Thursday, November 20, 2008

dancing

I wish I could dance on this blog. I suppose I could videotape myself dancing and put it on the blog, but I feel like that's a little weird.

a poem by john donne

LA CORONA.
I.
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,
Weaved in my lone devout melancholy,
Thou which of good hast, yea, art treasury,
All changing unchanged Ancient of days.
But do not with a vile crown of frail bays
Reward my Muse's white sincerity ;
But what Thy thorny crown gain'd, that give me,
A crown of glory, which doth flower always.
The ends crown our works, but Thou crown'st our ends,
For at our ends begins our endless rest.
The first last end, now zealously possess'd,
With a strong sober thirst my soul attends.
'Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high ;
Salvation to all that will is nigh.

apple pie

Thanksgiving is coming up and I've decided that this year, I will bring my own dish to pass. I now have a kitchen of my own and have learned how to be relatively self-sufficient in that area, and I think that I'm ready to contribute to the larger family meal.

I want to make apple pie. My host-mom from choir tour a few weeks ago made THE BEST apple pie I have ever had, and I found out all of her little secrets. I won't publish them here, but I'm very excited...

crochet (that's pronounced "crow-shay")

Being out of yarn when one is used to crocheting in one's boring classes is awfully distressing. Just yesterday, I finished my second scarf in three weeks and now I'm out of yarn. I keep stealing Alethea's yarn, which I intend to replace as soon as I can get to the store, and I don't want to keep stealing it. This means that today I was forced to sit through my Romantic Music History class with nothing to do.

You would think that being in class would automatically give me something to fully occupy my time, but that is not the case, generally speaking. I slept through class today in five-minute increments, waking every time I thought Lee was addressing me. He never did, but nevertheless, if you've ever tried to sleep (or have fallen asleep against your will) in a situation in which there is a known potential for great folly, like missing your El stop or a question from your instructor, then you'd know that it is a highly unpleasant experience. You awake in a tizzy every couple of minutes wondering if you've missed that thing that you couldn't afford to miss.

Anyway, I didn't pay much attention today, but I know that it was a pointless class. How do I know? Because we were analyzing Tristan und Isolde, and most of us had already done so in Theory IV earlier this semester. That's basically all we did. And if I'd had my crocheting, I would have survived. As it is, I know have two lovely little oily spots on the back of my notebook from where my nose and forehead were using it as a pillow.

Good times.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

creativity lost

I'm not a huge fan of North Park's chapel program, but I can now say that I've been to campus chapel at other schools, and ours is much better. Anyway, I went to chapel today and was surprised by two things: 1) the speaker was not talking about social justice or what we should be doing to reach out to the world (and completely ignoring those who are called to minister to suburbanites, college students, or by marrying and participating in creation by having a family...), 2) and more importantly, I actually learned something. Yes. I did.

It was actually during chapel chat, which is one of the more beautiful "programs" that UMin has put together. Today's speaker was answering someone's question as I came in and I heard him say, "We consume so much media [his talk was on media consumption, 'case you couldn't tell] that we lose our will to create. We just don't have it in us because we've taken so much in and put nothing out." It's funny that he said that, because I've been thinking recently how creativity-deprived I am. Honestly, it's a funny thing for a vocal performance major to say, but it's true. I have not been able to spend time exercising my creative abilities outside of singing, and singing is not even a creative process for me anymore because it has been beaten down by the industry.

When speaker-guy said that today, it clicked. All of the vague ideas floating around in my head finally made some sense! I'm working on narrowing down the topic of my independent study to a semester-sized bit, and with an umbrella topic of "Christian Sexuality" there's a long way to go. I've been reading a lot and writing a little, but what I mostly write is just a bunch of summaries and some musings, but not a whole lot of my own thought at this point. In light of this discovery, and in light of the fact that I am not actually starting this project until next fall (or summer?), I have decided to just do some freewriting. I think this will help me figure out where my interests lie and what my own opinions and presuppositions are, while giving me a break from all of this thinking. And then I can focus on my actual schoolwork.

But this does not only apply to my personal academics--oh, no! I think that it would be very good for my group of friends to spend some time being creative. A few of us do some sort of yarn crafting on a regular basis, and I think one of my close guy friends writes poetry on occasion, though I'm sure he isn't right now. The difficulty would be to convince them that this would be good for us--we all have a really hard time putting aside our work for a while to do something seemingly useless. But it's not useless...

Anyway, I'm rambling now because it's late and it's been a very long and exhausting day. I'll probably look at this later and laugh. Until then, BED.

Peace

what day is it again?

Oh, my. That time is again upon us...

FINALS!! Okay, not really. We actually have...exactly eleven days of class left, one reading day, and three days of finals. So we're not quite there, but we're totally getting there much faster than I would like. I won't enumerate my projects-to-do here, but I can tell you that the list is incredibly long and I have absolutely no idea when it's all going to get done. I imagine that I just won't sleep the last week of class and catch up during finals week. Or something.

We can do it!

Peace

Saturday, November 1, 2008

All Saints' Day!

Blessed feast of All Saints to you all!! I'm so excited. My friends and I are celebrating All Saints' Day with a brunch (for which I should prepare soon...) and by sharing stories of saints that inspire us. This truly makes me very happy--the saints are cool, alright?

Peace