the unicorn in my IR discussion

There is a unicorn in my International Relations discussion.

PLIR 1010.
Wednesday afternoon, 4 p.m. to 4:50 p.m., SHARP.
In the (fittingly) mystical land of Nau Hall.

Okay okay I'm just kidding; you got me. But in all seriosity, in this weird...mythical-creatures-existing-in-everyday-life kind of way, she is a little bit like a unicorn to me - singular magical horn and all. It all started with an innocent game of ASSASSINS. You know - dorm bonding fun activity at the beginning of the Fall semester, getting us to get to know our buildingmates by formulating complicated plots to kill each other as targets of our assassinary and forming alliances and suffering bitter betrayals and surprise strikes. And stuff. If you signed up, said "yes, I shall participate!", this grand assassin scheme-master would plug you into his very complicated system and email you a target to kill and if you succeeded, you would take on the mission of killing your target's target and on and on until one ultimate assassin reigned over all of our dead bodies (our method of killing was sock-throwing, targeted below the head. Relatively safe). The game also involved silly immunities and stuff. Lots of people changed their facebook identities and it got very complicated and intense - people carrying around dining hall take-out boxes for entire days was not an uncommon occurrence.

So I was assigned this girl. And really, did everything "right" - looked her up on facebook, carried my sock around faithfully, watched all crowds of people carefully, always on the lookout for a redhead female looking a little fearful for flying socks bulleting toward her. Even found out where she lived, cause I'm friends with one of her suitemates (one floor below me, SO CLOSE and so far!). But alas, fate was not on my side - no redhead I encountered was the redhead of my purpose!

...Until one rainy morning, while walking out of Maupin on my way to Symbolic Logic, I spotted them. The red hairs. Peeping out from under a gray hoodie, which was in turn peeping out from under a black umbrella. Albeit hiding and peeping, they were real, and calling to me. So it was only natural that I chased her down and  (because I felt a little bit bad about totally ambushing her when she was so off-guard and tired looking from the morning being so early) after tentatively yelling, "...hey...!", gently tossed my sock at her arm. And this is the embarrassing story that went down after the sock launch:

redheaded mystery girl: *looks confused*
me: wait...are you Clara Barton ? (not her real name)
rmg: um...no.
me: ....I AM SO SORRY I THREW A SOCK AT YOU YOU SEE I'M PLAYING ASSASSINS FOR MY DORM ASSOCIATION AND AND
rmg: ...it's okay...
me: D:
rmg: *walks away*

So the only real encounter I had with this redheaded target of mine was...not even real. Tragic. But then some days and weeks and months passed and I got over it (oh, and I got killed by this trumpet player who refrains from shoes. In the next door suite). I also heard that she talked to someone about me, how "yeah I was supposed to be playing assassins, but no one ever tried to kill me or anything. I didn't even do any of the immunities!" Sigh. If only she knew.

So imagine my surprise when I saw her sitting in my IR discussion! Wearing clothes that I would wear if my mom didn't already object so much to all my "hobo-like clothing," saying intelligent things while blushing just slightly - basically, all the bases for a beautiful friendship. And now that I can't kill her anymore, I see her around everywhere and all the time. And each passing occurrence of a chance encounter with the redheaded mystery girl (the real one, that is. Though I also see the non-real one everywhere, too. Eeep), I want to reveal myself: It was me. I was your assassin! And I really did try my best to find and destroy you - you were just never the right redhead!! Please understand... But for some reason, I never do. Strange, because I talk to random strangers about intimate things all the time. Err...more frequently than the average person, I think.

But anyways, yeah. I've sat next to her at coffee shops and libraries and IR discussions without saying a word. Because there's a sense of magic in keeping (benign) secrets forever. Because she is a unicorn. Because this way, she is forever mysterious, far away, distinctly unreachable. Distinctly...shouldn't be reachable, in a way, because what if I talk to her and she turns out to not appreciate differentness and never emailed people back or something like that? So for me, she shall forever stay a mystery.

& forever a unicorn

Put this way, I suddenly can't wait to go to discussion tomorrow! Yayayayay for sitting several seats away from unicorns and admiring them from a respectful distance and never revealing your assassin status and keeping benign secrets forever. And for finishing blog posts - whew

escaping the lukewarm

Well right now I'm breathing, blogging, and...flossing muh teeths.

If you wur wondering.

(strawberry alert hurhur) Today was a muggy, muggy day. High of 88/low of doesnt-matter;still-warmish, and a humidity of about 2093480293 percent. But it never quite rained, so all the water was forever stuck in the atmosphere - all, like, holding its breath and clenching its eyes shut and crouching on the verge of curling into droplets but never quite going over the invisible line to condensificationing....you know? It was sunny and gross, wet and breezy, simultaneously beautiful and a little suffocating. 

So, naturally, I was feeling 

and looking

pretty gross all day so at the end of it, decided to take a c o o l shower - uncharacteristic, because I usually like to take (almost) scaldingly hot showers...even in the summer, sometimes. And today's shower was weird. Not only because of the novelty/rarity, but because the faucet seemed confused that I wanted to take such a non-hot shower and kept wavering annoyingly, endearingly, between c o o l and w a r m until I coaxed its handle gently but decisively to the left, at which it finally gave in and allowed me a decisively cool shower. Closer to the plunge into freezing than I ever get in the span of my usual 12-minute showers. But anyways this is getting too too strawberry-ish so here's the point:

As I was taking my decisively cool shower, I noticed a small trend currently active in my life (trend being 2 whole instances): just like my escape from shower climate dilly-dallyings, I am actively escaping (err trying to. trying. to. escape.) lukewarmity in my walk with Christ. A little while ago, I had a conversation with someone who was trying to explain to me why lukewarm Christianity was even worse than being completely cold and far from God. How being bitterly distanced and heartbreakingly glacial is a preferable alternative to halfhearted indecisiveness, right in the middle of the spectrum (which reminds me of...mediocrity, but that's another story). At first, I really didn't get it. How could "super-far-from-God" be better than "kinda-far-from-God"? The kinda-far kind of far-ness means less distance to run back. It means, at least, glimpses and touches, though that's a far cry from direct embrace, I know. The kinda-far kind of far-ness keeps you kinda-safe from the biggest dangers, because while you're kinda-far from saving grace, you're also kinda-far from the cliffs. Kinda.

But God has been opening my kinda-closed eyes to the kinda-obvious answer lately. Through shivery building conversations and introspective coffee dates and decisively cool showers, I've been realizing exactly how scary lukewarmity is. Lukewarm means numbness. Lukewarm is blind to itself. Lukewarm makes you resigned to, and okay with: "Oh well." Because of the lack of complete lack - because you (I, we) don't feel the ache of an absolute void, you (I, we) think this kinda far awayness okay...when it's so not. It's a self-sustained monster, only medium-level scary. AHH the worst kind of them all. At least when the monster is huge and smelly, roaring and in your face, when you're suffering sorely with all your soul, you know you have to do something about it. Run away. Poke its boogery nose with your wand. Start using exclamation points!! So someone will hear and come to help!!!!!! YOU KNOW?!?!!!

At least complete cold pushes you to push yourself to be not so far away anymore. So yes. I get it. In these redundantly-expressed ways and much more, lukewarmity, sneaky and subtle, is the real creature (woah)to be feared. 

Yeah, I'm kind of dumb. This lukewarm thing is actually a huge phenomenon, apparently - google says so. Oops - minus 10 points for living under a religious rock.

Scalding, please.
P.S. I kind of cannot believe that I haven't used the word "tepid" this entire post.

Lukewarm, the conceited jerk, makes you write entire blog posts about itself and then end them with thoughts like

breathing, breathing, ...and teeth-flossing :-(

What a tricky, tricky rascal indeed.