art, art, i want you; art, you make it pretty hard not to

First, click the play button on the video below and listen while you read. Then after you're done reading, listen to the words again carefully. Sorry if you feel bossed around - you don't have to if you don't want to heeheee

There are many things that make me feel like a nobody, a noob. n00b. Taking the bus. Crossing unfamiliar crosswalks. Talking about nice and not so nice cars. But most of the time when that happens, it's okay. I actually kind of like feeling small - like I'm just a teeny piece of something bigger, something greater and more purposeful, like yeah I don't understand what's right in front of me but zoom out and you'll see a more coherent, make-sensical picture and ultimately everything really does make sense, at some level - that's nice. And it's good to be honest about one's noobishness and unashamedly so, sometimes (um yeah I'm having a little trouble figuring out which way to go in this FOUR-WAY crosswalk, but hey it's like only my 4th time here and there are so many cars and persons all around and this thang is complicated!), cause it makes for a good learning experience.

But the thing is, sometimes I feel like a noob about things I claim to love - things I know I do love. Things people think I'm good at (eeeeeep!), just by virtue my appreciation of them, combined with the semi-obscurity of said topics. Poetry. Art. Conversationing about human hearts. Blabbering words and sentences and not being sure I make sense, and even worse, experiencing someone else's elegant eloquence - extremely excellent - and being dwarfed by their genius. Don't misunderstand me - it's not about being jealous or bitter that I'm not smart enough. It's more like...being reminded about how much genius is truly out there in the big world, outside of my own head and feeling kind of scared because I'm supposed to "be good at this," cause supposedly, "omg I luff poetry!" you know? But do I dare even utter these things? Do I dare declare myself an English major? Who will care about what I say, do, make, write, synthesize, create? Am I even worthy of claiming that I love these things, when I know so little and am so inept at even expressing my love? I have no idea.

Art

For those of you who will not click the play button above:

"Art, art, I want you. Art, you make it pretty hard not to.

And my heart is trying hard, here, to follow you

but I can't always tell if I ought to."

partial to parcels

Parcels possess potential. A package wrapped in parchment paper, arriving in the pitch-black of a pristine winter night, packed with peanut brittle. A present containing a purple umbrella – protection against the pitter-patter of a rainy day in Pennsylvania. A paperback Pride and Prejudice with a petite pile of post-it notes, for Professor Pavlo's English 101: the personal reading assignment. It can be anything you want it to be, up until the moment you peel back the wrappings – a pleasant surprise, a mysterious perfection.

Parcel pronounces prettily. The perfect elision from the 'par-' to the '-cel' presenting a poetic partnership of syllables paired in auditory heaven; the two separated ever-pining for each other in the most pathetic of parted-lovers' sighs. One without the other is powerless, pitiful, perished. Preposterous perspiration and panic-inducing paralysis of my pulmonary system demonstrate my most profound passion for 'parcel.'

Parcels play phonetically. With so many possibilities for fortunate spelling faux-pas of this divine word, misspelling is probably more profitable than pernicious. Some strikingly pleasant examples: parsley, atop a prodigious portion of steak, for example; a parasol, for protection against the parching blaze of the summer sun; and Parseltongue, resulting from a particularly egregious error leading to the name of a peculiar language spoken by a certain Mr. H. Potter.

Who isn't partial to parcels? They are perfect.

mmmmmm

Bécquer

Rima XXI

¿Qué es poesía?, dices mientras clavas

en mi pupila tu pupila azul.

¡Qué es poesía! ¿Y tú me lo preguntas?

Poesía... eres tú.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Rhyme XXI

What is poetry? you ask as you fix 

on  my pupil your blue pupil.

What is poetry! And you're asking me?

Poetry... is you.

Éluard

L'Amoureuse

Elle est debout sur mes paupières
Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens,
Elle a la forme de mes mains,
Elle a la couleur de mes yeux,
Elle s'engloutit dans mon ombre
Comme une pierre sur le ciel.
Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts
Et ne me laisse pas dormir.
Ses rêves en pleine lumière
Font s'évaporer les soleils,
Me font rire, pleurer et rire,
Parler sans avoir rien à dire.

Paul Éluard

Beloved
She is standing on top of my eyelids
And her hair is in my hair,
She has the shape of my hands,
She has the color of my eyes,
In my shade she is engulfed
As a stone against the sky.
Her eyes are always open
And she does not let me sleep.
Her dreams in the bright day
Make the suns evaporate,
And me laugh, cry, and laugh,
Speak without having anything to say.

parts of translations stolen from: 

here & here

natural tendencies

this is the first thing that came to mind. 

I have a simple mind.

I'm all about the "natural tendencies" of things. Like, thinking thinking thinking hard about something complicated or discussing a controversial issue or just doing something repeatedly and coming to the same type of conclusion at the end of every try. The belief that the natural core-being...ness of something being a certain way leads you to the same conclusion every time. Does this make any sense? Probably not :/ Okay let me try some examples:

Like learning about issues of development and reaching a gloomy conclusion every time (no matter what specific thing you're discussing or whatever context the issue is put in): that, yeah, the world is kind of messed up and developing the undeveloped parts of it is a difficult, maybe impossible, thing to do. The AH-what-have-we-done-and-what-are-we-supposed-to-do-now! conclusion at the end of every depressing discussion, because maybe there really is no solution. All we can do is learn about it and keep thinking about it, and weep because we can never fix it.

Or maybe psychology. Or sociology. Evaluating different studies that are supposed to reveal aspects of  "human nature (stuff we're all supposed to have in common. human universals.)" and deciding - dun dun dun, that we really are innately bad, or something (the "or something" here is supposed to indicate my lack of real knowledge, just sayin'). Sorry, try again, Mr. Idealist - "people are all just bad and there's nothing you can do about it" (quoting Mr. Realist, obvi.)

Ahh I'm sorry I suck at not being general and indecisive and confusing and hyphenated. I'm not trying to be mysterious - I just really suck at coherency sometimes. Lots of times. But the idea is that

because something is so inherently ___, no matter how much or in what way you discuss it or think about it or WHATEVER, your conclusion will always end up as          . Those are just the natural tendencies of the ___.  ...Yap.

this is the music in the background of my life during the moments I've been taking to write this post.

just trying to recreate the scene of this gross incoherency. maybe the recreation will make it better.

Despite all the Negative Nancytude that this post is demonstrating about the whole natch.tendencies thang, what I truly wanted to say (what really inspired this late-night blogging) follows thusly: whenever I am communicating with God, whenever I am praying (thankfully about the happy things, complaingingly about the complanatory things; the good-the mediocre-the bad, the whole spectrum of conversation topics you know), no matter what the subject of the moment, I always end up with a "God I love you"

cause God must be "so inherently   love  ."

5 strawberries before 20 (& 3 after)

I cannot believe how close I am to having lived for more than 19 years. Anticipating the (maybe) justly-due wrath I may incur from the upperclassmen/even older people by saying this but deciding to say it anyways, let me just exclaim:

I am so old. I   A M   S O   O L D.

Actually, that's not true. I know it's not true. I am actually probably closest to the peak of my physical, mental, emotional health, being, whatever, that I've been in my life thus far - an exciting thought (yay). But it's just that relative to me and my life history up til now, I am also the oldest I've ever been, and this craziness even more exacerbated by the fact that I'm entering the next decade of my life. Which, I realize, has already happened once (maybe even twice, if you're being technical), but this is sentient me. Almost adult me becoming almost-almost adult me. Soooo significant because I will officially no longer be a teenager. The number of times I say the morpheme "-teen" as a part of my introduction (Hi, my name is Madison and I am nineteen years old) will probably decrease drastically!

And there are 5 days left. I wish I knew at what time of day I was born so I could dramatize this even more, but alas, I only know the date. So there are 5 days left, and I decided today that I will do something distinctly immature or kiddie to celebrate each of those 5 days...and then continue to do more things for the first three days of my life as a twenty-year-old so the total will be 8 (because it's symbolic, you know? A continuation of kiddiness, leaning a little more heavily on the 19-side because that just makes sense. And 8 because that's my favorite number (because that's my birth date and also once I won bingo cause of 8 (hah))).

(Read the first part of this, if you don't understand what the strawberries are all about. My mind just jumped to this thing - sorry if it was too abrupt!)
So,

Strawberry #1 (3/3/11): 
swinging on the tree-swing outside of Brown with Beks. 

real picture to come later, but LOOK IT'S A STRAWBERRY ON A SWING!

Strawberry #2 (3/4/11): 

A piece of leftover cake for breakfast (thank you for the surprise party!) - skipping real breakfast to try to finish up a take-home exam before my day begins.

again not a real (my) picture...but I forgot my camera cord at Maups

Strawberry #3 (3/5/11):

Was reminded about being a child of God. Spring Retreat 2011!

googled: gcf spring retreat, and this came up!!! I see...Yekyung, possibly Grace Pyon and Joyce Min, and Ed Bahng...! okay so it's from the gcf website, but still coooooool

Strawberry #4 (3/6/11):

Went puddle-splashing in muh rain boots in the muddy moat m-around Maupin. Didn't think to take a picture cause this wasn't on purpose; it just happened haha

my splashings weren't nearly as picturesque as this persons'^

Strawberry #5 (3/7/11):

Spent the morning reading (left-handed) cartoons, i.e. 

some immature buffoonz, like me.

Strawberry #6 (3/8/11):

Okay not necessarily child-like or immature, but kinda related to old and young ness - looked through past emails in search of my xanga and found a string of emails between me and a good friend. Forwarded him our silliness and reconnected by laughing over how embarrassing and weird we were.

just a little snippet of what I wrote to him - profoundly confused about this new, hip, personal site thing called facebook and whatnot...hahaha

Strawberry #7 (3/9/11):

Broke Lent on the first day. No pictures, no mo words. Sighz what a baby

Strawberry #8 (3/10/11):

Took a nap. Well it was like 3 hours long so you decide if that's a "nap" or a mini-sleep. I know grown-ups nap all the time, but I usually don't, no matter how tired I am. I'm just not good at it - I know I won't wake up in time for the next activity I'm supposed to be alive for...People who can power nap are one of the biggest mysteries to me. I need a good 3 hour chuck at least. So when I fell asleep after lunch and woke up to dinner time today, it was a special occasion! Haha

 What if you fell asleep and didn't wake up for twenty years?

alone and together simultaneously

Sitting in a sea of people. All taking up similar amounts of physical space. The long, sturdy wooden table divided into chocolate squares of eight beings' elbowrooms, punctuated by two lamps and endlessly expanding bubbles of private thoughts and non-thoughts. We're all existing here, together and next to one another, but also so far apart and deep away, tucked snugly in our respective worlds of gchat, blogging, and wolfram alpha (that's me in the middle of Mr.GChat and Calc-2 Girl).

We're together and alone. 

This is something I noticed a lot over my summer spent in Korea - especially in Seoul. People are so good at tuning the world out when forced to share a certain quantity of air with other beings. They exist all pressed up against each other without even seeing - without even noticing that the girl whose outer thigh area is slightly touching their outer thigh area across the continuous metro seat looks like she's about to cry. Without ever seeing the soldier-man in camo, riding the bus standing up (cause he's a man - no need for comfort of the butt or feet!) with a package next to his combat boots-ed feet, wrapped in pink-hearts-galore wrapping paper (the package, not the boots). So many small tragedies and sweetnesses of lives pressed up against yours that you never pursue to investigate or care about...!

But I mean it must be a matter of survival, too. Yeah, we're all social beings, but everybody's minds need alone time, albeit in varying degrees. In big cities where you're always hustling and bustling and jostling with other people doing the same right next to you, it's hard to have alone-in-the-zone time. When you can just stare blankly and think about blank things, which is just a fancy way of saying "nada nada limonada" (which is just another fancy way of saying "nothing") - crucial for sanity. So we zone out of the physical world around us and zoom into ourselves, our computers, our daydreams, our Things To Do lists - create our own thought-bubble-existence worlds, while everyone else does the same. Exist all together and completely alone at the same time. What a weird, weird thing.

Apparently, if you gather all the people in the world and get them to stand shoulder to shoulder and face to face, we would all fit into the city of L.A. (source: fun fact shared over Sunday lunch - MK, also known as michiecream). ...le WOAH. If this happened for real, the world would probably explode in a metaphysical way or something, due to the concentration of so many big and small and medium sized thought bubbles. Imagine all the different trains of thought that would be going through the airspace above our collective heads! Imagine all the same ones! And everyone lost in their own worlds...

...until someone across the table from you accidentally nudges your foot because she was readjusting herself and you were readjusting yourself and both of your feet met in the same space at the same moment in a tiny collision that brought you back to the real world of Clark Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, U.S.A., Earth.