Someday I will play guitar on the roof.
Someday I want to try raw meat.
Someday I want a non-creepy and gross guy to like me.
Someday I will learn to stand on my head.
Someday I will grow dreadlocks, then shave my head when I get tired of them.
Someday I will go on a long road trip with no destination.
Someday I will fast for a whole day.
Someday I want to get a really cool henna tattoo.
Someday I will actually get around to giving out christmas cards and presents.
Now, I have to go to class. One of these days, I'll skip and go out for ice cream instead. Or maybe not.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Food
I have often thought that life would be so much easier if I were anorexic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not, as anyone who's seen me eat pizza will testify to. Seriously, think about it. I'd never have to pack a lunch, be super skinny, and wouldn't end up spending all my money on breadsticks at the Dominoes next to the studio. Aside from the whole starving to death part, it's not a bad deal. Fasting could be a good compromise. It's almost a pity that I don't have the self-control for it. I mention this because, once again, I forgot to bring a lunch, and it looks like I won't get home until about 9:00 tonight. I'll probably end up shelling out a couple bucks at the Carls Jr. across the street from the school come lunchtime, unless I have homework to do then instead. I think my priorities may be askew, but that's life.
It's a commonly known fact that ballet dancers are, like, twice as likely to develop an eating disorder. You try wearing skintight clothes and standing in a room full of mirrors every day and see how you feel about yourself. What's worse, we are taught to critique ourselves throughout the whole class. That's why the mirrors are there in the first place. Plus, ballet really only looks good on 90-pound, flat-chested girls who never have to wear a bra with their leotard and have slightly large, perfectly arched feet with toes all the same length. (Guys don't have as many qualifications.) I don't have any of these qualities. But I dance anyway. I eat like there's no tomorrow despite everything. The way I see it, I'm fine the way I am. I'll never be that model dancer, so there's no use worrying about it and getting all neurotic. It might be too late to avoid the neurosis, though.
On the other hand, there's another model I do try to imitate. Again, I know I can never come close to this personification of all things people should be, but in this case, I try to the best of my ability. (You see where I'm going with this?) The word Christian literally means "Little Christ". We are a body of Christ-imitators. I think the Church with a big C has lost this idea. Christianity has become a club of sorts. To get in, you have to have the same political beliefs, wear the right kind of clothes, and live a certain way. I imagine that Jesus will have some choice words for the institution of Church and its proponents when he gets back.
It's a commonly known fact that ballet dancers are, like, twice as likely to develop an eating disorder. You try wearing skintight clothes and standing in a room full of mirrors every day and see how you feel about yourself. What's worse, we are taught to critique ourselves throughout the whole class. That's why the mirrors are there in the first place. Plus, ballet really only looks good on 90-pound, flat-chested girls who never have to wear a bra with their leotard and have slightly large, perfectly arched feet with toes all the same length. (Guys don't have as many qualifications.) I don't have any of these qualities. But I dance anyway. I eat like there's no tomorrow despite everything. The way I see it, I'm fine the way I am. I'll never be that model dancer, so there's no use worrying about it and getting all neurotic. It might be too late to avoid the neurosis, though.
On the other hand, there's another model I do try to imitate. Again, I know I can never come close to this personification of all things people should be, but in this case, I try to the best of my ability. (You see where I'm going with this?) The word Christian literally means "Little Christ". We are a body of Christ-imitators. I think the Church with a big C has lost this idea. Christianity has become a club of sorts. To get in, you have to have the same political beliefs, wear the right kind of clothes, and live a certain way. I imagine that Jesus will have some choice words for the institution of Church and its proponents when he gets back.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Lonely
I am alone a lot. It's not that I'm antisocial, but I'm not what I call 'proactively social' either. If someone comes up to me and wants to talk, I'll have a conversation, but I haven't been the one to start a conversation in a very long time, which is probably why I'm so terrified of making phone calls. I know this is a terrible mindset, but in my heart of hearts, I don't feel like people are worth my time. I am so narcissistic that other people hardly register as blips on the radar anymore. Sometimes I say to myself "People are important to God", and I believe it, but not enough to act on it.
I was lonely once. I was in the throes of a school play, one of twoscore students laughing, joking, and singing backstage for months. Alone one night, lying in bed and trying to sleep, I remember thinking "Hmm. There's nobody here. It would be kind of nice if someone was." Now, I often go hours without speaking to someone at school, but I don't think I'm lonely. It's entirely possible that I am and just haven't noticed. I am out of practice. I have gotten used to not interacting with people, which makes it that much harder when I do have to. Having had a lot of experience, I can fake it pretty well, though.
"It is not good for man to be alone." Gen. 2:18. This is one of those verses that make me think "oh, crap". I kind of like being alone. My soul must be sick, like a kid with a fever who doesn't want to eat anything, even ice cream. I have a lot of things I could blame it on; my very mild Autism, my busy-ness, heck, even the fall of man, but ultimately, this is something I have to fix. Well, me and God.
All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love- a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
I was lonely once. I was in the throes of a school play, one of twoscore students laughing, joking, and singing backstage for months. Alone one night, lying in bed and trying to sleep, I remember thinking "Hmm. There's nobody here. It would be kind of nice if someone was." Now, I often go hours without speaking to someone at school, but I don't think I'm lonely. It's entirely possible that I am and just haven't noticed. I am out of practice. I have gotten used to not interacting with people, which makes it that much harder when I do have to. Having had a lot of experience, I can fake it pretty well, though.
"It is not good for man to be alone." Gen. 2:18. This is one of those verses that make me think "oh, crap". I kind of like being alone. My soul must be sick, like a kid with a fever who doesn't want to eat anything, even ice cream. I have a lot of things I could blame it on; my very mild Autism, my busy-ness, heck, even the fall of man, but ultimately, this is something I have to fix. Well, me and God.
All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love- a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
-C.S. Lewis
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Role Model
Today I volunteered at Little YG (aka Yujin Gakuen shogakko), my alma mater, if you can say that about an elementary school. Michiko-sensei was my third grade teacher, and today I helped in her first-grade class. It's funny to have gone from the "problem child" who supposedly threw Travis Worscherwits into a plate-glass window (To this day, I maintain it was actually just a bit of a shove) to "Aaburi sensei". There was this one kid who had just started Japanese this year and was a tad ADHD, emphasis on the AD. He would stand up and wander around the classroom until the teacher told him to go back to his seat. I think he also had a little crush on me, since he would always come and talk to me while I was grading their homework. Michiko was telling the class (in Japanese, of course) that I used to be a first grader in that very room, and, by way of encouraging this poor kid, told him that I used to be "just like him", and look at me now! I am a sensei! All you little kids should grow up to be like me and come back and visit during your free period. Gee. What do you really say to that? It was funny, but at the same time, there was a smidge of indignation sludging around in my thoughts. I wasn't really like that boy. I had a good reason for shoving that kid! If anything, I'm just like that one blond girl who only speaks in Japanese and always knows the answers. But now, I guess I'm a role model for all kinds of semi-delinquent first graders whose lights I would have punched out if I had been in their class. I'm kind of glad though. Better to be a poster child for reformed "problem children" than nothing. Seriously, I could have just changed that kid's life. It's not likely, but it's possible.
Countercultural Culture
It's ironic that our culture defines coolness both by fitting in and standing out. To be cool, you have to be just a little bit different from what is expected, but not stick out too much. We, the crowd, collectively don't like to follow the crowd. Even more paradoxically, commercials and advertisements try to tell you how to be cool, but by setting it up as a standard 'cool', it becomes 'normal' and loses its coolness. By defining coolness, you change it to something other than what you defined it as. Logically, then, it could be said not to exist. In quantum physics, The Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle says you can never know where an electron is in an atom and where it's going at the same time. After checking with wikipedia, it turns out this has nothing to do with the point I was going to make. What I meant apparently has to do with Observer Effect, which is the idea that by observing an event you change it. In the same way, the media's portrayal of what's cool instantly makes it uncool. "So what do we do?" You ask. My answer: don't even try. I mean, present yourself as well as you can, but don't waste time, energy, or (especially) money trying to be the coolest thing since sliced bread, since tomorrow it'll be something else anyway.
Hmm. Come to think of it, sliced bread doesn't get the recognition it deserves as a food product. We take it for granted. But seriously, whoever first thought to slice the bread before stuffing it in a bag and selling it was a genius. But I digress.
Say you're driving along and you see a billboard with John 3:16 on it. Certainly, the people who paid to put it there had only the best intentions, but most of the people who it is intended to reach have heard it before. It's old news. It's not cool, it's what their parents think. Who wants to be like them? Seeing it just that one more time just hammers another nail in the coffin full of "Smile, Jesus Loves You" stickers. Christians try to market Jesus like he's some sort of miracle drug. Just say these words and all your problems will go away. (Rabbit trail: tell that to the first-century Christians when they were boiled in oil, fed to lions, and crucified upside-down.) The point is, they don't believe it. To be effective, we'll have to be sneakier than that. Unless they see the radical, countercultural Jesus for themselves, there's no way they'll be interested. Cliches are the last thing they want to hear. Jesus himself is exactly the opposite of what we are making him out to be. His words will always be counter-culture because they are counter to everything society values. Money, looks, popularity, power, everything humankind values he tells us to shun. "The meek shall inherit the earth"? The meek? You mean that mousey-lookin' kid back there with the glasses as thick as ice cubes who never opens his mouth because he's got braces the size of a small railroad? Him? Inherit the earth? Could you possible be more timelessly countercultural? Jesus himself and everything he stood for is so radically against culture that he is the only thing that can be cool despite the media that we unfortunately give him.
Hmm. Come to think of it, sliced bread doesn't get the recognition it deserves as a food product. We take it for granted. But seriously, whoever first thought to slice the bread before stuffing it in a bag and selling it was a genius. But I digress.
Say you're driving along and you see a billboard with John 3:16 on it. Certainly, the people who paid to put it there had only the best intentions, but most of the people who it is intended to reach have heard it before. It's old news. It's not cool, it's what their parents think. Who wants to be like them? Seeing it just that one more time just hammers another nail in the coffin full of "Smile, Jesus Loves You" stickers. Christians try to market Jesus like he's some sort of miracle drug. Just say these words and all your problems will go away. (Rabbit trail: tell that to the first-century Christians when they were boiled in oil, fed to lions, and crucified upside-down.) The point is, they don't believe it. To be effective, we'll have to be sneakier than that. Unless they see the radical, countercultural Jesus for themselves, there's no way they'll be interested. Cliches are the last thing they want to hear. Jesus himself is exactly the opposite of what we are making him out to be. His words will always be counter-culture because they are counter to everything society values. Money, looks, popularity, power, everything humankind values he tells us to shun. "The meek shall inherit the earth"? The meek? You mean that mousey-lookin' kid back there with the glasses as thick as ice cubes who never opens his mouth because he's got braces the size of a small railroad? Him? Inherit the earth? Could you possible be more timelessly countercultural? Jesus himself and everything he stood for is so radically against culture that he is the only thing that can be cool despite the media that we unfortunately give him.
Monday, October 16, 2006
The Complex Infrastructure Known as the Female Mind
The general consensus is that men are hunters and have to chase things. (Kind of like a dog, but that's not my point.) If a girl gives away all her life secrets, leaving nothing hidden about herself, there's no chase, no adventure for the guy. We are supposed to be mysterious to them. But what happens when no one chases a girl? She can be as mysterious as she wants, but if no one is interested in solving the mystery, she just looks like a derangedly severe introvert. Or maybe that's just me.
I believe that God put this desire to be pursued and rescued into the female heart so that we would want to recieve His perfect rescue from the ultimate evil. Every little romance here on earth is just us acting out, in miniature, the cosmic pursuit of Christ after humankind. It's all over our myths- knights in shining armor, princesses locked in towers, riding into the sunset- even if it's total baloney, its prevalence tells you something about the image resonates in our collective cultural consciousness. Man, now I really want to watch Sleeping Beauty for some reason.
I believe that God put this desire to be pursued and rescued into the female heart so that we would want to recieve His perfect rescue from the ultimate evil. Every little romance here on earth is just us acting out, in miniature, the cosmic pursuit of Christ after humankind. It's all over our myths- knights in shining armor, princesses locked in towers, riding into the sunset- even if it's total baloney, its prevalence tells you something about the image resonates in our collective cultural consciousness. Man, now I really want to watch Sleeping Beauty for some reason.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Philosophical Rampage!
Okay, so upon further reflection, I figured nobody would want to read about my pathetic, everyday life, so I thought maybe they'd want to read about my pathetic, ill-articulated personal philosophy instead! Here we go!
- Jesus was (and is) who he said he was.
- People are, left to themselves, selfish, interested only in their own happiness.
- Familiarity breeds contempt, so religious billboards and bumperstickers do more harm than good.
- Even if they're going to hell, people who have thought through all the facts at their disposal and come to the wrong conclusion are more deserving of respect than those who blindly accept the truth.
- If you don't like toast, you're seriously missing out.
- No person is inferior to any other, since we're all vastly flawed anyway.
- Dance is harder than most any sport, and guys who dance are more worthy of veneration than football players.
- In music, "Christian" lyrics and innovative musicality are a rare combination. Why do something new when you can sing chorus, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, chorus again?
- Choreography should never repeat more than four counts of movement more than twice, and even then, never consecutively.
- Something doesn't have to be "Christian" to be acceptable by a Christian.
- "Bad words" are just words, but still, be careful not to offend people. Like don't say 'crap' or 'butt' around a bunch of four-year-olds.
- 'Jehovah' is a mistranslation of YWH and its use should be avoided. It's not bad, but it's like calling someone the wrong name. God has a name and wants you to use it.
- Taking away the honors system in school, supposedly to raise everyone to honors level, won't work. Teachers have to teach to the lowest common denomenator, so the level of the work will automatically go down. Sure, we need to see to every student's needs, but the needs of a kid whose mom is a drug addict and who can't do their homework because they have to take care of their 17 stepsiblings aren't everyone's needs.
- Being too overt in your Christianity is a big turnoff to most people, making you completely useless as an evangelist. Nobody wants to be friends with a bible-thumper, but if you make friends first, then you can gently thump a little bible their way.
- You don't have to be smart to look smart.
- If you have to pretend to be something you're not to get people to like you, it's not worth it.
- Farts and burps happen to everyone- there's no reason to hide them among people you know.
- Sex is meant to be enjoyed in a very specific context- outside of marriage, it's sin. Unfortunately, sin is very marketable.
- Blood and guts were put inside people's bodies for a reason. Don't make me look at them!
- Some fear is legitimate- like a healthy respect for heights- but others are just silly. That tiny spider couldn't hurt you even if it wanted to.
A blog, eh?
Well, here I am. Post number 1. I figured since I'm virtually an adult now, I might as well start writing about it. In other news, I recently decided that I'm "over" orange and that my favorite color is now green. Whether this has anything to do with my role as Lady of the Forest in Narnia this year is anyone's guess. It's a fun role, but more because of the costume than anything else. It is over fifty years old and was worn in the Metropolitan Opera. I put a picture of last year's Lady of the Forest here for all y'alls to see. I tried the dress on for the first time Friday, and every time would I would- gingerly- go to adjust the sleeves, with the horrifying sound of tearing fabric, a tiny new hole appeared. After this year, it is going to be retired and they're going to make a new version. Well, with that astonishingly long rabbit trail, I'd better get to church. It looked rainy, so I begged a ride off of Tiese. I have GOT to get my stinking license!
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