take this sinking boat and point it home.
Tonia
I did that thing where someone posts ambiguous lyrics and says "it just means a lot to me right now, ok?"
Cliche as it is, that's where the title of this post came from, and really the whole song "Falling Slowly" [yes, yes, the one from Once] has meant a lot in different ways this week...even though I have no idea what the song as a whole is supposed to be about. I think maybe addiction? Listen here to decide for yourself. It really is a beautiful song.

........
Later.

Well, I promise I was actually going somewhere with that last post. Sometime soon I'll share more about direction and the future and such, but it's just too late for my thoughts to be together.

But one thing remains on my mind. Today was a tough one at Waco Arts. It just seemed like we were hit full force with the world the kids live in. Tragedy, violence, hatred, brokenness. It's just so distanced from my reality, it's mind-blowing. That Baylor bubble? it's real, and the edge is as close as a footstep.

This kind of thing simultaneously makes me wonder at the relevancy of art in the lives of these kids who face such darkness, and makes me want to keep coming, keep trying to offer them creativity and beauty.
And expression. In class today, my prof pointed out a line from a short story by James Baldwin, in which music shows itself to be a powerful force to "soothe the poison," to create a safe moment, to give beauty, but most importantly, to express. There is power in expression and sharing experiences [here in the form of storytelling.]
For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, is always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we have in all this darkness.
While I would argue that there is another Light to the darkness, I guess this quote gives me hope for the purpose of Waco Arts--maybe for these kids to learn how to tell their story. I wish we could do more, though.
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individuality and octopi.
Tonia
it's a depressing reality, really. I have class on Monday. Monday???

Monday, back to the grind, back to the humdrum monotony of homework, tests, and projects.
[And if you asked me, I would tell you that I like school. ]
I just really enjoy being schedule-less, I guess. Filling my hours with poetry that I want to read, movies I've been meaning to see, friends that I rarely get to connect with...not a bad way to spend my time, and I really needed it.
But responsibility is creeping in fast, with the end of the semester. I have to find a summer job, I need to figure out this whole changing majors thing, I have to figure out my other potential major/minor/interest/passion...I have to figure out how to conserve money.

on another note, one thing that has been on my mind recently is how much I value public opinion. It's a subject that has surely been beaten to the ground, with platitudes like "be your own person," and "be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." [Dr. Seuss]

but I am realizing that I find myself behaving in some ways in an effort to exude a certain persona, instead of doing things, choosing things, saying things, just because...I want to. Not because I wish to appear intellectual, more spiritual, less spiritual, cool, socially conscious, brave, nonchalant, wise...

anyways. I have no further thoughts on that, really, except that it's dishonest...and I'm working on it.
A final thought. I've read a bit of All the King's Men...and I unexpectedly found the reason behind my parent's attempt to keep reeling me back home this week:
When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to try to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. And the good old family reunion, with picnic dinner under the maples, is very much like diving into the octopus tank at the aquarium.

an interesting theory, anyway.

well...that's all there is, there isn't any more :)
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one of many literary crushes.
Tonia
Since I just picked up "Sailing Alone Around the Room" by Billy Collins yesterday at Half-Price, and a great book/commentary of Whitman's poems at the opera house in Denton...be expecting some poetry. I will write about adventures with no power soon enough I think.
but for now, here's this. (And you should read it, even if you don't like poetry.)

Aristotle
By Billy Collins

This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first-person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks.
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her, your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated,
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
teeming with people at cross-purposes –
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment unsolders his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,
where the action suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction.
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.
Someone hides a letter under a pillow.
Here the aria rises to a pitch,
a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.
And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain.
This is the bridge, the painful modulation.
This is the thick of things.
So much is crowded into the middle –
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,
Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall
too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,
the car running out of road,
the river losing its name in an ocean,
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electronic line.
This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,
the empty wheelchair, and pigeons floating down in the evening.
Here the stage is littered with bodies,
the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book.
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining,
a streak of light in the sky,
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

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domestication, headbands, and "major" decisions ;)
Tonia
SPRING BREAK 2010 WHOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!

I mean...nothing all that thrilling. I'm only in Dallas, no beaches or adventures here. But oh, the chance to sleep has been amazing.
in addition to sleeping, I have been
--watching The Big Bang Theory, Season 2. Four socially awkward, yet witty scientists + one pretty blonde across the hall=awesome.

--explaining the current season of Private Practice to my mother. Don't criticize, please. I love that show.

--enjoying my mom's AMAZING cooking.

--making delicious Oreo Balls (or "truffles"). mmm mmm good. You can tell I am not adept at cooking, because 1. the recipe is very simple. (no really, you should check it out) 2. it took multiple texts to my dear friend Sara Lemister to execute this very simple recipe successfully. Luckily, they turned out splendidly. This cooking discussion brings me to my mother's plan for me for the summer. She shared with me her concern regarding my lack of cooking knowledge, and that it would hinder me in my future marriage prospects. She feels this has been her personal failure, and is therefore going to teach me how to cook this summer. I feel like I'm in Mulan or something. I mean, it's 2010. A small part of me feels like something feministical should rise out of me and proclaim that all men and women are created equal, or precious in his sight, or something, and then tag on "with liberty and justice for all" somewhere in my speech...but then I realize, that at some point in my life, single or married, I will no longer have a meal plan, and I don't want to keep heating up these to live on.
Still, can't believe my mom some days.

--talking with Alia for hours at a time. Always good. At our traditional Starbucks, though both of us profess conversion to locally-owned coffeeshops instead. Still for nostalgia's sake, it is the place we met, because similar conversations have happened there, not to mention nearly the entire writing process of The Visitors, the production that she, Joshua, and I wrote and produced our Junior year of high school. So long ago...

so basically, I have been sleeping, watching TV, eating, and talking.
What sloth. I should be reading All the King's Men for cultures, but I can't bring myself to. I've heard it's good, but I mostly just resent it because I tend to resent books quasi-assigned over breaks. psh.

Speaking of books...well, I have no other great lead-in besides, I may be switching my major to Great Texts (of the Western Tradition). (<---is that parenthetical part typically included???)

anyways, here are some questions I have been asked so far:
Q: So, how is that different from English? (my current major)
A: Well, the classes sound cooler, and so do the profs. It sounds like some of the better parts of BIC, but more in-depth. And the booklists sound cool, too.

Q: What do GTX majors "do" with that degree?
A: Um, well, I don't have an answer for that now as an English major, so maybe this answer doesn't bother me like it should...but nothing specific. Even the website phrases this, oh so delicately: "Students in the applied arts may want to pursue a second major or a minor in Great Texts in order to strengthen their liberal arts background and broaden their educational horizons."

So maybe my answers aren't so great, but mostly, I'm just excited about the idea. And I have a few people I need to talk with to be sure about this decision, too. There it is.


My last thoughts:
I wish I was cool enough to wear this knitted headband thing, but I don't think I can pull it off. From the front, especially, I look like the lady on the cover of this book.
So I'll keep messing with it.

tomorrow=brunch, movie, and shopping with my little Wickett Erica Wickett. (The other sounds too much like "my little pony.") yayyyy!

anyways...off to more Big Bang Theory :)
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admission of failure?
Tonia

Nothing significant, except a quote and a sort of response poemish...in light of this week, it's humorous that I'm posting, but this has been on my mind lately.

"What is this praise He's after? It is Praise Living. It is GOD leaning in and shouting, "I am the center!" and the sum of our lives nodding back in agreement." --D*Crowd, Praise Habit




Piety.
If my life were a pie,
cut accordingly,
You might not get a slice.
She might get one,
and one for her as well,
and maybe even one for him.
And I suppose
there would be one piece
for some others to share.
But the rest?
all for me.
I, a glutton of my own self,
would feed on the largest part.
And maybe I would feel guilty,
with that weight
sitting heavy now in my belly.
Or perhaps I would just exercise
to distract myself.
And maybe, I would get so sick
that next time, I would
give away more slices.
But You? Not a sliver.
If I were clever (or pie-ous?), I would say,
"You don't need a piece,
for You are the whole pie. You are both
center and crust, sustaining and fulfilling."
And well, maybe I can say that.
But really, if it came down to it,
I would be content with the entirety
and a fork.

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Resolve.
Tonia

2010. Twenty ten. Two thousand and ten. Crazy. I am somewhere between intense interest in the new year, and apathy—it’s just another day, after all. As a student, I tend to think in school terms, anyway: “Did that happen sophomore or junior year? What teacher did we have then?” So the change from one calendar year to the next has never had much significance.

But something feels different now. Maybe it’s the fact that I have indeed been alive for two whole decades and that my quarter-life crisis is impending—instead of looking over my life so far and thinking “where has it gone? What have I done?” (i.e. mid-life crisis) I am approaching questions like “Where will I go? What will I do?” Unanswerable questions, indeed. I know I am not alone in asking them, but that knowledge does not always help—(“Ok cool, your ship is sinking too? Well, I guess we’ll drown together! Hooray!”)

And then of course, there the resolutions. One might be to actually become resolved. About something. Anything. There’s a good start.

I think another would be to notice life more. To wake up and smell the beauty. To taste how extraordinary this world, this Love, this life can really be. I think this is something I have lost of late. I used to be freakin fantabulous at breathing praise in my soul, of acknowledging God, even if only in my spirit (my stupid fear of turning God into a cliché often gets in my way.) Since reading some of Donald Miller’s new book, I realize that I have stopped noticing it all—

“What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We are all like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given—it’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral...If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you. “

So, resolution: to notice the beauty of every day, every person, of the mysterious God that made all of this.

Another one would be—to listen more to His voice. Whatever that means. The mystery and of this concept slips through my fingers so often, though I know I have experienced it before. Maybe this is supposed to start small, with the nudging that we sometimes call our conscience, and then moving forward with that. And maybe it’s more than that. Again, Donald Miller affected this resolution:

“I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness...I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.”

By listening better, perhaps I can live better. What a concept…

While these resolutions have no way to be counted or really attainable, somehow they seem more optimistic than “get better grades” (though that would be nice), “lose 10 pounds” (though that would definitely be nice) or “save x amount of money” (which is probably needed. I hate money.)

In some way or another, my resolutions encompass the UBC benediction, “love God, embrace beauty, and live life to the fullest.”

Maybe I’ll say those words with greater resolve every week.

Also, I need to drink less coffee. And blog more.

(So much for resolutions…)

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debo que estudiar para español.
Tonia
Late night desk shift at the NoRo front desk, where I should be studying for spanish, but I am restless.

I will practice translations.
  • Este dia fue muy extraño: Today was sort of an off day, to go with the weather this morning. It started out with my bike breaking, and my slipping and falling twice this morning. (TOMS + slick floors = no bueno.) To top it all, I saw a dead squirrel behind the SUB. Strange as it sounds, I found myself choking up a bit. God speaks to some people consistently with rain or butterflies, but he sends me squirrels as symbols of joy. The day perked up a bit, again coinciding with the brightening weather. Bought a ticket for Where the Wild Things Are, got an A on a paper, had dinner with good people...so really, that Relient K lyric, "lately the weather has been so bipolar and consequently, so have I" is really fitting.
  • Voy a Dallas porque necesito a ver mi familia: I miss my family. Not that this should be surprising, necessarily, but I don't know that there has been a time in my college experience so far that I have felt like I legitimately needed a break, and that I needed to go home for that break. It'll be good to see everyone after being away for over two months.

That's about it for now. Time to stop procrastinating,

I hope everyone has a wonderful Fall Friday! :)

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