brain muddle!

I am simultaneously reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Ivanhoe.
It's an interesting contrast, but... What was I thinking?

oh, retina

late at night, my bed looks lonely.
like it knows that this is the time of the day when it should have company.

Today was gray all around. gray sky, gray sidewalk, men in gray suits. The trees are still green though, and beginning to turn all those beautiful fall colors: crimson and scarlet, gold and yellow. And a while back I discovered a bush that makes berries as bright blue as a summer sky, and on the same cluster, dark purple berries, and red ones. Writing it down now, it doesn't sound particularly spectacular, but I assure you the colors are totally unexpected. I'll have to take a picture tomorrow morning to prove it to you. They're lovely. Really.
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and here they are!

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You know, when people ask me what my favorite color is, I have taken to saying that I love them all too much to pick one. I then go on to explain that I don't find colors nearly as beautiful alone as they are when juxtaposed. Side-by-side, contrasted and cooperating, colors are pure harmony. Alone, they're just... eye-numbing, if that makes any sense. Feel free to extrapolate that into whatever metaphor you wish- about diversity, about Paul's whole "parts of one body" concept, about respecting different peoples' opinions... I really just absolutely love color, and love that God put it here, and gave us the ability to see it.
over 'n out.
E.O.

Strata (or: Salad Dressing)

I just had a thought, which may or may not sound slightly delusional and exaggerated, if you think clearly. And I shall proceed to tell you what it was, and ask for your opinions on the matter.

You think, when you're in high school, that you're all divided up into groups, that society couldn't possibly be any better segregated or more clearly cut into layers. That's before you hit college and the real world, and realize that the layers have been sifted off... people have settled into their strata, like salad dressing that eventually settles out into layers of vinagre, oils, and spices. In public school, you were surrounded by everyone. Every kind of person, or rather, every developing kind of person, was, at some point, in your vicinity. You encountered all types of people, without even trying. Once you hit the end of high-school, however, the sifting begins. College applications act as the first sieve. Universities separate people out by academic achievement (a.k.a.: motivated people, smart people, and people who just know how to suck up), athletic achievement, personality type, etc. Then you go through four years, give or take, with your peers (your kind of people) and you all sort of morph and mesh into one another. This is what we call "discovering yourself" in college. Is it possible that college isn't so much about self-discovery as it's about better fitting yourself into the mold of your strata?
I imagine that the next sieve is job applications and grad school. 'Cause once you hit thirty, you're pretty much settled, as far as I can tell. Once there, it's very difficult, rather uncomfortable, and definitely awkward to move outside of your group. I'm hard pressed to define exactly what these groups are - after all, this thought just came to me about 5 minutes ago.
I shall continue to puzzle it out, and get back to you on it.
for now... over 'n out.
E.O.

funny stuff

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=309
http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=317

Mirrored Halls & Musings

My family has lived in (hang on, let me count 'em) 10 different apartments (that I remember, anyway). The other day I was thinking about when we moved into the Reguiero place: concretely, the time we walked in it for the first time. I remember being so very confused and disoriented by the mirror-paneled closets on the left (they covered the entire wall) that it tinged the whole place with novelty and a sense of alien-ness. Sometimes, after we had been living there for a while, I would pass the hall and remember that feeling. It was so strange to me that that little, familiar entryway could ever have felt so odd. By that time, it was my place. I didn't like the entryway much, but the apartment was my home, really and truly, in the sense that everything that was important to me about home was there: my family, my things, my quilt. For my parents, specifically my mom, it has always been different. She never settled into places quite like we did, my sister and I. She would always worry about stuff like keeping things clean or not damaging the furniture. And then, when I was thinking about all of those things, that's when this thought struck me:

When you're a kid, you don't think of houses as being things people own, like toys. You don't think that people can borrow each others' houses, or have to take care of them. And it never even occurs to you that maybe people could be as upset about you smashing into their cabinet door and breaking it as you would be about someone cutting all of the hair off of your favorite doll. When you're a kid, an apartment is more like a... like a landscape. They're all around. Everyone has them. You just interact with them like an environment- a field, a cave, a mountain, a bush. Grownups, they see it differently, like my mom did.

Not too much of a leap of intelligence, eh? We all know that kids are oblivious. I wonder, though, if we don't forget in what ways.

in other news, my RA totally walked in on me having lunch today while listening to an audiobook w/the lights off (it's a rainy sort of day). he must not've seen my ipod or something, 'cause after a couple of askance looks, he wanted to know if i was ok. :P I explained about the audiobook, while chuckling on the inside. I don't think he was entirely reassured. :P
anyways,
over 'n out.
E.O.

So. ...Question.

WHY is it that I am perfectly capable of being and staying awake when I'm wasting time watching videos on youtube, or figuring out what to wear, or texting, or fiddling around on facebook (or writing silly little notes like this) - but exactly TWO MINUTES into doing real work, my body's instinct for sleep kicks in?
I'm not a person who needs much sleep. My family is always getting on my case for it. Now, granted, college has introduced me to people at new heights of sleeplessness, like people talking to me about how they function just fine on 2h of sleep, but not 4 or 5, but I still like to think of myself as being a person who is relatively immune to the effects of sleep deprivation.
So.
How is it that a simple matter of getting between 5 and 6 hours for three nights in a row has put me into such a measly mood and caused my eyes to start drying out (a severe sign of sleep deprivation in me- happens usually after all-nighters when i've been awake for 36h or more)? I'm not in the age-bracket to be losing my sleep-elasticity yet! what is this?!
=(
back to Old English...
E.O.

"Yo're a n'artist?"

Whenever I'm in the States, my parents get pretty freaked out about the fact that I don't think much of walking around my neighborhood after dark (it's a pretty safe neighborhood, not a sketchy part of suburbia at all). They also make sure to tell me at least once a semester not to go to outside ATM machines, walk around by myself off-campus, ride public transportation after 7pm, etc.
And while I realize that, for a girl in the good ol' US of A, these are right and necessary rules, as a person who has spent most of my life in European suburbs and the occasional city, I find the concept of basically being confined to my house after dark pretty weird, and not a little restrictive- especially when it starts getting dark around 5 in the winter.
Yesterday after class, two of my friends and I took a trip down into town a little ways, to a more counter-cultural part of the city. There are small shops there, a pizza parlor or two, some junk shops, and very interesting people (think like, tattoos any and everywhere, people randomly performing spoken word, or playing instruments, or selling jewellery on a sheet they've spread out on the street). Close by, about a 3-4 block's walk, there is a more traditionally american shopping center with big chains like Petsmart, Best Buy, etc- including a Target. The goal of our trip was the Target; just a routine sort of grocery/battery run.
It was late-ish in the day, probably around 5 or 6 by the time we arrived, and the sun was setting beautifully. There were some lovely purple flowers growing right on the edge of the sidewalk, next to the road, so what with the light being so perfect and all, I decided to take a picture. As I was finishing up my photos, a raggedy looking man in his 40-50's came to stand behind us, eyeing my bag and what I was doing. He had shoulder-length white hair, a worn, wrinkly face, and his left eye-lid was stretched over the socket, so it almost looked like he was half-squinting, half-winking at you all the time. When I stood up, he asked me if I was an artist. I said yes. He then proceeded to tell us (almost unintelligibly) about some amazing graffitti nearby in which the artist had apparently predicted the fall of the twin towers, in 2011. (Go figure). After that, he shook our hands, told us something about having been in the Vietnam war and losing his eye, told us he was hungry, and asked if we would buy him some food- we could even come watch him eat it if we wanted. One of my friends, the more gutsy of the three of us, told him no, she only had a gift card for Target, and he would have to ask elsewhere. She told me later that the time it took her to see the scars on his arms was the time it took her to move her "sharp object" (aka, her pocketknife) from her backpack to her pocket.

Finally, we managed to get away from him, went and did our shopping, and came back out to the bus stop to wait for our ride home. By this time it was dark, so we stood in a lighted, open area, and waited. For some reason, my other friend (we'll call her the tall one) said she felt like that old man was probably going to show up again. Sure enough, we hadn't been standing there ten minutes before he came around again.
He did a strange little song and dance, which none of us recognized, as we watched him warily. Then he asked us for money for a bus fare. I offered him instead some saltine crackers that I had bought for myself at the store (it was a grocery run, after all), to which he replied:
"Naow, yong lady. Will sal-teen crackers help me git on th'bus?"
I was flummoxed, and not a little irritated. I replied no, but since he had been asking for food earlier, I had thought it would be reasonable to offer. To which he said that he now had food, and wanted to get on the bus. At which point I said, sorry, I only had my permanent pass, and I needed that myself. I could tell that he was making an effort to contain himself and be civil, so he said "I unnerstan'." To which I said we'd see him around, and (and this part was the most horrifying to me) slowly blew me a kiss with his knotted, knarled fingers and creaky old lips and said, you never knew when you'd see him next, and walked off.

Now, I am all for treating people with respect and kindness, no matter what their station in life. A person is a person, after all, and deserves to be treated as such. At the same time, I don't know how to be around the kind of person I've described above. As a follower of Christ, how does He expect me to act toward this sector of his creation? I don't know. What I do know is, that it'll be a long time and it'll take a large group of people before I return to that part of town after dark.
(And what cheek!! The cheek of that old man! hmph. If he were truly hungry, he would've at least taken the crackers.)
over 'n out.
E.O.

Swing

I have something to say about swing, namely this:

I really enjoy the dance. I do not enjoy the people so much. Not because they aren't nice people. They are. but because they are not my friends. I do not know them. So dancing feels like a very intimidating social event of the sort I typically avoid if I can.
Wait, I've discussed this on here already, haven't I? yes? yes. Good. Then we don't need to go through it again.
It's just something... ongoing in my life, that i must deal with.
Lots of things like that, come to think of it.
*Note to self: Must learn not to complain so much. It's silly.
over 'n out.
E.O.