A pointless ramble.

Alright, so it's winter break. Whoop-dee-doo. I still have to do a boatload of schoolwork and just plain old work-work. Oh well. At least I get to stay home in my jim-jams all day. I've been watching a lot of BBC shows lately, so pajamas are now jim-jams. According to motto #1, (The secret to creativity is hiding your sources,) I shouldn't have told all y'alls where I got the word jim-jams and just used it like I made it up myself. Unfortunately, then I'd lose my link to what I actually wanted to talk about.
Anyway, between items on my 6.2 mile long to-do list, I've been watching this very British TV show called Doctor Who. (I might as well admit, I think the new Doctor is pretty darn handsome. You can all thank my mom for pointing out that all the guys I think are handsome have kind of big noses.) Wow, I'm getting distracted really easily tonight. Alright, back on topic. There was an episode or two with these Cybermen, they're called, and they gave me the creeps. They are robots with people's brains inside, except with the emotions removed. As I was lying awake last night, unable to sleep because of the creepy monsters I stupidly put in my head right before bed, it occurred to me to wonder why the Cybermen were so much creepier than other villain-type robots and aliens in the show. The answer I came up with is that it could be any of us that got our brains cut out and stuck in a metal body. (stick with me, there was a point I set out to make...) Then I wondered, "Why am I afraid of losing this body? It's not like I get to keep it forever. It's not that I even like living in it all the time." It did kind of help to think of it in those terms. I'm so glad to know that there's a better body than this one waiting when I wear this one out. I have nothing to fear from death, or robots, or demons, or aliens, or autopsies on CSI, or computer generated blood that squirts out when you fall down in that skateboarding game we have on the xbox, or anything else Satan can hurl out at me. For some reason, though, I still get freaked out. Wow. I never knew there were so many things I was afraid of. That's odd. I thought I was fearless. Hmm. Not the first time I've been wrong.

Well, as it turns out, I didn't make much of a point after all. It's just one of those thoughts that kind of rambles. The phrase "Train of thought" doesn't do the process justice. Like a plant, it seems simple enough until you try to extract it and find innumerable roots shooting off in all directions. Ah well. I should go to bed. I should have gone to bed two to three hours ago.

I am now 16.98905 years old. Freaky.

I'm back!

Hey, guys! Long time, no see. As I predicted, I'm coming out of post-Narnia depression, just in time for all the family to come over for Christmas. I got a letter back from Rotary yesterday and now my future has been decided. Well, the next year of it, anyway. It turns out that I will be going and living abroad next year! Before you ask, I don't know what country yet. Rotary doesn't let you choose, but they let you choose your top three-ish choices, but that doesn't mean you'll get to go to any of them. My top three so far: Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark. My semi-plausible plan: go abroad, come back, go to college, then come back over winter break and guest star in Narnia (maybe as the witch!).

While it's great to know what I'll be doing next year, I'm just slightly freaked out. Suddenly, I'm a grown-up, moving away and living under my own steam. Everything is so final. This is my last Christmas at home. My last birthday (17!). I've been crying a lot lately. I don't know why, but I tend to cry at the silliest things sometimes. Even when I'm not particularly sad, I just well up sometimes. Then I feel silly, since it doesn't really fit with my picture of myself. Motto #3 of mine is "'Cause I'm fearless". Fearless girls like myself shouldn't get all emotional like that. (I've been watching Firefly, so I kinda start thinkin' in Malcolm Reynolds-style half-western fancy talk.)

For your reading enjoyment, I'll list out as many of my mottoes as I can.

#1. The secret to creativity is hiding your sources.
#2. Don't force it, just get a bigger hammer.
#3. 'Cause I'm fearless.
#4. It'll grow back.
#5. Never put a sock in the toaster.
#6. "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Einsten

Narnia

Tonight was the first Narnia performance. It was mostly good, but, as usual, not perfect. Ah well. One down, two to go. Pray for the show. Pray for all of us in it, from the little girl who got poked in the eye on stage to the pointe soloist who was late for her cue because she lost a toenail right before going onstage. I myself got a light smack on the forehead with a sword in the battle and almost fell over in my LOTF solo. I have no deep thoughts for you this week. Sorry.

Fishin'.

I have not had anything to say for a couple of weeks now.

After staring at that sentance on the screen for about a minute and a half, I had a thought. It kind of hurt. Perhaps more accurately, I remembered a thought I had a few days ago.

I don't remember where, but I once read something about a fish, living in a pond with a lot of other fish, and who lived a fairly good fish lifestyle. One day, this fish is taken out of the pond by a scientist who had been studying these fish for some time. The fish finds itself unable to breathe, to move in the manner to which it is accustomed, held in two strange pink fleshy things and peered at by a monster as incomprehensible as it is hideous. Finally, the fish is placed back in the pond, where it tries to explain its experiences to the other fish, some of whom think he's lying, and the rest of whom simply can't comprehend the universe he describes. Now, I think the guy who wrote that was comparing it to alien abductions, or something, but it came to mind in church last Sunday when my pastor was teaching on being a fisher of men, and it occurred to me that that's not a particularly attractive image when you think about it. I know He didn't mean it this way when He said it, but it's one of those thoughts that just occurs to me and won't go away. I mean, you and I are scaly fish swimming around, chilling in the sea of Galilee, when out of nowhere, a worm falls from the sky. Clearly, some higher power from somewhere above the waves wants to bless us with a free meal. When our hypothetical fish-selves bite into the wriggling little morsel, an unexpected, sharp pain shoots through our mouths, and we feel ourselves tugged inexorably upward. We break the surface, leaving the universe as we know it, and die gasping. Yeah. Sign me up. I just remembered that they used nets instead of the worm on a hook we know today, but the idea's the same. Shoot. That derailed my train of thought and spoiled my point.

My new point is that there's more to this universe than we can see in this life. Heaven is not going to be sitting around on a cloud strummin' a harp for eternity, but it's not going to be like anything we ever experienced or imagined either. Our earthly selves are chained to a certain perspective and until we're with God, we won't know what causes the universe as we know it to work. I've been reading a lot of books on quantum physics and string theory lately, and even though I don't understand a lot of it, it opens a lot of interesting thoughts, of which this is one.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that I think has a good idea behind it. We tend to take the things we have for granted and stress about the things we don't have, rather than being content in whatever circumstance. Anyways, there is definently a downside to the holiday. I guess there are two. Firstly, that by isolating a concept into one day and a bunch of greeting cards, it is objectified and loses meaning. You see it in Mother's Day, Veteran's Day, and all the holidays that are just 'reminders' of someone or something. Nextly, it is more about a day off of school and eating until your stomach contains enough food to feed several third-world countries for a year, once they rinsed off the bile. Eew. Gross. elib eht ffo desnir yeht ecno. There. That should have reversed it. Just making sure you're still reading. Anyways, I could write more on the topic, but... I'm not going to.

Sneezes.

A short thought before I turn in. It had better be short since I'm already lying down under the covers with the lights out, and my eyelids are getting dangerously heavy.

Lately, when I sneeze and people say "Bless you," I have responded with "You too". Mostly, they just look confused, which is fun in and of itself, but then I usually explain that I don't need an excuse to bless them. It's just a nice reminder to be aware of what we say. Words become cliche so easily. I find it especially true in worship, where the most beautifully articulated statements about such alluring and mysterious topics as divinity and eternity, sacrifice and humanity, lose all meaning after they've been sung a few times. Old news, but a catchy tune. Sometimes it takes a new perspective to make a song meaningful again. I heard the song "Blessed be the name of the Lord" sung shortly after attending someone's funeral once, and ever since, I can't sing "You give and take away" without choking up. The other one that gets me is in "Jesus, all for Jesus", where it says "All of my ambitions, hopes, and plans/ I surrender these into your hands" because I like my plans. I don't always think I can give them up so readily while I reside in this flesh.

Why Girls Flip for Door-Holders

Women have spent the past couple hundred years fighting to be seen as equal to men. We can do the same jobs, go the same places, and act the same way with relatively little stigma attached to it. Sure, a girl who can burp the ABCs might seem a tad odd, but not nearly as much so as it would have in, say, 1906. So here's the thing. Why is it that girls flip for guys who hold doors open for them? We spend hours moaning that chivalry is dead and waiting for someone to ask us to dance despite our assurance that we want equal treatment. It's culturally acceptable for a girl to ask a guy out, but it's just a little odd, still. We don't want to have to do that, it's awkward. (Obviously, it must be awkward for the guy to ask out a girl, too, but still. That's a different kind of awkward.) It's like the roles are reversed, which doesn't make sense since, in theory, the roles are no different from one another.
I'll tell you my theory. Back when men opened doors for us, stood when a lady entered a room, and tipped their hats to them in the street, it was all automatic. It was expected, and to not comply would have been unthinkable. Rather than anything personal, it was just cultural. Even that knight in shining armor people are so keen on was probably out battling dragons and saving princesses as a matter of form.
When women's rights became a hot issue, a man holding the door for a woman indicated to an already slightly paranoid suffragist that he thought women were incapable of something so simple as opening a door for themselves. How can we ever be seen as equals when they think we're that incompetent? I'll open the door myself, thank you very much.
On the other hand, when a guy holds the door for me today in 2006, odds are, it's not because he is expected to or because he thinks I can't do it myself. We beat the last of both those mentalities out of them in the 60s while we were bra-burning feminazis. Today, a guy holding a door open for you probably indicates that they respect you, which is all we really wanted in the first place. The simple action means infinitely more now that they don't have to do it. So guys, hold the door for people. Girls, you can hold the door, too. Old ladies. Moms with their arms full of groceries and two-year-olds. Besides literally holding the door for folks, give them a hand in other, unexpected ways. Our culture could use a little more good-old-fashioned respect for others.

In other, less deep news, I think APUSH is starting to get to me. I've started to imagine people around me wearing powdered wigs. It's funny, but some people would look really good in them, while others would just look silly. Then there's the ones who would have worn the cop-out brown-hair-in-a-ponytail look in colonial times. It's funny how you can just picture it. Or maybe it's just me.

Yes, it's pretty definently just me.

Christmas List

At the expense of my countercultural, non-materialistic image, I'll be listing my wish list for Christmas here for the convenience of relatives and anyone who just wants to get me a present. If you're not planning to get me anything, feel free to read the list and analyze my character based on the kind of stuff I like. I'll keep adding to this list as I think of stuff. Auntie Dawn, I love you very much, but please don't spend more than $30 dollars on me this year. I wear a medium or a 7 or 8 in pretty much everything. The dancewear is all available and cheapish at discount dance.

Okay, here it go!

• This t-shirt
• Or this one
• Gaynor Minden pointe shoes (I'll look up the size later)
• Grishko "Performance Series" SCP6
• Natalie N8007 leotard
• D5104 Dance Department dance shorts or similar
• A fiberglass cello case, if you've got a few hundred dollars to spend
• Psychonauts, which is a computer game that's supposed to be really good.
  

Non-religious religion

I don't want to be affiliated with a religion. Religion is about politics. About stereotypes and connotations. When one identifies oneself as a Christian, it implies that they are conservative, republican, pro-life, teetotalling, anti-hippie, self-righteous, and a whole slough of things that may or may not be true about the person in question, but have very little to do with the actual meaning of the word "Christian". I don't remember if I've said this before, but I don't call myself a Christian anymore for that very reason. Christianity, purely as a word, is no longer about Christ. I am a bond-slave of the Messiah, to use Paul's words. I am a Follower of Christ. I am a servant of Yahweh, the one true God.

Wow. You know how when you read a word over and over it stops even looking like a word, and you keep thinking you misspelled it? I've reached that point with the word "Christianity." It seems like it has too many consonants at the beginning, doesn't it?

Political correctness is overrated. The whole idea behind it is not to offend anyone, not to say anything that might possibly be taken the wrong way. That's fine as far as it goes, but there's a point at which it just becomes absurd. Don't get me wrong, I'm as much a fan of equal rights and all that jazz as anyone, but when it comes to beliefs, we Followers of Christ are kind of left out in the cold. More or less every other belief has in its roots a sort of "Well, we can still be friends. We believe almost the same thing," which really just doesn't jive with Jesus's whole "The way, the truth and the life" mantra. He really didn't leave any room for negotiation or compromises. He's not a way. He is the exclusive truth. Any other kind of truth isn't much of a truth at all, comparitively speaking. It's undiluted and uncompromising, like strong black coffee, but beautiful instead of mildly revolting when it gets cold. That's why we bond-slaves of the Messiah are always left out theologically. Socially, it's because of the connotations Christianity has earned itself over the centuries.

I haven't posted in some time since I have been trying to articulate a complex thought about the nature of evil. If I can figure out how to get it past the "glimmer of an idea" stage and into the "fully formed thought and articulated part of my philosophy" stage, you'll probably see something about it before too much longer.

Paradox

I am not going to talk about myself in this post. We'll just get that out of the way right off the bat.

Logic is sometimes deceptive. It is logically possible to prove that God exists, but it is also possible to logically prove that nothing exists. Logic, in its ever-definitive way, often contradicts itself, creating a paradox. Despite the falleability of pure reasoning, we as human beings hold onto it as one of the few differences between us and other creatures. (The word creatures is beautiful to me. Its connotations of being created by God is a good reminder that they were.) Our ability to reason is the basis of all our self-confidence in humankind. Since the ancient Greeks, every civilization has reached a point where the mind was considered supreme in its power, and all things that were not logical ought to be cast aside in the face of this new enlightenment. With every wave, this tendancy gets stronger.

Sometimes, we need to be able to embrace impossibilities. Clearly, things exist outside of logic. Things that cannot be proven, or that can be proven false despite their obvious truth. Maybe we need to learn to accept paradox. Three does not equal one, but the Trinity is three entities that are one entity. Rather than taking it as evidence that it is impossible, and therefore false, we should see it as a glimpse of something beyond our understanding. Logic cannot explain it. Our minds don't fit around the concept. It's beautiful because it cannot be quantified. The idea of infinity and of eternity, of cannot be truly understood. No matter how far you go, you never arrive. You never even get any closer to the end, since the end does not exist. We cannot understand the idea of something without a beginning, since everything we can ever be or touch or taste or see or feel did not exist at some point, and there was a quantifiable moment when it came into being, and there will be another when it ceases to exist as what we know it to be. We are born. We die. We see others go through the same process, like mice in a plastic tube that can only move one way. Every so often we get to poke our whiskers out a hole and see an outside universe that is not constrained the way we are used to and never questioned as the only reality. Rather than explaining it away, shouldn't we accept is as something greater than and beyond our experience?

It's mathmatical, and it's poetic in its rebellion from our known universe. Unfolding infinitely, coming forth from itself but never diminishing. God never ceases to amaze and dazzle. Meaning is layered throughout our human experience, waiting to be probed and explored. We live in an eternal metaphor.

I want to be a pirate!

I am now completely over my obsession with pirates. It started around seventh grade, and peaked shortly thereafter with a passing crush on Guybrush Threepwood, who was cuter when he was pixelated. Monkey Island 4 should never have been made, it was so crappy. Anyway, I'm completely over it now, just in time for piracy to come into fashion. I saw at least five or six kids dressed as pirates on Halloween, and you can't even walk into a store without being slapped over the head with POTC2 merchandice. If I see another peechee folder with Orlando Bloom on it, heads might not roll, but they'll be a little bruised. He's ugly. I don't understand how girls get so obsessed with movie stars. Even the good-looking ones aren't worth that much of your time. I only ever saw one movie where I caught myself thinking "Hmm. He's kind of handsome." (Just so you know, it was King King. Not the monkey, the movie. Handsome Writer Man is handsome because he's not 'hot'.) The other day, I overheard a couple of middle school girls talking about how they're going to marry some famous person I'd never heard of, and only just stopped myself from smacking them over the head and reminding them that their "fiance" doesn't know they exist, which is a good thing, since I probably would have been kicked off the bus and had to walk home in the rain. I am firmly of the opinion that girls are silly and somewhat boring. There's no explaining how their brains work. The obsession with boys is unfathomable to me, which might explain my total inability to flirt. I didn't even know I wasn't allowed to date until I was 16 until I was 16 and a half. Not that it matters. I'm not bitter about my eternal singleness, but I'm definently bewildered by the concept. I don't know. I'd always kind of assumed one day something would happen in that area of my life, but it resoundingly hasn't. It's still better to be single forever than do something stupid, which I think is blindingly obvious, but apparently, most girls don't know that. I don't get it. Girls are silly. Oh wait...

Anatomy

The human body is an astounding construction. Millions of parts- bones, muscles, ligaments and the like- and if even the tiniest one of them is out of whack, it can cause a chain reaction and cause a lot of pain. This is such an apt metaphor (fun word, but I always want to put an e on the end for some reason) for a lot of branches of interpersonal interaction. It's no coincidence that the Corps de Ballet are called that (corps means body in French, I think). Individuals moving together, not always doing identical steps, but working as a body to create a bigger picture. Pardon my Christianese, but the Body of Christ is a very deep description of the Church as it should be. Every member fulfilling its function to the best of its ability allows the group to function as it was designed to. It's a beautiful example of the layers and layers of meaning God wrote into the world. I think that if we were to really examine any area of life, we would find an inherent parallel with the "bigger picture". Not only does this make life easier for preachers and blog writers, but since God is so far beyond mankind's ability to comprehend, it helps us to have something to compare elements of it to. It'll all come together for us someday.
Anyway, the reason that I started on this topic is that my body hurts today. I am sore in every possible way. I can scarcely move without some part of me screaming in pain. I have, however, grown somewhat used to it, so I hardly notice the pain. There's a slight, joking superstition at the studio that those who play guys in Narnia are cursed to be injured at some point. Olivia got in a car crash, Cydney twisted her ankle on stage, Maddie left the studio (which kind of counts), Tanner sprained an ankle walking down some stairs, and already David has broken a toe. Which leaves Halla (this year's Edmund) and me. Halla's still got plenty of time, but the general consensus is that I did get injured, but didn't notice. There was some talk that when a boy filled one of the roles, the curse would be lifted, so when we heard that David had broken his toe, I finally got to say "The curse is still upon us!" which is one of those really cool movie lines that you never get a chance to say in real life, like "Follow that cab!". Anyway, I've got to get to math class.

Stream of Consciousness

Sometimes I play a game I invented on Wikipedia. I click on the random page button until I get to an interesting article, and from there, I see how few links I can follow to get to something I know and/or care about. Playing last night, I did the best ever. See if you can do it.From an article on fire-breathing, I made it to Firefly, which is pretty much the best canceled space western where people cuss in Chinese ever made. Since then, I've been watching the DVDs almost nonstop. I even considered changing my Halloween costume to Kaylie, the mechanic, but everything I try on makes me look like I'm dressed as my Japanese teacher, Patrick, who's a Buddhist priest. (I found this the other day that made me think of him. Check it out. It made me laugh, at least.) Anyway, wiki-surfing is buckets of fun. The thing is, you never realize how interconnected things are until you actually trace the connections. It just reinforces the smallness of the world we live in. If the links between people were tracable, one would probably be shocked at who you ended up at.

The internet is insane. Here, in this tiny white plastic rectangle, I have access to virtually any information I could possibly want, and some I really truly don't. Had anyone had such a plethora of knowledge available to them a few hundred years ago, I firmly believe they'd have been burned at the stake as witches. If you'd shown my laptop to someone from 1706, for example, they would have sworn the Devil was involved. It's just funny how our cultural perspective has changed since then. It makes one wonder what we'd think about someone from 2306. In the big picture, 300 years one way or the other isn't that long a time. Heck, even in the past 40 years, a lot has changed as far as technology is concerned. The difference between 1000 BC and 960 BC was virtually nothing, comparitively. The speed of communication is accelerating. The domestication of horses, the telegraph, the telephone, the cell phone. Increasly frequently, the speed at which information travels between people shrinks exponentially. At this rate, someone from the future come back to visit on a field trip could even seem telepathic to us.

I came across this scrap of dialogue in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest the other day, and I think it perfectly embodies my thoughts on why I write this blog.

Algernon: Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?
Cecily: Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.

Trust

Hype, the dance company I'm in, is learning this dance that's been around for a couple of years now called Thank You. A duet, it's one of the most choreographically interesting pieces we have in our repetoir, with a lot of weight sharing and interesting shapes. For a long time now, there have only been three of us who knew the dance at all, and each of us knows only one of the two parts, so we finally got around to teaching the rest of the company the piece. Those of us who knew the dance were dispersed throughout the masses, working with different partners. Kyla and I have been dancing this piece together for a couple of years now, but I found myself working with Lindsey, an extraordinarily shy girl, though she's getting better about it now, and I was amazed by the difference it made. I felt her introversion in a very physical way when I found myself not holding any of her weight. She didn't want to trust me. Maybe she did mentally, but her movement gave her away. I will be the first to admit that trusting another human being with your weight can be difficult at first. There is always the fear that somehow you will slip out of their control and land on the floor. The hard thing is that that fear and the reservations that come with it make it more difficult and therefore more dangerous. As the 'base' which others have to learn to trust, we have to make ourselves trustworthy to them. If something does go wrong and start to slip, our duty is to break their fall any way we can, usually by maneuvering ourselves between them and the floor. We are responsable for their well-being. My problem is that, having been a base for so long, I expect too much of others on the rare occasion that I am lifted or supported by others. I am ready to try new, bold, death-defying feats, but we both usually end up on the floor sporting fresh bruises and sometimes full-blown wounds.

You guessed it; it's "unveil the analogy" time again! Just as we have to learn to trust each other physically in dance, so also in life we must learn to trust one another emotionally. Otherwise you will land on your flat rump and won't be able to sit down for a week. This applies to every kind of interaction, be it friend to friend, parent to child, sister to sister, lover to lover, or God to man. Each of these has different rules as to who bears most of the weight.

All the world's a stage

Nothing is what it seems when you're on stage. From the audience, it might look like you're sitting in a house, or a resteraunt, or a park somewhere, but it's just wood scraps and paint. The audience knows that, but thanks to suspension of disbelief, they don't care and accept anything presented at face value. You can be anything or anyone, regardless of who or what you really are. In some cases, the role you play influences your behavior in real life- like when I had to play Peter in Narnia last year. Towards the end of the process, I started craving video games and wanting to blow things up. It was a little creepy. When it was over, I had to be thinking all the time, "Oh, wait. I can stand like a girl now." Then I'd shift my weight onto one leg and tilt my head slightly to the side. When sitting, I had to remind myself to keep my knees together. I made myself wear makeup. I let myself sing an octave up in church again. It's amazing how differently guys and girls behave, and nobody even notices, but they do notice when people step outside what's expected of their gender. Anyway, it's really strange to have an actual boy as Peter this year. I find myself giving him tips- David, if you just kept your shoulders down and back more, you'd look a lot more like the future High King of Narnia.- and then feeling like I should hit myself over the head with a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. He obviously is more qualified for the role than I was. I don't know. It's just weird.

Ponder this. The girls who are the strongest, the most aggressive, and in short the least 'girly' are generally those who don't have the willowy, stick thin body they need to make it as a dancer. Generally, they're more 'well endowed' than most, real bottom of the pyramid types. Since nobody wants to hold them up, they get stronger holding everyone else, metaphorically speaking. The willowy types know they're willowy and act like it. Super girly. They actually fit in a tutu, so they get cast to wear them. Therefore, we will never have a flat-chested girl cast as a boy in Narnia. It's as paradoxical as it is problematic. Just a thought I've been thinking for a while.

Apparantly, Homecoming is tomorrow, which explains why everyone's been dressing up weirdly all week. (I swear, if I ever see another boy in a grass skirt and coconuts, some heads are going to roll.) Today seems to have been something like North Spirit day. If they had called it "Pretend you like North day", maybe I would have given it a second thought. Or even a first thought. Everyone else is going to a lame-o assembly where they'll probably have some stupid relay race and probably pour gravy on people (They did that once). I'm skipping it to do my math homework. I haven't actually started yet. The librarian let me stay in the library, which they don't usually do, probably because it looks like I'm studying furiously, staring at the screen and typing a good 100 wpms. I wonder how fast I actually type. I'll have to pull out ol' type to learn and find out. I should start actually being productive now.

Update: It turns out that this particular assembly did not involve gravy in any way, but did feature milkshakes and a bunch of girls who didn't know how to walk in heels on the Homecoming Court. If you didn't know that walking in heels is a totally separate skill from walking like a human being, you have obviously never tried it, which hopefully includes any and all of my male readers.

Halloween

It's 10:04 on Thursday night, and I'm about halfway done with my AP US History homework. (Aside: It took me about two weeks to figure out that APUSH was an acronym for that. Sad, but, you know, it looks like A PUSH. Total gibberish. End Aside.) I'm behind in every part of my life at the moment, so I need some distraction, so I'm going to ramble.
Halloween is next Tuesday, so why is it that I'm already seeing Christmas turn up everywhere? It's ridiculous that we spend two months advertising for one day. It's not even about anything anymore.
Halloween is a bizarre holiday. It's sole purpose is to glorify everything that oughtn't be glorified. I do use it as an excuse to wear something that I always wanted to wear to school to school. This year, I'm planning to wear my kimono I got in Japan in 5th grade. Maybe I'll wear Tanner's yukata instead- same look, less fragile. Less... silk. Anyway, usually I just wear some old ballet costume. My best one yet was last year, when I made a tutu out of old newspapers. Too bad it melted in the rain. And that I couldn't sit down. And that I crinkled when I walked. But it looked awesome. (Word of advise: don't ever wear old pointe shoes all day. You will regret it for months.) It seems that I'm feeling parenthetical today. Ok, back on subject. Even though I dress up, I don't think that Halloween should be as big a holiday as it is. We dress kids up as personifications of evil and send them out to demand 'treats', threatening to 'trick' them unless they are placated with solidified sugar that rots their teeth out of their head. It's like roasting marshmallows. We give kids pointy sticks, put highly flamible objects on the end and tell them to stick them in an open fire. Why don't we just give them knives and guns to play with? It'd be more efficient. On what level is Halloween at all edifying to anyone? There's enough violence, hatred, anarchy, and literal glorification of evil in my school already. I know that the capital-C Church officially disapproves of Halloween, replacing it with thousands of "Harvest Festivals". What the carp does that have to do with anything we ought to be supporting as earthly ambasadors of an eternal savior? It's just a euphemism, another version of the same thing, except for ghosts and witches the decorations are pumpkins (uncarved), squash, and various autumnal fauna. It doesn't accomplish anything but cloistering mini-church goers into thinking that everything not put on by their youth group is the devil. When they grow up a little and start seeing things not church- sponsored or even approved that are way cooler, more meritous, and more interesting than the auditorium/sanctuary with orange construction-paper leaves taped to the wall and a potluck set up on folding tables, they will start to question everything about not only the church, but what it taught them too.

Weekend

I'm back from the longest break in the history of this blog. What a crazy weekend it was! Friday- rehearsals for Hype and then Narnia, as per usual. Saturday- left for Portland around 3, lazed around the house until then, then went to my first school dance with my cousin, which is just sad on so many levels. I had an awesome time, but I kind of feel like my dance quota for the rest of school is full. It was kind of funny that so many of Spencer's friends knew of me from this blog. It was really fun, but strange, to never have met these people before, but have a reputation among them already. Anyway, then I spent the night at the cousin's house and got up at five to go to the airport. A couple of hours later, I was chillin' on an airplane. Everyone complains about flying, but I really like it. I never check bags, since I've heard too many stories of people who spent weeks without clean underpants because their luggage got sent to Bora Bora while they were in Chicago. But I digress, which I do a lot. When I arrived in Spokane, I met up with yet another set of cousins- the Goins kids. We hung out for a couple of hours, during which I introduced them to Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, an excellent adventure game c. 1989. Then they dropped me off at Whitworth College, which I fell in love with almost instantly. The only thing about it that is slightly less than ideal is the lack of a strong dance department. I could still minor in it, though, and nothing says that all my dance training has to take place on campus, either. We toured the campus and were lectured on how great the school is, then that night, in the dorms, I played soccer foursquare (no hands!) and twister with some guys, and then talked to this really cool guy, Sam for like three hours. He will probably read this, so I won't embarrass him by telling all y'alls how awesome he is. Besides, everyone I tell is like, "Oh my gosh! Aubrianne's finally got a boyfriend!" which isn't even true and makes me blush and get all flustered, so I won't go into that.
The next day, I went and visited some classes. The intermediate Japanese class was way too easy, but I had a lot of fun anyways. After lunch, I got on a shuttle to the airplane, then on an airplane with a couple of girls I met, then off the airplane just in time to be picked up by my cousin Cameron, who took me back to their house, where I hung out with Spencer and his friend Michelle, who I met at the dance. Then I went home and wrote an English paper that was due in school the next day. When it came time to turn it in, I found that instead of 300 words, the limit was 500 words. Now I have to put back in all the stuff I cut out. Arrgh. Apparently, Monday, there was a lockdown for a couple of hours because some kid brought a gun to school. Glad I missed that. I hate my school.
So this post was probably the least abstract and philosophical yet. And extremely long. I'll write more tomorrow, probably.

Someday

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.

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.

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.

-C.S. Lewis

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.

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.

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!

1. Jesus was (and is) who he said he was.
2. People are, left to themselves, selfish, interested only in their own happiness.
3. Familiarity breeds contempt, so religious billboards and bumperstickers do more harm than good.
4. 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.
5. If you don't like toast, you're seriously missing out.
6. No person is inferior to any other, since we're all vastly flawed anyway.
7. Dance is harder than most any sport, and guys who dance are more worthy of veneration than football players.
8. 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?
9. Choreography should never repeat more than four counts of movement more than twice, and even then, never consecutively.
10. Something doesn't have to be "Christian" to be acceptable by a Christian.
11. "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.
12. '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.
13. 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.
    
14. 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.
15. You don't have to be smart to look smart.
16. If you have to pretend to be something you're not to get people to like you, it's not worth it.
17. Farts and burps happen to everyone- there's no reason to hide them among people you know.
18. Sex is meant to be enjoyed in a very specific context- outside of marriage, it's sin. Unfortunately, sin is very marketable.
    
19. Blood and guts were put inside people's bodies for a reason. Don't make me look at them!
20. 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.

I've got lots more, but that's more than a big enough chunk to be getting on with. I'll try and elaborate on a couple of these in every entry. Well, another hour when I should have been doing my homework gone forever.

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!