Brevity

is the soul of wit and also something I lack. I like words, and I like stringing 'em along until I run out.

But 8-10 and 10-15 page requirements on subjects that really don't need that many are making me reassess.

I think I am prone to word-clutter. Maybe not a big deal when scribbling in notebooks. But too many paragraphs on a blog can be scary. If I want to be able to turn out quality, to-the-point material... well. Out comes the chopping block.

Writing in the smaller notebooks I've been getting instead of full-size ones seems to be helping. So does waiting till I have something specific to say, instead of putting down everything I think of just as a sort of mental occupation.

It has often been said there's so much to be read,
you never can cram all those words in your head.
So the writer who breeds more words than he needs
is making a chore for the reader who reads.
That's why my belief is the briefer the brief is,
the greater the sigh of the reader's relief is.

-Dr. Seuss

I Feel Like Going Dancing

There is a hoedown going on in my head.

Do - si - do, y'all, swing your partner round and...?

I do not actually know how to dance much more than a hop, skip, and a jump. I've got the bob-my-head and the wiggle down. I've also a hip-sway-and-step that people tend to think is a product of being Bolivian but is really just moving around in as close a mimicry of generic Latin dancing as I can muster (apparently I am successful in this).

BUT, hey, is not dancing supposed to be an expression of the soul? And therefore is it not above reproach of elite rules and traditions, the secrets of which I have not yet cracked? [Although indeed subject to rules of appropriate conduct; I am not condoning indecency, people.]

My soul wishes to express an effervescent HOORAY at the moment, and is seeking suitable physical articulation. Fist pump, perhaps?

Three semesters ago I took a Jane Austen/country dance class. I developed line-and-direction-switching skills I never knew I possessed, as well as an immunity to public humiliation! Country dancing all of a sudden held unprecedented appeal! These skills have left me since, alas, left me with my wildest dreams of barnstomping still unrealized and whirling 'round in my imagination.

And right now I am SO ITCHING for a whirl.

This is because I have spent most of today fending off a funk (does it not sound terrible? THE FUNK.) Anyway, much effort was spent fending off this Funk, and by sundown, I was spent. And lo and behold, THE FUNK WON. Everywhere, distraught debating of My Life Path and extreme inner existential and theological monologues!

But after much listening to chipper banjos and reading of spiritual materials (Oh how I enjoy thee, Ecclesiastes), I have routed Mr. Funk and he is nowhere to be seen. I am oh so brimming with that enthusiasm for living which bubbles over at 3 A.M. because it is too much for the light of day to handle (apparently). Or for me to handle during the light of day (likely).

FOR INSTANCE: Did you ever concieve such a world? I mean, the colors! the sounds! they are so bright and sound-ly! Isn't music the best thing around? Isn't singing fun? Are not words and books and ideas such lovely things to hold and play with? Did ever a language sound so pretty as English? And with what a history (but one I will not here bore you with)! Really, did ever anything sound as nice as any language, ever? And do not even get me started on the people! They are so different! They are so many! And my goodness, are they ever interesting.

Listening to Mumford & Sons almost nonstop contributes to my mental dance party. I am the happy happy possessor of one Sigh No More, already duplicated for the car. It was one of my lovely gifts for my twentieth birthday, the story of which will go into the For Later bin for now. Now we are talking banjos and guitars and all manner of stringed instruments. Also, songs that quote Shakespeare and Steinbeck. That's Shakespeare and Steinbeck, folks. Sigh No More, did you catch that? I do love harmonic rollicking, and banjos are so very hard to not dance to, let me tell you!

Plus, I have striped socks on! My feet are ready to party!

I think I have used up my exclamation points for a week.

So you get the idea, I think, despite my brain being in 4 A.M. fog (how do I take so long to write these things?!).

For hilarity and dancing:

[warning: f-bomb @ :30]

Where is my heart, girl, where is my heart?

Did you throw it in a blender or throw it beneath the car?

(and also, how 'bout my ears?)



For plain dancing:

Anne, with an E(mily)

I've got a post in the works, but it's hugely long and difficult and rambling. So it will take a lot of cutting up before it's ready or be scrapped altogether, and I don't feel like putting that much effort into revision right now...

So...

ANNE QUOTES!

Because I am usually in at least one of her moods. Last night I was busy being horribly miserable, so we can call that the Depths of Despair. I never could understand how Marilla had never been in and couldn't imagine the Depths of Despair, could you? I think she actually had been and didn't want to admit it. She did step out with Gilbert's father for a bit when they were young, after all, so it's not like her life is without intrigue.

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

(I am optimistic, anyway.)

There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.

I suppose so, Anne.

I can't help flying up on the wings of anticipation. It's as glorious as soaring through a sunset... almost pays for the thud.

But really, Marilla, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?

True!

(I have a small story to tell, but it doesn't belong in this post, which really is getting too long.)

At the moment my mood is:
Things never seem as bad in the morning as they do in the middle of the night.
Warily hopeful. And by that I mean very, very warily (that's a funny word, isn't it? Waariillyyy).
Attempting not to be too restless and discontent.
Trying to be tenacious and determined.
Slightly overwhelmed.
Really descriptive.
Still without a name...

And ever so Anne-ish, but with a great deal of Emily mixed in. See, I love and adore Anne, and I speak and think her language, and want to be like Anne. But that leaves all my non-Anne bits (of which there are a good many) unaccounted for. Way deep down, I suspect the innermost me is extremely Emily-ish.

Emily was one of "the eternal slaves of beauty," of whom Carman sings, who are yet "masters of the world." She was tired, but her tiredness showed itself in a certain exaltation of feeling and imagination such as she often experienced when over-fatigued. Thought was quick and active. She had a series of brilliant imaginary conversations and thought out so many epigrams that she was agreeably surprised at herself. It was good to feel vivid and interesting and all-alive once more. She was alone but not lonely.

The Quandary

A second post in a week? What is this?

Well, I felt like writing.
I also feel like doing nothing else.
I do not feel like finishing my homework, even if it is reading poetry and analyzing other people's political commentary. I am tired of it!!! All of it! So put that in your pipe and smoke it, college!

I have been watching Downton Abbey, which is delightful. Maggie Smith is in it, and she makes it ever so much more delightful because she is delightful and so very Maggie Smith-y. She has killer one-liners, too, for example: "Put that in your pipe and smoke it." OH YES.

Now what was I saying? Hm. Okay. You know those days, THOSE DAYS? Today was definitely one of them. It was a miss-church, clean-house, read-blogs, fret-over-future-past-and-present day. There was also much listening to radio and folding of laundry, and copying of quotes. Mostly I waffled between "I can't take being at home anymore!" and "I like weekends and Anne of Green Gables," and "What am I going to do with my life, OH NO!"


But seriously, what am I? Going to do with my life, I mean? Both are valid questions, don't you think?

I bookwormed and analyzed myself out today. English may very well get me nowhere and make me utterly useless for the real world. I am terrified of this. I also do not know what else I am more obsessed with or equipped to do, so stinks for me, eh? Perhaps it is time to invest in some stencil for decorating my future box-house, since I am not 100% broke yet? (Only like, 93%, really).

Art and Languages and Culture are pretty much the prettiest things of this world to me, but what cheer? Beauty is only skin deep, and besides, I am mostly sure they do not have bodies, right?

But then, how to do away with knowing exactly what Donne's sonnets mean, and reading compulsively for sixteen out of almost twenty years, and that part of my brain that explodes into light when I read that brilliant line, and my creeping, horribly tenacious literary ambition, and my horribly bothersome, romantic ideal a la (el? Is this French?) Gilbert Blythe? HM?

When I am fifty, how many starving kids will I have helped feed, and how many decaying towns will I have helped repair, if all I have made of myself is English-this-and-that?

Doth it not seem extremely selfish and oblivious to you? I do not know what it seems to me, that is for sure. Or there are too many seemings and I cannot make one out of them.

All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream...


Smack me, please.

Goodnight.

PS. This is the first time I have finished a post and not been ashamed of my bad sleeping habits. IT IS ONE A.M. AND I'M PROUD. Is it really bad to think going to sleep at one is prideworthy? Yes? Probably. Yes. Sigh.

PPS. I saw Tangled on Friday night. Good life decision. I would talk about it more, but, like I said, one a.m.

Goodnight!

Injuries, Poetries, Clearances!

This is sort of a cheat post, because I am going to focus on somebody else's words instead of my own. Pablo Neruda's Poetry has been cropping up in my mind all day. I beg pardon, but his words are so close to what I would want to say in such a poem (for the most part. I doubt I could come up with "palpitating plantations."), and so perfect, they must be here. And so:

POETRY

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint,
without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

Pablo Neruda

I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

I am doing this instead of reading my political science homework: an 11-page article debating whether political violence arises from self-love or self-hate. Really. Is it any wonder I want to major in English? I love you, Political Science, but sometimes- !

I have an injury. The extent of this injury will be determined tomorrow by the doctor, an event to which I look forward with great excitement, but for now I can only explain how it happened.

I slipped on ice and fell on my hand, which assumed a peculiar and very inadvisable position for the occasion. This means - I think - that I basically hammered it into convolution in a single, mighty blow. Ka-pow. Of course at the moment I really had no idea what was going on; my grasp of the situation was somewhat like this:

Getting out of car, walking, PAVEMENT OW MY HAND WHAT oh I fell OW MY HAND WHAT

It was probably my most unNinjalike moment ever, except for the time I faceplanted off of a swing when I was five (a story that totally merits telling but will have to wait because I am sleepy).

And then I believe the next thing that hit was utter annoyance, a.k.a., WHAAAA NO FAIR I JUST WANTED TO GO TO KOHL'S.

And in the amount of time it took for Sammy to take my stuff and help me up, my little hypochondriac voice was going you broke it, you broooke it, youbrokeityoubrokeit. But I couldn't pay that much attention because Kohl's doors were twenty feet away and we came to shop and conquer, so up and at'em.

We found out Koh'ls closes at nine-thirty on Sundays instead of ten. It was nine-twenty, and although we were assured we had time to shop by the man at the door, we were not so sure.

By the time we got halfway back to the car (again, this is about twenty-five feet in all), I was almost convinced it was broken. I mean, it hurt like something was broken, and I couldn't use it to even get up, and I couldn't do anything with my thumb at all, and I mean, you never know.

The car must be driven? SERIOUSLY? Well, okay. I can do this.

I am actually quite experienced at one-handed driving, but driving with only one hand is not, apparently, like one-handed driving. If you think for a second that you can use that mangled thing for a hand-over-hand turn, you are wrong, buddy, and it will tell you in no few nerve signals. Five minutes of driving to Sammy's and I want to be drugged, please, and so I ask her if she has Tylenol at home. I also decide, upon arriving at Sammy's, that I can stick it out and just want to go home, because I am Stupid Like That. For the ten minutes from her house to mine, let's go with a ten-minute-long silent screech of ow-ness and clenched teeth. For grabbing my purse and purchases for/and the walk from my car to my door, let's go with if I had the use of two hands, Purse and Purchases, you would not dare be so difficult.

At home my mummy dear is not overly, but appropriately, sympathetic, and advises ice to prevent swelling. Hand status: useless, thumb and surrounding area: immobile, beginning to bruise, scraped knuckle and fingernail. By the morning, after sleeping with an ice pack,* it is decidedly purple. I love purple, but the color itself is not so lovely in the flesh. Luckily I also bear a fascination with cuts, bruises, and the like, and I promptly developed an attachment to, and forgave, my bruised appendage.

The four days since Sunday have been a lesson in The Benefits of Thumbs: buttons, zippers, boots, ponytails, getting dressed, typing, picking up or holding things, locking my car. I had no idea how much effort they require. I can move my thumb much more now, and use it for itty bitty things, but it still hurts if I forget and try to pick up my laptop, and I keep banging it on things by accident. The bruises are fading. I find this disappointing due to my affinity for bruises, and the fact that it won't be as glorious to show the doctor tomorrow, but I am hoping for x-rays.

*insert joke about the ridiculousness of cuddling with ice-cold vampires a la Twilight here.

In other news, I am now the happy owner of a second pair of jeans (which are rather like jeggings due to how thin the denim is, but I really think they are closer to jeans), two shirts, and...

Two bookbag-sized Vera Wang purses, which were on clearance from 99 and 80 dollars to 30 and 16, respectively! And they are TOUGH. One has to go back because it's too small for my laptop, but the sixteen-dollar one (and my favorite) stays. A bag that's perfect for school and is pretty and sturdy and way out of my budget but on clearance, cheap? Kohl's and I are on friendly terms again.

I am brain-dead now. Poetry class tomorrow morning (hooray!), in five hours (no words). Zombie day ahead!