Saturday, April 25, 2009

Disappointing Dance

It is time to discuss... dancing.
I was introduced to swing dancing by a GEM friend of mine last summer. It was a lot of fun, and we learned the basic step plus some really random turns and aerials (yes, aerials in the first 2 days of dancing. 'twas fun). I really enjoyed it, it was such a fun way to move.
So this year I joined the school's swing club. I've learned a lot from various club members, and even made a few friends. I can now swing out, and know some more steps that are common on the social dance floor. But I've made a discovery as well. I don't dance well with people I either a) don't know or b) don't feel comfortable with. And I really really don't do well in a big gathering of dancers.
There is something about the social dance floor. It requires a specific body language to indicate your availability to dance and amiability. I have not mastered this body language. That, coupled with my not-quite-up-to-par dancing skills lead to one conclusion: I don't dance much at a big dance. I don't know people, so I can't join them (since they don't exist) and I don't exude approachability, so I can't get to know people. And I'm not a phenomenal dancer, so that doesn't attract people to me either.
To put it bluntly: I end up feeling like a wall flower.
Some people take pity (or something) on me, and ask me to dance, and then it's fun. But there's never a repetition. I also can't seem to master the chattiness required. For one thing, talking while dancing is hard. I can either concentrate on following the way the person is leading me, or on talking. A lot of leads like talking (it is after all, the SOCIAL dance floor) and then, of course, my dancing fails. Sigh.
That said, I really really enjoy dancing when I get it. When the dance is good, it's a wonderful feeling. The movement is something like harmony, which I've talked about earlier. ...which knowledge only fuels my disappointment that I don't usually manage to dance like that.
Sorry, reader, I've just sort of been rambling some of the thoughts I had this evening at a neighboring college. I will attempt to make this post more upbeat in the morning, when I'm not quite so disappointed.
over 'n out.
E.O.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

How do we Worship?

I go to a pretty contemporary church- a young church, if you will, in both senses of the word. You know the kind I mean. Their building isn't fully fleshed out yet; it has hardwood benches, you can see the rafters in the cieling, they have one projector onto a pull-down screen, and an awesome african-looking tapestry in the back. They're more invested in their ministry than their building (which I LOVE about them) and they are very mission-based.
I describe my church so that you can understand what I'm about to say. Every Sunday I go to this church, and every Sunday, the worship causes me to think intensely. Mostly, it runs along the line of "do i really mean the words I'm singing? Do I really 'adore' God? Does my love for God really overflow to the point where I can't hold it back?" And mostly, when I examine myself, the answer is no. So then I have to question, do I want to throw myself into the music, sing it, participate in it, and hope that doing so will make it true? Or do I stand quietly, listen with all the concentration I can muster, and keep analysing the music? Tonight, I chose to think.
There always comes that time in the service where the musicians keep playing, and the one who is "leading" for the night begins to talk... inspirationally. Or at least, it's supposed to be inspirational. It's the sort of thing that may or may not sound ridiculous, depending on the level of your emotion, and whether or not God is speaking to you at the moment (which non-believers take to be the same thing, but I can say with complete surety that it's not). At that point in the service, no matter how into the service I am, or how much I was pouring myself into worshipping God, I come to a screeching halt. Although I suppose you can make the argument that the words in the songs we sing are just as arbitrary as the words the worship leader then speaks, to me it always feels forced. As if they are either furthering some agenda or making things up out of their heads, maybe a composite of all the worship songs and services they've ever heard. In short: it feels fake. I know that this kind of ad-libbing sometimes speaks powerfully to people. Occasionally, God speaks to me through it as well. However, I can't help but remain skeptical.
My dilemma, the one that confronts me every service is this: I don't know how much of my resistance to what is being said to me is because what's being said is legitimately not good theology, or not true in my soul, and how much of my cynicism is too-intense doubt caused by sin. So every week i have to search my soul with this question... and every week, I dredge up- well, not much. I end up coming to the conclusion that all I can do is pray that God will help me to discern truth from lies or truth from irrelevance, and that I will learn to love him better.
Today I came to church being convicted of not having prayed really at all in the past few weeks. So I decided tonight, when the pianist started ad-libbing, that I was going to pray. I was going to pray with all my might that God would indeed inspire his ad-libbing, and that nothing that came out of his mouth that night would be "fake." I have no idea how effective that prayer might have been... but then, that's always how it is with prayer: you never know until you KNOW, I guess.
over 'n out.
E.O.

Music Minor

A friend asked me once why I love singing in harmony so much. I couldn't tell her off the bat, but the question intrigued me... so I thought about it, and this is what I came up with:
Singing is a beauty that comes easily to me... and I realized soon enough that the beauty is deepened and magnified if there is more than once voice, singing something different but... fitting. Like a puzzle piece, fitting. It is wonderful in a way I can't explain to have your voice soaring into the air with another voice (or two or three) singing a note that's different to your own, but fitting. So I look for opportunities to make that beauty in the same way an artist pursues the making of a good drawing.
It gives me joy.

I credit her with unwittingly helping me choose music as my minor. =)
over 'n out.
E.O.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Blaaaaarg

Ahem.
"My bonnie lies over the ocean.
My bonnie lies over the sea.
My bonnie lies over the ocean.
Something something my bonnie to me?"

There. A tribute both to Meredith and Wooster all in one verse.
And now for something, completely different.

I finished vacuuming books today. Huzzah! Nasty, dirty, old books they were. And I mean every word of that last sentence literally. You see, this fortnight's project was to vacuum the dust off of the book collection of a dead man in England, whose 90-year-old wife donated it to the University Library. Go figure. Now, they didn't exactly give me all the pertinent information before I got this job... my boss said that they were books, they were rare, they were dusty, please vacuum them. So I said, well, ok.
It wasn't that he didn't tell me that a) it would be very tedium-intensive (since all library jobs are, that would've been redundant) or b) that it would be really really grimy (all old books are grimy- that's to be expected).
No, what irks me about the whole thing was that I was fooled into doing the job. From bits and pieces of conversations I deduce that it was a job that everyone else refused to do- and I wasn't told I had a choice. Nor was I asked if it would be detrimental to my health (aka, if I had dust allergies) until I was already on my way up there with the suuuuper-expensive vacuum in hand.
Fortunately for me, it doesn't seem to have been too detrimental to my health, and I got to be in a closed-off space all by myself where I could sing to my heat's content. Which came in pretty handy for practicing my part in a particularly tricky song I'm trying to learn. =)
Still, though I am only a lowly work-study student, and though I DO run random errands on occasion, it bruises my pride a bit that I was asked to do grunt work without even being told it's grunt work. Sigh.
All in all, I'm glad that's over with. Though I'll miss the empty halls and the solitude, I'd much rather have sunshiny-blue-sky-and-windy outside solitude any day.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

memories, thoughts, and praise

So it occurred to me tonight that I spend almost three years pouring out my thoughts and the events of my life onto xanga. So I decided to go explore it. I went back to the post I wrote two years ago today, and something caught my eye. I used to write things that I thought, calling them "Thinkingfullnesses" Two years ago today was easter, and this was my thinkingfulness...

Does life ever make you ache? Not urgently, not direly, but just a kind of ache... like hearing an un-tuned piano, and knowing the strings won't ever really be set right again. Or like when you've made a mistake in how you treated someone or what you said to a person, and you can't take it back. It is an ache of things lost... Do you know that ache? I do. I've had it for the longest time. I see it when I'm not close to God, or when I take a very close look at reality. We, as people, didn't ask for this. Not life, not love, not the pursuit of happiness, which always seems to be slipping away. But we have it. One day we were born, by God's wish, and we have grown into the realization of it. But do you know what I realized this easter? I don't know if that ache will ever go away, really. In fact, I'm pretty sure it won't, no matter where I live or who I'm around. It might be less in some places than others. At any rate, I know that even so, I wouldn't for the world wish not to have been born. I am glad that God decided to make me, that even after he saw the path that Adam and Eve had chosen, he decided not to wipe humanity out.

Interestingly enough, I had occasion, last weekend, to revisit this thought, albeit in a different form. This past 9 months, I have largely gotten away from the "ache" I talked about in the above thought... amazingly enough, my life at college so far has been... wonderful. I did not expect it. I still find it kind of hard to believe... and having only a month or so left of this school year, I find myself wondering if it could be as fulfilling as this year and just a little sad for this possibly-to-be-lost happiness. I have no idea what next year will bring... but I trust the ache of life isn't far away. Whatever next year may bring, I am grateful for this blessed respite for my constantly-twinged spirit.
...I'll post on memory another day.
E.O.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Best Sign-off ever.

I was just now doing a sort of variation on a mad-libs letter, and have discovered the most awesome sign-off ever. The rest of the letter is unimportant. Ahem:

You should also know that I mocked you behind your back constantly and you ruined my attempts at another world war (possibly ending in world domination).
Greetings to your frog Leonard,
E.O.

I know at least 5 people I could sign off that way to... and I think I will, when the time is right. :P
over 'n out.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Comp Lit

It is time that you received a post. Comparative literature has been the cause of much of my pain this semester. It is not the fact that I was landed there, without compassion, in a group of six guys to discuss rather misogynistic literature. I could have dealt with that without too much trouble. No, what has caused me such immense trouble in this course is one thing (or i should say, one person) and one person only. That person's name is Branson.
I will say here, in an attempt to be charitable, that Branson is a grad student, not a professor. That is the last positive word I will say about the fellow, not because there aren't others, but because at this moment in time I need to air my grievances against him. Positive points may arise later on in time... but not now.
Allow me to explain. He leads the class as if it were going to be a discussion class. Very well. But he then feels the need to rephrase anything that anyone says. Not only does this make the flow of communication and ideas very awkward, he tends to rephrase things so that they're more convoluted than they were when the person said them in the first place. Moreover, sometimes he gets so carried away with rephrasing (usually if an idea goes through his head that relates to said rephrasing) that he just keeps talking. For minutes on end. Sometimes he'll extend into the half-hour mark, just rattling away, pausing every once in a while to make sure we're not all catatonic, and then forging ahead in a river of comparative literature jargon laced with modernistic pseudo-philosophy. This would be fine if the class were an advanced level of comparative literature, but it isn't. It's elementary, my dear Watson. I'm pretty sure that if he'd just shut his mouth for about 5-10 minutes at a time, the class might actually discuss something of interest. The class, mind, not Branson. He can hold an endless discussion with his own illustrious self. Never mind the fact that he gets so carried away with what he's saying that discussion rarely, if ever heads in any particular direction or clarifies anything.
My second problem with Branson, apart from his apparent oafery at mediating discussion, is that to my way of thinking, he has failed at teaching us anything. His purpose in teaching the class, as stated by himself (and shortened by me) was to get us to think about the relationship between literature and life. How does literature affect life? Why do people read literature? What does literature have to do with life? Well, so far, these questions have scarcely been discussed. They have been alluded to, yes, but we never actually got into them. His purpose, as defined by the title "teacher" or "professor" is to help his students to understand some aspect of the world (in this case, modernism and comparative literature) that they did not understand before taking his class. In literature, what I take this to mean is that he is there to explain to us the ideas behind modernism, to help us analyze its texts for ourselves, and so forth. He does try, I think, to accomplish this, but he does it by raising questions that he wants us to reflect about. Now, this would be alright by me, if he didn't raise so MANY and questions, or if they weren't the sort of question that doesn't even hint that at the end of the mental effort it takes to slog through it, there will be anything worth knowing. I can deal with a few such questions, but not as many as he raises constantly. The whole class becomes just... questions. Questions without answers that raise more questions, based on questions, following into questions... it quickly begins to feel like a maze of smoke and mirrors.
Now, I have considered the possibility that the concepts of the class might just be too hard for me to understand. I am not yet sure how likely this is, or whether I am just not willing to put in the effort anymore to trying to understand what the heck is going on.
Honestly, I love a good discussion. I love deep thought. I love wondering about things, and pondering things. Anyone who knows me can attest to that. In a discussion, I usually have at least a few good, pithy things to say or questions to ask. However, in this class, I've given up. There is no reason for me to speak up only to be ignored, made fun of, or have my words twisted beyond recognition. I will rack my brains and write a killer paper that will knock stupid ol' Branson's socks off and I will depart that class shaking its dust off my feet and happier than a fish finally back underwater.

Just to sum things up for anyone who got tired and skipped to the end:
I am BURNT OUT from this class and officially HATE CompLit 181 Reading, Living Modernism because in my opinion the professor is incompetent. The end.