moving out

I've done it a lot of times, but I'm finding that I'm terrible at packing up and moving out.

Trying to move out of 223 Maupin right now. Taking all the scraps and junks off the wall. Taking down posters. Looking around constantly, uselessly. Heart beating harder. Drowning in my own sentimentality. It's scary. This is like dismantling a life. A bigger deal than anticipated. Why is it? Why is it such a big deal? I've moved so many times before. Packed up boxes and left places, blowing kisses and hiding tears or not hiding them. But this time is different from the other times.

I think it's because every scrappy scrap of sticker and crap and sticky note and piece of junk is completely mine. A scrappy piece of life that I've made on my own, completely own - or at least as "on my own" as I've been in my life. Everything I'm going to have to pack up was put in its messy place was put there by my hand or foot or whatever. Every piece of writing or drawing on the wall was created by me or by friends or friends of friends and I experienced it being created. Every mess is mine. Every beautiful thing is mine. Every.thing. is a part of this life I've made. Here. And it's hard to take it all down, I guess.

And all that just magnifies and makes me think of how it'll all be forgotten after us. Especially with Maupin being torn down. All these memories we made and places we touched will be gone. And we will probably never be together in one place like this again - even the people I never got to meet, dear unknown Maupin-mates (this strange first year identity that will hold us together as this weird group forrreverrrr). Yeah I'm a sentimental Sally, but can you really blame me for fearing my own forgetfulness? It's the scariest thing, I think - my own surprising ability to lose things from my brain and heart. Stuff just tumbles out - that's why I photograph documentarily and write so often about "thisverymoment"s instead of doing homework.

maddie and madison at maupin

So anyways, here I sit, with all my sticky notes still up around my desk carrel and sitting in the midst of my books and postcards and posters and pictures I have yet to take down. Drowning. Tired. Kind of...really scared. And all this talking about on my own/the fact that Maddie is sleeping making me feel really alone - haha silly. The only thing that constructively keeps building up is the increasing volume of the sighs filling the atmosphere. And can you really even call sighs constructive?

I know I'll probably look back at this post and feel dumb but here's to capturing the moment. Clicking the PUBLISH POST button...n o w !

"libarry crazy"

(Strawberry alert)

My life is so full of cuteness right now. And I've been kind of itching to blog in the midst of finals (and name it "libarry crazy," but for other reasons than those listed below) - maybe to defy...stuff. Probably mostly myself. Hm I don't know; I'm tired. So here's my excuse: my life is so full of cuteness right now.

Cuteness 1.

JJ Heller - When I'm with You (discovered this thanks to Rebecca - youtube repeating like crazy ever since)

Cuteness 2. Boys. More specifically, studying (..."studying") with boys and sitting and listening to them talk all excitedly about sports mumbo jumbo that I don't understand. It really is like a language that I just don't get. Flows into one ear and jumps out the other. Really. (But I did learn about this guy - apparently he eats a lot of candy...obviously that would be the only part I understand.)

Cuteness 3. Boys. More specifically, being with them when their Bible study leaders bring them bags of candy for morale, which they proceed to immediately throw up into the air in celebration so it's like raining candy. Okay actually only one boy did that but it was still like cute overload (hope he never reads this cause he doesn't need to know I think he's cute).

Cuteness 4. Sitting in Clemons but not feeling hostile towards it haha. Actually, sitting in Clemons and actively feeling happy and stuff because I'm just people watching (and actively not studying...) - watching people be hopeful in the midst of exams, being solidarity-y with each other, sharing junky food, and smiling even though they're studying hard (or not so hard). Wutevers!

Cuteness 5. Feeling things for other people who are...not me. I've been so wrapped up in myself, my tiredness, my busy-ness lately that I forget to think of other people, feel for them. Making wishes for other people and praying for them when I see them run hurriedly and worriedly toward some unknown location - that they get there soon/on time, and safely. Hm sorry sorry sorry this makes no sense :(

Cuteness 6. Confessing to people that my shoulders are in pain and tentatively asking for back massages but receiving terrible, albeit very very well-meaning ones. Hahahaha oh well.

Cuteness 7. 

it's the same song but sounds a little different. cause i like circular progression of things.

EDIT: 5/10/11 12:51 am 

Just found this on my desktop! It's from the morning after this post was originally written, at Clemons. I ended up pulling an allnighter and being joined by another libarry crazy, sitting in the booth behind me. HAHA!

gotcha

"un moment émouvant"

My laptop is way too heavy to carry around to all of my classes. So I don't. Then I justify this with all sorts of excuses: "with a computer in class, I'll just be distracted!"..."taking notes by hand makes me feel like a real student!"..."motor memory...yay?!" (irrelevant when you can't read the notes afterwards because they are only a mass of sleepy scrawlings all over the notebook pages...sigh).

But...let's be real - the one true reason is that carrying my laptop around is cause it tips over the weight limit of my backpack from heavy to backbreaking. I have a weak back, I think.

But Thursday, April 28th was a day that truly made me regret this silly habit of never bringing my laptop to class. It was a day when I wished I could write as fast as I could type - to capture all the words falling from my French professor's mouth, from her brilliant brain.

FREN 3032 was my daily inspirations class of the semester. I mistakenly thought it was going to be taught by a TA, but it turns out that Claire Lyu is not only NOT a TA, but a science genius tri-lingual lover of French poetry - basically the adult I want to be when I grow up. And on this past Thursday, our last real class of the semester since we're taking our final test on our actual last class, she was more full of beautiful words than usual. She wanted to send us off on...good feet, I think. Or something. Obviously I am far from the eloquence that is my French professor.

She said that she had experienced "un moment émouvant" - an emotional moment, a touching moment - the night before, while reading this collection of literary criticisms. The passage she wanted to share with us was about the song of a bird. I know it sounds super sappy, but no worries because honestly I didn't get it all either and thusly will not expound upon it...hahaha. But she was talking about how powerful some literature can be - how some works have the ability to switch up the power dimensions of a relationship you can have with it ( :P kind of like this). Usually when you're reading something, you're in power. The subject is you and the object is it. You hold it, open it up on the webpage, pick up the book that contains it and control it. You read it and judge it and analyze it and finally pronounce that it is good or rather bad or quite mediocre, while it sits quietly and looks up at you and simply exists. Naked and vulnerable.

But...Claire Lyu shared with us that some works of literature take that power position away from you. Totally and surprisingly. You had no idea it would happen, but then there you are - suddenly pierced through the heart and defenseless, and the thing is staring at you instead of you looking at it. Suddenly it knows your heart and what you love and hate and mediocrely like. And to sum it up, she read to us from the book. That

"On ne sorte pas indemne de ce gen de livre."
"One does not escape unscathed from such a book."

And that that's why we study literature. Because sometimes, it has this power to make us buckle at the knees and cry or laugh, or stay completely quiet. Because it has the power to make you reveal your soul to it and to others - and that is the difficulty of humanities classes (gross generalization - please excuse me). I know I (self-destructively) stand right alongside the engineering school kids when they joke about our School of "Arts and Crafts" classes, but truly, humanities classes are difficult in their own way. When you analyze a piece of literature, even in just discussing it, you're revealing a piece of your soul: what you think about this piece of someone else's brain, heart, and how you believe it applies to your brain and heart. When you create a piece of art, you're undressing a little bit of your secret self and representing it concretely for whoever happens to walk by to see - it's bravery at its finest. When you write an essay, analyzing and synthesizing (at least when you do it right), you're investing a chunk of your brainwaves to this clean slate of paper and bringing into being not just some inky letters but an idea, a new thing, fresh and alive into the world. It's an emotional thing - you invest your heart in it a little (or a lot).

When was the last time you were brave enough to get naked for a math equation? Do molecular structures inspire you to tears or pierce through your heart or render you completely helpless and reveal a part of your soul (not counting those times when you despaired like a baby because you didn't get the concept)?

These are the questions and affirmations that Claire Lyu inspired on the second to last day of my French class. As we all responded in the various ways that we usually do - from yawning to acting cool/like we understand everything she just said to sitting on the chairseat edges trying to engrave into our minds every pearly bead of wisdom that fall from her mouth - Madame Lyu remarked that maybe it's because of all the talk of bird songs, but that she felt like a mama bird letting all her babies fly out of the nest.

buh-bye!

And with that image, I said a bittersweet goodbye and floated out of room. Feeling broken into, a little bit taken by surprise, and a tiny bit...more naked than I had felt going into class on that fateful Thursday afternoon.

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.

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.

God's provision for Carrie the Casual Camel

Today I ate a strawberry.
No, I'm just kidding - but that's the sentence I always think of whenever I find myself wanting to start a post with "Today,..." cause I don't want my blog to be about wee little things that happen to me each day that people don't want to read about. I mean personally, I love reading those kinds of posts, too, and there's definitely merit in the realizations that exist in the little "Today I ate a strawberry" moments that may have lead you to think of how many little seeds exist in this tiny body of a fruit and what if all those seeds could've become strawberries but nope cause you ate them all, probably in one chomp oops sorry try again...you know?! And I mean you gotta have these realizations during some "Today," so I guess I'm really making no sense, but that's not what this post is about anyways.

It's just that...
Today,
for some reason (alright, not "some" reason - there's actually a concrete reason, but I just don't wanna tell you), I just felt God's provision for me so much. Keeping with the vague theme, here's the generalized story: I've just been really scared about lots of things lately, and God keeps proving himself faithful. A faithful God. A good God. Today especially. I keep trekking through literal and figurative uncharted lands these days and it's scary and weird because I just never know what to do or expect or think or feel about all this. But today, for some concrete, abstract reason, I just felt that all was right with me. Alllllllll iiiiiiis riiiiiiiight wiiiiiith meeeee hmmmmmm - just reassured in the most mysterious, wonderfully unreassuring way, because it's not that the scary things are gone, I just know that whatever happens with whatever I have or don't have, it's all in God's freakishly awe-inspiring plan. But the thing is, that it's like . . . DUH. Why so silly, Jaehee Madison  Lee? All these things my brain knows, my heart and mind need to be reminded of so often, in the weirdest ways (how demanding).

I mean even camels are provided for in this wonderful design. Did you know they have three eyelids? Apparently "the third lid is extra thin and see-through, so the camel can pull it down in sandstorms" according to a very credible source (MMR, text message 9:24 pm 2/24/11). SWEEET, right? And so amazingly created - so wonderfully provided for. And this isn't even about their humps...wutttt!

Carrie the Casual Camel

So...Today,
I'm just rejoicing in God's provision, and in camels, for their humps and their tri-eyelids, and in blogging about the insanely mundane, and the beauty of the fact that God's love is sometimes simply insanely mundane. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Insane, insane, insane. How can I keep from singing?

Did you know that earbuds are magnetized? If you try to push them together, they will repel each other gently.

eugene the mean writin' machine

Eugene is my favorite 5th grader. During our tutoring sessions, I make him write poetry under the guise of "fostering his imagination" haha... But really, he is the smartest, funniest, most unwittingly romantic fifth grader I know. He always protests when I demand love poetry out of him as the next week's homework assignment, but I think he secretly enjoys it...maybe. Haha anyways here are some of his best bits of literary genius. 

Oh, also, we enjoy madlibs quite a bit.

"In fact, in about 38 years, the air will be eighty percet sunshine because we are cutting down all of the kisses in the Brazilian rain forest." These are not such bad prospects for the Earth, huh?

yeah, your group project partners are people, too. don't be mean.

Eugene's preferred writing utensils...obviously.

Um. Swoon. Haha lucky Jennygirl.

Learning about metaphors i.e. "Her fingers on the piano keyboard were lost ducklings...like they didn't know where to go!"

What a guy, this Eugene. He totally makes my Saturday afternoons.

vday thang

Love closes the door suuuuuper softly at night because someone is sleeping inside.
Love is my dad "tucking" us into bed aka actually just fluffing out the blanket cause he's kinda bad at tucking.
Love <==> understanding. knowing (noun, not verb).
Love forsakes sleep (varying degrees).
Love has magic conversations in circles with its loved ones.
Love squeals; is stoic.
Love exists wayyy out of the comfort bubble.
Love is like zomgmindexplode (?)
Love exists all over your sleeve and stuff.
Love makes lumps in your throat, headaches in your heart, smiles...on your face haha.

Dear world,
Happy Valentine's Day. woah funny how the word "love" hasn't started looking like a non-word yet. love love love love love.

to know, know, know her is to love, love, love her

S O R R Y

"désolé" - français

- desolate

- disconsolate

- bleak

- stark

- woebegone

- sorry

"mi dispiace" - italiano

verb: dispiacere

- to displease

- to mind

- to hate

- to be sorry

"lo siento" - español

verb: sentir

- to feel

- to sense

- to regret

- to be sorry

These are three ways to say "I'm sorry." In every day usage and found in conversational French/Italian/Spanish phrases books as, simply, "I'm sorry." But if you really think about the literal meanings of the words composing these different translations of this little sentence, each is really unique and impressively more sorry-seeming than its English counterpart.

The literal meaning of a French person's "désolé (sorry)" to your sorry-inducing story is: "(I am) desolate." "I'm hungry!" "My cat is overweight :(" "The state of the world economy today makes me worried..." whatever your woes, I am desolate for you. What a show of sympathy - &what an adjective, right?! Thanks for being so expressive, Frenchmen.

so desolate.

In Italian, to say "I am sorry," is actually a bit of a grammar feat. "Mi dispiace," though it is one of the first phrases anyone learning the language will learn, involves indirect object pronouns and third person conjugation of verbs in the present tense. wowzas!! Haha anyway, the verb from which this phrase derives is "dispiacere" - the antonym of "piacere," I guess, which means "to please." So dispiacere means "to displease." And the little "mi" means "to me," so all in all the whole thing says to you, "(Something, it, that, the fact that your toe is stubbed, etc.) displeases me." Ultimately, empathizing with your worries. Dang yo, I really hate that this bad thing happened to you. That really bothers, bugs, irks me, like it does you. I'm really sorry.

empathy, according to google images

Spanish speakers are feeeeeeeeling you when you're down in the dumps - "lo siento" is similar to the Italian one in the grammar feat department, except it literally means "I feel it." So it's not exactly the same as the Italians' saying that empathizes with you, but this one still expresses that the speaker knows what you're feeling and feels the same way about it. This is like AH I put my figurative hand over my figurative heart and literally say I am so sorry - I feel your pain. 

YOU WHAT?! WOW THAT SUCKS; YOUR PAIN MY PAIN

I know all this makes the English "I'm sorry" seem boring, too normal, whatever, but sorry derives from "sorrow" which is pretty dramatic and sorrowful, too. Haha so no need to hate on English.

hey man i'm really sorry

All of this I will mean the next time I tell you "I'm sorry."


P.S. Koreans on the other hand...

to the lefties of the world:

First of all, a special hello to you!
Secondly, are you even there? Is anyone even reading this? Because I realize the viewer population of my blog is probably pretty small and I'm not sure that any of you will be left-handed enough to be intrigued by the title of this post. I would probably read a post entitled "to the lefties of the world" even though I'm definitely a righty, but that's only because I really just enjoy reading blogs.

But okay - if you're there, HULLO. I've been thinking about this for a while, so let me know if you have an answer or resonating feelings or thoughts:

Dear left-handed people, do you feel slighted by this righty-dominated world? Turning the knob left to make the volume go down and to the right to make it go up (something seeming inherently bigger and better and greater about turning the knob to the right), looking for the "before" picture on the left side of the TV and the "after" on the right (they always have them "before"-->"after" if they're side to side, resulting in sort of an "uhhhgg..hh."-->"ooohhwoahhh" reaction), when talking with your hands flailing in sync, having to use the left side of your airspace as the "yesterday" and the right side as "today" and "the next day" and "the future" just in general, having to take extra care to write un-smudgily because our society demands that you read and write from left to right?...being bombarded by a bunch of buffoons thrusting out their right hand when you introduce yourself and wanna shake hands to make the meeting official??...sitting uncomfortably in those tiny right-handedness-adjusted seats with the mini desks attached???

Woah here's some more stuff from wikipedia:

Many technological devices are made primarily for right-handed people...refrigerators, scissors, microwaves, cameras (ARGH that must be annoying!), can-openers, computer mice, padded kitchen mittens (padded only on one side ARGH), many musical instruments, military rifles (many injuries have resulted from spent cartridge casings hitting left-handed users in the eye and head!!!!). 

We right-handed are righteous, moving right along, going right ahead and getting things done right away so that everything is right as rain, you guys always seem to be being left behind, left in the dust, popping up out of the left field and throwing salt over all your left shoulders and eating leftovers...sigh!!

And WOAH look at the wiki page for left-handedness (the above link was for righthandedness)!

The  Latin word for sinistra originally meant "left" but took on meanings of "evil" or "unlucky" by the classical Latin era and its double meaning survives in European derivatives of Latin, and in the English word "sinister." ... The right hand has historically been associated with skill: the Latin word for right-handed is dexter, as in "dexterity," meaning manual skill. Even the word "ambidexterity" reflects the bias. Its intended meaning is "skillful on both sides." However, since it keeps the Latin root dexter, which means "right," it ends up conveying the idea of being "right-handed at both sides." ... In Chinese culture, the adjective "left" sometimes means "improper" or "out of accord" and in Korean, the word for "right" (오른) and the word meaning "morally proper" (옳은) share the same pronunciation.

?!WUHHH!!!!!


But maybe it's not this way - maybe you don't feel jibbed at all. Though the world is, in fact, dominated in number by right-handed people, you have - even if unwittingly - put on a brave face and endured and adjusted. Maybe you have become stronger of character and pleasant-er of disposition because you have been put through all these extra troubles and are surviving, pushing through, livin yo life anyways. I just don't know...I'm only a young right-handed girl!

awkward left handshakes by some cartoon characters - not real people

loverain

Listening to my m.m.m.m.m. playlist (bloggin' music) with just one earbud in, which I never do because I like music to fill my brainspace entirely and from both earholes, but this night I make an exception because it raineth outside right now and I am enjoying the rain noises and blogging and listening to one earbud because I love the rain...eth. Like mmmmmmmmmm lovelovelove...mmmmMMmmmMMMMm.

I think I must've been a fish (omg-g-g-guh..I'm a pisces....just realized this) or...maybe an aquatic mammal

"weehr!"

in my past life, because I get so easily parched without rain in my life. I love the rain. I love the rain. I love the rain. I love "forgetting" my umbrella when it raineth outside and having an excuse to walk around with the droplets falling all over the place and on me. I love college because it makes me walk places all the time and some of those times, it is raining and then I can walk in the rain with a purpose and not look like an insane person. I love being inside when it's raining and hearing all those rain pieces falling and splattering and making a ruckus. I love listening to this thing combined with this thing and being myself, being dreamy sleepy on my bed or swaying by myself ballroom dance style, even though I do not know how to ballroom dance. I love raindrops that fall on my nose and iLashes. I love the way rain makes the world beautiful in a way so underappreciated - redder bricks, greener trees, blacker pavement, albeit the grayer skies. I love the moat that forms alrededor el Maupin when it rains a lot at night and then you wake up in the morning and walk outside to find that you are a princess because castles are surrounded by moats, you know. I love so many more things about the rain but I am afraid that it will stop raining before I finish this post and I want this post to be created and born all, completely, in the time of rain so I'm gonna just say -- I love the rain. I love the rain. I love the rain.

It rains in Charlottesville tonight.

"Smiles, Winks, and Words"

"The relatively involuntary nature of our smiles and gesture calls means that we are in constant danger of revealing ourselves...Our calls and gesture sometimes convey our true emotional state considerably more faithfully than we want them to...Photographers may ask us to pretend to smile, but they know better than to ask us to pretend to laugh." -Burling

Reluctant to share in words, but impossible to avoid sharing in smiles and frowns. Sorry if I ever put on the frowny face and made you feel bad. I'm trying to be better about that.

the news

JJ, you so right.

Watching the (Korean) news with mom and dad at dinner and found myself constantly in panic. Dying livestock, dying regular stocks, monster-sized icicles, mini icebergs floating down the 한강...sigh. There was one good thing after 298234 bad things - apparently the report (made 12 years ago) about the flu vaccine causing autism was made up. And in a way, for somebody out there that piece of news is a horrible one too, I  mean for that scientist person who did the initial study, wrote the report, blahblah.

Makes me feel so helpless. And makes me think of how every banal moment of my life must be, for someone else in the world, is the worst, most frightening, life-changing, wonderful, etc. moment. Every moment, around the whole world, is something special and ultra significant. How little I am, and how big the world is. And how much bigger the God behind the happenings and healings of every moment everywhere! wuhhhhhhhhhh so global.

365: Week 2

1/8-1/15

1.8
new skill acquired over winter break: fire stoking!

1.9
cupcake clinks! a night of many kitchen adventures...

1.10
New Year Resolution traditions with Eliz

1.11
ate something off of favorite winter themed plate

1.12
LOTR marathon. dad abandoned me half an hour into the first one!

1.13
we got a new fridge, so the old one hits the curb, out in the cold

1.14
downtown frolicking (SHOPPING SPREE) with siiistre! planned since Thanksgiving break, finally accomplished YAY

Woah last full week til it's back to school. Gbye, winter break!!