That's all.

Hello friends.

Have you ever noticed how the 'Man in the Moon' always seems to be gaping off into space somewhere above your left shoulder? I've been staring at him through my living room window for the last fifteen minutes, and I've decided that, on the whole, I'd rather he gaped at space than at me. I feel the same way about actors in a theater. That's why I don't like to sit in the front row of the audience.

Now you know.

Wanna know something else? I am seriously considering getting a tattoo. Now, I'm not telling you what the design will be until I'm ready to commit, and that may not be for weeks or months yet, but I think I may have found something I feel strongly enough about to merit permanent markage. It's not a picture per se, because it has to have more significance than mere aesthetic enjoyment in order to justify its existence. I am not fool enough to think I could improve on God's handiwork. And anyway, bodies change over time, as well they should.

It's an idea, more than anything else--something I want to remember every time I look at myself*--something I'm fairly confident will be important to me for the rest of my life, whether I go the way of the adventurous and eccentric maiden aunt or find someone fantastic enough to inspire me to chuck it all and settle down. (So do not fear, Concerned Relatives, I will immortalize no man's name on my buttocks--or any other personal territory, for that matter--nor will there be anything resembling fat cupid babies or skulls of any kind. Skulls. Blech.)

Of course, I could come to my senses at any moment, so don't go calling any newspapers.

I just thought I'd throw some thoughts out there because you and I, dear Reader, haven't talked in a while. Which is a shame. Because I like you.

That's all.

*and no, it has nothing to do with StrongBad's "Awesome Song"** which is now stuck in my head.

**basically just one refrain repeated over and over: "Every time I look at myseeeelf, I can't believe how awesome I aaaaaam" in StrongBad's grainy and slightly tone-deaf baritone.

How I spent my (spring break and) summer vacation, pt. 1

I know that we're only just getting to the end of July, but I feel the impending doom of the school year with every tick of my Snoopy clock (a happy new addition to my kitchen, it plays the Linus and Lucy song on the hour). So let me tell you a little bit about my summer adventures and, because I love my brother, I will begin with spring break.

Loyal readers will recall that, during the months of March and April I suffered under the burden of the Paper to End All Papers and the wrapping up of my master's degree coursework. It was arduous and painstaking, as I spent countless hours sitting in an old lawn chair in my tiny kitchen surrounded by books with horrid titles like Curriculum Development: Theory into Practice and Sociology for Music Educators. The mere mention of them makes me shudder--ugh! There, in the very midst of this scholastic purgatory, the memory of one marvelous week in Florida shines, like a firefly in the gloaming.

At the behest of my newly acquired sister-in-law (who is a capital person!) I spent my week's worth of spring break with her and my brother at their house in Pensacola, FL. From the moment they picked me up in Jake's ferocious black truck to our last picture pose by the fountain in front of the old Pensacola Museum, I gave myself over to opulent rest and relaxation with no thought for the half-finished monster-paper I left behind me. It was marvelous. I got a tan! We took several small trips to various museums (I sat in a real cockpit at the Museum of Flight and had Jacob explain all the buttons and levers and other doohickies to me) and to the beach (where I laid down across exquisitely white sand and read books just like a native--except for the blindingly white legs) and to the Gulfarium (where we watched a trained seal feed a trained dolphin). But my favorite part of the whole trip, although watching Thomas the Train with my adorable niece-in-law Emily comes in a close second, the very favoritest of favorites was the time when Jake and Sara and I just hung out around the house...playing darts, washing the car, eating amazing home-made breadsticks. It was simultaneously weird and wonderful to see my little brother being a husband and the man of his own house. He was the same and yet not the same...more purposeful, maybe? Definitely better. And I loved getting to know my sister better. She's wonderful--vivacious and smart and equal to just about anything. You chose wisely, Boy.

It was a glorious week, and just what I needed to remind me that there's life outside of school, and that it can be a heckuva lot of fun living it.

And that's just part one of my (spring and) summer vacation report. Tune in next time to read about my adventures in Sunny California.

Right now I am going to bask in the hedonism of a summer vacation that isn't quite over yet by starting a movie at 9:30 at night!

In which Sarah and her mother narrowly avoid death by snakebite

First, let me begin with a disclaimer: in eighteen years of living in the desert and almost ten years of visiting and vacationing here, this is the first poisonous snake I have ever encountered in the wild--and I've spent quite a bit of time tromping around in this arid and uncharted wilderness. I don't want the follwing account to dissuade any visitors from experiencing the unique adventure that is Ridgecrest. As long as you don't wander outside barefoot in the dead of night, stick your hand in any holes in the ground, drive off without water, a map, and a full tank of gas, or call Ronald Reagan a poo-head, you'll be fine. Everybody got it? Good. Now, on we go.

So mom and I have been waking up at 5am most mornings to go jogging in the desert. A crazy way to vacation, I know, but it makes sense if you think about it. If we're going to feel good about eating out as often as we have been, we have to exercize somehow, but it's too hot to be outside for any extended amount of time during the middle of the day. Since we are on vacation, there's nothing to keep us from indulging in long and luxurious naps during the heat of the day* to make up for lost sleep. Plus, a desert sunrise is a visual delicacy not to be missed. Mom is a relatively new edition to the strange and wonderful world of the jogger, and so she was running a few paces behind me along the right side of the slender dirt road that constituted our chosen route.** This turned out to be a Good Thing because, as I ran ahead, I happened to spy a snake, not four feet ahead of me, on her side of the path. It was light brown, the color of the sand in which it sat, curved like a reptilian 'S', in a frozen--yet menacing--position. Recalling some zoological training I received in elementary school, I noted that the creature's head was not round (like the friendly and harmless gopher snake), but angular (which means 'poison'). It was about a foot and a half long, roughly as thick as a beerbrat, and there were some dark diamond-shaped blotches running down its back.*** I don't remember the exact warning I shouted to my mother, but I do recall backing away slowly and sticking my arm out, fingers spread, like you do when you're trying to protect someone in the passenger's seat of your car, so as to stop her from running past me and getting bitten. The very end of the snake's tail looked red and raw, as if part of it--the rattle(!)--had been ripped off. Standing at a cautious distance, I took a picture of the dreaded serpent with Mom's phone, but I suspect the quality of the image will require me to point the snake out, like a UFO enthusiast distinguishing the unexplainable blurry lights from the explainable ones . We decided to turn around and leave the rest of the trail to the snake. It looked like a Sidewinder, and Sidewinders are notoriously fast.

The rest of our run was free of incident. However, I could not shake the unpleasantness of having come so very close to death (or severe discomfort). How easy would it have been for me to glance up at the glorious desert mountains, bathed in early sunlight, instead of spotting the snake in front of me? What if I had missed it altogether and thus allowed my mother to step on it and get bitten? I am very grateful that God protected us, and all we got was a cool story to share. But anyone who has lived at all knows that protection from physical harm and even death is not a guarantee. Mom, always the pragmatist, points out to me that we are always surrounded by danger. We could get run-over crossing the street, suddenly discover a deadly allergy, develop a terminal illness, get mistaken for CIA operatives and be assassinated by enemy spies. I guess it's just too easy to forget that our lives on Earth are fragile, and will eventually end.

The moral of my story? Actually, there are several: enjoy every moment you get in this life, tell people you love that you love them--often, don't pass up opportunities for doing Awesome, and finally, when jogging in the desert LOOK WHERE YOU'RE GOING!


P.S. Since I lack the l33t skillz to work even basic internet magic, I can only encourage you to google 'Mojave Sidewinder Snake' for pictures of our early morning menace.


*'heat of the day': 7am to 7pm, give or take.
** Our chosen route was one of those random dirt roads created by local marksmen who drive their trucks out to empty places to shoot junk (i.e. coffee cans with rocks in them, old pumpkins, broken down appliances, etc.). We're not worried about meeting any gun enthusiasts out there because anyone who is dedicated and disciplined enough to be out at 5:30 on a Monday morning undoubtedly drives out to the official shooting range, which is impossible to mistake for empty desert on account of being full of shot-up metal deer and bunnies, and in any case, it's fenced off.
***A quick internet search has confirmed our suspicions that it was a Mojave Sidewinder--"rarely fatal," but your leg might swell up and fall off.

Wear sunscreen...

I went shopping today at Fred Meyer--shopping for a new pair of jeans, actually. I don't know how it is for you gentlemen readers, but any lady will sympathize with the drawn out mental, emotional, and physical anguish involved in shopping for jeans. In fact, I had a short commiserating conversation with a woman at the store who saw me wrestle six pairs of jeans out of my dressing room and hang all but one of them on the 'somebody else put it away cause I'm not buying it' rack. It was the second batch of jeans that I had gone through, too. Trying on clothes is always a draining experience. Altogether too much time is spent looking at oneself in one's underclothes--flat and poochy in all the wrong places. Only in movies do people look nicer with fewer clothes on, and then we really shouldn't be looking, should we.

In any case, the experience reminded me of one of the speeches that was made at my school's recent eighth grade 'graduation' ceremony. It was a list, really, given by a former Conway student now high school senior, of all the things she wished somebody would have told her when she was a freshman. I was thinking today, as I struggled with the zipper of a pair of jeans that would turn out to be too tight or too long or both, that if I had made such a list to pass on my hard-earned wisdom to fresh minds just starting out on a new life adventure, I would have started with "When you find a comfortable pair of jeans that also makes you look good, buy them. Buy two pair, if you can. And then go and buy yourself a lottery ticket, because it is clearly your lucky day."

And then of course, once I started I had to compile the whole list. So here it is, my personal message to graduates* of any level:

1. When you find a good pair of jeans, buy them.

2. The same goes for comfortable shoes. Buy them. Buy two pair of them, because you never know when you'll find another good pair of shoes again.

3. If you have to choose between looking stupid and not having any fun, choose to look stupid. (You're going to end up looking stupid to someone somewhere along the line anyway, so why worry about it?)

4. When someone wants to talk to you, close your book, turn off the t.v., stop playing the video game, stop texting, look that person in the eye, and pay attention.

5. Tell the truth. Always tell the truth. A lie might seem easier, but it will bite you in the butt every time.

6. You can't give what isn't yours. If you can't discipline yourself, you will never truly belong to yourself, so if you want to make any difference whatsoever, take every opportunity to develop personal discipline.

7. Sometimes this means following the stupid rules simply because the person in charge asked you to.

8. There are some mistakes that you can't learn from...because you're dead.

9. Sometimes loving someone means letting them do something for you for which you can't pay them back. Always, loving someone means doing things for them without expecting to be paid back.

10. Don't let the fact that you can't feed all the starving orphans in India keep you from investing time and energy into the emotionally, spiritually, and (possibly) physically starving children down the street.

And finally, my best piece of advice:

11. Ask for help. If you don't understand something, ask for help. If you don't get it the first time, ask again. If you were meant to do everything on your own, you would have been born a grown up--and even the most brilliant and effective grown ups ask for help, so there's really no getting around it. Ask for help. And then of course, you have to listen to the answer.

Congratulations graduating classes of 2010. (Now we all throw our hats in the air.)

*and speaking of graduates: guess who got her diploma in the mail today? Me! That's who! And boy does it look impressive: scarlet casing, Latin words on the cover, my full name in schmancy font. I think it's even bigger than my other ones, too!

untitled

I wrote this in October, 2009.

(Warning: entry contains possibly pretentious verbiage along with quite definite third-person brooding. Proceed at your own risk.)

Once upon a time there was a girl on a crowded ferry sailing into the night. Surrounded by kaleidoscoping muted conversation, she found herself profoundly alone, extravagantly lavishing words like “profoundly” and “kaleidoscoping” on what ought to have been an unremarkable Friday night. Perhaps she knew, deep down, that this was no ordinary Friday night. It was a night of significance, if only because this particular night found her able to write exactly what she felt. She felt detached from the world, like an introverted window reflection, like one of those amazing illustrations that create whole scenes with a few lines and some carefully placed smudges. How strange to be trapped in this bobbing bubble of light with so many amiable strangers. How surreal to relish this nothing-time, this transition. But this is life, isn’t it? It’s so easy to see where you’ve been and plan where you’re going. Infinitesimally small is the point of intersection where you actually are. So delicate and short-lived is the present. Why, oh why does it seem to last forever? Do we move? Or do we, like trees, just sit and grow and mistake the wind that breathes through our branches for our own walking?

---The girl sitting across from me is sketching in a sketchbook. She looks like a regular commuter. But she and I share a secret, a divine inheritance when we create, even if all our scratching ultimately yields handfuls of nothing. I must grasp at this image, scaffold it with my words, and carry it with me: a humble little sketch of a present now passing, like light through a bottle.

(Don't say I didn't warn you. This just goes to show that referring to yourself in the third person almost always elicits weirdness. Amateur writers and professional athletes take note.)

Thoughts from a Friendly Friday

I've just had the loveliest weekend. I'm sorry to see it go. On Friday, I went down to Seattle to visit the old stomping grounds of 'dear old SPU'. I dropped in on my good friend Adrienne who, being possibly the most considerate person on Earth, promptly invited me to lunch with her at ye olde Gwinn Commons (a.k.a. SPU's relatively posh cafeteria). After a long-overdue reunion with some legendary cookies (which were every bit as good as I remembered), I meandered down to the School of Music to have coffee with my old professor and friend, Dr. Hanson. Over the course of our conversation, I experienced several medium sized* epiphanies.

Epiphany no. 1: I am not a failure/disappointment to my parents, mentors, sunday school teachers, or college professors. Now I can see the incredulous looks on the faces of some of my beloved readers, but let me just remind you all that deep in the heart of every perfectionist lurks an irrational, yet terribly compelling, suspicion that the world requires us to be flawless (just us--other people are allowed to make mistakes). This is what fuels our perfectionism. Along with that comes the much more realistic suspicion that we are always mucking things up somehow. This is what makes us irritable and neurotic. Lucky us. In any case, I learned that even though I have not written any symphonies, published any research papers, or filled any posts as conductor of some impressive philharmonic orchestra, Dr. Hanson is still proud of me. I heard him say so. Coming from him, it makes a big difference.

Epiphany no. 2: I have a mind that was built for scholarship, and I am not referring to the kind of scholarship where people give you money to go to school (although, if you think about it, I am getting paid to go to school--just not to learn). In the words of the inimitable Steve Urkel "I simply crave academic nourishment." For a while, I thought I was done with taking classes and writing papers and all that stuff. And it is possible that I am. But I am certainly not done with learning and thinking, and it is a distinct possibility that some of this learning and thinking will eventually land me back in school (as a student), barring some sort of social breakdown in which all of civilization is compelled to return to subsistence farming. Although, with my future, your guess is as good as mine.

Epiphany no. 3: I am, and probably always will be, hopelessly weird. Maybe someday that will be cool. Today, it mostly means that while big concepts like the progression of Western Civilization from medievalism to rationalism to romanticism to modernism and postmodernism and post-postmodernism make perfect sense to me, practical things like how to date someone remain hopelessly out of reach.

Epiphany no. 4: If I want adventure, I had better just go out and have it. What's the point of all this freedom and independence if I'm going to just sit around and whine about where I am? Also, If I really do want adventure, then I shall have to let go of any expectations as to how my life ought to turn out. I feel like that's a really big idea, although I can't really explain it any better.

...And that was just my Friday afternoon. I got to spend the evening watching Dr. Who with the aforementioned Adrienne and her husband Josh (fun!), and the next day featured such refreshment of the soul as only a Lazy Afternoon at casa Walter can provide.

Like I said, it was a really great weekend.

*A medium sized epiphany is somewhere between "Oh, now I get it!" and "I will now sell everything I have, move to Guatemala, and spend the rest of my life contemplating the innate artistry of a single fern frond."

summer Vacation in April--epilogue

Remember my second-to-last blog entry?--You know, the one about finishing my master's degree and facing the prospect of an additional field of study? Well, here's what happened with that.

The good news is that I have a job next year, and it looks like it will be a full-time one. Of course, who knows what we'll have to do the year after that to stay afloat, but one thing at a time. I am incredibly grateful to God and my school community for doing what they can to keep music in their children's curriculum (and to keep me gainfully employed in facilitating that curriculum).

The bad news, and the impetus behind most of this post, is that I have a bad case of the summertime blues. Summertime blues?! you say, incredulously. Isn't that some sort of oxymoron? you ask. Yes. Yes it is. Nevertheless, I, who, as a teacher, have probably one of the best work schedules ever (it sort of makes up for having one of the lowest paying jobs that require college education--and perpetual college education at that) I, even I, am officially complaining about having a summer vacation. Actually, it would be more descriptive to say that the prospect of two months of unstructured self-indulgence has me feeling as discouraged and lethargic as a person might feel who is facing a recurring two month diet that consists exclusively of chocolate cake. I know that just because the time is unstructured, that it doesn't have to be squandered in self-indulgence. There's no rule that says I have to sleep in every day and spend all my time watching tv shows, reading books, and hopping from friend's house to friend's house in a perpetual orbit around my own empty apartment. I know all that very well. The problem is that right now, I have little hope that it will amount to much else. But I simply can not bear the thought of coming to the other side of this time, this precious gift I have that may never come again, with nothing to look back on but a wasteland of botched resolutions and mental escapes. I can not. I will not. Heaven help me, I've got to find some way to spend my life that truly matters!

(Bet you didn't expect all this drama when you started reading today. Well, sometimes that's all I've got.)

I hate being weak. But you know, I was not meant to stay that way. I was meant to grow, and I am growing, and I will continue to grow, God-willing, until the day I die (and maybe even after that).

So here's to a summer that's unlike any other. Bring it on.