Plain.

I've been granted a revelation. In my group of friends here there are a couple people who, if you ask them for honesty, have no qualms about giving it to you.
You know how groups of people have customs? Quirks that are particular to a group, things that are acceptable within it, but not really in general society? Well, in our group, one of these quirks is making observations about people's character. Direct and honest observations. So today, A once again said something about my personality... and I went for it. These opportunities don't come often in life. I said that I wondered, what they really thought of me, because I didn't understand, sometimes, where the things they said were coming from. And to my utter surprise, the gamble worked. I got an honest answer.
My friends think I am plain.
Not in experience or knowledge, but in taste: food, clothing, likes and dislikes. Plain.
A couple people tried to soften the word, but I asked them, because I hate such political correctness,not to. Plain: that was the general consensus. And if I am to be honest, if this is the opinion that other people hold, it would explain why so many people seem indifferent to me after about 5 minutes of conversation. Oddly... it makes sense. I do not hold people's interest for more than a short while. And if I do, it almost always feels like it's more out of charity or obligation than anything else (excepting one or two close friends from years back).
So this leads me to wonder- is it true? After all my striving to be different, to stand apart from the mindless crowd, have I become simply... boring? My intuition tells me it's quite possible. The thought really disappoints me, because I never wanted to be overlookable. When i said, when people asked that superhero question, that the superpower I wanted was invisibility, I didn't think that I might get my wish. Passionless, without that joie de vivre that touches people, without loves, without aspirations or intensity. I am again faced with the fact that there's nothing in this life that pulls on me, a love that demands that I be and lets my personality reflect its light, gives it color. Where are those convictions that make people so interesting to be around?
There is more I could say, but... out of consideration for you, reader, I will simply think. No need for you to have to listen to my disappointment in what all my journeying and wonderful rainbow colors of people and places have produced. It'd be too awkward and embarrassing, I know. I apologize for being - who?
over 'n out.
that other drone,
E.O.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.