Recognizing Excellence in Writing

It took me approximately 1 hour to get through the first Twilight novel by Stephanie Meyer, and felt I should gouge out my eyes with a broach to adequately mourn the time wastefully spent skimming through page after page of trashy cliches and basically poor prose. In contrast, I spent 2 delicious hours savoring each word in Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, a deeply beautiful novel that also caused me to mourn: not for time ill spent, but for the end of something so exquisite, so poignant and so beautiful that I wished to always be reading it. It is not ironic that I should so happily spend double the time reading a book of only half the length of Twilight:  it is simply the difference between good and poor writing.

Shakespeare is a fantastic standard in the English language for good writing. He unceasingly employs creative and exacting poetic devices that elevate his writing in a continuous upward transcendence. He does use cliche, but not generally speaking, and not as a fall-back tool of the trade. No. The Bard is much better than that.

Students, too, can learn to be better writers than a New York Times bestselling author! Student writing can be monotonous to read when poorly done, but it also can be a fantastic experience when students rise to the occasion and produce quality work.  I have noticed, while reading student essays, that a few always cause me to to pause and read a little slower. They make me think, and they have a funny sort of beauty, too. They use delicate and sometimes intricate figurative language, and they are rhetorically sound. Writing is nothing more than communication: the attempt of a thinker to transmit his or her thoughts to another. It is immediately apparent to a reader how much thought fueled the writing. The craftsmanship of the figurative language, the complexity of the thoughts, and the poetry of the two fused together make good writing unmistakable.

My Sad Life in a Series of Disney Quotations

Lately I find myself easily comparing me to Jessie the yodeling cowgirl:

"When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful. Every hour we spent together lives within my heart." -Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl, Toy Story 2.

My main tactic for moving on with my life has been to just not think about the last year at all. The experience is way too much like the above quoted Sarah McLachlan song, and the truth is:

I am a desperately hopeless romantic.

I believe in LOVE. What can I say? I was nourished by Disney movies growing up, and now it's just too late. You are what you eat. I can't believe in love and let myself wallow in self pity, not this time. I can't be Mariana of the Moated Grange any longer, or say to myself, "Sometimes its better to be alone" (Megara, Hercules). 

"If there's a prize for rotten judgement, I guess I've already won that." -Megara, Hercules

I know that makes me old fashioned, but I really, truly believe in the kind of love that transcends time, space, and circumstance. I believe that there exists a love that embraces all my weird quirks and histories, and someday, when the time is just right, we will meet.

"¡Ven conmigo! ¡Te mostraré las maravillas de la galaxia, y juntos lucharemos contra el despiadado Zurg!" -Spanish Mode Buzz

It just hasn't happened yet. Until then, "I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now" (Edna Mode, The Incredibles).

"Go, confront the problem. Fight! Win!" -"E"

Life Enrichment vs Life Sustaining

I have been thinking lately about what makes life worth living. Here is a short list:

1. Ice cream. Any time, any where.
2. Visiting the zoo.
3. Watching a double feature at the drive-in movie theater with my friends, and making jokes that they laugh at, even though I'm not that funny, but feeling like Tina Fey because they laughed a LOT.
4. Going for a long run or bike ride and feeling like I'm not running, but flying.
5. Donuts at Grandma's house.
6. Stopping at Little America for 50 cent cones after a long drive through Nebraska
7. Walking through Mammoth Cave in Kentucky with my Dad.
8. Listening to Shakira sing "Waka Waka" and convincing myself that she's talking to me, personally, and that the whole thing has nothing to do with soccer, or Africa, but everything to do with my life lately (Or as John Green would write it, My Life Lately).
9. Reading a book by John Green, and realizing that even though he chose to be a writer instead of a minister, he actually is a minister, not a writer.
10. Reciting "The Soldier" by  Rupert Brooke at work and replacing the word "England" for "Reptiland."
11. Singing along to "Hotel California" with my sisters and brothers as I drive them somewhere, and realizing that my brothers and sisters are more awesome than I ever gave them credit for, because they already know all the lyrics.
12. Watching "Little Women" and crying EVERY TIME when Beth dies.
13. Finishing a large drawing of the solar system, and feeling a small portion of what God must have felt when he created the real solar system.
14. Selling the book Verdi to a young mother who hasn't read it yet.
15. Discovering that there is a new Avatar, and all of the first book so far is available on nick.com, and watching the first 3 episodes with my sisters!

I don't need to do any of these things. They are not requisite to survival. The same is true of many things: in fact, most of the things that make life worth living, I find, are not the things that make life possible to live.

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.

What Dorothy Gale Didn't Tell Aunty Em

"End, begin: it's all the same. Big change!"

-Augra

I love my home, and I've wanted to come back for such a long time -- but, I've got to be honest -- I've had a recurring nightmare for the last few years: when I come home to visit, I am forced by legal or maternal forces to return to high school, and it is awful.

I've been thinking lately that I might want to get an art add-on to my certification. So, before diving into that, I decided to observe some art classes in motion. I contacted my high school art teacher, as well as the elementary art teacher, and I observed them teach for a day.

I loved observing, especially the elementary classes. They were sweet, and creative, and excited about art. They thought I was awesome, and, well, that made them awesome.

Going back to my school was like entering the twilight zone: all of my nightmares congealed with my actual memories, and I felt like I was swimming through a Dali painting.

Everything was just the same as I left it. The teachers were all the same, the posters in the halls and in the rooms were the same, the carpet and schedule and broken policies were the same. The students even seemed to be the exact same students who roamed the halls before I was released, wearing the same cut off shorts and bunched up tee-shirt, combing the same section of hair carefully over the same eye as ever before. The band room reverberated with the same sounds, and the cafeteria stenched of the same smells, the gossip dripped in clinging, black gobs from the same mouths into the same ears.

I took my little sister to a fund raiser fair for the elementary last night, and I saw a classmate who graduated with me. We had been through all those years together, in the same OM team in elementary, in some of the same classes, calling each other strange nick names until the bitter end, and yet, when we passed each other in the hall, we didn't make eye contact. We barely said hello. We walked a little faster.

This town is a fantastic place, full of kind people, and a great school district. There's just something funny about leaving a place as a child, and coming back as an adult. It strips you bear of all you've built around yourself since that time, and it makes you feel trapped in a never-changing mirror.

It doesn't help that I'm in a similar place in my life as I was the last time I was in that building: flux. Then, I had just finished high school, and I knew that I was going to BYU, and everything would be changing, but I was blind the reality of how that change would affect me, shape me, make me the woman I am now. Today, I just finished college. I know that I am going to become an English teacher, and everything will be changing, but I am cognizant of how blind I am to the reality of how this change will affect me, shape me, and turn me into a different woman than I am today.

I wrote a post a while ago about Luke Skywalker. I've been thinking about those thoughts, and I've wanted to take my own advice: but I think that it may have been flawed. Luke and Frodo both find, eventually, the perspective their elders have masted -- eventually. Who am I to criticize them for the time it took them to find serenity amidst a paradigm shift? It may take practice, more than sheer will power.

What do you think? I am all at sea.

A Letter About Life in College

To: my sweet sister, Kimber, upon the occasion of your graduation.

Dear Kimber,

This is an exciting season of change for both of us. You are graduating from high school, and in the fall, you are going to BYU. I am graduating from BYU, and in the fall, I will be going to high school (as a teacher). . . (I hope I hope!). I think it's as good a time as any to tell you all you need to know to survive the jungle. Seeing as you and I are so similar, I think that my advice will be especially helpful for you. Here is a list:

1. don't drink the water. It may not be a foreign country, but it is in town, and you are used to well water. It will taste really gross, and if you try to drink as much as you need in a day, the poisons in it will make your belly ache, too. get a Britta filter. Use it.
2. Spend as little money as you possibly can in the BYU bookstore. It seems cool at first, because it embodies the spirit of BYU in a sense, but I promise you: you will come to resent that establishment almost as much as you resent someone spitting in your morning cereal. The solution? half.com, which is powered by ebay. Yes, ebay is the answer. Ebay is always the answer.
3. Eat real food. Food that you literally eat day in and day out will eventually make you sick at the sight of them. So, if you ever want to enjoy Cheerios or peanut putter sandwiches again, make sure that you also eat something else during the course of the day. Like meat. And vegetables.
4. If you eat junk food, you WILL get fat. It's just one of those things you don't want to learn the hard way.
5. If you got it from a vending machine, it IS junk food, and it WILL make you fat.
6. If a boy asks you on a date, and you are in the HBLL, then he's a jerk and a player. Don't bother.
7. If a boy asks you on a date, and it is not the library, you might as well say yes as long as you're not already in a serious relationship and you're not getting creeper vibes from him.
8. Never go for a run after dark.
9. Never run on the river trail.
10. If a boy asks you out, and you are both in the same ward, then think carefully. It sounds nice, the idea of getting to spend 2 hours every Sunday with your boyfriend during church, BUT, do you really want to spend 2 hours every Sunday with your ex boyfriend?
11. Use ratemyprofessor.com to find the right professor for each class. Remember, too, that a negative rating might be positive in actuality (IE: "Don't take this professor! He requires you to .....learn! And it will stretch your brain until it expands to capture a larger portion of the knowable universe!" How dare he!)
12. Take astronomy from Professor Moody. That way, you can say that you took a class from Professor Moody.
13. Even if you don't go to "FHE" or devotional or institute every week, go to the temple every week. It's a good choice. You may never again have the opportunity.
14. When a boy asks you "What are you thinking about?" when he hugs you goodnight after a date, he probably is thinking about kissing you. Beware.
15. You don't have to marry the first jerk who tells you he loves you.
16. Keep a separate journal to record all of your dates in, and keep a running tally of all the boys who ask you out. Dating is a game of feast or famine. Written proof of the coming feast will help you stave off the hunger of famine.
17. Learn to find quality, cool clothes at the DI. This is a very difficult and frustrating talent to foster, but it will save you tons of money if you can pull it off.
18. Do NOT join the medieval club. I will disown you if you do.
19. Wash your dishes every time you make a dish dirty, and wash them right away. If you leave even ONE dish in the sink, you basically fail as a roommate and you deserve to feel crummy about how rude you are to all of your unfortunate roommates who have to deal with your crap under their noses all day long. Remember: You are living with strangers! They don't have to love you, and a sure-fire way to make sure they don't is to be a slob!
20. Do not expect your roommates to ever, ever ever clean up after you. You are a grown up. Act like one. They shouldn't have to even look at your mess. Plus, it is not their mess; it is YOUR mess. If you are too busy to clean up after yourself, then you are too busy to make a mess in the first place.
21. Whatever you do, do NOT put your boogers on your roommates' bed covers. She will throw up a little in her mouth when she finds the green scab on her otherwise clean duvet.
22. Wash your sheets every week.
23. Seriously, wash those bad boys.
24. Procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency for ANYONE ELSE.
25. Don't spend more money than you earn.
26. Continue to read for pleasure. The HBLL is an amazing place where magical dreams come true, if only you dedicate some of your time to reading.
27. Act like a grown up, even when everyone else is acting like they are 5 years old. It might seem like the cool thing to do, but really it not. You won't regret it!

Well, that is all, at least for now.

Your sister,

Heidi

P.S.: Does anyone else have good advice for my little sister about college life?

Sweet Freedom

"Today is a good day to die."

-Lt. Commander Worf

 Do you remember "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin? I read it first in high school. A woman with a heart condition is told that her husband has died in a tragic accident. Locking herself in her room, she does not find pain in her husband's passing, but rather, joy:

"She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her."

And when she learned that her husband was not in fact dead, she died of the shock. It's a very interesting short story; you should read it.

I thought that if Jordan and I ever ended our relationship that I would die of grief. I find myself, on the contrary, released of an immense burden. Just as Kate Chopin's Louise Mallard felt, I feel:

"Free! Body and soul!"

When I read this story for the first time, I had never been in love. I was 15 or 16, and I thought that Louise must have been in an abusive relationship. I thought that Mr. Mallard must have been a horrible man, or Louise must have been a terribly selfish woman.

I find my opinion is changed. Jordan was not abusive. I was not selfish. And yet, here I am, exulting in the inner chamber of my self:

"Free, free, free!"