Heidi Has a Happy Hippo

Just in case you're wondering, this post has a lot to do with religion.

When I was in fourth grade, I was invited to participate in the program, Oddyssey of the Mind. In our radically eclectic skit, my character was a puzzle peice named "Happy." I thought it was fitting, seeing as my first name is Heidi, and like Stan Lee, I'm a sucker for a good alliteration, especially when it comes to names. "Happy Heidi."

A little while after that, Stephanie drew these little illustrations of animals for each of us. They had adjectives, too. We each had a different animal. Well, mine was a hippo. A happy hippo. I didn't like being associated with a hippo, but I really liked being named "Happy" once again.

I don't have anything especially exciting to report. My life is pretty routine. I go to work, I go home. I go to church, I go get groceries. I look forward to the weekend, and I don't love Mondays.

But, I am happy.

Sometimes, when I kneel beside my bed to pray before I fall asleep, reflecting on my day and my life, I am overcome with a sense of happiness. I am surprised by it. It is not fleeting. It is constant. I am truly, deeply, actually happy. (No matter how much I wish it were different, the only thing I really feel in the morning when I pray is sleepy. Oh well).

I'm not really sure how long I had been deeply unhappy, but I can tell you: I was. I was so busy with college, and dating (I figured it out. Since I was 21, I have had only 10 months of "singleness," 6 of which have been the last half year. That's exhausting, and admittedly, a little unhealthy), that I really wasn't keeping my self in check. And I wasn't happy. To be honest, I wonder if I was ever really happy at college.

The summer was a little strange for me. I felt sad, but I enjoyed it. After all, I have a right to be sad, . Being sad is a part of the human experience, and a blessing. I am thankful for ALL of the blessings that my Heavenly Father allows me to have.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't wallowing: I've done that before, and it isn't productive. No, this was a productive kind of sad, and sad might be the wrong word for it (maybe contrite? But nobody uses that word anymore). Anyhow, being sad helped me think about my SELF and who I am, and most importantly, what makes me happy. (Leave a comment if you can think of a better word for this. I just can't think of one).

I started reading more again. I used to read quite a lot for pleasure, but at school, I couldn't really choose what I read, because I was reading, reading, reading what the professors assigned me to read. I love the way I grew as a reader and a scholar during school, but there was something missing, too. So, here I was at home, and wanting to read, so I went to the library and brought home a stack of books, all picked by ME. Then I read them. Then I took them back. Then I got a new stack of books. Which I read. It was awesome.

I started painting with watercolors, too. I'm not very good, because I'm a beginner, but I enjoy watercolors. I like to play with the colors, and mixing, and trying to get the shapes and textures on the page the way I imagine. I think of myself as an artist these days. My work with markers and color pencils is, in my opinion, inspired. When I paint or draw, I feel a sense of peace and trainquility.

I re-evaluated my relgion. This, to me, means I re-evaluated my relationship with God and His Son, Jesus Christ. I'm not saying that I re-decided whether or not to have this relationship, but that I decided to change the way I related to Them. I prayed more. I studied the scriptures, my patriarchal blessing, and my journal to re-discover the many tender mercies I am showered with constantly. I changed my journal writing to focus on them, and describe them, so that in the future, when I come to a similar place in life, I will have more material to study.

I worked in the garden. I hope I helped my Mom, working in the house. I made new friends and I made new plans for myself.

Being happy is fantastic. I don't have to be at a party or playing a game to feel it; that's not the same kind of happiness I'm talking about. I don't even need to be dating someone. It's a feeling of deep satisfaction with who I am, and knowing that God is also satisfied with who I am, too.

I have this theory about cycles: everything is a cycle. Life is a cycle. Each day cycles in and out, each week, each year -- and so, too, do our lives, in a way, through a cycle of self examination and self acceptance:

1. First, we lose ourselves, and become a stranger with the person we are.
2. Then, we re-discover ourselves, or discover our new selves for the first time, again.
3. Then we learn to accept and adjust to who we now are.
4. Finally, we change again, becoming a stranger to our selves once more, starting the cycle over again.

I don't think that's deep or profound, but it's beautiful, and I don't have anything deep or profound to say, except that I am happy. I may not be the same little girl with a painted, plywood puzzle peice costume dancing on a stage singing "Happy, happy ha-PPY!" but I still am (or rather, am again finally) "Happy Heidi."

A Plea From Hell

I wrote this poem originally in 10th grade while reading The Inferno by Dante Alighieri and studying the romantic poets of Great Britain. I recently found it and made a few small revisions for rhythm and rhyme (considering the content, I felt that an ontology was required):

We've fallen underground
the sounds of Hell around
The pressure and the strain,
the fire and the pain
The gnashing of the teeth
the stench that from us seethes

It's endless torment;
We're in Hell.
the relief we seek
we know well
is never to come
we won't die
though how our souls will
Always try
I can only start
to tell.

We Are Cavemen!

Jordan and I went to Timpanogos Cave National Monument. It's a 1 1/2 mile hike up the mountain to the caves, and it's about an hour long tour once inside with a ranger. We had a lot of fun doing something different from the norm!

We made it!

Look --- we're inside a cave!

....another climber.

What can I say? I love bugs! When I was little, my Grandma told me that these kinds of caterpillars (Wooly Bears) could forecast the outcome of the coming winter. Who knows? Maybe it's true.

Are We Ennui? A Post of Three Parts (Just Like a Nucleotide!)

Part: The First: My English Nerd Self = On


"Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." 
-Benjamin Franklin
-Twelve Oaks Plantation Entrance (the Wilkes' plantation in Gone With the Wind)

squan·der/ˈskwändər/Verb

1. Waste (something, esp. money or time) in a reckless and foolish manner: "entrepreneurs squander their profits on expensive cars".

2. Allow (an opportunity) to pass or be lost

I squander time frequently. In other words, I allow material essence of life to pass or be lost. How can that not be depressing? And, what is to be done?

Read?

I have a short reading list this summer, because frankly, books are not people.  These are the books I have read:

1. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

2. Austenland by Shannon Hale

3. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

4. The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

5. The Crucible by Arthur Miller

6. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Here is my to-read list:

1. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin
2. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier 

3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

4. The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

5. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

6. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

7. Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska

It's a very female summer, frankly.

Part: The Second: My Intrinsic Humanity = On

I want to make something. Something of my own choosing and design, something that will be finish-able in the time that I have until school starts again, but will challenge me within that time frame. i don't know what it is yet, and I have been desperately trying to think of it for some time. 

I am open to suggestions. And by suggestions, I mean useful-yet-ambiguous guidance. Otherwise, it would cease to be my own, correct?

I've been thinking of writing something, or doing an art project, or a science project like making batteries out of potatoes, but I don't know.

Part: The Third: Basic Frustration = On

I hate formatting on blogger, and formatting on blogger hates me.

Life Is an Adventure.

Luke Skywalker bothers me.

Sometimes, in life, we are required to rapidly shift our paradigm. I do not believe that Luke thought, "Oh, I'm going to set in motion a journey today that will radically change the political surface of the galaxy, as well as infuse life into a dying religion and reunite me with my lost twin sister." And yet, that Tatooine morning, he went to buy androids from the Jawas, and the day after, never did get to the Tosche station to pick up those power converters. He didn't need to.

His paradigm shifted.

Welcome to life, Luke.

I could understand giving Luke a reasonable amount of emotional space in which to mourn the death of his aunt and uncle who raised him --- but he doesn't do that. Instead, he spends a quantifiably huge amount of time complaining about how hard his pursuit of Jediism is, and how he "just doesn't understand."

No one understands. Heck, Obi-Wan obviously doesn't understand, either. You don't hear him kvetching incessantly. He's been living a happy little hermit life (let's be honest, hermits have it made), and suddenly some punk kid shows up and roots him out of his comfortable little hut in the golden age of his life. Luke had been obviously angsting up the moisture farm for some time, desiring a radical change, and yet, he is so resistant to that change when it comes.

Perhaps we are all a little like Luke, but you don't see George Lucas making a film about me, either. Yes, life is fluid: in flux (I seriously love that word). As Gandolf puts it, in response to Frodo's lament of "I wish none of this had happened!" (a reasonable exclamation, considering the circumstance): "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

Similarly, The Book of the Dead inquired of Lirael (In Garth Nix's novel by her name): "Does the walker choose the path, or the path choose the walker?"

We make choices all the time, but how consciously do we choose how we deal with the choices which are made for us? Perhaps that is the real difference between those who are happy, and those who are --well-- miserable. I'm not sure that there is a middle ground. We pass through times of trial and stress, constantly. We pass through times of happiness and joy, only upon our deliberate choosing.

My Cell by the Sea.

Have you ever been trapped under a wave?

You're standing in the foam, trying to transcend, because oceans are sublime. You listen to the sea gulls, hear the waves grating their heavy weight on the sand, and you close your eyes. The feeling of the wild ocean wind is different, isn't it? It's not like the old woman wind that sweeps your face with a wiry broom in the winter, or the shy wind that comes sometimes at night on the hills. It's wet, and wild, and sad. You're standing there, letting the ocean lull you into subliminality,  and then the salty wall hits your head, and you're a klutz already, so you tumble into the wave, trying:

 (1) not to breath,
 (2) to keep your eyes closed because you are wearing contacts,
 (3) to sense the direction that is up, and
(4) to get your head up enough to no longer be under water,

and those are too many items to perform all at once, so you fail a couple of times until suddenly you are standing, gasping, drenched, and surprised by what just happened and by your relative okay-ness. Every inhalation is divine, every exhalation is a prayer. You are safe. You look around. You see the ocean, as it was, before the mad scramble under water, and it is the same. You are different. You see it as you never could have, not before. Now, you know the power of the ocean a little better. You feel the danger seething from its ripples, and that is when you transcend.

You feel it vibrate across your skin, down into the tips of your hairs, and it is electric. Perhaps you are bound by the laws of the universe to remain in the Earth, but perhaps you are part of the greater universe in a more intrinsic way, and perhaps your geographical location seems suddenly to be without meaning. Perhaps time becomes as tangible as it is constant.

Meanings become clear. Paths become straight. The proximity of Life to Danger is a sweet contrast, and you begin to wonder:

What more could there possibly be?

Artists Called Mothers.

Christians believe that dreams can be powerful.

Joseph, son of Israel, had dreams about his future, and was gifted with the power of interpreting dreams. The Pharaoh had a prophetic dream, given to him in order to care for his kingdom, and also for Joseph to interpret. Lehi had an important dream, the dream of the tree of life, and he was even called a "visionary man."

I am not a prophet, though I am a Christian. My dreams are usually just the random sparks of a sleeping brain, but sometimes, sometimes: my dreams mean something to me.

I don't know that I have ever had a prophetic dream, and I really don't think that I've ever dreamed something that affected someone else (like whether or not they eat in the next 14 years). However, my dreams give me insights to how I feel, and sometimes, rarely, my dreams can be answers to prayer.

As a Mormon, I believe in personal revelation. God talks to me, because I am his daughter, and he loves me. Sometimes I am so dense, it takes something so involved and visual as a dream to make me realize something important about my life.

The other night I had such a dream.

My oldest sister just had a baby. You could say the concept is on my mind.

I have often had dreams about being pregnant. In these dreams, various things happen. Sometimes I'm asked who the father is, and I can't remember, and seriously? That's distressing. I remember once in a dream my dream-Mom asked me about my baby, "Who's the father? What's your baby's last name, huh? What's the last NAME?!" and I replied, "It's BARNHART. Mom. The last name is BARNHART."

Once, in a pregnant dream, my skin covering my baby was just like bread dough -- soft, plasticky, and difficult to keep a baby inside. It was an active baby, too, so it was really frustrating, trying to keep the child in. It was very strange.

Once, I had a dream that I was pregnant, and somehow was back in high school. My show choir, from back in the day, did their best to be kind to me. At practice (dream practice, that is), they asked me careful questions and looked at me curiously when they thought I couldn't see.

This dream was different from all of those.

I was pregnant, which makes it similar, but the mood of the dream was different. I wasn't panicking about the pregnancy for any reason. I don't remember being married in the dream, but I don't remember being single, either. I was coming close to the end (I wasn't uncomfortable, which probably tells you how often I've actually been pregnant, to dream it like that), and I was very, very excited about it. My whole family was excited, too. It was like counting down to Christmas: delightful anticipation! In my dream, I was waiting for a baby to become my daughter. I was anticipating motherhood.

I can think of no greater work of art than the creation of another human being.

Purposeful Living

Lately, I've been contemplating my life, how I live it, and wondering what I can do to calm down a bit. I'm anxious. I'm stressed. I hate it.

So, as a transcendentalist, I've decided to take some advice from Thoreau. Here is a little list of how to make my life simpler:

1. Deactivate facebook. It is pointless, meaningless, and time consuming.

2. Kill my texting plan. It is distracting.

3. Watch no television.

4. Quit taking long, hot showers.

5. Cook all my food/stop buying food from vending machines/Papa John's.

6. Quit playing solitaire.

So far I have done #1, resolved to do #2 to a certain extent and #3 during the week, #4 not at all, #5 I've been trying to do with some success, and #6 is gonna be hard.

Here's hoping.

To Run, or ...?

Multiple times weekly, I make myself feel nauseated. That's right; I run. Why? Well, there are multiple health benefits that I could describe in detail, but they are not the ultimate motivator -- not when it comes to me, and running. No. It's something else.

About the time that it begins to be necessary for me to suppress my gag reflex -- usually during the third mile -- I experience something sublime. Rivulets of electricity begin to dance along my skin in waves of flight hormones, and I begin to find myself mid-air. I'm running faster now. Yes, although my sneakers continue to deliver the sidewalk a corporal punishment, the rest of me is transcending this world, all care and stress delivered to the sublime ecstasy of purposeful living. I feel the graceful, powerful expansion and expulsion of my lungs and air. My heart sings with intense rhythmic clarity. My arms pumping, my legs stretching and reaching, my feet whisking through the air like arms on my Mom's electric beater -- I feel, I do, I am.

I am living in, and of, that exact moment, trembling on the lip dividing its birth and death. I will still exist when the moment is gone, but I will only experience that moment once. And what do I do with that moment? If I refuse to look at it, and know it, and experience it, am I not already dead?

What is more important than understanding life? What is more important than running? Is it not worth the price of nausea?