The Thoughts That Fill Your Mind at Night

I find it so incredibly frustrating when there are nights that you just cannot fall asleep. You know you have to because you have to wake up early the next morning and there are a lot of things on your “to do list” and you need the sleep in order to successfully accomplish all of them, but that is the very thing that keeps you from drifting off effortlessly into a deep slumber. WHY?! It is always those incredibly important nights that you need your rest the most that you are incapable of dosing off because you are left worrying about how you did on that Spanish exam, your big presentation in speech that is coming up at ten the next day, if so-and-so likes you, wondering if you should buy that cute shirt you saw at Urban Outfitters the other day, if you should have really eaten that delicious but incredibly greasy piece of pizza at dinner (the answer clearly being yes), going through the list of things you need to buy during your next Wal-Mart trip, count on your fingers how many hours you have left to sleep, accidentally start humming a song you heard in the bathroom while getting ready for bed. Then you realize that you have to go to the bathroom. You let out a sigh of frustration because you know that as soon as you get back to bed the process is going to start over again. You can no longer ignore the pressure that is building up and so you awkwardly climb out of bed and make your way to the toilet trying not to wake up your roommate. You are finally back to the warmth of your bed ready to start from square one.

Genius

I love this song by itself, but I feel the video makes it that much better. It is such a simple idea, but it is executed phenomenally and is very tastefully done. I am most surprised at the pure thought of how incredibly long it must have taken to shoot with the thousands of the individual shots compiled into a music video...impressive. My favorite part is when she is in the "water" and playing with the "fish." So cute and creative. I really do not have a whole lot to say about this, mostly I just wanted to share its awesomeness with you.

Warmth

I can barely wait for the days where you can wear your flip flops and not have to look at the weather channel to see if it will be warm enough, where you can slip into your favorite dress and not have to hide its loveliness with a jacket. When you can finally study outside or roll around in the grass, your choice. When the shade is actually comforting and does not feel like death. When you can hear the pitter-patter of the rain tapping on your roof and windows inviting you to enjoy its goodness and not have to tromp through the bitterness of snow. When you can stay out late to stare up at the stars and not feel as if you are so distant, when the sun tenderly wakes you up by wrapping its warmth around you and stays out late in the day to play. What joy the warmth brings its way.

Boo moody Iowa.

City Life

Big cities intrigue me. There is so much to do and see. Life would never get old. I used to live in or extremely close to big cities such as Naples, Italy (a little over three million people), a suburb of Chicago called Wheaton (around 55,000 with Chicago bordering three million) and then a suburb of Denver called Littleton (close to 41,000 and Denver having approximately 555,000). Then I was moved to Muscatine, Iowa breaking the barriers at a whopping 22,000 people. That just so happens to be the place where I spent most of my life. *sigh*

I have always loved going to visit my family because they live near the big cities and we never run out of activities and there is always something new to see and experience whether that be a neat little antique store tucked away in a building or a homeless man singing and playing his accordion at the corner of a busy intersection. But people-watching is by far my favorite thing to do in the city. Just seeing the variety of people that fill the city and listening to all of the different languages that emerge is almost as good as eating carrot cake. If something is close to beating carrot cake’s greatness, it has to be something pretty spectacular. That is how much I love the city.

The hum of constant cars and the rumbling of trains passing by beings happiness to my heart. The busy traffic does not bother me. It kind of brings a little rush when you are trying to figure your way through downtown while weaving in and out of cars. I find it a stress reliever to lay on your horn for a good long minute at the stopped traffic ahead of you even though you know it will not do anything to help hurry things up. Oh the little joys of living in the big city, yet I chose to come to Iowa State. Sometimes I do not understand myself.

101 Things I Will Do Before I Die

One day I will…

Travel to all fifty states by the time I am fifty years old
Go white water rafting
Go mountain climbing
Travel to every continent (yes, even Antarctica)
See Conan O’Brien live
Ride a camel
Lay in a poppy field all day long
Backpack across Spain
Go across America in a hot air balloon
Go on a safari
Be on The Amazing Race with my sister
Get backstage passes for my favorite band
Open my own coffee shop
Go to a big time fashion show
Go parasailing
Learn sign language
Live in a loft in a big city
Get a meaningful tattoo
Discover a keepsake box/time capsule
Create my own signature scent
Have a piece of my art shown in a museum
Have one of my poems published
Be an extra in a movie
Ride an elephant
Milk a cow
Go skinny dipping
Create my own personal mission statement and follow it (revising it from time to time)
Travel India by train
Take a dip into a fountain
Write an anonymous letter attach it to a large check and give it to a worthwhile organization
Graffiti something beautiful
Live in a house boat
Stay in an ice hotel (http://travel.msn.com//Guides/MSNTravelSlideShow.aspx?cp-documentid=918831&GT1=41000)
Write a personal letter, leave it in a book at the library and look for it twenty years later
Play chess until I beat someone I should not, then quit forever
Witness a tennis match at Wimbledon
Experience weightlessness
See the Mona Lisa
Try fencing
Learn all of the “love languages”
Learn to belly dance
Learn to play guitar better
Go paragliding
Go zorbing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ljbOmNX7x0)
Fly through the Bermuda Triangle and live to tell about it
Witness ancient cave art
See the seven wonders of the world
Learn to juggle
Have a star named after me
Have a room in my house devoted to books
Be in the Guinness Book of World Records
Help build a Habitat for Humanity home
Join Peace Corps
Invent something
Attend a Super Bowl game
Drink the sunset
Live a life without regrets
Have a duck as a pet
Have an eclectic collection of things
Trace my ancestry
Send my parents on their dream vacation
Visit Stonehenge
See the pyramids
Go to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
Learn to break a board with my bare hands
Travel to the moon with Virgin Galactic (http://www.virgingalactic.com/flash.html?language=english)
Ride in a submarine
See the wreckage of the Titanic
Be turned into a piece of art
Grow a Bonsai Tree
Create a home with an inviting, joyous, comfortable and loving atmosphere
Adopt a child (there are a lot of kids already…why add to it?)
Become financially savvy
Splurge on a one of a kind piece of art
Conquer fear of singing in front of an audience
Have a street named after me
Take up gourmet cooking
Learn origami
Learn how to perform magic tricks
Create a mindmovie
Swim in the largest swimming pool in Chile
Learn a little Tae Kwon Do
Become a Yoga master
Perfect snow skiing
Write a children’s book
Do a book’s illustrations
Go whale watching
See the Northern Lights
Do the Polar Bear Plunge
Walk across Abbey Road
Visit a “real” blues bar in Chicago
Participate in Carnival Parade in Brazil
Bathe in the Ganges

Go heli-skiing

Photograph an endangered species as a reminder of how fragile life is

Spend the night in a storied/historic hotel

Stand at the North or South Pole

Participate in the world’s largest water fight in Thailand

Witness Haley’s comet in 2062

Find the man of my dreams and marry him

Cross off everything on this list

Spontaneous

I love being spontaneous. I have had this itch to go and do something completely random and out of the blue for a few weeks now, until Wednesday night when this craving was quenched.

One of my very good friends, maybe even best friend, Kate, attends Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. Not being able to see her at least once a week like I am used to has been tough. We could literally laugh for hours and it did not have to be about anything in particular. We spent a lot of our time watching our favorite show, America’s Next Top Model together and talking about deep life journeys usually consisting of parents and guys during the commercial breaks. Now, about all of the interaction we have had has either been over the phone or through Facebook video messages. Kate has been able to visit me here at Iowa State a few times in order to meet all of my friends and see my puny dorm room, but I have never been there to see the place she now calls home and it was beginning to bother me. Good friends should not be separate for such a large amount of time.

I noticed on Facebook yesterday that her status was “getting ready for her last dance performance!” and a pesky little thought popped into my head. I’m going to go watch. One problem…I did not bring my car to college. I called up a good friend of mine, Valerie, who went to school with her and asked if she would maybe want to go watch Kate dance. Before I could even finish my sentence she agreed to go. It just so happens that she knows a lot of really nice people who own cars.

It was finally time to hit the road. We had our directions, IPod and good stories all lined up for the trip. After an hour and a half we reached our destination after driving past it twice not realizing that the campus is practically the size of my pinky nail. We passed a parking lot that housed a max of eighty cars but kept going thinking there would be one closer to the gym. Nope. That was it. We finally parked and sprinted across central campus due to the fact that it was five degrees and blowing like a mini tornado. I felt as if we were running through Narnia’s winter wonderland. When we reached the gym red faced and shivering we remembered that Wartburg has sky walks that connect all of their buildings, but we were glad we just made it there without the wind blowing us into a pile of snow.

We arrived just in time for the half time performance so we quickly mustered up three dollars each and slyly slipped into the student section trying not to give ourselves away. I had butterflies as if I was about to see my favorite band perform or a boy I have not seen for a long time. We giggled because we could not believe we were actually there. I was watching the clock tick down the last few minutes while watching to see if Kate would appear from the “dungeon” as it was cleverly labeled. Five…four…three...a small guy on the Wartburg team attempts to make a half-court shot but it comes two feet short and bounces into the crowd. Half time! The players clear the court and soon music starts playing. As the girls filed out and got into their starting poses, Valerie and I were holding onto each other like proud parents you see at every event with a camcorder and a button of their kid pinned to their chest. We spotted Kate but she had not yet seen us which prolonged our anxiety. She was a dancing pro, better than many of them who had been dancing for years, and then there is Kate who has not has never taken a lesson in her life. The performance was over and they started filing out towards the dungeon so Valerie and I stood up and yelled her name but she did not look, so we yelled it again. Still nothing. Again. And again. Finally she looked to see where this obnoxious noise was coming from and stopped in her tracks and stared for a good five seconds trying to figure out who we were. Then a dropped jaw followed by a huge smile. My favorite reaction to date.

After about five minutes she came out and charged us. We exchanged a few hugs, smiles and happy stories then headed to see her dorm. She could not get over the fact that we were actually there and that we got away with keeping it a surprise and ranted about how excited she was all of the way to her room. There we met her roommate and a few others were heading to Eucharis, Wartburg’s version of The Salt Company at Iowa State. It was dead. There were a lot of people but little life or growth among them. After the service was complete, Kate introduced us to her friends who consisted of mostly guys and you could tell they all wanted her. She is the one of the few friendly and outgoing girls there so they all flock to her. There was one guy in particular who came out of nowhere and introduced himself to us. I could tell he was trying to win us over and pass the best friend test but I could read right through him. He then proceeded to hug Kate, twice, and I wanted to punch him in the gut and tell him to get his hands off of her but I held back. Eventually we left and hung out with a few of her friends in one of their incredibly nice rooms and chatted about all sorts of odds and ends. She has such fun friends. The night came to an early end when Valerie started falling asleep on the couch so we drowsily walked back to Kate’s at one in the morning and got ready to hit the hay. We chatted in our temporary beds and drifted off to sleep.

I woke to the rhythmic buzzing of my phone and the sun seeping through the shades and onto my face. I rolled over fighting the thought of getting out from my toasty sleeping bag and changing out of my comfy pajamas, but I knew we had to depart. I poked Valerie with my index finger a few times to get her to open her eyes and thankfully it worked. We shuffled around her room trying to gather our things without disturbing anyone but unfortunately Kate is a light sleeper. She climbed down her ladder and joined in our effort to pack up. Once everything was folded and stuffed away in a bag we stood facing each other in a silent pause because we knew what followed was the dreaded goodbye. We hugged for a minute and thanked me for coming out to see her, even though it was for such a short amount of time. It meant a lot to her. We sadly waved goodbye and quietly shut the door behind us, hopped back into the car and headed back home to our everyday, routinized lives.

Big Whiff

I see the world around me in a big blurry mess out of nervousness. To my left I see houses and the rusty metal shop building. To my right the big brick school and all of its students peering outside wishing they could experience the beautiful weather. Although it was a beautiful sun shiny day I hated it. I meekly walked up to the squishy baseball mat with a bat too large for my small size and watched my teacher slowly toss the ball up towards me and I watched it fly past me. I heard the rest of the students chuckle behind me. I took a big swallow of my sticky saliva and awkwardly held up my bat waiting for the ball to come to me again. I see the people on second and third base waiting for me to hit a homerun so we could make a lead in the score, which only put more pressure on this hit that I didn’t need. Again I watch the ball come softly soaring towards me and I knick it away off to the foul lines. Not only do I hear the people around me snicker, I can hear the laughter of the people in the cars passing by in the street ahead and the houses hiding behind the trees to the left, one belonging to the home of my sister’s good friend. I was waiting to go home and have my sister and parents be laughing at what happened in gym class today because they were peering out of their windows watching me in my humiliation. I took a deep breath hoping that it would calm me down and I would be able to keep my eye on the ball as they always say, but to no avail. I whiffed again. More chuckles. I began to sweat because I realized that I was going to be standing at that base for a long time considering there was no three strikes and you’re out rule. You just stand there, soaking in humiliation and wait until you can tap the ball somewhere onto the open green field. I watched my gym teacher’s eyes as he tossed the ball so carefully to me trying to make certain that I could hit it, but even the helpful and encouraging eyes couldn't help me hit that silly, white, holy whiffle ball. I start to hear numbers called out from the long curvy line of onlookers behind and to the left of me. They were out of sight, but not out of ears reach and nothing I could do would keep them out of my frantic head. I remember thinking,” I am sooo glad Chris isn’t here to see this” as I hit another foul ball. I hear someone whisper, “Eleven” in a taunting voice behind me. I swear ten minutes had passed as I was still standing by the dirty and beat up home plate, most likely because it had. I look back with a look of apology to the rest of my class waiting for their turn at bat and see that people had become restless and were sitting on the ground picking at the grass. I look back at my teacher just hoping that he would have pity on me and let me go to the back of the line so I could hide from all of the eyes, but instead he was still standing on the mound waiting for me to let him know when I’m ready. The ball inched towards me and I heard a pop at the end of this clumsy piece of plastic in my hands and realized I had actually hit the ball on the field, it took me fourteen tries, but I hit it in play! In the ten minutes I was standing there I almost forgot the rules and my running was delayed, but that embarrassment paled in comparison. My brain had a huge sigh of relief as I timidly walked to the end of the line. Thankfully I didn’t hear another word about it that day at school which I couldn’t have been happier about. From that point on, I have only watched baseball.

The Pitfalls of My Imagination

I have a confession to make. I did not fully read the article that we were supposed to for homework for today. At least my mind was not fully there considering it was about two in the morning when I read it. I do not recall it being so disturbingly gruesome, so when I reread it in class today I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach, slightly light headed and by the time I left I managed to get a headache. I do not do very well with the whole blood and guts scenarios. I blame this on my exceedingly vivid imagination. I think my brain takes me places that most do not. Either that or I just do not handle the situations well, but I will blame it on the imagination.

I have found that my imagination has been both beneficial and harmful. I have been able to use it to really dig into a book in such a way that I feel like I am there alongside the characters, have peculiar daydreams and produce art, my favorite being in the form of a collage. Although many good things come from this trait,there are many more memories I remember where it has not been so constructive. I was one of those children who got a running start before flying into my bed because I was afraid of what creatures might be living under there, when I saw shadows on the walls I was sure someone was there to get me, and I would often have the reoccurring nightmare of a pack of wolves devouring my entire family and leaving me to fend for myself.

What was worse than scary dreams was my decision to watch the movie The Sixth Sense one evening in 1999. It has caused me so many nightmares and restless nights, even days. I scared myself into thinking that I was being followed and around every corner was someone or something that would attack or scar my thoughts. I believe I cried myself to sleep most nights for almost a month after seeing this film. I even asked my parents to go to therapy. Thankfully these fears havemostly filtered out as I have gotten older, but I will still find myself recalling random bits of the movie every once in a while. Especially the scene where Hayley is using the restroom with the door slightly ajar and someone walks by. To this day I still make sure that the bathroom door is fully shut if I am inside, even if I am not using the facilities. People will often share a quiet chuckle with each other when they find out that I will not be within eyeshot of the movie let alone watch it because they do not find it scary. But they do not know the whole story and I do not typically try to recall those nights where I would stay up just to make sure no one would get me while I was sleeping so I take the insensitive chuckles if it means I can ignore the memories for one more day.

True Colors

I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed our class discussion in Thursday’s class. I always take pleasure in taking an ordinary topic, such as a blog or a picture, and looking at it in a whole new way and asking simple questions about them that really make you think. So when the whole issue of being able to decipher who someone is by their blog, their “about me” section or their photos really intrigued me. Sure, they may tell you something about what they are like, but it is all staged. Everything about facebook, myspace, or a blog is set up in a way that only what the person wants you to see is viewable. The music or the movies that are listed are ones that most likely evoke good memories, but what about their guilty pleasures or what they listen to or watch when everything in their world is not so gung-ho? The blog postings are not usually ones that bare the soul of the author. The “about me” section is filled only with things they want you to know about them. The pictures that are posted are ones that the person most likely looks good in, but we are not always done up nicely and smiling at all hours of the day. All it catches are snippets of you. Even when you think you are being brutally honest in what you post, it is never going to be you, and because of that they can never fully know you unless they are around for a long time.

Then there is Postsecret, where people expose some of their deepest, darkest secrets anonymously. Although there are no names attached, this is where people’s true colors really shine through. The whole world has access to reading them, and often times I am sure the audience can relate, but only the sender of the postcard knows this about themselves. You cannot connect the secret to the sender and learn something about their true identity. It is sad to me that some people feel the only way they can truly reveal something honest about themselves is anonymously.

Superstition

Being that Friday the 13th was this week, I figured nothing more suiting to blog about than superstition. I cannot say that I am the most superstitious person, far from it in comparison to the rest of the world I am sure. Especially with the signs of bad luck like a black cat walking across your path, walking underneath a ladder, opening your umbrella indoors, walking over the zodiac sign in the Memorial Union. Who is earnestly afraid that bad things will happen to them if they were to carry out one or more of those actions? All of those have happened to me, multiple times actually and I have lived to tell about it with no serious or scary stories to share. What I want to know is who made these things up and what about them makes them “bad luck?”

Towards the beginning of the school year, I accidentally dropped a handheld mirror on the tile floor in my dorm room. I picked it up to realize that I only had the plastic covering in my hand. The glass was shattered in a jumbled mess on the ground beneath me. My first thought was “aaah crap. Now I have to buy another one.” Then immediately after, the thought came to mind of how you will supposedly get seven years of back luck once you break a mirror. I shrugged it off and said it was all a scam. Then my button fell off on my jacket. I stood there for a few seconds and just stared at the button twirling on the floor. I was thrown off guard because this was not supposed to happen. I grew somewhat concerned not knowing if something else was going to happen. I tried recalling the other times I had broken a mirror if anything had happened, but I could recall no such moment. Then I wondered if maybe this bad luck because of a broken mirror thing had its own set of rules and it would not kick in until you were eighteen years old. So I kept my eyes open and my senses acute. Nothing else ever happened, but it almost had me.

Although I do not find myself believing that bad things will come from these things happening, I will occasionally find myself doing silly things like: avoiding stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk, making a wish when it is 12:34 (even though one of them is yet to come true), search for four-leaf clovers, wishing on a fallen eyelash, knocking on wood, and sometimes just for fun to recall the memories of childhood I will twist the stem on my apple and recite the alphabet until the stem falls off (you know what happens next). Oh the ridiculous things we do.

To Travel

When I travel, I have a tendency to want to fit into the surroundings. I hate looking like a tourist. I find that I rarely will carry a camera or an awkward backpack or fanny pack that will give me away. I do enjoy seeing people who stick out like sore thumbs. They simply do not care who is around them and do what they want and could care less of what they think of them whether that be an entire family wearing Hawaiian shirts and kakis, a newlywed couple who can barely keep their hands off of each other or a solitary man with his fancy 40D Canon taking pictures of everything around him. Personally, I find my vacations to be so much fuller if I can just soak in what is around me through my eyes and not through a lens (I usually leave the photography to whomever I am with).

I love venturing to the parts of the city that most tourists do not tend to visit because there are not any “tourist attractions” there, at least not the big ones. I want to see what the people see, experience what they experience, and eat what they eat, to be one of them even if it is only for a day. Otherwise I do not feel like you will get to experience your trip to its entirety. I will go visit the main tourist sites to say that I have been there done that, but what I want more than that is to disappear into a café or a little hole in the wall restaurant and people watch and enjoy the fact that I am not obligated to do anything. I think this quote sums it up quite nicely.

"Travel pushes my boundaries. When you travel, you become invisible, if you want. I do want. I like to be the observer. What makes people who they are? Could I feel at home here? No one expects you to have the stack of papers back by Tuesday, or to check messages, or to fertilize the geraniums. When traveling, you have the delectable possibility of not understanding a word of what is said to you. Language becomes simply a musical background for watching bicycles zoom alongside a canal, calling for nothing from you. Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full of choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower. You open, as in childhood, and—for at time—receive this world. There’s the visceral aspect, too—the huntress who is free. Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth."

February

I have a great appreciation for new things. New clothes. New friends. New books and journals. New music. New goldfish. New days and months. The list could go on and on. There is something so refreshing about the start of the new. I cannot quite put a finger on it, but I like that. Something to look forward to, hope and wait for. A reason to clear your off your desk and just rest in the joy it gives you. A chance to start fresh and enjoy what has been given to you.

I wish I could experience this more often...

Tattoo or No Tattoo?

Tattoos are ridiculous inventions if you think about it. Who would have thought about stabbing your skin with a little needle repetitively and then putting ink in that wound to create a design? I mean…what?! They can have a tendency to be pretty neat pieces of art if done right, but if not, then you have a piece of tacky “art” stuck in your body to carry around with you for the rest of your life. Yes, that means your tattoo of a flower will begin to wilt along with your skin. That is the reason I hesitate in getting one. I have seen far too many ugly tattoos, more than the occasional tasteful ones to risk having someone possibly screwing up on mine. There is also the fear of not liking the results after it is complete. There may be some sort of medical procedure to have it removed, but not only is it an incredibly painful and expensive process, it still does not eliminate the tattoo entirely. I hate needles to begin with, but the thought of one making thousands of little holes in my skin is terrifying! Although somehow I find this small bit of me that still wants one even in knowing this.

If I were to actually follow through and get one, I would not necessarily want it in a place visible for the whole world to see. I know they have the potential to hold you back in the workplace and I would not want to risk something as big as that for something as small as a tattoo. It would be in a place that only I could see and one day my husband. No tramp stamps please and none on my foot (the new and improved tramp stamp).

As far as what I would get, I have spent many hours contemplating different possibilities, but I have yet to come up with one that I love enough to keep with me forever. It needs to be something that means a lot to me and has some sort of significance behind it. Sure, maybe someone loves Mickey Mouse so much they want to put it on their skin to showcase that, but I mean something deeper, something that describes me but that cannot be determined or interpreted by just looking at it. You would have to ask me to understand the whole story behind it. I would like to go with someone who means a lot to me and get the same tattoo as a reminder of the other. My sister is the person I have in mind, but I highly doubt she will fall for it, but I have not asked her yet, so I might be surprised.

It is going take quite a few more hours of pondering the numerous possibilities of getting a tattoo before I will ever go through with this proposal, but something tells me that the tinge of unruliness in me will win.

Fragility

Today I have a whole new appreciation for life. In my 8 o’clock health and nutrition class towards the end of our time I heard gasps from multiple people and my professor yell, “Someone call 911!” A girl at the front of the class had passed out in her seat and was bright red. A guy from a few rows back announced he was a medic and ran up to her along with another man. The class fell silent with the occasional concerned whisper as they slowly brought her to the floor. At this point she was beginning to turn blue. A guy in the back of the large lecture hall stood up with his phone in hand and asked if she was breathing. Shortly after the man helping her replied that she was not. The guy on the phone described what was going on to the best of his ability and gave them the address. I could not see what was going on from the back and it only made me more nervous. What was going on? Was she having a seizure? What are the two men doing to help? When is the ambulance going to get here?! Finally, about five minutes after someone called 911 a woman arrived with a bag in hand and approached the girl lying in front for the whole class to see. Shortly after she arrived our professor dismissed the class. People slowly filtered out of the classroom in silence while trying to catch a glimpse as to what was happening down in front. As soon as we left the classroom I saw the ambulance pull up and people rush inside with a stretcher.

Since class was dismissed about ten minutes early I stayed inside LeBaron for a while and talked with a friend of mine. While we were waiting for the time to pass, I overheard multiple conversations of passersby talking about what might have happened to the girl or people inquiring about the ambulance outside. No one seemed to fully know what was going on and it was killing me that I did not know the real story. No better way to start a rumor. I eventually left and on my way to Kildee I was passing by McKay and noticed that the fire alarm had gone off. I wondered what was going on inside. Was someone pulling a prank or was it real? Nobody knows. What a way to start out a Monday morning.

It got me thinking, we are so unbelievably fragile. Life can simply vanish in a matter of seconds. We have all heard that we take life for granted, but I do not think you can really grasp it until you encounter a near death experience. It may make you reflect back on all of the great experiences you have had so far, maybe some of the few not so good that you realize are tying you down and make you release them, it may mean to make things right with those you have wronged, it may mean you call that special someone and tell them you love them because you do not know if you will have another opportunity, but for me, I thank God for this life that he has given me. I know my days on this earth are numbered and so I will use them for the One who gives me life and breath and everything else.

Quirky

One of my favorite parts about getting to know someone is finding out some of their talents. I tend to have a pretty good idea about what someone might be good at, but all it really is, is an educated guess. I love it when people entirely catch me off guard and posses completely out of the blue talents or pastimes like creating latte art or making paper cranes the size of my pinky nail. I kind of enjoy not being right. People of this sort intrigue me.

A good friend of mine who I met at the beginning of this year is a prime example. I was told by someone I had just recently met that we were going to be “best friends” before I even met him. They must have known that I enjoy this breed of people. I still wonder today what gave it away.

I pawned him off as being someone who would be musically inclined, but what I quickly found out once getting to know him was that he has never actually played a musical instrument. He has good taste in music and a lot of it, but has never really played an instrument. It turns out that he is an outdoorsman who backpacked out to Alaska this past summer, an incredible photographer with all of the gadgets and doodads to prove it, an abnormally incredible yoyoer and an avid collector of unusual shoes. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised.

I always try to pick up a few talents and pastimes that could potentially be out of the norm and that might catch someone off guard if they were to ever find that out about me, but I have not come across any that I have been particularly fond of and kept up. Plus I am not sure if anyone else would really appreciate the strange talents the way that I do. But I keep searching. Eventually I will discover one, I have no doubt.

One Day

I love coffee. I love free-reading. I love art. So what better way to display all three of my passions than to open my very own coffee shop. It will not be just a coffee shop but part bookstore and partly a place to display and purchase people’s art. I am well aware that often times small, personal businesses get shut down, but I do not mind the risk. I find it kind of exhilarating. I cannot say that I have it all planned out because I definitely do not, but it is a work in progress. I have mentioned this idea to numerous friends and surprisingly they all have considered doing the same or going into a particular area of work that I would need in order to make my business run smoothly. Coincidence? I think not.

When I see something like a piece of art that catches my eye or an interesting coffee mug, I think about how perfectly it would fit in my future shop. I love brewing potential ideas in my head about the future. As much as I look forward to the thought of opening up my own place, I know it will be a lot of work and will most likely tie me down, and I am not sure how fond I am of that idea. I like to have the option to be free and roam when and where I please. I understand that the chances of that happening are going to be slim to none when I find a job, but it is still nice to dream right? Hopefully I will get to a stage in my life where I find a job that I love so much I would not even want to leave. That will be the day.

As much as I hope I find a career that I love, I do not want it to define who I am. Sure, let it be a part of me, but not all of me, not a chance.

The thought of work always leads me back to a book I read in my high school English class one year, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail and the way that Henry David Thoreau so eloquently looks at the subject...

“Retirement? What an absurd idea! Why spend the best part of your life earning
money so that you can enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable
part of it? Why work like a dog so you can pant for a moment or two before
you die?”

Bird's Eye View

I must admit I am incredibly jealous of birds. This may sound odd, but it is so true. It arose in class today when I saw a small bird perched in a tree looking in as I was looking out. Even though it was bitterly cold today, I still felt a bit of longing to merely have the option to be wherever I wanted to be whenever I wanted to be there. What freedom they have. They are not restricted to classrooms or schedules, they do not have to be concerned with living up to a particular set standard or worry about how they are going to pay for their education, they just take it a day at a time, a trait that I am still perfecting. Though this may be true to every animal, but birds have it far better because they do have the capability to see the world from one hundred feet in the air. How cool would that be? I mean, really. Who would not want to experience flying?

Life for them is so undemanding. There is a part of me, my adventurous half that would want to live that life of minimalism. To not be tied down to a job and be able to just up everything and move from town to town, maybe in a mobile home, maybe to whoever’s door that is open and willing to welcome me in, or maybe on the streets, who knows. Something that involves some risk. Then there is my practical, stereotypical side that wants to live in a nice, character filled house to raise a family, to be self-supportive and find a job I love (if I can ever find what that is) and in the end settle down with my love and raise a family. Why do we have to live according to our cultural predisposition? I dislike that we have created a status quo and if we do not live up to it than we have seemingly failed. Who set the status quo anyway?

I just wish the nomad life were not so looked down upon. We all have a need and a hunger to be liked and accepted, even those who like to challenge the norms of life. It would be difficult to create any sort of lasting friendship if you were constantly going somewhere different unless you were to bring along with you some sort of companionship. This would surely be a challenge for me because I thrive on people. There is no doubt in my mind that it would push my boundaries, but I like that. I think I would enjoy the challenge. Maybe I will only do this for a short amount of time, just enough to quench my curiosity.

There is one part of the bird’s lifestyle I know I can follow: to take life a day at a time. Plans are too overrated.

Three in One

In the article “On Dumpster Diving,” Lars Eighner did an extraordinary job describing his life on the streets. I felt as if I could have been there next to him helping go through the steps of determining if something found in the pits of a dumpster was edible or not. He has such a way with words that makes you truly believe he was out there eating leftover pizza tossed out by a pizza delivery store, creating thrifty tools that would make his scavenging as efficient as possible and coming up with ways to turn embroider-by-number kits into gifts. He experienced it all.

I noticed in Susan Bordo’s piece of writing titled “The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies,” that her use of stories and examples were exceptional. She caught the audience immediately by saying that a place such Fiji, where the beautiful women were voluptuous and curvy but that clearly changed as soon as American and Britain television started to broadcast there. In showing vulnerability to the reader, she is able to bring in a perspective that most leave out when it comes to this topic. She uses ethos to create for her a sort of respect and admiration that she would be willing to share her personal struggles so openly.

As far as Richard Rodriquez’s article, “Public and Private Language,” there are a lot of emotion filled words. I could sense the pain that he was going through as he was forced to transition from one lifestyle to another. The difference in the way he portrays his family from the time that they used to all speak with vivaciousness before the move from Mexico to California and how home life became so dull that no one wanted to return home at the end of the day. It is upsetting to hear of a dwindling family. Although the story was distressing, I love how he went on to receive his Ph.D. in English Renaissance Literature of all things, is working as an editor for the Pacific News Service, and has published several books. There is nothing like a fairytale ending.