how to be alone

Just finished posting all my documentary-ing pictures of first.semester.of.college on facebook. Still trying to recover from the too-many hours spent captioning, rotating, organizing, explaining. Obviously unable to form complete sentences as of yet.

Haha actually I'm just trying to refrain from using so many I statements.

Looking through this semester in the pictures I took, documenting everything, really made these past few months seem like "my" semester. Gave me some weird sense of ownership over this experience that hundreds of first year UVA students had this fall-winter too, but was also amazingly, magically, unique to each person. Haha I know it shouldn't seem like magic that "everyone had a unique experience," because, well, ...duh everyone lived something different, but I don't know - it seems kind of magical to me, all these different perspectives lived and sights seen and pictures taken by so many different people put in the same place, living the same sorts of experiences in terms of the big-general stuff.

And it turns out that my first semester at college was full of solo adventures. Exploring the Rotunda in search of a bathroom ending up in a symmetry photoshoot, sun-basking in the amphitheater because the warm stone steps are the best for warming up cold bodies, library hopping, walking everywhere and wasting substantial amounts of time in transit to far-away places like the Corner and the hospital. It's not that I didn't want to hang out with people - I actually spent a lot of time doing useless things with other people too, and it seems that you're never really "alone" on a college campus anyways. It's that I just happened to spend a lot of time with myself, and in doing this one day even discovered my intro-extroverted self (hah).

So the conclusion is: "being alone," for all the subtle social insecurities the phrase may be stuck with, isn't a bad thing. Haha let's be active about it: lots of times, being alone is good - even preferable to having your moment full of people and voices. Enjoying alone time doesn't mean you're antisocial or independent in an off-putting way like a cat. So don't be insecure girl and work dat up-do! (Woah sorry for being so bossy)

Here are some helpful tips to begin with, because I'm really no expert and because she can say it so much better:

Happy alone-ing! Haha for all my talk of casting off socially-placed insecurities and labels it still sounds a little depressing. It shouldn't though! Hopefully the video convinces you, too - it's really nice.

"such a bad person"

So many Christians I know, me included, so often say this phrase in the same context of "me" or "I" or "myself" or "madison," if his/her name happens to be Madison (except me, cause talking about oneself in the third person is "funny" in the weird way...said Madison to herself..(uh what kind of weirdo narrates her own life? not me)). It's a different kind of self-deprecation than most of society is used to, I think. Subtly, but definitely, different. First of all, it's not a humor thing, and it's admittedly way holier....and I am kind of already regretting my word choice of "holier" but really it's hard to find a replacement at this moment and I am probably over and beyond my quota of commas and conjunctions for this entire post, I think. aargh.

And (sdf#fr!) I know it's kind of inherent to many, if not most, of Christian denominations' beliefs in the Original Sin, Jesus' redeeming death on the cross, our need to be saved...and constitutes, basically, the very foundation of our faith.

But truly, honestly, I find myself questioning it so often. I know I'm a bad person - I am selfish and thoughtless and hypocritical, in subtle ways that make it all even worse. I know that, and am in the process becoming more and more perfect, because He tells us to "Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect" (in Matthew 5:48) (thank goodness). But I have a hard time reconciling the beauty I find in humanity with this original schmoriginal sin idea (is this heretical schmeretical..?sigh). I want to believe people are innately good. Honestly, I don't yet know for sure if people are indeed innately good, and probably never will, but nevertheless, I want to believe it. I want to think the best of people and wish to trust everyone to have the best intentions always.

But I can't - I'm not supposed to, right? If not according to "reality" according to realists (stop snickering, you realists), at least according to Christianity...right? And solid Christian doctrine shouldn't really be subjected to an "at least" kind of qualification anyways.

Don't even go into predestination; I'm a romantic-realist.
Hm. Send me words. Hellllllpppp

Mozart, mensa, and mediocrity

I am the most mediocre person (eh.. the "most" mediocre? the "middlest"? yeah, it exists). But wait wait, before you get all worried, it's a.o.k. Pahaha it's a-okay - I'm not writing a whiny post about how sad and "just okay" at everything I am. I am pretty "just okay" at everything, that part's true, but it's not necessarily sad or whiny, so hold on.

I guess (hope) everyone goes through childhood always being told that they are, simply thinking and accepting that they are, believing that they are, indeed being (!) special. I was. Enough, at least - like, a moderate/normal amount. Enough that I didn't end up with  either an inferiority or a superiority complex (whew &hurrah).

But then you reach a certain point of being a bigger person, bigger than a small kid, when you realize that you are pretty average. Right? Except for a few special individuals who are really gifted, like Olympic contestants and best-selling novelists (though a lot of times, even those people are told they're no good at what they do, by editors, publishers...), and like, Mozart and MENSA geniuses and master bakers or something.

Mmmm...geniuses

Anyway, so unless you fall into those categories mentioned above, you are a pretty average, normal person - and you eventually realize your normalcy. And it's not all about you necessarily "not being exceptional" at something, either, because everyone's relative worlds are always changing - as we learn to grow and deal with harder and harder things, the bar set to define excellence is jumping higher and higher. Being great at Pee Wee soccer (this is real; you can even coach it!) doesn't mean you're going to be a star player in the World Cup someday. Being an awesome artiiiiste in middle school (or even high school. gasp.) doesn't mean you will be the next Picasso. Just thinking about the difference between high school and college sports teams makes this clear.

But this isn't a sad thing. Mediocrity, as a whole, is not a sad thing. Here's why this post isn't a wehr-wehr kind of a post:

1. Mediocrity is full of hope. Because you're in the middle of the awesome-terrible scale, you can always move to either end - which way you go, or even staying in the same place, is at least partially dependent on you. How empowering is that?
2. Mediocrity gives you a choice. It's either glass half-full or half-empty. You don't have to be gung-ho about it if you don't feel like it.
3. Mediocrity in shoe size means you usually have the biggest variety of shoes to choose from. Ask anyone with size 5 feet. Or size 13. Or...both. That would really suck.
4. Mediocrity is necessary - we don't really get a say in whether it should even exist or not, cause what kind of awesome-terrible scale doesn't have a middle? That wouldn't even be a valid scale, at all - like even less valid than just being a random made-up thing in this little person's little blog post. 

Big/tiny feet are difficult to accommodate, you know.

P.S. I love geniuses. Of the musical variety and the sensitive sweater variety and the expertise in Mario Kart-playing variety. AHHH

companion to four fingers?!

hrmmmm

What an understatement of a definition.
Thumbs are great...

• because their foot-counterparts, big toes, help us stand upright
• for holding chopsticks...and the other utensils, too.
• because they are so expressive. They are the only specific digits that can say "yea" and "nay" and "I feel pretty ambivalent about that." I guess they could even express halfway emotions, if you use the angles cleverly or something.
• because they are stout but proud. Even though they only have two segments, they don't have a complex or anything about it all.
• with kids. haha
• for hitchhiking purposes. You don't even have to have one of the hitchhiker variety.
• when you're painting your nails because of the relatively formidable surface area. What a relief to be able to start out on such a large palette.
• because it can be green. No one has a "green pinky."
• for playing the piano with extra force, or when you're trying to play octaves, or when you just feel like playing the piano with just thumbs.
• for opening doors and ovens like civilized people. 
• for holding pencils!
• to type with on a computer keyboard with expertise. Can you imagine how much longer/how much more effort it would take to move some other finger down to the space bar every single time you had to insert a space? ...I am tired just thinking about it.
• because it would be really hard to hold open stubborn paperbacks with just your four non-opposable digits. Dang.
• when you're picking out a piece of candy from the candy bowl

But you're right. There are some really important things that the other fingers do, too. Like pinky-wave at your friends and lovers, dip into sauces and soups to let you have a taste, pick nose holes (okay I guess you could pick your nose with your thumbs but...hmm), flick things off your blanket, wear the marriage ring on the marriage/love finger, press all the other keys of the computer keyboard and piano keyboard,  and close the clasps of necklaces/button buttons (yeah the thumbs need help a lot of times, but they're not ashamed of that). And other stuff. I guess it's the cooperation of all the fingers and their adjoint (is this even a word? Oh, oops.) friend the palm that makes up the whole magic of hands.

Yay for hands. Yay for thumbs. Yay for...all the fingers?! Oh no, generalizations wreak havoc once again.

privateface

I've only been home for like...not very many hours but I've already spent so many of those hours on the computer. Staring at the screen. With my face. Looking at facebook stuff or blog stuff or email stuff, instead of my fambly or my Binky or all the books I want to read this winter break.

And this made me think of privateface:
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1278174725798&id=1414260910
especially the second half of the video, from like 0:21 onward,
where syang is typing furiously the videocaption of this

"pointless video of you watching pointless video and then writing on my wall and then writing on my wall

again"

It's such a private part of someone's facial expression repertoire. Everyone has their different-occasions-faces, mostly for the outside world - smiling for pictures, smiling f'real, being outwardly sad, cute little asian face (cause asians are so prevalent in my life), blahblah blah. Even staring off into space thinking nothing  (or maybe something, but you're not gonna tell anyone about it) isn't necessarily a private activity, because it's most often noticed and noted by other people.

-"whatcha thinking about?"

-(waves hands in front of face) "HELLOOOOOOO"

-"ahahaha you're staring off into space."

I mean when you're staring off into space in private, no one is there to point it out so you don't ever notice your own silly looking face.

But this staring-at-computer-screen face that everyone has is so private. Well unless you're skyping or making videos or...I guess even watching videos or something, when you're laughing or crying. I don't know. Haha but otherwise, when you're just doing normal, not-immediately interactive computer activities like typing out an email or googling something, online shopping, learning to play the ukulele, whatever, that expression you're making during those activities, probably very few people have seen. Or okay, with that face, you have probably not given active attention to anyone, because no one is there to ...appreciate it, react to it. And you're not expected to give the computer non-verbal cues with your eyebrows or mouth corners, because its feelings will not be hurt by your stoicness. You know?

Did you just get really self-conscious about your expression at this moment? Hahaha cause I did, and now I'm smiling at nothing. Oopth.

THERMODYNAMICS

The ENTROPY of the universe is INCREASING.

... 

All change arises from an underlying collapse into chaos.

The deep structure of change is decay;

What decays is not the quantity of energy, but the QUALITY of energy.

Energy's quality, but not its quantity, decays as it spreads into chaos.

High quality, useful energy, is localised energy.

Low quality, wasted energy, is chaotically diffuse energy.

Things get done when energy is localised.

But energy loses its potency to motivate change when it becomes dispersed.

-Peter Atkins: The Creation

(jacked from a chem handout, weird CAPSLOCKs and Britishy English and all. more thoughts later....maybe.)

madisonstheoryofrelativity.net

"BUTTERFLIES = SUGAR SQUARETON RAINBOWS"

Nope, that's not the theory of relativity.
Neither is THIS. Not the one this post is going to be about, anyway, though that's a pretty important one by a pretty special guy. I GUESS. Anyways...(it's hard to focus when Maddie the roomster is being so hyper without me/listening to her hippy-dippy musicz eyy shoutout)

Anyhow --
zomg I cannot believe this, but this is something I always "zomg-I-cannot-believe-this" at whenever I feel that a major time span has been covered in my life. Year-ends, birthdays, the beginnings and ends of summertime, the Russian national day of reproduction...all the important timespan-milestones. Though it has never been too significant in my life before, since the only classes that changed in elementary, middle, high school semester by semester were P.E./Health (blech/blech), the end of this semester is freaking special so special too special. I'll never live another first semester of first year ever again. I know, I know - on that kind of specificity level, it's pretty unlikely that anything will ever be unspecial blahdi-blahblah, but really what a huge milestone we have all just lived. WE ONLY HAVE SEVEN LEFT AH (oops just generalized the whole world as experiencing the same things that I experience. selfish.) Ahh first semester. I can't even talk about it right now, not yet. Ask me a semester later.

ANYHOW ---
so first semester classes are done! Done like turkeys, all of them (guh I keep forgetting about finals but yeah).

Let's have a conversation right now (sorry, I know you don't have much choice in agreeing or not agreeing to my whims of having a conversation with you right now or not):
me - can you belieeeeeeeve first semester is already over?!
you - oh I know - it's so crazy! it went by so fast
me - yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeah...yyyyy

After having that same (stunted, kinda-one-sided) conversation over and over after all the time milestones listed above &etc., I came to the conclusion that is now madisonstheoryofrelativity. Hm I've actually never thought of it all as one word before, but it seems kind of catchy. Hmmmaybe.

SO THERETHUSFORTHLY ----
here's finally the explanation. I think I need another conversation.
me -  (cont. from above yyyyyy)yyyyyyeah. SO I HAVE THIS THEORY.
you - oh rearry.
me - yeah it's called the theory of...eh heh...relativity.
you - ah. hah.
me - so when you're two years old, one year is half of your life, right?
you - yuss.
me - and when you're nineteen, one year is...one nineteeth of your life, right?
you - yusss.
me - SO. RELATIVE to you and your life experiences, that "1/19" year is much shorter than the "1/2" year you spent as a human being. RIGHT?! And every year that passes by is relatively shorter and shorter -  a smaller and smaller segment of your life as a whole!


you - oh. yeah. mhm.


me - yap that's it.

Haha so there's my theory of relativity. Man I really hope I didn't mess that up with my general incoherency. And I was hoping to make the 'you' end of the conversation more easily applicable to whoever ends up reading this by making it as generic and devoid of personality as possible, but I guess that's sort of a contradiction, too - more widely applicable generality...no one is "devoid of personality. And if someone is, that's sort of a personality on its own anyways. Oh well.

And I don't know what big thing I think I am, but I was honestly surprised when someone told me that other people have had this thought before me. Oh hey... What a fool I am pahah

hello how are you how has your day been?

hello how are you whattupppp are often taken so lightly. It's definitely not always this way, but so many times, greetings are in general such...space fillers. Because you happen to be standing in front of one another at the same moment in time and everyone else seems to be greeting others.

And the responses are taken just as lightly - there's never enough space between the 'how are you' and thePRETTYGOOD.

"hi! how are y-""GOOD"

Haha I know this is a little sillyfied, obviously, but sometimes that's how it seems. Not many people ever truly answer the question. It's just a conditioned response, filling the air in between two individuals and not accomplishing any of its word-potential in finding out about anything, really, until (if) the real conversation starts.

So it's no wonder that people so often just skip this whole asking 'how has your day been' business altogether. And even if the question is asked (haha sounds like marriage or something. the question!?), no real answer is ever expected.given.

But it's important to ask about people's days.

Lots of people never mention their terrible days, full of inadvertent fall-asleeps and consequent stressful popping out of beds and raspy-voiced presentations in Chinese classes. People are suffering mini tragedies everyday, which are really only mini in retrospect and when zoomed out to the big picture (But what human being is good at doing that for every mini tragedy ever?SLASH what would really be the point of being human if we didn't suffer from our mini tragedies and rejoiced in the mini moments of....joy?).

Reading about my friend's popping-out-of-bed-so-many-times-AH-so-stressful-day on her tumblr post a few minutes ago, I realized that I saw her at the end of that day. And never asked how her day had gone.

OOOPZ.

Haha so the point is to say hello and how are you and mean it sometimes. People need to be asked, more often than we're accustomed to thinking!

GOODBYE HOPE YOU HAVE A WUNDERFUL DAY 8-)

nightswimming

the door to our room is being pulled and pushed by the wind from outside the window - it sounds like someone is trying to get in. not slammingly but gently, consistently, once in a while. the pressure from the winds and the constant volume of the room, i guess, makes all the difference in the world. like the road less traveled and night swimming. night swimming - deserves a quiet night. rain rain and wind and windows lit up far away close outside of my window and phantom hands bodies trying to get inside the room, but not scary-ly. the recklessness of water. they cannot seem to make it. like catherine's ghost and heathcliff(e) longing for his lover, their souls were made of the same soul-material. same silk, same cotton, same polyester, but probably not polyester. something older, and not as stretchy. and not very soft. are you hearing this rain outside? so much water - there will be a moat outside of maupin tomorrow morning. the maupin mote for madison and maddie princesses and being kind to others and using nice words and not being careless with other peoples' things and hearts, though not backspacing. well backspacing a little.

nightswimming. deserves a quiet night.