Subtleties in the Weather (or Everyday Thing #2)

Weather is an odd thing: not only does it have its varying degrees of hots and colds, its different kinds of rains and winds, it also has a feel and a smell to it. One of the best examples is how it can smell like Halloween once October hits. There's something in the crisp air that mixes with falling leaves, the chilly breezes, and the hoodies that haven't been worn since March that mixes all together and makes a scent that is unique to Halloween. This happens in summer too. It can smell and feel like summer. In my hometown particularly, when the wind blows right, air rolls off the Salt Lake and there's a hint of salt in the wind that mixes with the smell of freshly cut grass and other inexplicable elements to combine to make the scent of summer.

Yesterday I noticed a different kind of nuance in the weather. It's been really nice outside for days and even a few weeks now. The temperature has been perfect: right in that area where you forget to check how hot it actually is because you don't notice the temperature at all. It's even gotten up to the upper 70s without it getting out of control hot. Yesterday, however, as I emerged from one of the buildings on campus, I immediately felt different. It wasn't incredibly hot, but it just felt different. The sun on my neck felt different, somehow. I said to my friend that it felt like a different kind of heat. She remarked that the spring heat is gone and the summer heat is here. "That's it!!" I said. It sounded crazy to both of us, but it makes sense. There's some little factor that's been changed so that it now feels like summer outside and no longer spring. It could be that the temperature just increased, but I think it's more than that. It feels like it's more than that. I could strangely smell something in the air that confirmed what we had just said and consequently basked in it for the rest of my walk back to work.

This is another instance where I ask myself, Am I crazy?

Someone to Talk To

It's been a while since I've posted anything on the blog....mostly because it's been a while since anything has really made me think "Gosh, I'd like to write a post about this" or "This would make a great blog post!" While all the things on this blog are personal, there are a lot of personal things and then personal things to sift through before I get to things I want to post. So while life has continued and things have happened since my last post, it wasn't until tonight that I had something that (I feel) is worth saying.

One of my basic needs that is personal to me is a need to be understood. It's often hard for me to talk to people about how I really feel, mostly when it's something hard in my life, because I know that they can't understand it. I know they want to help me more than anything, but because I know deep down that
they can't understand, they often can't do anything, so I just opt to not say anything at all.

Another piece of information that's important in order to understand the eventual point of this post is that I've always heard people say that they know they can always talk to God about everything and anything. Whatever it was, they could tell Him about it and somehow I imagined that everything turned out all right for them after saying that. I've always known that I could talk to God about anything, but I never really felt like I got answers. I know I had answers about several big decisions in my life, so I didn't doubt that He was there, but I wondered if He really did care about the small things in my life. Even in my hardest times, I never really felt any sort of comfort that people always talked about in their testimonies or stories. I never felt any sort of warm, loving feeling, no acceptance, no understanding.

I'm sure there were a number of factors that played into my feeling that way, but I'm not sure what they were and at this point I don't care. All I know is that things have changed. It's been so gradual that I didn't realize until tonight at around midnight as I was brushing my teeth how much I was looking forward to telling God about things that happened during my day, several of them uncomfortable things that I knew (don't ask me how) that only He would understand.

In the past few months, I've started really confiding in God. I mean really confiding. There comes a point in everyone's life when they truly have nobody to talk to. Sometimes, there simply is nobody I can talk to to make things better or easier, and certainly nobody who will understand. Happily, in my moments like that, I turned to God. I've laid things out on the table for Him, told Him that this is how things are and this is what's going on and this is how I feel. I've told Him that I am not sure how I ought to react or feel but this is how I am reacting and feeling. My prayers have been becoming less formulaic and more informal. I haven't been keeping back the "knitty gritty" stuff. Actually, when I talk to God, that "knitty gritty" stuff takes up a large portion of the conversation. Slowly, I've realized that God does understand. He understands and the best part is that He's okay with everything that I feel. And even better, because I know that He is OK with it, I am OK with it and am much less hard on myself for the little things that I keep inside to reproach myself with.

So at the end of the day (and the beginning of it), God is my go-to. He's given me people in my life that I can talk to when I need one kind of support or another, of course, but sometimes, there is just nobody but God that I feel comfortable talking to, nobody but Him who will understand. It's a relief to know that I don't have to preface how I feel with anything when I talk to God because He was there when it happened.

 It's really important to realize that this took a long time. I've also realized that this took a long time for probably every person who I ever heard say that they felt they could really talk to God and He understood them. I certainly haven't been there for all the times when they felt alone or wondered if God cared about the little things in their life. How can I expect to understand? I heard the end, or at least most recent, result of their experiences and I expected to get to that same point in a few days or fewer.

It's also important to realize that, even though God does understand and that brings me a lot of quiet comfort that can often go unnoticed, my problems do not go away as I expected and hoped when I heard people tell their stories. That wouldn't really make much sense. How on earth can I expect to overcome the problems if a few prayers and soulful confidence in God takes them away? No, because they are still present, that helps me remember my dependence on His constancy. And, while I still am not grateful for all the trials I have, I am grateful for the things that they have brought me, one of which is an answer to a long-asked question: Yes, God is there and He does care and (most of all for me) He does understand. That knowledge is something that is worth a lot to me and something that I hope I can always remember.

It's that time...

It's that time of the four-month period called a semester right before finals. It's that time where...

-I do anything and everything other than doing homework:
          i. Facebook
         ii. 10-minute Arthur episodes on YouTube
        iii.  Quick Hotmail check
        iv.  Write a blog post
         v.  Check the extended family website
        vi.  Look for housing (except that's actually productive)
       vii.  Eat
Exception: Fun reading. I couldn't do that....it's too blatantly unproductive.

-I feel like I'm in a daze and am a robot more often.

-Naps constantly sound good (but really).

-Working for 8 hours a day with no homework sounds wildly appealing.

-If anyone so much as says "Do you want to" I am apt to yell back "I'm in!" (incidentally, no one's said this to me yet, but if they did, I would)

-I go through weird bouts throughout the day where homework and studying sounds good because it means I'm that much closer to no more of it.

-I find myself sitting and staring at nothing.

-I become apathetic even in my favorite classes and blow things off until the last minute.

So, while these end-of-the-semester feelings and reactions are not at all unique to me, the fact remains that they're there. And how. If I were to write a stream of consciousness short story, it would go something like this:

I like this song. I'll probably listen to it a few more times. I'm glad the sun goes down later. That snow melted fast from this morning. Thank goodness. The whole mountain is green. Almost. Except for those rocks. I guess they'll never get green. Oh, the song is over. YouTube, why do you allow ads before videos? It really messes up my listening experience.

Not exactly Mrs. Dalloway. If it sounds like I'm crazy, well, I don't know what to say. I actually started writing this post to avoid doing English homework. I'd probably better get back to it. Although it's not really that bad this time; the readings are much more interesting than normal. I'm sick of reading. Wow, did I just say that?

I think I'm psyching myself out. Only 13 more days.

An Exhausted Accounting

Remember that time back in December when I said I was going to start running again? Well, I technically did go running one night in the bitter cold of January. I didn't go too far, but it was far enough. I didn't pace myself at all so it was a horrible, freezing experience. I told myself that night that I'd start again when it got warmer because it is so much easier to go running when it's warm outside (of course, I couldn't go find a treadmill and run in the warm inside).

Well, it's been in the 60s for a few weeks now and my exercise nag started to act up again. Today while working on homework I started to feel myself slow down. I realized that it was the perfect solution to clear my head. I'd be able to get out and run around, come home, take a shower, and be ready to attack the homework again with renewed zeal. Almost impulsively, I put down my laptop, got on my running garb and headed out the door.

It's a beautiful day out there, truly. I realized while I was running that I didn't feel the weather around me. It wasn't cold, it wasn't hot and it was great to feel my body working hard and pushing itself again. I have a testimony of running, but I'm not converted to it enough to do it regularly. I can't argue with how good I feel right now, though. While I was running, I thought of how I could cut down on my sugar intake, because otherwise, I eat pretty healthy. I've been inspired by those around me who have taken measures to get in better shape and have seen great results from their hard work and I'd like to see some results myself.

So here's to a renewing of the goal I made in December. I'd really like to get into better shape than I was my senior year, the last time I consistently ran, in addition to other workout goals. I feel like I got run over by a horse right now, but hopefully by continually making an accounting to myself of how I'm doing on my goal, it'll eventually take a lot more to get me to feel that way.

Why I Will Never Like Poetry - or - Should I Be Studying English?

*Beware - Rant ahead*

As I've said before, science and I have never seen eye to eye. Similarly, poetry and I have never been the best of friends. However, contrary to science, it wasn't until just recently that I finally admitted to myself that I severely disliked poetry in almost all forms, be it rhythmic or free verse, sonnet or elegy. Although I must say that free verse frustrates me just a little bit more. The lack of structure stresses me out when I read it and can't fall into a rhythm, especially when a line ends but the sentence continues on the next which makes me start the whole phrase over.
Additionally, in my various forays into different kinds of literature and literature forms, I have found that poetry is the form which makes me ask most often "What is this supposed to mean?!" No matter how much time I spent poring over "Tintern Abbey," I just couldn't get the sense of what Wordsworth was trying to tell me in some passages, and that was using the language of "real men" that was so prominent in his time period. If you ask me, he felt nostalgic when he revisited this hill above Tintern Abbey and tried to express his nostalgia in words and lines. But my English professor wasn't satisfied with that. There had to be something more, something more meaningful, more deep, something more.....what? Why can't we be satisfied that Wordsworth was just being nostalgic? This is my core issue with studying literature so far.
Along a similar vein, in another class about writing our own criticism, we get scolded if our paper topics are too close to the "standard interpretation" of the text (thankfully short stories, not poems). But we still have to come up with something that lines up with the author's views and opinions, so in this case, anything really happy is out of the question. One of my paper topics was shot down because it was too "Pollyannaish" and too positive for the given author. This is a different argument, but how am I supposed to know what every scholar has been saying about these stories since 1923 or whenever it was published??? Anyway, back to finding deeper meaning behind short poems.
I get frustrated when we read a very short poem for British Literature and then have to write a journal entry about it explaining the key ideas that tie it into Victorian Literature, provide a critical response (whatever that means), and then pick several key quotes. I find this problematic because I firmly believe that some of the poems we have read were written because the author felt like it. They just had these words in mind that went well together and decided to write them down. In other words, not every piece of poetry written by a poet (even the most famous) can be applied to Victorian ideals, or Romantic ideals, or whatever. What's wrong with saying that they wrote the poem simply to entertain? Christina Rossetti said that her poem "Goblin Market" was written as a children's story. However, after having read a biographical sketch of her and other interpretations of the poem, one would be led to believe that many critics are discounting what she herself has said about her own works and then are putting words in her mouth about what the poem really means. I mean, I love literature, but this is too much.
But! I ate my own words (a lot of them) this past week while reading, ironically, Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market." In the biography preceding her poetry in my monstrous Norton collection of British Literature, it said that the poem is clearly not a symbolic retelling of the Fall of Adam and Eve. After reading through the poem (which was about 5 pages long, so this isn't really the same argument), I thought to myself, whoever wrote that biography is crazy! This is a blatant retelling of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the idea of redemption! I did exactly what I just shot down, I put words in Christina's mouth and told Norton off for misrepresenting her poetry.
So what do you do? It's also important to remember that my rant is unreliable because I've only been doing this for 2 semesters now. As far as finding new topics and the ethics of interpreting an author's intention...I'll probably either get over it or find out how it's justifiable. But finding a deeper meaning behind poems shorter than a page long? Forget it. I'm not sure I'll ever buy into it. No matter what anybody tells me, I'll always hold fast to the idea that a lot of poets wrote poetry simply because they wanted to. Or at least I'll take the poem at face value.

Now, academia, go crazy and deconstruct this post and find out what I REALLY meant to say!

Writing and Progression

And speaking of academic
written criticism.....

Last week in my English class about writing criticism, we were discussing the editorial and revising process. Among other things, our teacher noted that, as a work, our papers will never be "finished." To quote her exactly, a paper is not a product, it is a process. She used an example from her own life when she sent a so-called finished and ready article to a journal only to reread it, horrified at what she had submitted. The paper was no longer done and more changes were in order to improve the quality and style.

I think our own lives are much the same way, especially in our spiritual progression. We can never say we are "done." After working on something in a specific area of our life (or paper), when we step back and look at the big picture again, we'll surely find something that could use a little tweaking, some rewriting, or maybe the removal of a major paragraph or habit. The finished product we're working toward won't really be finished and thoroughly refined until after this life. But we can get as much of a head start as possible right now through another process called repentance. This is really comforting for me when I get weighed down by all the things I'm doing wrong, or worse, doing wrong over and over again.

The encouraging thing is that our "papers" don't have to be perfect to be acceptable. God isn't going to send us back a piece of paper with all things that are wrong in our current "draft" and tell us to come back when we've fixed them all. God knows we aren't perfect and all we have to do is try our best to keep improving. A friend pointed out to me that in the oft-quoted scripture in Moroni which says to "Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him," perfection is mentioned after coming to Christ. It doesn't say to become perfect and then we can come unto Christ, because we will never become perfect without Him. That means that I can reword and revise my draft as much as I need to for as long as it takes me until I can get it perfect. When will that be? I have no idea. But I am so happy and grateful that it's possible.

In Control...For Now

It's occurred to me that I don't have to have interesting things to say in order to make a blog post, nor do I have to go on and on as I tend to do when I have a subject I really feel strongly about. I can also write about the mundane or the everyday things in life, because I think those are good too and are more interesting in their own way. They can also be short.

Everyday Thing #1
For the past few days I've had the great feeling that I've really been in control and on top of my classes and homework and it's a GREAT feeling!! My typed-up "To Do" list shrinks at the appropriate times, papers are being written, readings are being read, tests are being studied for, I've found my rhythm for the semester. This is weird for me because usually it always feels like I'm drowning (which it did for the past couple of weeks, it is true) and like I'll never surface but, for the moment, I have! I have and I'm trying to enjoy it for as long as it lasts before all my midterms start (or triterms would be more accurate in some cases, as there are three intermittent tests in lots of classes nowadays) or whatever may happen that causes me to start to fall behind again. Here's to hoping that moment never comes!