love/hate, and I think this is perfectly fine. To be honest I was surprised that I didn't love every second of being here right from the start, but really, why should I? It's a strange and new experience for me, and the city is also quite dirty (even in the nicest areas), crowded, noisy and it has been either freezing or incredibly hot for the last week, there are weird looking people walking around, you are constantly surrounded by people you never have any reason to talk to, and it often smells of urine. So, with all of these things to hate, why do so many people continue to live here, to raise their families here, to grow old here? I'm pretty sure I just don't understand this place yet. I'm trying though, and maybe some day I'll figure it out.

I spent most of my day in Central Park, walking around, looking at people, knitting, you know, the things you do in Central Park. I love Central Park, and I have always loved it, before I even went there. In fact, I wrote a paper on it for my Environmental Humanities class a couple years ago and had plans to expand it into my thesis, but as many of you know, I switched to zombies because I realized that writing a 100 page thesis about a park would end up being extremely boring. I think I made the right decision, but I still have plans to expand that paper. It's about the poetics of park design, but I wanted to also talk about urban nature in general. The interesting thing about Central Park is that it resembles nature, but in a contrived way that is supposed to induce recreation and transcendence. It's like looking at a landscape painting where nature is improved upon. Landscapes and parks do not show its scary side, but instead are meant to be morally, and in the case of parks physically, theraputic. After the morning I had feeling like I absolutely hated this city I went into the park and wandered around the "ramble", the woodsy area behind one of the lakes with trails. Of course I know the history of the park well and I know that all of those trails were very carefully designed, but I totally fell for it. I felt like I was out in the woods, not in the middle of huge dirty city. I calmed down, breathed deeply and relaxed. I totally fell for what Frederick Law Olmstead had planned. I felt like I was far away from the dirt and noise of a crazy city. I watched the birds and the squirrels and I decided that I would forgive New York this time. After another hour in the park I decided that I loved New York again. I left the ramble, but later went back in to eat my lunch and knit.

I spent 6 hours in the park today, knitting and taking pictures and enjoying the warm sunshine and the clear blue skies. I climbed up the Belvedere Castle and looked out over the park. I got lost a few times, turned around because I couldnt see any buildings and didn't know which way from Sunday. But even that was nice because I found places I hadn't known existed. I bought a frozen custard at the Boathouse cafe which was way overpriced but entirely delicious, and a few times I was genuinely entertained by the people walking their dogs and their children, and at one point a little old French lady complimented my knitting.

The last week has been filled with anxiety, but today I am happy. I'm glad Central Park and I were able to get to know each other a little better, and I hope we can be real friends now. I can't wait to start working on that paper again.

nyc day 3

2010-04-29T21:17:00.001-07:00

The last two days have been mostly spent freaking out. I kept thinking, "what the hell am I doing here? Why do I think I can do this? I don't belong here and I'm being incredibly irresponsible." Today, however, was really lovely and I realized why I belong here. I am so comfortable in the city. I love all the people everywhere, all different kinds of people from all different kinds of backgrounds. I love the smells and the lights and the energy. I love how each neighborhood has a totally different personality.

I was freaking out because I don't have a strong reason to be here. I don't have a real job, just a little part time job that won't even pay for my food. So I decided that I would apply for internships and other jobs in the city. I decided that I need to interact with all these people that I see, that talking and smiling and helping them is something that I desperately want to do. So the plan tomorrow is to send out at least 3 resumes and cover letters to galleries, museums and other places needing interns or part timers. I decided that I would definitely come home at the end of summer, but that's not how I role. I live my life playing by ear, seeing what will come up. I don't make plans because plans never work out. Something else always comes up. Basically, I'm going to keep my options open.

So far it's been a busy few days. On Tuesday Jendar and I did a little shopping and went to Institute where a Muslim speaker (who is a civil rights activist for the Muslim community in Manhattan) presented a basic history/overview of Islam. It was incredibly interesting. I had a basic knowledge already but I liked hearing the passionate and tender way he spoke about his beliefs. Yesterday Jendar and I went to the Museum of Modern Art to see a performance artist, Marina Abramovic and her retrospective exhibit. This is the first retrospective of a performance artist in the history of the museum. Her stuff was very interesting, disturbing and engaging. She liked to push her body to its limits, and I loved the physicality of her work. Afterwards we shopped a little more and then went out to dinner for Jendar's birthday to this little vegetarian Chinese place in Hell's Kitchen. It ended up being pretty tasty and I had my first celebrity sighting, James Cromwell who is very tall and scary in real life. After dinner we got some frozen yogurt and then headed home where I proceeded to get lost and wandered around Harlem by myself at 11:00 pm. It was a little scary and at least now I know which direction I should go when I get off the train.

Today I met up with an old friend who lives in the area and we went and ate a famous soul food restaurant in Harlem called Sylvia's. Man was it tasty food. I got the golden fried pork chops and they were just perfect. Then my friend and I decided to walk over to Columbia University and down through the Upper West Side and in to Central Park. I checked on google maps after and figured out that we had walked almost 6 miles. And I only got to see a tiny corner of the city! It was really nice and I only have a little blister from it all. I got to see Tom's Restaurant (the one on Seinfeld and featured in that great song "Tom's Diner" which song I had in my head for the rest of the day). On the way to Central Park I passed a community garden and I was able to go in and talk to a couple of the gardners in there. It was a really adorable little place.

Central Park was lovely. We walked across to 5th Ave and then walked up and crossed through Harlem on St. Nicholas back to my house. I was going to write my thesis on Central Park and so it is always special to go in and see how calm and peaceful it is inside. After all the walking we did I rested for a few hours and then went back out to Lincoln Square to go to the temple. It was a really lovely session and I loved the spirit that was there in such a tiny little space. The whole experience was really special and I plan to go back as often as possible. After the temple Jendar and I went to a pizza place downtown called Artichoke and got a thick crust artichoke pizza slice that was huge and delicious. Definitely worth what seemed like 20 blocks that we walked to get there. On the way back we got a slirpy at the 7/11 and while filling my cup up my skirt fell down. I have no idea how or why, but there it went around my ankles. I quickly pulled it up and no one acted like they saw anything, but it was still weird and embarrassing. I guess i'd better take that skirt in a little before I wear it again.

So then we hopped on the train, and I got off at the right stop and walked in the right direction and got home fairly quickly. I live next to a bakery and I was considering rumaging through their trash, but I might just go in one night and ask if I can take anything they plan on throwing out.

I'm still on Utah time, so I've been staying up late every night and "sleeping in" until 9:30 or so when my body tells me it's 7:30 and time to get up. I kind of like this system since all the fun stuff happens at night. I'll try to keep it until I get an internship and have to be up and about early again.

Spring playlist

2010-04-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

So my friend Jendar recently blogged about her spring playlist and it got me to thinking about the things I have been listening to this spring. My ipod broke a few weeks ago and I got an ipod shuffle as a temporary replacement. I figured I would just have to deal with the fact that I can't have the option of listening to my entire music library at any time. I don't like it all the time, but I have been really satisfied with the 150 songs that are on there now, and I think they make up a pretty good spring playlist. So here's a sampling of what I've been listening to the last few weeks since the trees started turning green again.

The Talking Heads- "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
One of my favorites of all time. I will never get sick of this song.

Cat Power- "Empty Shell"
I have been meaning to listen to this album for years, and just barely managed to get it. I wish I had listened to it years ago because I love it.

Lykke Li- "Little Bit"
I have a thing for Swedish singers, and I downloaded hundreds of different songs a few years ago. She was in the mix, but I just barely got the whole album. I think she's adorable.

Okkervil River- "Lost Coastlines"
I've been listening to a LOT of Okkervil River lately. They're one of my favorie bands and I'm going to see them this summer in New York. I didn't love their last album, but the more I listen to it the more I'm appreciating it. This song features Jonathan Meiburg from Shearwater, the side project he and Will Sheff (from Okkervil River) started about 10 years ago. I love Meiburg's voice. It's like chocolate.

Peter Schilling- "Major Tom"
This is the funnest song and I can't get over how much I love it. I've made it my ringtone. I'm putting both the German and English videos up for your listening and viewing fernugen.

Camera Obscura- "Lloyd I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken"
Another long time favorite I can't get enough of.

Nouvelle Vague- "This Is Not a Love Song"
This is a cover of the PIL song, which I hadn't heard until the other day. I like this version better, but it's interesting to juxtapose the two, so I will.

Annie- "My Love is Better"
I just love Annie. She's so much fun.

Peaches- "Mommy Complex"
Thanks to Brock. She reminds me of Jerri Blank from Strangers With Candy.

where's Buffy?

2010-04-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

I was at my mom's house today and we couldn't find the cat. We were worried she slipped outside and wandered away, which wouldn't be such a big deal but there's a fox in the area that likes to eat cats. We searched everywhere. She must have a hiding place somewhere in the house because she often disappears like that and she hasn't been eaten by a fox yet. Anyway, we finally did find her hiding spot, and I have to say it is a pretty clever little spot.

She's in this closet somewhere. Can you guess where?

There she is! In that green bucket thing underneath all the coats. Sneaky little bugger.

i just came here to say i'm going away

2010-04-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

I'm moving to New York in a week. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this. A month ago I was going to move to Salt Lake. Two weeks ago I was going to stay in Provo because it would be easier and cheaper and now I'm moving to New York to have a summer job working at Coney Island. I have a place to live, I bought my plane ticket, and it seems like this and perhaps another job will work out for me. But really, I'm not going to be making much money and will probably spend a lot more than I make. I'm leaving my home, my family, my friends. Why? To get out of Provo I guess, even though summer in Provo is wonderful and I love it. I love going to the farmer's market and swimming at Mona, and I had goals of working hard at the local community garden and maybe finding a boyfriend. And now I'm moving my whole life across the country so I can work part time at a museum shop in Coney Island?

Yep. That's what I'm doing. And I can't wait. It's really time for me to make this change. I get antsy staying in one place for very long, and I've been fantasizing leaving Provo for years. One of my closest friends lives out there and I'll make new friends and have a wonderful time getting to know a really great city. I feel good about it, and a lot of prayers have been answered to get me to this point, so I'm just going to take a leap of faith and see how it works out. I'm mostly sad to be leaving the people I love, people that I just barely started to be friends with, people I've been friends with for as long as I've been at BYU. But sometimes you just have to go away for a little while, and this is one of those times.

5 reasons why today was a great day

2010-04-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

1. I took five bags of old clothes to D.I.
2. I got three really great hugs all within the same half hour.
3. I sold my first item on etsy!
4. I got a bound copy of my thesis in the mail.
5. It was a beautiful, warm and semi productive day.

hair story

2010-04-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

I'm a little obsessed with my hair, so I thought I'd try to get all my thoughts and feelings about it out of my system and throw it out into the void of the internet.

For the last several months I've been thoroughly dissatisfied with my hair, which may or may not have had negative effects on my overall sense of well being. Right now it's on the longer side, about shoulder length and curly. I've usually kept it short because when it gets long it weighs down the curls, and I really have no idea what to do with it. At any rate, for the last few months whatever shampoo and conditioner I was using was just crap. It seemed like it took all the curl out of my head. Before I had been using horse shampoo for about a year, and it was pretty good. My hair was usually shiny and bouncy. I switched however, which was just a huge mistake.

So I've been thinking lately about how to remedy my bad hair days for good. A couple of summers ago, before I switched to horse shampoo, I stopped shampooing my head altogether, with mixed results. I used baking soda to wash it followed by a vinegar rinse. After a while it looked good, but with it being summer and me being all sweaty it still seemed a bit flat. Also, I smelled like vinegar, especially when I sweat, which was all the time.

I wanted to try it out again, but I didn't want to smell like vinegar. While in the back of my mind for the last couple of weeks, I was still avoiding the whole vinegar thing when suddenly I realized the other day that I was probably just using too much vinegar. I never measured the amount, just poured a little in a cup and added water. So this time I was very precise and put 1 tablespoon of vinegar for 1 cup of water and put it in an old shampoo bottle. I did the same with the baking soda, since I also think I was using too much and it was drying out my scalp. 1 tablespoon for 1 cup of water. It's not that much, really. I also added a drop of lavender essential oil to the vinegar solution to add a nice smell to my hair.

I used it the other day and when I got out of the shower I instantly noticed a difference. My hair was so shiny! And it already felt light and bouncy. I left it alone, let it dry without adding any product (it dried very quickly I noticed) and voila! All day long I had big bouncy curls that kept their shape, and I didn't smell like vinegar at all. I've been doing it for the last week and getting the same result every day. Some people's hair has to get used to this sort of switch, but I think mine was craving it. So now, no shampoo, no conditioner, no product at all, and I think I have perfect hair. I may not even cut it any time soon (the only thing I knew to do to keep it curly). It's pretty awesome, even it if makes for a really boring story.

good news and bad news and good news

2010-04-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

I desperately hate the dentist. Eight years ago I went and the dentist had no patience for me after four shots and said he wouldn't give me another and that I needed to suck it up. I still hate that man. And so it was eight years before I would return to the dentist, which I did a couple of months ago and I have been back 4 times. I had 6 very deep cavities (my fault for not getting them taken care of years ago) and a cracked tooth which required a crown and may require a root canal (not my fault for not going to the dentist since it was in a tooth that already had a filling and was almost undetectable). The cavities are taken care of, and now I have to go back a couple more times for the problem tooth.

Unlike my last dentist this dentist is extremely nice and sweet, and I feel like he genuinely is bothered by the idea of causing anyone pain. Although I never want to go back to the dentist ever again, at least this experience has not be as unpleasant as the last. Oh, I also found out that Dr. Sweetypie is married and has three little babies, which only makes him more adorable in my opinion.

Today while at the dentist I missed a phone call from the University of Louisville, the school where I had applied and never heard back from. I called them back, mouth numb and all, and talked to the graduate program director. She told me that I was accepted into the program and that the letter they had sent me was sent back because of a wrong address. We figured out that I had put my "permanent" address down as my mom's street address, who doesn't have a mail box. I am used to putting this address as permanent on loan applications and such where they don't want a P.O. Box. I hadn't thought about that, and so the letter was sent there and then back to the school. Because of this delay I missed the deadline to apply for the teaching assistantship which would pay for tuition and give me a livable stipend. And so, she wanted to know if I would still consider going to the school this year, but told me that if I wanted to I could defer enrollment until next year and apply for the assistantship. Out of state graduate tuition is $9000 a semester. I think I'll defer.

So, if I defer, which will likely be the case, I will have a year off. What should I do in that year? I'm thinking I'll find new and interesting ways to make and spend money. That's a good plan, yeah? I think I'll start by moving to New York.

abject

2010-04-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

I love horror films, and I love talking about and writing about horror films. You would think this would desensitize me a little bit so that when faced with mildly gross or distasteful things in real life, I wouldn't be bothered as much. In fact, the opposite is true. I think it has sensitized me. I know the stuff on screen is fake, which makes stuff in real life that much more real and intense for me. I saw a dead duck today on the way to campus. Someone had tried to cover it up with a piece of cardboard, but with its little head peeking out, the cardboard only made it that much more abject. I don't like seeing dead animals like that. Then a block later I crossed the street and there was blood on the road. Blood. It must have been real blood. Probably from an animal getting run over. It made me sick. I almost couldn't go to campus. Now, this is ridiculous. That dead duck was not the first time I've seen a dead duck. I grew up on a ranch where we killed ducks (and chickens and geese and turkeys) all the time. I've seen blood; I've participated in slaughtering animals. So why was what I saw today so abject? Probably because it's out of a context of the farm. It's a dead duck and blood on the street in the city where I live. Definitely not expected. About an hour later some girls came to class late saying they had seen a girl get hit by a car, right where I saw the blood apparently. Freaky.

sing me Happy Birthday

2010-04-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

This is going to sound awful and pessimistic, but I'm going to say it. I am not a fan of birthdays and holidays. While holidays are not always so bad because it forces us to spend time with our loved ones, I really hate birthdays. It's like I have 2 designated days of the year to remember what a crappy day it was: my birthday and Christmas. Yesterday, as some may know, was my birthday. It was just another day. I felt sick in the morning, had a terrible headache, went to a couple of panels at the conference, went to lunch and dinner. As far as days go it was mediocre at best, definitely not as great as Thursday and Friday were, but because it was designated my birthday it suddenly went from an ok day to kind of a crappy day that I would rather have not called my birthday.

Another thing I hate about birthdays is this weird attitude that we have about them. It's YOUR day and you are supposed to be selfish (you pick what you want to do for dinner, you pick the cake you want to eat, and some people ask you to pick the present you want), but at the same time, if you are selfish at all people will think you are a total brat. I feel like I'm doing something wrong when I have a birthday, like people are obligated to say happy birthday and they are annoyed with me when I don't tell me every little thing I want. I don't want the day to be my day. I don't want to say "It's my birthday and I want to do this." I don't want the day to arbitrarily be a "special day" because I happened to have been born on the date so many years ago. I want the day to be special because people go out of their way and make it a special day, without me asking or demanding or even being aware of their plans to make it special. Maybe this is the most selfish way to want a birthday, but I don't want it to be MY day, I want it to be YOUR day to make me feel special, if you think I am special and want to bother. If you don't it's fine.

And so I'm going to put this out there to the world. Please don't ever feel obligated to give me a present of any kind, not for Christmas or my birthday or anything. If something makes you think of me, then by all means, but you don't have to wait for some arbitrary date to give such a thing to me, I'd rather you try to make next Thursday a special day than my stupid birthday. We can celebrate the day of my birth any day of the year if you really want to celebrate it at all.

I do have to say that I had an excellent birthday dinner last night, thanks to my sister and our friend. We went to a tapas place and spent a LOT of money trying all the different little entrees. We had duck, quail, tuna, gnocchi, risotto, beef tenderloin, a lobster salad, and two other things that I can't remember, and for dessert I had gelato with caramel and a basil cream. I loved the basil cream with the gelato, it was the most interesting flavor ever. Basil should be sweet, I've decided.

So, I'm still in St. Louis but I'm leaving today. The PCA Conference was great this year, even if I didn't get to do as much site seeing as I did in New Orleans, but it turns out there's just not that much to see. I spent most of my time geeking out with my fellow academic nerds about popular culture, which was just as fun as anything I can think of. I presented my paper on zombie origins, and was pretty proud of it. There weren't any zombie people there though because I had been stuck on the panel at the last minute and so they didn't know another zombie paper was given, which was really too bad. I was hoping to have a zombie discussion. It was fun nevertheless. I had worked on the paper the few days before and was really proud at how it turned out.

Anyway, I'll blog more about the conference later. I just needed to get my feelings about birthdays out of my system.

whither must I wander?

2010-03-01T21:37:00.000-08:00

As I come up to a huge month of change and events I can't help but feel extremely anxious for my future. I defend my thesis this Thursday, I'll find out if I am accepted or rejected from 4 schools within the next two weeks, I'm going to a conference at the end of the month and I'll be celebrating another birthday. Then I graduate for the second time in 7 years. I don't know what is in store for me, where I'll be in the next six months, or in the next two months for that matter. It's easy to get all disparaging, to think about the missed opportunities, the time I may or may not have wasted in the last 4 years since I graduated the first time. It's easy to heap regrets on regrets, and for some reason that is all I can seem to do. When I ask myself the question, "Am I where I want to be? Have I done what I wanted to do? Am I on the path to where I want to go and who I want to become?" I don't even know what the answer is, but I have a sinking feeling that it's a big resounding no.

I don't like thinking this way, but the truth is I'm scared. I'm scared out of my mind.

Appropriately I've been listening to this song a lot this week. It's a song based on a poem by Robert Louis Stephenson, and is on the Martha Wainwright album I'm in love with.

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather:
Thick drives the rain and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree,
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door -
Dear days of old with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.