Be Cool

What fun is being cool if you can't wear a sombrero? –– Calvin and Hobbes

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However hidden this page is, I'm proud and humbled to have been able to share my stories.  This blog is just one in a million clogging the internet, but it was mine, and it connected me to listeners I never knew I had: thanks for reading.

The Lily White Shall in Love Delight

Always

Just Like Magic

I didn't finish the Harry Potter series until this year.  I knew the ending before I read it, and had forgotten the majority of events characterizing the first six books by the time I was told the ending.  In other words, I'm not your average Potterhead.  What I learned when a Potter-drunk friend of mine convinced me to revisit the series is that J.K. Rowling is quite possibly the only modern author I consider in the league of my precious classics authors.  Rowling is a master of plot development, managing a steady pace that leaves the reader neither bored nor whiplashed, and painstakingly darkening the world of wizards with each successive novel.  She beautifully combines Harry's life as an unwanted addition to a muggle family, a bumbling idiot around cute girls, a procrastinator, and a bad dancer with his life as "the Chosen One," greatest weapon against dark forces and soon-to-be savior of the wizarding world.  Harry is real because he's confused, and frightened, and lovestruck, and sarcastic, and angry, and powerful, and small; even Ron, who has "the emotional range of a teaspoon," is brought to life on the page by Harry's side, in all his awkward, ginger glory.  I admire Rowling because she created such truly real characters that they needn't have been impersonated by actors to come alive: when I read her words, I might as well have been sitting in the Gryffindor common room leaning in to hear Harry's whispers on polyjuice potion, or tensed at my desk with Snape breathing down my neck.  More impressive still was the depth of her writing: each successive read brought new information previously skated over--phrases with double meanings, names derived from ancient stories, characters based on previously existing people.  Rowling's novels are treasure troves of information, encompassing reality within this folklorish world of dragons and witches, both in her three-dimensional characters and her reality-based inspiration.

Rowling envelopes me in her world: I often found myself wondering where my Hogwarts letter was, and why it was six years late.  Harry Potter was no longer a piece of another's imagination, a peak inside the writer's head, and yet he was so much more than a person strolling through a wall at King's Cross: he came to represent to me that childish wonder at the possibilities reality had in store--the belief that what hasn't been proven false is practically true.  Hogwarts was the magic hidden away in my jacket pockets and the unturned stones on my street; Voldemort was my fear of plane crashes and midnight robbers and my own mortality; Dumbledore was my reason and discipline and all other responsibilities accompanying adulthood; Hermione was my obsessive compulsive tendencies and my love of academic excellence and rules; Ron was my cheesy jokes and hours spent watching mindless television with friends; and Harry was my courage, and my passion, and my humbling self-consciousness. Harry Potter was my life.

A Book Long Enough

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. –– C.S. Lewis

Eagle Eye

My favorite summer days are those that I convince myself waking before 12 in the afternoon is a good idea, and, equipped with phone, key, tennis shoes, and a motivational playlist, trek three blocks to my local organic food store.  Their banana bread and blueberry granola are the best way to start my morning.  I like to peruse the shelves, smelling the natural ingredients and raising my eyebrows at fruits I knew not of until that moment.  I might spin the handmade-jewelry case a few times for good measure, and then it's just a skip, a hop, and a dangerous intersection to the thrift book shop.  Eagle Eye is my hidey-hole, a nook untouched by my hectic world of teenage concerns.  They've strapped a brass bell to the door handle that rings on my entrance.  The store is deeper than it's exterior suggests, but you could walk to the back in thirty strides, and from one wall to the other in ten.  The shelves are a foot shorter than me, so that most of my time there is spent stooped until I've collected my top picks, which I carefully spread on the carpeted floor and plop down criss-cross-applesauce to edit down to my soon-to-be purchases.  I can only imagine the looks on the faces of my fellow customers at a seventeen year old girl stacking classics like a seven year old stacks picture books--can only imagine it because when I'm sitting there, no one else matters.  I haven't come to be social, I didn't dress for company, I dressed for a day of book-watching and banana-bread-eating, and as I read first the back cover of one, and the first page of another novel, I smile in delight at my slightly-used new acquaintances pressed between pages of books I have stacked to tote home, whom I need not impress with flowery language or elegant dress, yet still speak to me like I'm an adult.

Lost

Not all who wander are lost. –– J.R.R. Tolkien

Golden Treasure

I've always been a fan of florid writing: my love of Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, and F. Scott Fitzgerald attest to that.  J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the few exceptions: the vivid imagery and rhythmic lullaby of his words proved his writing prowess, as well as sucked me into a fantastic read (which I highly recommend), The Hobbit.   I admire it because I think it's among the modes of entertainment both children and adults can enjoy equally, complete with a fantastical plot and charismatic personages.  But I love it because of the nostalgia it inspires: Tolkien writes in the same voice as my parents' bedtime stories to me when I was young--the kind of phrases that just roll off the tongue and can only be read in tones of wonder.  The Hobbit represents nightly conversations on the rug before the fire during out cold-for-Atlanta winters; it's my mom reading Harry Potter to me before bed and mimicking the characters' voices; it's finishing a Nancy Drew book a day in junior high; and now, as I peruse my shelves of George Orwell and Shakespeare, it's my strongest connection to the fantasy of winter tales, bedtime stories, and slinking sleuths.  And it still impresses the heck out of people to have read it.

Me, Me, Me

If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living. –– Arnold Bennett

Be Prepared

Be prepared for the coup of the century,

Be prepared for the murkiest scam.

Meticulous planning, tenacity spanning,

Decades of denial are simply why I'll

Be king undisputed, respected, saluted

and seen for the wonder I am.

Yes, my teeth and ambitions are bared:

Be prepared.

–– The Lion King

Scar is, in my opinion, one of the worst Disney villains ever imagined--and therefore, by definition, one of the best.  To quote Harry Potter (which I noticed I do a lot, but who can blame me?), he "is terrible, but great."  I consider him in the same league as Mother Gothel and the Queen of Hearts, the former of which possesses the same manipulative ability as he, and the latter the same unpredictable temper simmering just below the surface.  He scares me because he is clever, [externally submissive (and thus not a clear threat)], and patient--the last of which is his most dangerous quality, as many Disney foes meet their demise by their own hubris-driven rash actions.  He is cautious, carefully devising foolproof plans (they must be, as his only employees are utter fools), but greater still are his acting abilities: convincing his own brother, who should know him and his wily ways better than anyone, that his dreams of the throne lie dormant; leading Simba to numerous dead-ends by exhibiting false good intentions and exploiting a child's innate trust.  He puts on a good show, so good that Mufasa is lured to his death.  Simba is left so emotionally scarred (no pun intended) by his uncle's accusations that he believes the obvious lies long into his adult life, thus our hero effectively negates himself thanks to the psychological damage induced by his uncle.  Scar essentially convinces Simba that he is the villain.  It's ingenious: most villains bribe, and then lose their bargaining chip, or else threaten, until the tables are turned on them; Scar needed neither: he used Simba against himself.  Very Big Brother, is it not?  Avoiding rebellion by making any potential rebels self-regulate their urge to rise up.  And yet his regime falls, and while Simba's recovery of himself and his destiny is definitely a large factor in Scar's demise, I can't help but think Scar was a greater threat to himself: in much the same way he convinced Simba to subvert himself, Scar was the cause of his own destruction.  And laugh if you will, but I think the best way to describe Scar's self-destruction is through John Tucker, who shared a similar problem: where one confessed love to three girls, the other professed loyalty to three major powers--Mufasa, the hyenas, and Simba.  In the end, neither could balance their false claims of love to three independent states, and the whole fragile structure toppled over.

Scar's doom was inevitable, regardless of the rank of his balancing abilities: after all, it is a Disney movie.  But for once, the hero faced a true threat that could not be beaten by brawn or brains or true love: Scar's mind-bending and his self-effacing trickery will always be, to me, one of the most frightening displays of villainous power ever displayed on a Disney screen.

The Other Perspective

Newspapers will run a headline: "Shark kills human."  You never see a headline from the other perspective: "Man swims in shark-infested water, forgets he's shark food." –– Gary Larson

"So Sharky"

When asked how I planned to spend my last week of summer vacation, I responded with a rousing "SHARK WEEK!" at which my friend eyed me like I was a loon.  If you haven't been following my posts thus far, here's a refresher on my personality: I'm a cheerful but reserved girl who spends her days watching Sherlock, Chuck, and Cake Boss and admiring her stacks of hardbound classics--not the type normally pegged as a shark-lover.  I feel, therefore, an explanation is warranted, and therein lies the topic for this blog post (a little outside my ordinary theme set, but Spawn of Jaws: The Birth put me in the mood).  Before any of you start gagging, I do not watch sharks for the pleasure of seeing them tear their prey to pieces: I'm not really a blood-and-guts kinda gal.  What attracts me to these creatures is their majesty: wolves are lean, kittens are cute, but few animals are truly fierce in the way that sharks are.  Their paradoxical combination of elegance and murderous bloodlust fascinates me: it's like finding out a classy lady in a skintight cocktail dress is packing a submachine gun.  Their sleek, slim builds glide silkily through the water--even the Great Whites possess a certain grace.  Were they not laden with razor-edged teeth, I might describe them as delicate, or at the very least balletic: their crisp movements and lithe bodies that can u-turn on a dime--they're fine dancers in the water.  Set dinner before them, and no longer do they lazily slip by: they perform a curious underwater lunge at their prey, larger Great Whites even known to perform spectacular jumps in their effort to secure a meal.  Graceful hardly describes them then: the sheer power they exhibit erases the subtle beauty they possessed moments before--they are the reapers of the deep.  That delicate balance of power and grace contained in one animal is what drives me to watch them: I love that transition from apparently docile to hunger-mad, to see what is beautiful become gruesome, only to return to the former after mealtime.  It is the contrasting elements, the beauty within the beast, that prompted my enthusiastic response to my friend's question of how I would spend my remaining week of free time.

Absentminded

I am not absentminded.  It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else. –– G.K. Chesterton

What Makes Us Human

When I was younger but still old enough to have piles of papers cluttering my desk, I would watch my dog, Honey, roam aimlessly from room to room and, when she got tired of that, settle down on the carpeted floor of my living room, and I would think what bliss it must be to have hours upon hours of free time, to the extent that you could see no other thing to occupy them but daydreaming.  It was then that the obvious question came up: do dogs dream?  How capable are they of abstract thought, of creation and invention and imagination?  What would life be were it composed only of endless hours you could not fill with pondering and wishes, unless they were wishes for food and walks and scratches behind the ears?  How dull to be a dog, I concluded, to whom everything is just as it seems.

Abstract thought, an essential building block of humans, is also an essential part of my area of interest.  Philosophy is based upon the intangible--that which can only be imagined and depicted verbally.  George Orwell is among my favorite authors because his writing focuses on concepts he dreamed up, and yet which are just near enough the bounds of reality that they are believable.  I love to make the impossible plausible: it truly makes anything seem possible.  The mind's ability to believe what it has not seen fascinates me above all else: its ability to realize that which does not exist.  Abstract thought is the foundation of modern human life--of our system of government, our societal values, our individual morals--and exploring that capability and all it entails thrills me because it's among, in my opinion, the most powerful capabilities on earth, and the crucial dividing factor between us and other animals.

That said, abstract thought, for all its relevance, distracts from the present and can distort our perceptions of reality.  It is more often helpful than detrimental, but can be a cause of pain if we rely on its faculties too heavily: as Dumbledore advises Harry, “it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

The Power of Words

          "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.  Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well.  It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms.  After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words?  A word contains its opposite in itself.  Take 'good,' for instance.  If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'?  'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not.  Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them?  'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still.  Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else.  In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality only one word.  Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?" [...]  Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?  In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.  Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed in exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. [...]  Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. [...]  Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we're having now?" –– Syme (George Orwell)

The Inexpressible

My lit class last year began with a chapter from a book by Tim O'Brien entitled "How to Tell a True War Story."  His answer in a word: lie.  War is so absurdly heinous and ridiculous and glorious that a story from war that actually happened cannot constitute a true war story; it can't capture the beautiful chaos of it all for those who have not experienced it for themselves.  Essentially, one must stretch the truth so far as to make a creative nonfiction piece whose bounds are just beyond those of reality.  It must resemble reality, but in such a warped way as to twist the stomachs of the readers.  

This being the first war story of the year, and my being a strict pacifist and therefore viewing all killing as unjustifiable, I could only think well, hell, why twist what's already twisted?  You can get your point across just fine without unnecessary surrealistic details.  Following O'Brien with Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July only seemed to serve my point: he killed a corporal from Georgia--one of his own men--why exaggerate that?  But therein lied O'Brien's point: to read "I killed the corporal" and to kill the corporal are vastly, incomprehensibly different.  So, how do you bridge the gap?  When asked "what's it like," how do you express it?  The truth is no longer any good: it's too mundane.  "I killed someone" only evokes murmurs of "oh" or "I'm sorry" from the listener, but there is so much more behind that simple phrase.  What does it mean to kill someone?  There is the sorrow, yes, and the dread, the disgust, the guilt.  But what about the adrenaline, and the exhilaration, and the power?  How do you convey the wonder with the horror in those three words?

I studied war my whole junior year, wrote numerous essays on it--the good and the bad, their intersections and their distances--and still have not found an adequate answer to that question.  It's not just that I can't put it into words: I don't understand it.  Maybe you'll think I'm morbid to pair war with love, but I think the same dilemma appears in both: how to portray what can only be experienced?  Words are marvelous tools, but there are not enough, and none carry the emotional horsepower necessary to describe the sensations of love and of killing.  I have only a glimpse into the latter, and that only because I was forced through Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, The Deer Hunter, MASH, Grave of the Fireflies; through Born on the Fourth of July, The Sun Also Rises, Journey's End, Slaughterhouse-Five, Catch-22.

I am still a committed pacifist, but I no longer believe in the two-dimensional Disney version of war, nor the blood-guts-and-glory Black Hawk Down version.  I believe it possesses a cold beauty, though one I still barely comprehend.  I'll leave you with the first seen that convinced me killing could be beautiful:

This scene is from Saving Private Ryan (the light in the background is a bomb going off).  It’s poor quality, but I couldn’t find the original scene; however, I found this remake online--check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYQ8VA2Nrx8

Beyond Measure

Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure. –– Rowena Ravenclaw (J.K. Rowling)

Company

Inspired by others' words, I decided to post a quote of my own to my bedroom door: it reads, "I believe a person's room is a window to their soul, which, mom, is the real reason I refuse to clean it..." That said, if I'm to expect you to know anything about me through this blog, I must explain the state of my room to you, because a bedroom is a safe haven from the chaos of daily life, so the configuration of mine may therefore be taken as what makes me feel safe (an essential part to anyone's personality).

In my room, I put my bed by my window so as I fall asleep I can see the stars and when I wake the sun plays across my covers.  I put my futon in one corner under a tall set of shelves with a dull lamp sitting in them so I can watch the rain as it washes my windowpanes in the warm, yellow light.  I put my old, wooden desk against one wall and taped a cork-noticeboard in front with twine-dolls and recipes pinned to it so I don't get too downhearted when I work; atop my desk are a pencil-filled pale and a matching lime green lamp, and inside it rest my trinkets.  And I put quotes on all my walls so I will never be alone.

Seriously

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them. –– Niels Bohr

Calvin & Holmes

I always thought school a brilliant device strategically: developing a child's mind through a range of disparate subjects as they transition from dreams of being astronauts to presidents to artists, poets, NASA engineers and ultimately the career they want to pursue in college.  But I think Calvin nailed it when he said, "I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know" (Calvin and Hobbes).  School is excellent at covering a broad range of topics, but they are all (of course) standardized, and with so many to teach it's difficult to examine the subgroups of and personal approaches to each subject, and learning is made less individualized.  That's not to say it's a straitjacket of a system: one can personalize the subjects through projects, essays, and use outside the classroom, but I've always wanted to create my own schedule complete with writing workshops, classics discussions over coffee, and a few quirky classes on extraneous interests I never find time or motivation to study on my own.  And as priceless as much of the information taught in schools is, much of it a critical platform not just in helping to develop our passions but in connecting and relating to the rest of the world outside the school, I can't help thinking how much of the information (if not the skills gained in obtaining the information) will just go down the drain.  Subjects I don't use on a daily basis become inconsequential, and their particulars are erased from my mind in an attempt to make space for what matters to me.  What I'm saying here is, in the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "a man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to need, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it."  His character, the infamous Sherlock, a man beyond brilliant (and beyond cocky) who, as I've already mentioned in a previous blog, is an unstoppable criminal-busting force with a mind like a government-issue computer, doesn't even know our solar system.  As his BBC counterpart tells Watson, "this is my hard drive and it only makes sense to put things in there that are useful.  Really useful.  Ordinary people fill their heads with all kinds of rubbish.  And that makes it hard to get at the stuff that matters."  "But it's the solar system!" John argues persuasively.  "What does that matter?" Sherlock responds.  "So we go round the sun.  If we went round the moon, or round and round the garden like a teddy bear, it wouldn't make any difference.  All that matters to me is the work.  Without that, my brain rots."

I will always be open to learning new things, even, or better yet especially, in school, but sometimes I wish I had more room for my interests, and more time to explore them.

Great Spirits

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. –– Albert Einstein

Along for the Ride

I've wanted to be a writer ever since my dreams of being a veterinarian were crushed by the harsh reality of animal surgery (it had never occurred to me at that age that the vet doesn't just check the outside of the animal).  As a bold first step into this new and intimidating world of self-expression and keyboards, I sought out some pros to help me get on my feet: two teachers at my school, both published authors, and both with very different tactics and motives.  I interviewed them thinking it would be beneficial later when applying to colleges, and left with a greater passion for the subject thanks to these two: let's call them Bill and Bob.

First up was Bill, an elementary school teacher (one of my own way back when) who writes action-packed children's novels.  He's excellent: he speaks a child's language while also including the adults in the adventures.  I asked him how he did it: how do you become successful in a competitive, opinionated industry like publishing?  He told me his strategy was write now, think later.  Bill's a stream of consciousness writer: as he explained to me, the biggest obstacle he faces is putting down the words; once that hurtle is jumped, he can pare it down and add flare through astute edits.  I, a professed over-thinker and lover of thesaurus.com, could not imagine simply sitting down and writing my story in its premature form: it has to be a masterpiece right off the bat (an unrealistic goal, I know, but one I've had difficulty getting around).  He admits that some days he writes "garbage" for the sake of writing anything at all, just so long as he gets it out there, and (perhaps subconsciously) I've come to do the same on occasion: I never publish my "garbage," or even edit it--the majority of times I delete it before I even read it over (baby steps, people, remember my obsession with perfection?)--but sometimes my thoughts run so rampant that the only way to clearly see what I want to say is to clear the crap down first.  Perhaps I'll never be a stream of consciousness writer, but my methods are much more realistic now, mostly due to Bill.

Next I spoke with Bob, a junior high teacher who writes short stories with subtle morals.  Bill and Bob could not be more different: before even bringing up a word document, Bob must stew for hours about an idea, map it out like connect the dots, and then, when he is finally prepared to realize it on paper, he takes a moment to compose himself before writing each word, weighing the pros and cons of a word versus its synonym.  Remind you of anyone? [thumb pointing at me]  He admits this pursuit of the perfect word can have detrimental effects on his writing, namely stemming the flow of his ideas, but it's become a necessity for him: he has to see potential in it in order to continue working on it.  While his stories are short, he likes to pack a punch in each, to the extent that, he told me, laughing, he's occasionally prone to hitting his readers over the head with his "subtle" themes, his favorite of which, he later told me, is dismantling the timeless struggle between "good" and "bad" by making the two seem like a package deal instead of pure elements. Perhaps the greatest advice I got, both in my interviews and since, is what Bob suggested to conquer writer's block: a book; a movie; somebody else's story to stimulate my imagination and free me from my mental overdrive.  Sometimes it's nice to let another do the thinking, and just go along for the ride.

A Mile in Another's Shoes

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading. –– William Styron

I Want to Be Selfish

How your average Joe sees writing:

How I see writing:

A picture's worth a thousand words, and yet a thousand words couldn't capture my art form better than this picture.  There are limits to what even words can do, but in a way that's what I admire most about them: their flexibility.  Words are only so descriptive, leaving a paper-thin sketch to be realized by the reader's imagination, in effect making the reader the second creator of the writer's--my--world.  The same writing can become different places to different people, individualizing and personalizing it.  But sometimes, when my own vision is realized by another in a tangible form, I want to share that concrete thought in its mature form.  Sometimes, I want to be the sole creator; to be selfish.

A World Beyond Ours

Good writing is like a windowpane. –– George Orwell

Paper Bleeds Little

Paper is an odd medium to convey emotions: it is flat and inanimate and lifeless--how can it be expected to truly make the reader feel as the author does?  Half of the work is lost in translation: this intermediary between the writer's lips and the reader's ear lacks the same purpose, the gesticulations, the intonation of the speaker.  The hardest part of writing is making others feel the way you do using only a keyboard (or a pencil back in the day).  To misquote (and probably misinterpret) an old proverb, I want to make the paper bleed: I want the emotions to be so real they soak through the pages.  Each piece I write is a horcrux of mine (though I don't have to kill someone to put my soul into it): it's my lifeblood flowing through the pages, making the words dance and writhe and live.  But it's hard to make the stationary move, and paper bleeds little.

And That's a Fact

There are no facts, only interpretations. –– Friedrich Nietzsche

Just Words

Words carry more weight than most presume: they may feel light on the page, but they have the power to unite and divide us; they are communication, and by extension understanding; they are emotions, and virtues, and evils; they are unlimited, more are created by the day, and I am in awe of them, sometimes fearful of them, but always in love with their potential.  One word could be the difference between love and hate, peace and war; one word: sorry, stop, always, if, please.  They're just ink and paper, but they've come to represent so much more: they signify our belief systems, our identities.  They're just words, but they are the building blocks of our society.  Imagine a world without words, in which everyone's thoughts were only for themselves: it would be so lonely.

Wise Words from the Dowager Countess

Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class. –– Violet Crawley (Downton Abbey)

The Philosophy of Science

I’m fascinated by science the way I'm fascinated by zoo animals: I enjoy spending the day viewing the animals, reading the placards, and then going home for dinner.  Scientific discussions are what throw me: I understand science only so far as the textbook explains it to me--abstract argument using what I've learned, while second nature in my english and history classes, is beyond me in this particular field.  I retain knowledge like a sponge naturally, and I can understand the information to death, but am somehow incapable of furthering another's discoveries.

I enjoy science on a very basic level: if you explain it to me, I will listen enthusiastically, and it may even spark a few ideas, but they will all be based in the story of evolution and chemical interactions, not the science behind it.  I'm a book-driven girl: give me an excellent plot and I'll take it anywhere; give me cold hard facts and I'm lost.

Again, I say I'm not incapable of grasping a concept once a light's placed on it, I just don't know how to place my own light on it; I'm capable of science, but incapable of being a scientist.  There's a difference: one is taught to you, the other you discover through extensive research, experimentation, and outside knowledge.

Though I cannot advance the scientific community, I won't deny I love a good intellectually-based argument, and science is full of them: people arguing over the course of evolution, the ancestors of different animals, the purpose of different body parts, and the purport of different body plans; arguing over the possibilities of new elements, and the uses of old ones, and the causes of different chemical reactions.  Philosophy is my niche, and it is abundant in science.  So, while I am not drawn to the latter, the existence of the former has given me a soft spot for the subject.

King of Kings

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.  Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions era
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
–– Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Foray into Poetry

In tenth grade, my closest friend and I spent our entire fifth period passing poetry back and forth in scrawled cursive.  We littered the pages with enchanting snippets of hidden wisdom and buried passion:

She howl’d aloud, “I am on fire within.

There comes no murmur of reply.

What is it that will take away my sin,

And save me lest I die?”

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Palace of Art"

When I have seen by

Time’s fell hand defac’d

The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage

—Shakespeare, “Sonnet 64”

My whole life long I learn’d to love.

This hour my utmost art I prove

And speak my passion—heaven or hell?

She will not give me heaven?

’Tis well!

—Robert Browning, “One Way of Love”

We spent hours memorizing our favorites out of the chapter subtitles in The Infernal Devices, curled them in the margins of our notes, traded, and memorized each other's.  I, as a hoarder, have notes dating back to as early as third grade, and so naturally these sonnet-filled books from sophomore history class resurface occasionally and I smile at my own messy cursive and my friend's gorgeously consistent loops, once again stacking the poems in neat piles at the front of my mind and rehearsing them when it suits me.

The Sound of Snowfall

He thought he could almost hear the snow falling outside.  He could not, but he could hear the silence where it fell. –– Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)

The Sound of Books

I'm picky about a good place to read: too much noise or too much silence distracts me, as do light playing on the page or through my fingers, another person within my line of sight, and thoughts of what's for dinner.  (Honestly, how do I finish reading anything?)  But I think I've unearthed the perfect spot: Barnes and Noble (let the angels sing).  Often hand-in-hand with a Starbucks, so the scent of caffeine and creamer partially permeate the store, mixing with what you already know is one of my favorite scents--ink on paper.  I like kneeling down in a secluded aisle and just picking books up, reading the first page and perhaps the plot summary, and carefully tucking them back in among the rest.  The more books that pass through my hands, the happier I feel.  My favorite are the special edition hardbacks of the complete works of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or who else--the kind that have ridges on the spines and intricate lettering with sparkly filigree.  The kind that should decorate the walls of a Disney princesses' chambers and instead I want decorating my own.  I always like to stop in the notebook section and examine the petite calendars complete with antique floral patterns on their covers and red ribbons to hold your place.  I like the sassy post-it notes and electronic dictionary bookmarks.  And I like that everyone is quiet and hidden away in their own corner of the store, but all know the others are there.  I like being surrounded by people, both those physically present and those present in the books they wrote, but not having the pressure of talking to any of them: it is up to me to approach a book, say "how do you do," and then decide whether to take it home.  Most of all, I love the illusion that all the shelves upon shelves of volumes are mine, at least for a couple of hours.

Temporary

Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks. –– Dottie Walters

I Was Wrong

I've taken a class on war.  This is not to say I am familiar with every facet of the subject--I am, in fact, severely lacking in the experience department, and therefore unqualified to state anything regarding it as fact--but I am no longer ignorant of the topic, either.  This class, a seminar literature course called War and Peace (when asked where the peace came in after a couple of introductory movies, Saving Private Ryan and The Deer Hunter, our teacher told us that our classroom represented the peace aspect), had a significant impact on me.  However, I had previously believed its impact to have been more substantial than I now know it to be.  I went into that class considering war an abomination created by all that is wrong with human nature: that it was our darkest side revealing itself in the most immoral ways.  I saw it as unnecessary.  I still, to some extent, believe in the former; what changed is my belief in the latter.  I think (in very limited cases, mind you) that war IS necessary.  But, I also think that war is overused: my teacher told me that Saving Private Ryan was, to him, the closest one could get to being in war without volunteering for the armed forces; I barely made it through Saving Private Ryan, and that is, of course, not really comparable to the true experience.  Knowing how appalling many of the events of that movie were, and taking into account that it is still only a movie, I think it unforgivably rash to enter a war as anything other than the last resort, and with no less than a means, a justifiable motive, and a plan.  But more than that, what I find I cannot forgive is those who not only see war as necessary, but morally right.  The ends, in my opinion, must be morally right in order to justify the means, but the means will never be moral.

So, I give in: I believe killing can be necessary.  But I will never believe it is right.