Passive Voice Novel: Coming Soon!

There once was a river. The river was called "Passivity." It was not desired to be swam in, but it was required to be done. The dangers were known; the signs were read, and the foot was placed in the flowing water. The Hero was told "farewell," and the heart was calmed of fear. The boat was pushed from the shore, and the journey officially was begun.

Then it was declared "finished" because of its difficulty and decided repulsivity.

The End.

BYU = Cool (Sometimes).

Check it out:

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

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.

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

Passion.

–noun

1.

any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as in love or hate.

Passionateless people are unimpressive perversions of legitimate humanity. Show me a man who is impassioned by life, and I'll show you someone worth my time, money, and infatuation. If you are a man, and you do not understand passion, meaning that you have not felt impassioned, then you are a disgrace and a travesty. You are an embarrassment to the species.

Love is a most ardent passion.

There is a trend among men for shallowness and mediocrity which seems to be matched in women with a desperation for depth and exceptionalism. Men seem to generally lack strong emotion. They also turn from expressions of unadulterated emotion with mild repulsion. This is epically disturbing.

In dating, I find that the finger is generally pointed toward women, that women are the problem. Women complain about being single, and ergo must change themselves in order for the situation to become rectified ---and yet, we must never, never, never expect men to change their behaviors in any way. The flaw of singlehood is engendered by women's general lacking of man-catching skill, outgoingness, bravery, and leadership. I, as a woman, and most women I know (especially the single ladies in my ward), have looked inward and excavated and re-built our beings  again and again until we can fervently say that we are in legitimate danger of Juno's jealousy. Without fundamentally changing our personalities or innate persons, we have hiked --- no, ran --- up the mountain of self improvement, and find ourselves lonelier still.

Let's have a moment of honesty here. Can extensively improved human beings really be the ones at fault for their loveless lives, their inability to compliment another's passion with passion of their own, when there is another half playing video games and watching reruns of "South Park"? No. Don't be stupid.

Perhaps you think this is prideful, or perhaps you see it as dodging blame. In this you would be wrong without question, and for obvious reasons. I do not deign to address such a horrible misconception of the women I am referring to, and the fact that you would stoop to ask such a wrongfully crafted questions causes me to question your stability of character, morality, and upbringing.

Perhaps I am truly blind.
Perhaps my young women's leaders lied when they told me that I am precious.
Perhaps I am as mundane as the men I blame for the widespread dearth of companionship provided to the  unimpeachably remarkable women I know, love, and have cried with on occasion in regards to our embarrassingly prolonged interludes of solitude.

Perhaps.

But at least we have passion. Yes, we are passionate creatures, and cry we must (Medea said in Euripides' tragic play, "I am a woman: I have to cry!"), so cry we will.Women cry, on average, five times a month. Men cry, on average, once a month. Feeling compassion is a godlike attribute, and shame for this expression of potential godhood is nonprogressive and ridiculous. Perhaps the stigma associated with crying was created in defense of those who lack. Those who can't, mock. In any case, it is counterintuitive.

What this world needs is one more vertebrate man. A man who is passionate, strong, brave, and a leader. Is that not the definition of manhood? So many males say, when referred to as boys, "No, I am a man."


Prove it.

 It is time for a real hero to step forward. It is time for now's Beowulf to prove his passion, and show the world of Provo that men with spines are still being born. Do not expect women to hand you all that you want, because although we will try, unless you stand up and create a world where men are men, and women are allowed to be women, what is wanted will not exist to be handed to anyone.

I am a Tribute (Obituary)

PROVO, Ut -- Heidi B., the perpetual student, of Brigham Young University, has died. She was ...well, it's curious, saying the age of a woman, even a dead one, even if I'm not saying, but just typing it, seems impolite. Let's just say she was old enough to drink, and young enough to die good. Even though she didn't drink, and she wasn't really good, either.

Heidi, a left-hander, was 741-0 with two near-wins and five comically predictable strike-outs only in the last year.

Heidi suffered and died from complications due to what medical experts called a "massive BSR stroke" (while reading, of course) caused, doctors say, by an unusual combination of extreme boredom, extreme seclusion, and massive reading. Apparently the brain really can only handle a quantifiable amount of proportionate salmations of these three things, and doctors estimate that she had exceeded the normal limits of "so much" in the eighth grade. "It's a wonder," said one expert, "that she made it as long as she did. It really was only a matter of time."

Witnesses claim that she died laughing.

According to Heidi's friends, she was "nice --- but a little strange." One friend said, "I felt bad for her, because she just didn't fit in -- I mean, she really, really didn't. I just wanted to help her be normal, but it was totally beyond her to even see normal. It's like she didn't even realize how weird she was. Or she liked being abnormal. I think she was pretty near-sighted, actually. She told me her contact prescription once, and I sort of wondered if it were legal for someone so impaired to drive."

Heidi's family had nothing to say on the subject of her death. When questioned, they asked, "Who?" and then, "she's dead? What are you talking about? Stop being ridiculous. I don't have time for one of these games."

According to several facebook tests, she most likely was color blind, had road rage, dandruff, schizophrenia, technophobia, androphobia, and would most likely date both George AND Fred Weasley if she were a student at Hogwarts. Of course that means the opposite (Except the part about androphobia).

Heidi was pursuing a degree in English Teaching, which she unfortunately did not obtain prior to her death.  She has exactly zero major (or minor. She was minoring in humanities) accomplishments to speak of.

She is survived by ...well, no one. She never did get around to making one of those family-things, and her apartment contract forbade pets of any kind.

At least she died laughing.

Sample in a Tube.

She sits, in the library, day after day
from her job, in the lab,
squirting samples into tubes.
Her eyes meet the floor:
(they are unashamed lovers,
her eyes and that floor,
meeting day after day,
gazing passionately on,
unashamed of the time
that they've wasted on each other.)
There she sits, till the close,
in that room, after dark,
gazing days into years,
till her face starts to sag
and the people in her books
live their lives while she sits
and diligently squirts
all her samples into tubes
in the mornings at the lab.

Janel and Jared