Sticky Moments

I'm out of music.  

And I've got two more papers LEFT. 

Can she do it?

She  MUST.

She CAN.  

She WILL.

Thank you, Vince and Bola. 

After darting all over the nation, I can't say I'm in the right frame of mind to sit back at my wee desk and put together words for this assignment.  I don't know what to say anymore.  I don't know enough about the topic at hand to say much.  

My arms are actually tired from sitting crouched over my computer.  My shoulders are tight, my back aches, my eyes are sleepy, me me me me meeeeeeee...

As we began our descent into Newark, NJ, I tried to figure out what land we were flying over - what roads, valleys, and mountains.  I can never seem to figure it out exactly.  The next day, I wondered if I was driving along some of those roads I saw from the air.

Everyday is full of enormous transitions: planes to cars to walking to sitting.  From sitting at my computer for hours to driving for hours to sitting with friends and back again.

I'm thankful for the music that never ends, floating in the background of all these scenarios, helping me through school.  The aches and anguish of Grad School will fade away and what will be left is the music, the photos, the moments that wove themselves throughout... they will all stick right to me.

Castle Valley, UT

Arches

Crushed!

Arched

Having a Blast

Up in the Window

Landscape Arch

Landscape Arch from behind

Cray

Window

Hey Girl.

Smoke is no fun. 

Profiled

Cheers to the people you know across the globe.

Should've Known Better

Driving and camping around Moab, Sufjan's Carrie and Lowell became our soundtrack for the trip.  It started with my friend humming Sufjan in the kitchen before we left.  This quickly turned into playing his album more than three times along the red dusty roads of the canyons of Utah.  We also created our own narrative along with the tune:

Should've staked my tent down
before the storm came in...

...Lightning strike
Nothing can be changed
the past is in the past
My tent is up in flames...

...Illumination...

We only lost a canopy.  Thanks to the kindness of our camping neighbors, my tent was held down with rocks they had put in it after they had seen it blow away.  They saved our canopy canvas, but the bars were crushed by the wind.

Michael crushing the remains, so we can put it in the car. 

This storm had come in quickly.  Just as the light from the sunset was fading out on Delicate Arch, a strong gust of wind stormed in from the Northwest.  Thunder boomed and a stroke of lightning shot across the sky.  I called to my friends and we began running down the bald rock ridge as lightning shot above us from time to time.

"We've gotta get off this ridge!  Go, go, go!"

"Where's the fire?" said the people we sped passed, strolling down the mountain.

All I could think of was (1) Get off the ridge (2) Take lightning position.  Luckily, we had a car to drive us out of there.  Off went we drove, through the raging winds and rain above us, the sky lit up by daggers of electricity.

Right before things got crazy.

The next day we decided to take the scenic route to Canyonlands.  Luckily, I pictured a relaxing photogenic drive and not this terrifying footpath of a road.

Assumptions can protect you from worry without you realizing.

Four wheel drive was encouraged on the sign, but we continued forward in our Toyota Camry.  Rough gravel and potholes seemed a bit precarious but we kept driving.  The road continued to gain elevation and soon we were teetering on the skinniest red muddy road, clinging to the sides of the canyon walls.  We had been warned about an area where there was "rock and road, and it was steep" according to a person we had stopped along the way.  But he encouraged us saying, "But I've seen people make it!"

Oh good.

A tiny road of switchbacks brought us out of the canyon, while Billy Holiday and other jazz tunes played on - except for the last part, where silence seemed the only tune we could embrace.  Meanwhile, we prayed to God that our car would make it (the entire time).  My fear kept me from taking photos or videos.  Two hours later, we made it to Dead Horse point - alive (!) - where the sun was shining and we could take a look at the dark canyon road we had just traversed.

Along the switchbacks, in the car.

There's our road!

Canyonlands

We were able to enjoy a bit of a sunset, though it didn't light up the rocks as it did the night before.  The light is able to change everything, making dark canyons beautiful.

Back we drove to Salt Lake City, where we slept like the rocks we had just seen.

Thank you, Moab.

Girl.

On the dining room table of my brother's apartment lay, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling, writer on The Office and star of The Mindy Project.  While my brother was taking a shower, or getting ready, or something - or maybe his girlfriend had grabbed the book off her shelf for me because of our conversation - I can't remember - somehow it ended up in my hands.  I began reading it, and found myself laughing out loud - which I'm not sure has ever happened to me from reading a book.  My brother's girlfriend then (rather thoughtfully) gave it to me as a Christmas present and I've recently pulled it off my shelf as a form of self-care, to get away from the piles of work that have been slowly eating me alive this semester... bite by bite.

Here are a few excerpts:

(from chapter Types of Women in Romantic Comedies Who Are Not Real)

I love romantic comedies. I feel almost sheepish writing that, because the genre has been so degraded in the past 20 years or so that admitting you like these movies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.  But that has not stopped me from watching them... I simply regard romantic comedies as a sub-genre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world... So it makes sense that in this world there are many specimens of women who I do not think exist in real life, like Vulcans or UFO people or whatever.  They are:

THE KLUTZ

When a beautiful actress is in a movie, executives wrack their brain to find some kind of flaw in her that still allows her to be palatable... A not 100-percent-perfect-looking-in-every-way female?  You might as well film a dead squid decaying on a beach somewhere for two hours... Our Klutz clangs into Stop signs while riding a bike, and knocks over giant displays of expensive fine china.  Despite being five foot nine and weighing 110 pounds, she is basically like a drunk buffalo who has never been a part of human society.  But Fred Tom loves her anyway.

THE ETHEREAL WEIRDO

...If she were from real life, people would think she was a homeless woman and would cross the street to avoid her, but she is essential to the male fantasy that even if a guy is boring, he deserves a woman who will find him fascinating and pull him out of himself by forcing him to go skinny-dipping in a stranger's pool.

THE WOMAN WHO IS OBSESSED WITH HER CAREER AND IS NO FUN AT ALL

...I am slightly offended by the way busy working women my age are presented in film.  I'm not like, always barking orders into my hands-free phone device and telling people constantly, "I have no time for this!" I didn't completely forget how to be nice or feminine because I have a career.  Also, since when does having a job necessitate women having their hair pulled back in a severe, tight bun?  Often this uptight woman has to "re-learn" how to seduce a man because her estrogen leaked out of her from leading so many board meetings... Having a challenging job in movies means the compassionate, warm, or sexy side of your brain has fallen out.

***

Those are just a few, and they make me laugh out loud.  I think she gets at these weird images and ideas that we can get lodged in our mind due to the leading females that we see who get the guy: must be mysterious, it's cute to be klutzy, better not get to work-obsessed or I'll turn into a nasty person.

This commercial actually makes me tear up:

It's when I see the younger girls running as fast as they can.  I'm thinking about how they haven't simply accepted the phrase, or had it take a certain drive out of them.  The look on their faces when they're running as fast as they can just gets me.  They don't have these weird images in their heads yet - the strange ways women can be portrayed and the expectations that can influence them.  These little girls believe in themselves.

I remembered recently how over the summer, in the all girls group, the girls refer to each other as "Girl".  "Girl, let me help you."  "Girl, your hair."  Girl.  Their intonation had this power to it.  It's hard to even imitate it unless I'm around them.

Girl.  Run.  Laugh.  Think.  Be.
And see Romantic Comedies as Sci-Fi movies.

Girl, go!

Eastery Blanketing of an Old Woman

Pink Blanket Time

Gang's all here: heater, blanket, water, and tea, hunched over a laptop.  I might as well be 94, just like my grandfather.  The pink blanket is out - always the signal that Sarah will not be moving for awhile.  This means either she is watching Downton Abbey, or...

... she is couch-bound with a cold.  

It was bound to happen - naturally, with the changing of the seasons.  What can one expect but to suddenly feel their eyes close over and the sticky dribble drabble of nasal fluid slide down the back of one's throat.  Delicious. 

The perfect remedy?  Chocolate and peanut butter cake smuggled in by baker-roommate, obviously.  Ironically, she had been baking them all day at her bakery only to come home to our other roommate baking one.  

What ARE the chances?!

Luckily, my blanket resembles the soft pink shade of an Easter egg.  Ripe for the season.  I just need a bunny and an Easter basket. 

In the spirit of one of my favorite old ladies, Lady Grantham, I shall summon her wisdom:

Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

I am a woman, I can be as contrary as I choose.

Everyone goes down the aisle with half the story hidden. 

We are allies my dear, which can be a good deal more effective. (as oppose to friends)

I don't dislike him, I just don't like him.  Which is quite different. 

I do hope I'm interrupting something. 

Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class.

One can't go to pieces with the death of every foreigner.  We'd all be in a constant state of collapse whenever we opened a newspaper.  

Sir Richard, life is a game, where the player must appear ridiculous.

She's so slight that a real neckline would flatten her. 

Just because you're an old widow, I see no reason to eat off a tray.

There can be too much truth in any relationship.

If I were to search for logic, I would not look for it among the English upper class.

I wonder your halo doesn't grow heavy.  It must be like wearing a tiara around the clock. 

Wars have been waged with less fervor.

There's nothing simpler than avoiding people that you don't like.  Avoiding one's friends, that's the real test. 

Isobel: It's only me.

LG: I always feel that greeting betrays such a lack of worth. 

Switzerland has everything to offer, except perhaps conversation.  And one can learn to live without that.

He's one of the most unconvincing fiancés that I've ever come across. 

***

Cheers to wisdom from real friends and story friends and those who make all things new. 

Happy Easter!

Smooth Like Jazz

There's something about Jazz on a rainy day or when I'm studying in the morning, with my coffee.

I watched Whiplash on the ride across the Atlantic and back.  There's a scene that continues to stick in my mind.  I live in a world of positive psychology where we toss around the term "strengths-based" and talk about feedback being a gift that we give to someone.  We talk about offering people opportunities to choose their challenge, to view behaviors as communication, to see resistance as a gift, and grow in our own self-awareness of how we impact others.

Then there's this conductor: aggressive, terrifying, passionate.  The synopsis describes him as someone who stops at nothing to activate potential.  His speech sticks in my mind as it was something that I already knew, but didn't know like this:

I wonder how to think about potential or how to activate it.  What kind of cymbal will I throw at someone to grow their potential - and when, why, how?  What kinds of cymbals are people throwing at my head to motivate me, give me incentive to move?  I think I can think of a few...

What are the cymbals and what is the symbol!

One thing I learned from playing with Chimes recently, is that the sound of dissonance soon resolved is the sweetest.  You have to cringe before you smile.  

Here's to exchanging a "good job" to becoming smooth - like Jazz. 

There's just something about it.