Romeo and Juliet were Never Really in Love: the Debunking of Popular Urban Myths

This is day three of the exile (can it really have only been three days? I can hardly believe it). Today I escaped into the wider world, which was about as frigid as anything can be in W. New York at this time of year. I think my hands near froze off on my way up to the library. But I managed to have a fairly productive morning looking at Keener's commentary on the gospel of John, which is wordy as anything, but full of good information. I honestly wished I had more time to spend with it, but it was hard to focus b/c I didn't get to bed until late last night and I had to be up early to go to the library this morning, so I was definitely falling asleep while reading. Not as bad as usual, but still I was glad when lunchtime was over. I will have completed almost all the research that I need for this fine paper just in the past few days if I stick to my plan. I rarely stick to my plans, but hey, a girl can dream. Today I actually got a ton of stuff done. I worked on all these applications for things and I wrote some poetry (basically crapful, but I'm still trying to tackle the whole formal poetry thing and it was better than last time, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. I also got to watch Rush Hour at lunchtime, which was quite a nice change of pace from all these movies I have been watching about death and war. I mean, there is a lot of death in the movie, but there's also a lot of great comedy, which makes up for it somehow. I thought of you a lot Hope, but I couldn't get a hold of you this afternoon by phone, so I had to content myself w/ our movie instead *tear*.

Anyway, all of that is superflous, here is the real news. I am becoming acclimated to my state of exilic solitude to the point where I am actually enjoying it quite a bit. This is, of course, a sure sign that my brain is going soft, but it makes everything in the immediate present fairly enjoyable, so I will ignore any potential long-term effects. But, for example, I get to play my music as loud as I like. Today I was singing a long to "War" at the top of my lungs, which I can do b/c hey, who am I going to bother? And furthermore, I have to say that I have been cooking the awesomest, tastiest meals for myself lately, not that there's anything wrong with the food that I eat normally, there's just something about still taking the time to cook something tasty, even if it's only for yourself. But the real sign that my mind is going round the bend is that I now talk to myself quite freely and openly. I find myself, as I have always expected that I would, to be an excellent conversational partner. It is grand to finally have some company again (aka-the sound of my own voice) after this time alone. I have a glimmer of hope that perhaps I might be able to become a decent hermit after all. I think honestly, it is just finally starting to sink in that there is, in fact, no one else here, so I can do what I want and not have to worry about looking dumb. Hooray, inhibitions are gone. Bring on the madness. All things considered, I think we should all be glad that I'm not doing anything worse than talking to myself and singing too loud and laying around reading Real Simple in the middle of the afternoon. Think of all the others things that I could be doing w/ my social inhibitions gone...

Castaway

Year:2006
Day: Unknown
Month: Unknown

How long have I been stranded in this god forsaken place...has it been weeks, or months? Perhaps even years have passed since I was marooned and left for dead. The monotony of every day being so like the others makes me lose all track of time. The food supplies are running low, the oats are almost entirely gone. There is enough for one spoonful a day for perhaps two more days, but after that...well, I don't know, I shall have to begin to forage in a more feral manner. But what I miss most is not the life that I dimly remember without the constant ache of hunger in my belly, but the sound of human voices and the sight of human faces. I fear I shall die of madness from this dreadful solitude long before I am claimed by hunger or thirst. As more and more days past my hopes of rescue grow thinner and thinner. Soon I shall have no choice but to surrender to the great, aching emptiness of the wilds...

Ha, ha, okay, so that is mostly just silliness on my part, but it is, alas, silliness that is based in reality. I have been stuck townhouse bound for the past two days, like I have literally not stepped out of the door. I have not really talked to anyone since then, except when my dad called until the phone mysteriously cut out on me and I couldn't get him back...oooh, spooky. Also, there is plenty of food and I have done quite well for myself scavenging around the house, but the sad fact is that the oats are almost gone and when that happens I am not really sure what I shall do, as I am not altogether certain that I can live w/o oats. If you want the back story to all of this, I was supposed to go to my Aunt Linda's house for break, decided at the last minute that it wasn't going to work out, and so I decided to stay on campus during Feb. break, which is a WEEK LONG and I'm going nuts already. Don't get me wrong, I've had about as much fun as anyone can who is quite entirely all by herself and I've been very productive working on things like papers and what not. But I am totally, totally sick of being all by myself. Life's just no fun w/ nobody else around. Fortunately tomorrow I get to spend the morning at the library doing more work, which is going to be boring and suck generally, but at least there I have the hope of seeing another human being! I think of this as like, hard core monastic solitude, which has proved to me that, in spite of how much I've always talked about it and said I'd like to do it, becoming a hermit is absolutely 100% not the life for me. I would suck at being a hermit, so, okay, that's out of the picture. One less potential future to mull over. Fortunately too, Thryn and Jeff should be coming back to campus in a few more days to end my purgatorial suffering.

Really, when you ignore my intense boredom (funny how I can keep as busy as I do and still feel bored, just b/c there's no human stimulation around) this is like an ideal situation. Spend a few days working hard core so that a lot of work actually gets done, then goof off with my friends for the last bit and get virtually no work done at all. Maybe. The thing that I keep thinking of, the thing that would happen if my life were a movie life and not my life, would be that a huge blizzard would hit the day that my friends planned on coming to get me and I would be stuck here all alone, not just for this week, but for much, much longer, and I would have to find a way to rally all the others who are stuck in Houghton and we'd have to make an awesome trek to find food and warmth, one the blizzard knocked out our power. And the trek would be long and terribly dangerous, and basically everyone would die except for me and some boy I'd randomly find myself in love with, after we began the trip as bitter adversaries who couldn't agree on anything. And he'd risk his life to save me and prove his love for me, maybe even multiple times, and maybe, if it was a really modern movie, I could reciprocate by risking my life to save his, but we'd both end up okay in the end, and then we'd live happily ever after and be on the first plane to Arizona or Brazil or some other really warm place. Too bad there is no Arizona, that would be quite the disappointment for us, wouldn't it? Then I guess it's a good thing my life is just my life where I happen to be stuck in my boring and creepily noisy townhouse for a few days, and not some stupid movie.

Seriously, though, this whole solitude thing is starting to mess w/ my head a bit. I can see going crazy really quickly if I was ever to be lost in the woods for weeks on end or something like that. Funny how even one other person can make the difference in a situation like that. Anywho, I'm going to go back now to babbling and drooling while curled up in the fetal position (or go do some belated work for my poetry class, whatever). Night, all!

Hello, my apple-berry plumcakes with almond jelly beans...

This blog is beginning to fall into a lamentable state of disrepair. And by disrepair, I mean, I don't post as often as I should. Ah well, there are worse crimes...perhaps. This too, will not be a true and for real life post. I would just like to say that I am crazy busy and yet, still doing reasonably well. That could all change in this last week before break, since like EVERYTHING is going to be due this next week. But after that, break, and then everything will be good again. Here is what I am doing this semester:

Learning flags/preparing dances for chapel a couple nights a week
Participating in SGA meetings on Tuesdays as Junior class Chaplain
Attending Prayer Leader Meetings/Dancing for One Thing 2 hrs on Weds.
Prayer Leading or Assistant Prayer Leading at One Thing on Thurs.
Co-leading a Bible Study and Going to corporate worship on Fri.
Going to Menno group every Sunday

In addition to all of this, I am taking fifteen credits worth of classes (including the poetry class from Hell) and auditing one additional class as well as managing all the homework that these classes entail, trying to exercise 3x a week, working at the library, trying to remember to eat well and wash my face twice a day, and trying to maintain something that resembles a normal spiritual/social life. And oh yeah, sometimes I like to try to get some sleep, you know, in the night times. So if you're wondering where I am, I am probably engaged in one of the above activities.

This, despite how you've probably taken it, is not to complain, I am doing great and am reasonably happy and even reasonably (albeit probably foolishly) free from stress. This is just to give you an idea of what's on my plate this semester. It's a full plate, but at least it's full of tasty things.

Musing Shambles

Well, this week I have tragically less of interest actually happening in my life, which I guess means that the focus will have to shift to be a bit more interior, possibly exciting for some of you, for others, well, you might have preferred just a news bulletin. Oh well. So, at the moment I am supposed to be doing a massive stack of reading for my class in Pentateuch, we are supposed to have upwards of about 125 pages of reading due every week, in addition to our actual assignments for the class. I think that was a bit excessive, but then Jesse showed me the miraculous time saving process of scanning (i.e.-not actually reading most of the material) which will, I think, prove to be a marvelous time-saving device in the long run. At least, I hope so, because I've had a premature outbreak of senioritis, so I pretty much just don't care about working tonight at all, like I can't muster more than the absolute bare minimum of effort. Very dangerous sign at this point in the semester. There's gonna be a lot more crap to get through before this is all over, and if I'm already almost at the point of giving up, this really does not bode well. Hopefully this is just a temporary condition and one which I shall soon get over.

You know honestly, though, I should really enjoy this whole college thing b/c what I'm looking for is not to quit school and wend my way out into the merry world of the workforce, but rather to quit school work and just have fun all the time. Honestly, with that kind of attitude, how can I ever expect to make it out there in the "real world?" (You know, when I graduated from high school they told me I'd end up in the real world, but that really was not the case. So, could the real world not be lurking somewhere out there beyond the confines of college? Is there no "real world?" At any case, I think once I graduate I'll hopefully finally know that I'm in the place that's as "real" as my world is ever gonna get. End excursus). Why can't our whole lives be more like our lives as children. Because I remember what is was like to be a child, at least in part, and even as a child I was never really satisfied either. I wanted to be an adult. Which just goes to prove the theory that no matter where we are, it seems like we will never be really satisfied, at least not all the time.

Well, this was really not a very good post at all, but I really don't have the mental capacity at the moment to do better. Sorry folks. Maybe next time.

A Week of Winds

Well, for those of you who noticed my absence, I have just spent a whirlwind first week of classes and then, instead of stopping to catch my breath, took a little side trip up to Philly to attend my dear friend Sharon's commissioning service before her trip to Africa. Things have been mostly crazy, but I have been having some good fun every now and again, especially this past weekend. The trip entailed a five hour car trip both ways with people who, I have to confess, I did not know all that well. Or rather, I did not know them well at the beginning of the trip. By the end of the trip, I think it is safe to say that we are all fast friends. We talked about everything in that car, about faith, about poverty, about clothes and chapstick, about parenting, personal struggles, music tastes, man, there is nothing like a long car ride to help you get to know people. And then, our time spent in Philly was wonderful too. We spent the afternoon in downtown historic Philadelphia, which turned out to be a much greater adventure than I ever reckoned on. We set out in a light drizzle, but by the time we parked downtown at the art museum, it had turned into a steady shower. Then, as we walked down Benjamin Franklin (for whom everything is named) Parkway, the shower started to get a little more determined, especially as large gusts of wind kept driving the rain into us from behind, soaking our backs and popping our umbrellas inside out. Oddly enough, this all made the afternoon that much more enjoyable, adding this wonderful spark of hilarity to everything. It was good that we were in this group that was able to take things in stride and still have a lot of fun in spite of some slight trials. We still managed to see the old Town Hall and the Liberty Bell, as well as walking around a bit in Reading Station Market, which was a wonderful place where they sold fresh produce, flowers and meats, as well as all kinds of prepared foods from all over the world. I love places like that. Unfortunately, Rick's was out of buns, so we did not get our authentic Philly cheese steaks, but that's something to look forward to another time, I suppose.

The service this morning was also beautiful. Sharon, Grace, Jo and Brent did the music, and they did an amazing job. Sharon looked so beautiful standing on the platform this morning, in her deep purple skirt that her parents got her from Zambia. I must confess, it was difficult not to get choked up, thinking about her heading off to Africa, first to study in Tanzania, and then for nursing work in Uganda. I so admire her dedication and clear-eyed vision, and in some ways envy the opportunities she will have, as I do, to a degree I suppose, with all my friends who are going to be off campus this semester instead of me...Ah well, soon enough, I suppose ;-)

Then, after a delicious pot roast lunch at the Askey's home, we started out on the long trip back. We got back tonight and I have been footling around since then, trying in vain to get ready for the week. Instead, I have had to content myself with being ready for tomorrow. Well, one day at a time, I suppose.

A Day

Today I was finally treated to the spectacle of the fine Chronicles of Narnia movie. Since I have raised myself on these books, this was quite a treat for me. Although the movie was not identical to the book, some of the additions were actually kind of cool, though some were irritating. But I won't go on about that, I'm sure it would not be very interesting, though maybe someday I should have more speaks about Narnia. At any rate, it was a lovely experience, like pulling some comfortable old dreams out of a beautiful trunk to shake them out and admire them. And now I am watching Ever After with my fantasticly amazing sister. And furthermore this evening I was listening to my jazz music (Billie Holiday singing "You Go to my Head, mmmm)...someone should stop me before I start getting ideas in my head.

A Nog in the Egg (or, The Yolk's On You)

So, now that the saga is at last drawing to a close, I think that I have had sufficient time and retrospect to be able to fill you in on this latest epic in the life of me. It began innocently enough, on December the 22nd. Alicia had just gone to stay w/ her parents after her stay w/ us, my mom had just taken her to the airport that afternoon. That night, it started w/ an itch. The next day when I woke up, I had broken out in hives all over the place, my neck, my arms, my back. I took some Benedryl and managed to ignore it most of the day. But that evening, it just got worse and worse until suddenly I found myself in the glorious emergency room with an allergic reaction, getting fine shots and many fine pills. The reaction cleared up a few days later, but it's occurance was a source of endless amusement to my dear mother as she tried to figure out what had caused the reaction. The funny thing was, really, that there was nothing out of the ordinary with my routine on that particular day. Hadn't started using any new kinds of soap or detergent, no new medications, no strange or exotic foods. But for some reason it was the foods she fixed on as the primary potential culprit. She narrowed down the possibilities until she decided that it had to be either ginger cookies or egg nog. How she decided on these particular foods remains a mystery to me, especially since I have eaten these foods all my life with immunity. She said that was because of the accumulation of toxins in my system that apparently reached some level at which I could no longer tolerate them.

Well, by the time the reaction cleared, I was already in Omaha, where I sampled some delicious egg nog ice cream. I mentioned this to my sweet mother on the phone and she responded, "What?!?! Why would you do that, you know you're allergic to egg nog!!! Squeak, squwak, squeaking, squwaking!" Yep, yep, that's clearly the case.

So, the saga ended today with a fine trip to the allergist. The first thing she told was that, based on my symptoms, it could not possibly be a food allergy. The diagnosis that she was able to give was that some people have bodies that randomly reject their own cells as allergens. I find this to be strangely ironic, that in addition to being rather on the crazy side myself, that my body would follow suit by randomly attacking itself every now and again. Well, there might be some other insights following the bloodwork, but there's no way to tell. For now, there's nothing to do except wait for the test results...and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Well, another sojourn has been successfully completed, this time to the most exotic land of Omaha. At this moment I am sitting in my "very own" living room, watching Aladdin, with my pumpkin bread baking in the oven. Could there be a more believable picture of perfect contentment, to retire to such a haven after the perils of travel have been duly dealt with and conquered? I think not.

Well, as usual, I have had many more adventures and misadventures on this past trip, most notably with my Omaha chums from days of yore (mostly jolly old Eddius (aka Barley Grump-Grump) and the great Hoperston, Funky Chicken extrordinaire). Our first adventure involved much driving around in the car of young Francis before he had to leave for a band trip. Then we traveled throughout the gloriousness of the Hy-Vee before enjoying the dairy-licious pleasure of cookie dough ice cream. The next time I saw these indomitable peers o' mine, after a round of bowling (the sport of kings) it was for a fine sojourn through the desolate wasteland commonly referred to as "cornfield." After exploring and mapping much of these previously uncharted terrain, we happened across an ancient temple, crudely built by some of the ancient inhabitants of this land. After paying the proper respects, we continued on our way. Later that night, we were hanging out in the fine basement domain of Eddius' house and we found ourselves engaged in the fiercest kind of combat w/ the so-called Nerf guns. I am proud to say that I managed to be victorious against Eddius and young Patrick as well. I am one fiesty bug. After some refreshing victuals, we found ourselves at the fine lake of Zorinsky, the landscape of my childhood. On this particular occasion we ended up with a little impromptu late night dance party, fueled by the melodious sounds of Eddius' car's fine stereo. This was a very liberating and ennobling kind of experience, it must be said. I've never danced in a place w/o walls before. Well then, one thing led to another and what with all of our pressing engagments and affairs that we had to attend to in various locations, we remained quite busy until 6:00 in the fine morning.

The next time we got together it was one of the only nice days of weather we enjoyed while in the fair state of Nebraska, a place which the powers that control the weather have chosen to display their extreme displeasure. But that particular day happened to be nice in spite of that, and so once again we wended our way to Zorinsky to enjoy some high class walkings. Not content to follow the beaten path, we soon struck out to do some exploration on our own. We ended up wending our way down a stream, which seemed to be more or less frozen, or so it would seem from its ability to hold us up for quite some time. After we made our way to the other side of the stream, we stumbled upon a fine field of cattails, which we proceeded to disassemble in the most glorious manner. Old cattails have the ability to break apart into a million tiny filaments of fuzz when you break them up, and then they float away on the breezes like snow. It was quite a lot of fun. Then we proceeded to have a fine conversation in which we proceeded to discuss how we could use cattails and other things found in the natural world to convince other people that I had magical powers if I had lived back in the middle ages. The trip back to the car was not w/o event, as we were attacked twice by trolls as we were crossing bridges (where the trolly trolls lurk) but Hope and I decided that we would sacrifice Young Goodman Eddius to their appetite, and we managed to make it safely home.

Well, I feel as though I am not doing nearly a sufficent job of describing the wonders of the glorious city of Omaha, many other marvelous things have occured over the past few days that I have not even begun to set down on paper. For instance, I have not yet begun to wax eloqent on all of the marvelous shindigs that I had w/ my dad. However, the hour grows later and I believe that I have put down all the most dramatic events. I believe that I should quit now before I become any more incoherent. Goodnight.

Word Salad with a Side of Soap

Again, I have been remiss in my posting, but by way of explanation, I will here include my travel log of late.

Dec. 5th-Return from Australia
Dec. 9th-Off to Houghton
Dec. 13th-Return to Houston
Dec. 19th-Leave for Plano (via road trip)
Dec. 21st-Return from Plano/Pick up Alicia
Dec. 22nd-Alicia departs
Dec. 25th-Christmas Day
Dec. 27th-Leave for Omaha
Dec. 30th-Aunt Erinn comes to Houston
Jan. 3rd-Return from Omaha
Jan. 7th-Aunt Erinn departs
Jan. 9th-Return to Houghton to begin another delightful, whirlwind semester

So, as you can see, I haven't had much leisure time since break began. I think I'm still waiting for break to begin, still trying to prepare for Christmas, a holiday which has already passed, in case I'm not the only one who might have missed it. This, I think, is also a vindication of my continuing pilgrim status, as you can see there has been little of the quiet pleasures of hearth and home for me lately. And Kathryn, I promise that I have not tried to avoid you, I have not seen any "301" numbers on my phone. In fact, our new phone in the kitchen doesn't even have a screen for call waiting, so I have had to resort to the unthinkable...actually answering the phone when it rings!!! (*gasp!*). When I'm home, that is, which as you can see isn't often.

At any rate, in addition to alerting you all to my impending "out-of-town" status, I also wanted to continue a little reflection with which I was trying to inspire my sister earlier this evening. We are watching the movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame tonight, a movie which my sister does not particularly care for because it is not an especially happy movie, even for a Disney version. I responded by asking her if the only purpose of stories is to entertain us. She knows that that is not the case, but I don't think she quite understands why.

This all goes back to some conversations we had in Oz Lit class in which my much esteemed professor Maurie Nestor said that he thought that there should be a saying; "Don't trust anyone under 30" in reference to the changes that our culture has been going through in recent decades in regards to the way that we understand stories. One of the things that we have done is to cultivate a culture of forgetfulness in which we have a widespread ignorance about the stories which are most important to us, most fundamental to our knowledge as a culture. Now perhaps, too many of us see stories as entertainment alone, nothing more than to occupy our free time.

Now, it's not stories that I am attacking here, I am an avowed lover of stories in all forms, not least because of the many capacities they are capable of operating in and the many functions they are capable of fulfilling beyond just mindless entertainment. Our stories are our teachers, first and foremost, the way we transmit our values, our ideas, our way of looking at the world. This you can tell most obviously by the fact that stories are what we use to teach the young, and the most effective method of teaching the young, I might add (just ask Lyotard). Or at least, we used to, at any rate. Now I don't think we see our stories as anything besides a play-pretty, a bauble for babies to gawk at, with no real meaning. Oddly enough, we are still often telling the stories that we've told for hundreds of years, in their original or more modern (often watered-down) forms, but I think that what has changed more than the stories that we tell is the way we are taught to look at them. There is no more critical thinking, we do not look at the stories as our teachers, but as our court jesters. This is why I think Maurie Nestor says, "Don't trust anyone under 30," because they are bankrupt of the kind of knowledge which was always previously thought to be fundamental.

Don't misjudge me here, I'm not saying that we have to interpret the stories the same ways that we always have, but we must think critically about the stories we tell, and we must tell stories about which coherent and depthful thought is possible. Our stories must convey aspects of the culture from which we tell them, there is no other way to give them life. Think about it, out of the phenomenon of postmodernity we begin telling stories from "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" to the new movie, Hoodwinked, stories which look at things from a new perspective. We love turning stories, like everything else in postmodernity, on their heads so we can marvel at the new point of view. We don't just babble to amuse ourselves, we as a culture must tell and re-tell our stories with conviction, knowing that we have something to say. Maybe I'm just on a rant b/c I have an analytical personality, so I see meaning in just about all stories, even though it's not always a meaning I agree with. But I still can't help but think that people like me are vital for distilling those values and wisdom into something that just about everybody can stomach, and understand on some level, even if its not quite as conscious as one might wish. And hence, I think this is why I have become a writing major, because I want to tell the very most important kind of stories in a way that is just as bright and as vibrant as something that is meant solely for entertainment. I want to tell the old stories in new ways, so that they become fresh and lovely again, and I want to tell my stories as well, for my own benefit as well as for the potential benefit of others.

I am not, I do not think, by any means an exceptional story teller, but I am an avid one and I hold on to the hope in this, as in so many other things, that passion will serve me where talent and aptitude fail. Once a friend asked me if I could ever stop being a writer, a novel question and one which intrigued me. I know that there could be a time in my life in which I put away laptops and keyboards and pens and papers and pencils and any formal accoutrements of the writing process with no regrets. But there are two things which I know that I will never be able to stop doing: stringing wonderful words together to enjoy their beautiful sounds and meanings or to form a brilliant, tiny gem that I think of as a proto-poem, and telling people stories. These things I know I will be doing long after my wrists become defective from carpal tunnel syndrome and my fingers are too cramped from arthritis to type. Even when I am senile and shoved into the dark corners of a nursing home, I will still mumble the events of the Odessey, of Oedipus Rex, of Shakespeare, of the Brothers Grimm, of Tolstoy, of Bronte, of Tolkien, of Faulkner, these are the characters, the lives, the doings that I will blather incoherently in my gumless glory through my mushy applesauce till they lie me cold and dead in the ground...

Ahem, excuse me, allow me to step off of my soapbox and collect myself. It is here, friends and readers, that my rant must sadly end, as the night is late and furthermore, it is now time for me to go and read my sister her bedtime story...

Ho, Ho, Ho

So tonight I believe I am going to at least attempt to not be quite so vacuous as I was last night. Really shouldn't be much of a struggle to top that post, but hey, what can I say, a girl's gotta start somewhere. I think the trouble w/ me is that I really haven't been doing much of anything since the Great Houghton Heist (okay, it wasn't really a heist at all, but c'mon, that is a really catchy name!) For those of you who don't actually live in Houghton, I should probably be a bit more explicit. This semester in Australia, I was pining away for certain persons who live in the fair town of Houghton and lamenting the fact that I would not be able to see them for a whole year in the form of odes and ballads and other forms of poetry which I accompanied on my lyre. After a while, I got fed up with all this lamenting, so I raised up my MIGHTY right arm and brought in down w/ one of my soverign judgements: "I will go to Houghton this semester before these good souls leave the continent," said I, "or I will die in the attempt!" Well, from there it was a very simple matter of arranging passage for myself as a cabin boy (don't ask) on an ocean liner across the Big Pond (the Pacific, for those of you who are not adept at geography). After landing on American soil, the only obstacle left to overcome was the girth of the landmass of our 48 states, which I navigated across by earning my passage on various stagecoaches riding shotgun (literally) and protecting the shipments of gold from robbers, injuns, vagabonds, saloon girls, card sharks and other brigands. The last few miles were so snowy that I had to switch to sled dog and mush my way over the Appalacian Mountains surviving off of nothing more than fruitcake, melted snow and my cheery disposition. But I finally rolled in to town on the evening of the 9th, exactly a week ago as of today to be precise. Well, there was no small ruckus (that's called a litotes, means there was a big ol' ruckus) when it was generally known that I was about, especially since I came bearing gifts; all the riches of Australia were packed along those rugged trails to bring holiday joy to those that I hold dear. It was a fine visit, all in all, w/ plenty of catching up and other such vital business which will hopefully eventually serve to allow me to let my dears go off all around the world next semeter without my protection. It is indeed a dangerous business, stepping outside your door...

Well, since then, life's been pretty quiet. I've been frantically trying to wrap things up for my independent study, though on reflection tonight I realized that I don't actually know when I have to get everything in by. I was hoping to find Thryn online tonight to ask her, but so far, no such luck. I am trying actually to not set myself too many things to try to accomplish over break. I usu. try to be so ambitious and just end up disappointed, so maybe if I am not so lofty minded about what can be done in my alloted space of time, I won't be let down. The time is already flying by too quickly. I feel like Christmas is coming up much too fast, not because I still have tons of shopping or wrapping to do, but because I don't feel Christmas yet. Sadly enough, I still usually find myself trapped in the frighteningly subjective world of emotions to determine what is going on exactly in my life, so for me Christmas is not a day, it is a feeling. I had that feeling for a bit in Australia, it was lost somewhere in the crossing, I fear. I actually think it's probably been years since I've felt like it was Christmas at Christmas time. I think that is the terror that seizes me every year, that I will not find it in time for that day of days in which everything is supposed to be so pristinely like a Hallmark card. I hate to be a Scrooge about this, but I usually find Christmas to be so disappointing, it is like going to a play in which the scene is well-laid out and beautifully represented, the players all in place, the music and the aromas are even staged to set the mood, but at the most climatic scene, the star of the show just doesn't come out on stage. After a few moments, the audience starts to shift nervously in their seats, people begin coughing, and flickers of conversation begin to quietly crop up all over the room. Then finally, after an anxious minute more, the curtain is hastily dropped and the audience is ushered back out onto the chilly streets of reality, the show is considered a flop and all the critics tear it to pieces the next day in their columns. Tragic, isn't it?

This is even worse for me because, as a Christian, I think there is even more pressure to get excited about Christmas. This isn't just about cookies, parties, a pile of presents and a chubby guy in a red suit. This is about the savior of the world, God himself coming down to earth in bodily form to dwell among his creations, the ultimate in humiliation and the ultimate in love. Isn't that something that should just send warm fuzzies coursing through your whole body? Unfortunately excitement and gratitude isn't something I can flip on with a switch, even with such a worthy impetus as that. I know with my head that this is big news, but it's hard for my heart to capture the kind of wonder that such an event should inspire.

So what to do, what to do? I could just drop the whole thing, learn to expect disappointment and admit that the magic of Christmas must only be for children and fools. Or I could slog away and ignore the sputterings and grindings of my emotional generator that clearly indicate that there's a glitch in the system and keep on keeping on trying to ignite some life in the old thing; bake the cookies, play the music, read all the right verses of my Bible and pray that my defunct inner child comes out to play. Hmmm...another wholesale personality overhaul to be completed by December 25th? And I thought this was going to be my less ambitious holiday...

Hmmmm...

So, I am realizing that it's been awhile since I have made a quality post. And, more unfortunately, tonight is not going to the night that redeems me. Maybe I'll just gradually let the blog tank so you all gradually drift away from my readership...or maybe the next post will be better. I don't know, wait and see. For now, I will make meaningless observations about what is on the television.

Oh hey, my sister just came back out. I guess she can't sleep. I should help...

Okay, I'm back. You know, television is so vapid. Seinfeld is very, very bad. Like boring. I think I think I've even seen this episode before. Ooh, I wish I had a milkshake.

Perhaps I should call this a stream-of-conciousness, ego-draining, chakra purge. It would look very avant-garde on my resume. Maybe not. Now Jerry has to walk home through some park where he's afraid a serial (cereal?) killer is going to come along and saw his head off. I think I'm getting dumber...

Oh hey, there's a really old movie version of Othello on TV. Little do the TV people know that I just saw that show in my own little college. I do not really like this play, and I really, really do not like the guy who is playing Othello in this movie, he is so creepy looking. Denzel Washington would do a better job. He probably was not alive that point. Too bad. I am only waiting at this point to see who is playing Desdemona. Ugh, she's not very pretty at all! And she's wearing like the world's ugliest dress, some silver thing w/ some sickening salmon-colored fabric draped over it. Whoa, I think it's the lady who plays Wendy (very old Wendy) in Hook. She's not very good either. This movie sucks. I'm changing the channel.

Shoot, I'm still hungry. I think I will go read my novel, Cloudstreet, in an attempt to revive my intellect.

Oooh, a preview for Narnia just came on...I want french toast...

The Prodigal returns...

Well, I have been receiving a few comments of late as to my recent absenteeism in posting. I must agree, it is most disgraceful, this long absence of mine. However, I have been having trouble adjusting to your so-called "American" ways of life. This is indeed a strange country, you drive on the wrong side of the road, light switches are no longer on the door frames, you do not sell any decent chocolate or Tim-Tams, I can never seem to get to sleep when the rest of you deem it to be sleep time and I seem to have near collisions w/ people on sidewalks every time I step out the door. It has been hard, among such alien life-forms, to get back on my feet. But soon, my gentle Yahoos, soon I will return to you and divulge my soul, or at the very least the manifold duplicities I executed in order to pull off this latest trip to Houghton (ha ha...I chortle to myself w/ glee to think of it). But at the moment, it is 20 minutes after 4 in the morning, and you Americanites all seem to think that now is a time for sleeping (isn't jet lag just a gorgeous thing?) so I will attempt to join you in your strange custom of "night time." We shall see if this is really all it's cracked up to be...

The grand finale...

As of today...classes are over. No, let me try to say that again, more convincingly this time.

As of today, classes are over. Nope, still no good, I just can't believe myself on this one. How can this be?? Wasn't I just pulling onto the runway, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready for anything? More reflections on the leaving pending...

(As of today, classes are over...shoot, still not working...)

Tasmanian Devils (and chocolate...and convicts)

So, I have spent the morning trying to work and realizing, hey, wait a second, I am not actually getting anything done towards this exegesis paper that is going to be due in two more days. Now there is only a half hour before we are going to leave for another one of our lovely excursions, so I figured I might as well give in and at least attempt to catch up my blog again. This past weekend was our wondrous trip to Tasmania. I was somewhat surprised by the amazing natural beauty of this little island, it is like a cross between Western NY, only with higher hills and mountains, and the Caribbean with wide, shallow bays fully of crystal clear turquoise water. So, in answer to my assigned journal questiony thing, I think that Tasmania has much more natural beauty than the mainland, or, as they like to refer to it, the North Island. We spent our first afternoon there in Freycinet National Park, hiking around and visiting Wineglass Bay, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I have not seen enough of the places on this planet to be able to make an accurate evaluation as far as that is concerned, but I was not disappointed. There was a long, white beach with the funniest sand you have ever seen, almost like tiny pebbles, but hardly small enough even to be called grains of sand, and they squeaked when you walked on them. The beach was all in a long arc, backed by a steep dune all covered with green vegetation. On each side of the beach were big tall mountains, so tall that you could see little wispy puffs of cloud drifting by far below the peak. They were covered with deep green trees all laid our like a carpet around their flanks. Out towards the ocean, the bay narrowed so that only a little neck of water could get through, which is probably where it got its name. It was a long, steep hike down to the beach, but I think it was definitely worth it to be able to walk on that beautiful sand, look at the shells, and laugh at Matt as he tried to swim in the icy water, fresh off the Antarctic icebergs, which is the next closest land mass off the shores of Tassie. So that was a really fun day, in spite of the fact that we had to wake up at 5 in the morning in order to catch our plane.

Oh! That was the other funny thing. We all had to wake up ultra-early that day in order to be on time for our plane, and then as we all stumbled out of the house in our groggy, half-conscious state, we realized that only one of the taxis we ordered had come. So we all stood around in the parking lot, watching the sun come up and the sky redden, much like Dr. King’s face as he grew more and more perturbed at this unprofessional behavior from the taxi company. Then, we all breathed a sigh of relief as we at last saw the second taxi speeding down towards Kingsley, only to turn that sigh into a gasp of disbelief as the driver sped right past the college, missing us entirely. We waited some more while the one driver we did have radioed the tardy driver, I imagine with a message something along the lines of, “Hey moron, you missed your stop!” and we waited a few more minutes as he came speeding back, then waited a bit longer as he overshot the entrance to the parking lot just enough to need to back up in the middle of the street before he finally pulled in and we all rolled out. It all turned out fine, we still got to our plane on time anyway, but gosh it was awfully funny in the delirium that I was in at the time. Anywho.

The second day in Tassie was fun too. We stayed in Hobart and that morning just happened to be the one when they had their Christmas Parade! It was so much fun, I haven’t seen a parade in forever and I enjoy them so much. They had a bunch of different floats trying to show the multi-cultural nature of Tassie and so there was great Japanese drummers and Greek music and a whole float full of Africans (though I must say, that was definitely more Africans than I’ve seen in the rest of my time in Australia put together) and like three different troops of bagpipers. The weirdest things were the float carrying the giant gold statue of Buddha, sitting in his locust flower and shaded by a big umbrella, and also to see Santa Claus come rolling by in his sleigh and reindeer over a snow covered roof, all things which they definitely do not have in Australia, especially at Christmas time. Also in Hobart they have this big market that you can go to that has the coolest stuff which is where I spent the afternoon. I had been saving up my food money for the last few weeks and so I got to do a good bit of actual shopping that morning, rather than just browsing longingly. The other thing about Tassie is that the whole place has much more of a small town feel, so I found the people to be really exceptionally friendly there, even more so than most other Australians. A story to illustrate…

I had shopped all morning and it was getting to be like 2:00 and I still hadn’t eaten the peanut butter and nutella sandwich that I had brought for my lunch, so I picked the courtyard of a quiet café that was just closing and sat down. The only other people who were still there were these three older guys who, I noted from their conversation were all in a band together and had just finished playing the coffeehouse. So, as I sat there quietly eating my sandwich, one of them came over to say hi and we got to talking and he was asking me (my accent giving me away as an obvious American) why I was over here and what kind of studying I was doing and he stops suddenly and says, “How old are you?” and I think for a second before remembering, “20.” He starts digging in his pocket and pulls out this antique coin and gives it to me and says, “Here, I like the way you talk to me, you’re not afraid. You look me straight in the eye” and we continue talking. It was a crazy coincidence that the other guy in the band’s family all lives in Houston too, and not just in the same city, but like the office where his brother works is like two blocks away from my house. He is an ex-pat American who’s lived in Australia for the last few years. He really seemed like he just couldn’t stand living in America any more, the noise and the pollution and the traffic and the consumeristic way of life all just finally drove him out. I can identify with that to some degree, but I also feel like it’s better to stay with a place and work to make changes than just give up on it. But anyway it was a really cool conversation.

The next day in Tassie was quite silly, we staying in Hobart, but it was Sunday and basically everything was closed down. So basically Thryn and I read all day, which was fairly productive, but not much fun. Then that night we went to a service at this church that Thryn found. It was pretty strange, fairly small (actually really small, maybe only like 40 people) but still trying to follow this mega-church Hillsong kind of model. And rather charismatic, but not so much on the scriptural foundation. But hey, at least we can still all get together and having exciting and emotionally charged experiences of God. The end was also rather interesting, people getting slain in the Spirit all over the place, they were dropping like flies! I don’t know, I’m not really in town long enough to have an impact on any of this negative or potentially negative stuff, I thought about talking to somebody after the service but I was too upset to be able to articulate myself well. So I just ended up leaving. Bleh.

Our last day there started off with a tour of the Cadbury Factory…yum. Just like visiting Willy Wonka, only more purple. It was really funny because we had this tour guide with this razor sharp wit and she kept the tour pretty interesting and fun and also managed to make fun of Ben King without getting in trouble for it. The tour itself was also pretty cool, but I mean c’mon, it’s chocolate, what’s not to get excited about???

The rest of the day we spent touring around Port Arthur, which was kind of dismal. It is a sobering thing to be in a place of so much heartache, a place where so much pain was endured and so many lives were played out in listless despair. I went into the old penitentiary building and looked out the windows, trying to imagine what it would do to me to have to spend years looking at the world from behind bars. I don’t think I even came close to the sentiment, but the place made my stomach turn. Speaking of which, it’s supposed to be majorly haunted, especially the old parsonage. Our tour guide spoke about that place with so much conviction and as much matter of fact common sense as if she was simply warning us about loose floorboards. Don’t go in by yourself, she said, and she especially warned us girls not to go in, even together. Send a guy in first, she told us. I don’t know what exactly to think about such things, but I have heard enough stories to heed such advice when it is given. Although interestingly we had just been up to said parsonage before the tour, and not knowing anything about it, we experienced nothing out of the ordinary. But, regardless of any ghosts stories, I think it really does something to the feel of a place when so many people live such unhappy lives there. I was not sorry to leave Port Arthur behind. It has a pretty and historic veneer, like many other old sites, but there is something rotten at the core, methinks.

So, that was our trip to Tasmania. Sorry this was such a long post, but it was a four day trip. Fairly succinct for me, actually.

"Your mom goes to Hanging Rock!"

Wow, finally getting back to blogging for a bit. Sorry that I’ve been so remiss, but as I’ve said before, I’ve been busting my butt working on the world’s most involved paper, so I haven’t really had time to post. The paper, btw, is done, more or less, at last; it’s on theology of the body, but if you’d like to look at it you’ll have to e-mail me and ask for it, because it’s 24 pages of text, much too long to post. Anyway, the topic for tonight’s post is our little visit to Hanging Rock, a post which is overdue by about two weeks, and is a very important topic, since it has proved to be surprisingly pivotal to my Australian experience.

Well, to begin this delightful excursion we all got together to watch the film, Picnic at Hanging Rock in preparation for our own picnic we were planning to embark on the next day. And friends, I kid you not, it was probably the strangest film I have ever seen. It was actually in my opinion, pretty poorly written, the plot just kind of wandered all over the place without ever having a really clear direction, and the film seemed to always be trying to drop these little “clues” which never really fit together and introducing all kinds of obscure characters and dialog that didn’t really do anything to further the story. Cinematographically, it was also pretty…uh, I don’t even know what to call it. There was just a lot of stuff done to make it seem really hypey, like when the girls were walking up towards the mountain and there was all this intense, LOTR style music, and all they were doing was hiking up a rock. And then when they got up near the top, they all just kind of spontaneously laid down on the rock. Why? We may never know. Most strikingly was the part where the three girls were walking up into the clefts of one of the rocks, led by the flighty and ethereal Miranda, prone to mid-stream dancing, the main character I guess (“She looks like a Botticelli angel!”). Then the fourth girl was calling after them and all of a sudden she starts screaming her head off and her running is in super-slow motion and the sky turns pink and then the scene just ends. What was that about? Again, I couldn’t say. Oh, I probably should have mentioned that the story behind this strange film is of 3 students and a teacher from an all girls school in about the 1910’s who go out for a picnic at the rock along with the rest of their class and never come back. They are never found and nobody knows what happened to them. Now, the movie is based off of a novel and although there are some who think that there could be some kind of factual basis for the novel, but there were never even any news stories run about the event. The question that we are supposed to address in our journals for this week is whether any Australians think its true. The ones that I’ve talked to seem to be quite aware of the fact that the story is fictional, and yet there is a great awareness about the story. I don’t know, it seems to me like people know the story is not true and yet they still believe in it to a degree, maybe even only subconsciously, but there is always this niggling little doubt of, well, it could be true.

Hanging Rock really is a place that captures the imagination; it is just so strange and unreal. All the rocks are like these incredibly enormous boulders scattered around, some worn incredibly smooth by the trodding of many feet and some that were as jagged as hardened lava. You could see all kind of faces and forms in the weird shapes of the boulders, which didn’t help the place to feel any cannier. The way that the rocks were tumbled about around the top of this giant formation made this complex web of little passages, impossibly steep little valley, turns and crevices. I could easily believe that someone could be lost in there and never be found again. It was a totally awesome place for exploring though, a fact which I was quite determined to take full advantage of, which led to the first exciting occurrence of the day. I was poking around the rocks when all of a sudden I went around this corner and there was this book just sitting on the rock. I left it alone for a few minutes to see if someone would come and grab it, but then curiosity got the better of me and I went over to check it out. There was a sticker on the front that said, “Take me home!” which confused me until I picked the book up and opened the cover. On the front was a panel explaining that this was a book crossing book, which is basically a program sponsored by a website where people can take their books and leave them out in public places for other people to find, read, and then leave out in a different place. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and it was certainly one that tickled me, so the book is definitely coming back with me to America. Most exciting of all, it’s a book of Flannery O’Conner short stories, so I feel pretty sure that it will be something that I enjoy.

Secondly, well, I was having so much fun climbing around on the rocks, climbing in and out, up and then back down, and well, I have no sense of time and I don’t wear a watch…the short form of the story is that I was a bit late getting back down the rocks to our picnic. And when I say a bit late, I mean like, a big bit. The two-hour-long sized bit. Oops. So I finally got back down and they all saw me coming and started clapping for me and I took a bow. I finally got back down to where the tables were set up and people were joking with me, asking, “Hey Shannon, where’ve you been, we thought you’d disappeared too!” And I put my hand dramatically to my forehead and rolled my eyes back and said, “I’ve was possessed by the spirit of Miranda!” which would probably be a lot more funny to you if you had seen the movie. But the point of all of this is that the people there thought it was quite funny, and I have been known as Miranda, especially to my housemates, ever since. This is an important fact because Miranda is not just a name, especially now that the idea of it has developed over time. It is a persona that I discovered I fit quite well, because as I have realized, the idea of it was built around me, like hey, this spirit of Miranda thing is how people here see me. And that’s kind of a cool thing. I like my new nickname. I like being Miranda. Now I suppose the only questions are whether this person really is me, or is just a part of me, or whether it is only a disguise and whether that part will remain when I return to life at home or life in Houghton. These are the kinds of things you have to think about when you are a freaking over-analytical nutbag like me.

Goodnight everyone.
Best regards,
Miranda

Probably the most boring post you will ever read...

Seriously, I'm trying to warn you guys away from this one. We just had to write about our recent trip to the bustling metropolis of Geelong for our Engaging Australian culture class. I had to say something, but you do not have to read it...although, if any of you are suffering from end of the semester stress and insomnia, this could be your cure. Oh, the fascinations of the Ford factory and wool...

I think in all fairness it must be said that the Geelong excursion was the most dreaded of all the excursions we have done this semester. I think considering the fearful expectations we had, well, it could have been a lot worse. The first part of the trip was our tour of the Ford factory, which I have to say was my least favorite part of the trip. I don’t really know anything about cars, so I couldn’t understand anything of what were seeing and how all those metal bits they were showing us could be made into a functional machine. I also feel like we didn’t really get to see how anything was done, we just kind of watched from a distance but we couldn’t see, for example, how they used the die-molds to form pieces of the cars. The explanations that our guide was giving weren’t very illuminating either. The thing that I did find really interesting was considering the impact of robotics on the industry. It is interesting to think of the extent to which robots could replace human workers. They do the job better, more quickly, and you don’t have to pay them a salary or workman’s comp. because they never get hurt on the job. All of these factors make them very attractive to employers, but maybe not so good for the overall economy. Workers lose jobs when their work can be performed better by a machine, or they can be replaced by just one worker who is more highly trained. Some argue that this actually creates jobs by putting people into the technology industry to make and program the robots, but I find it hard to believe that this would work out like that in actual fact. It would eliminate a lot of jobs for unskilled laborers, at any rate, even if it did provide more work for those in the technology industry.

The second part, the Wool Museum, did provide an interesting contrast to the Ford factory as well as some parallels. For one thing, the aversion to technological advances was definitely a parallel. A lot of times when an invention would come along with the capacity to make work easier on the shearers, they would totally reject it because they thought that if work was easier, they would get paid less. So they would have riots and burn the shearing sheds of the squatters who introduced the new technologies. Actually, the whole shed burning thing was like the theme of the wool museum. If something happened that you didn’t like, just go find a shed to burn down. Yep…I can identify. This whole wool thing was pretty serious business. There was actually almost a small scale war over shearers rights when the squatters all got together to decide to unanimously lower the price they would pay for the work. It was a big conflict, and in some ways it continues to this day. I am glad that we got the chance to go to the wool museum because I feel like the whole wool thing is so much a part of the Australian consciousness. It is all over the literature in things like Henry Lawson’s stories and the work ballads, and even the modern travel narratives that I’ve been reading usually mention something about sheep. I think historically, if there had been no sheep, there would not have been an Australia because they could not have had that first sustainable export to stabilize the colony. From what I’ve been reading though, it’s currently a very rough market and a lot of station owners are constantly in danger of going bankrupt. There’s a lot about the whole economic situation that I don’t really understand, but apparently even with the help of unionizing and cooperatives, it is hard to make ends meet. It is no longer needed for sustaining the economy all by itself, but I think something integral to the Australian consciousness would be lost if the wool industry died out. Something of those outback ideals and the strange and sublime scenes that Lawson paints in his stories would be gone, leaving behind a hole that would be very hard to fill indeed.

Office Space

Sorry friends, I know it's been a while since my last post, maybe even long enough for you to notice the lack. I have been consumed lately with a big paper for my Christianity and Postmodernism class. I want so badly for it to turn out well, not for the sake of the grade, but because the problem that I'm working through is something I honestly want to figure out and revise. It's due on Thanksgiving Day (here, not there) so the clock is ticking down. I needed a break tonight though. I've been reading Dunn all day and my head is so full of Paul...sarx, pneuma, soma...and I don't even know Greek! But, an update is long overdue, so here goes...

It's been about a week ago now since I found myself walking towards the security desk of the Telstra Building, looking around anxiously. A few minutes of indecision before I found the folks I was supposed to meet, and we all headed up to the 24th floor. It was then that I found myself in a conference room way, way up in one of the tallest skyscrapers of the Central Business District, Melbourne, sitting down with Telstra execs, a postal worker, a drummer, and a city councilman, trying not to look as out of place and silly as I felt. What were we all doing there? Having church, of course.

David Wilson, who teaches one of my Kingsley classes on Wednesdays, also runs a number of cell churches throughout the week, including one that meets on Friday's at lunchtime for business people. I told him I was interested in going to one of his house churches and this was the one he directed me to. It was altogether an interesting experience. First of all, as a kind of side note, everyone except me and one other person was male. That may not sound like a big deal, but I have been going to Houghton for 2 years now, so it's pretty safe to say that I've gotten used to a different ratio. Secondly, I was the only American. That was interesting just in terms of what they had to explain to me. Like one of the things that was referenced in discussion was a big court case that's going on in Indonesia where an Australian woman got busted for bringing in some kind of drugs, which she claimed were put in there after the suitcase was out of her hands. That's commonplace enough, except in the country she was bringing them into, they deal out the death penalty for a crime like that, so its gotten a lot of media coverage. This is a specifically Australian concern b/c a lot of people travel into that area for either business or just on holiday, and so suddenly every tourist or business person has to wise up to the fact that they could easily find themselves in the same situation. All of this had to be explained to me, as an outsider. Just an observation on the whole "in-group, out-group" thing.

Anyway, they were talking about the book of Ecclesiastes because, as David explained to me, it's a book of wisdom which they find to be applicable to their place in the business world. It's highly informal, and nobody is exactly an expert biblical scholar, but they did come up with some surprising insights and ways of looking at things. At one point, they were talking about a verse that is about obedience to the king and how there's a time to just shut up and take orders. They were applying that to a corporate setting, to team projects they had been on where someone can start out with good insights, but when they start constantly shooting down everybody's suggestions, they probably should just shut up for a while and learn to just take orders. Or how when you're trying to make a suggestion to your boss, you can only push things so far before you need to just lay low and let him make his own mistakes. Mmmmm...contextualized scripture, it does a body good.

The interesting thing was though, that because the nature of the group was so specific that because I was not in the know, not just about Australian things, but about corporate things, I didn't feel like there was anything that I could have added to the discussion b/c it wouldn't have the same immediacy of application. Although you could argue that it was my fault for allowing myself to be intimidated, you could also say that it was the nature of the group itself. I do feel like it is a valid risk when forming "special interest" churches, outsiders will probably not feel as welcome or even necessarily be able to function. For example, my mom has functioned in a corporate setting all my life, so I have picked up a lot of the lingo and ins and outs of things just from listening to her talk about what's going on at work. What if I had had no knowledge of that whatsoever? I think one of the things that's pretty hot in postmodernity is forming these kinds of cell churches that really fit the needs of one or the other marginalized groups. I'm kind of reading a book on that right now, and I've got a lot more thoughts on house churches and the book specifically, but really can't write them out tonight. Someday, maybe.

It was an undeniably uncomfortable experience, but I'm glad I did it, if for no other reason than to add another dimension of experience to some of my other cell church experiences that I've had in the past. So many thoughts, so little time before the movie starts and I get counted absent...

Not about Halloween

So yes, the Great Ocean Road. This should be an interesting post b/c it is already 1:00 in the A.M. but I am already falling behind my posting in terms of what is going on here and events are starting to pass by more quickly than I can record them. So, this may not make sense, but at least it will be here. So, as I began, the Great Ocean Road...you'll be pleased to know that all of the landmarks are the same, the rock formations and the water, the waves and sand and bright air and big sky...the kind of endless water that entices you to dream of foreign destinations and adventures as big as the blue on blue horizon. But the one element that was decidedly different on this trip (besides not changing al fresco) was the social element. This time, instead of being with Thryn and a whole bunch of strangers, I was with a whole bunch of people that I knew, or rather, a whole van full of the more familiar brand of stranger. I felt though, that this trip was very good for us as a group. We lead such separate lives here, off in our own dwellings with hardly any contact besides tea breaks, growth groups and these excursions. I feel like in some ways some of the walls were broken down on this trip, perhaps for the first time in our semester I felt like we were a group, and not a conglomeration of completely separate cliques. And then, there was that day at the Gibson steps...

It all started well enough. The Gibson steps are famous, and so we, being good little American tourists, stopped to walk down them. The waves were large and enticing, and though we were warned straightaway that the undertow was fierce, wading ensued. Many lamented the lack of swimsuits (bathers, for you Aussies) and so some (the indomitable Katie O. and Thryn) just decided to go in w/ their clothes on. Well, then other people w/ clothes on were dragged or pushed into the water or splashed until it was just no more use trying to stay dry. I was one of the fortunates who got dragged into the water, fully clothed. It was so much fun though, we splashed around in the water and chased each other and tried to knock each other down and tried to get other people wet who remained dry and ran all around dancing like lunatics and got sand EVERYWHERE and just generally enjoyed life and our temporary liberation from the classroom. We were liberated in a lot of ways that weekend...

Pause for reflection: It is atypical of me to get soaking wet with all my clothes on, and I only find this to be more true the older I get. I think of the consequences, I plan ahead, I go through different scenarios in my head ("Well, I didn't bring a towel, what if I'm too cold when I get out? Will we be going back to our cabin immediately after this? Do I have anything with me that could be damaged by the water?" and etc.). Katie O. put it to me so well this weekend, "Shannon," she said, "you've just gotta stop thinking so much." And so for one afternoon I did, I was in the in-group, the wet crowd, the people who were having fun, the people I would have envied if I had stayed dry on the shore. And the thing of the thing is, that's who I wish I was more often. A little less rational, a little more fun, more carefree, more willing to take chances if that's what's called for in order to really experience life. So here's the question that I've been mulling over ever since. Who am I really? Am I the person that I tend to act like most of the time, reserved, thoughtful, and above all, deliberate? Or am I the person that I act out when I am trying my hardest to be the person that I really want to be, the person that I am working towards inasmuch as I feel myself capable of change? I still don't know...

Anyway, my other favorite part of this second trip was a part that we actually hadn't seen before, a rainforest walk in a place called Melba's Gully. I think I am finally coming to discover that I am, solidly and undeniably, a tree hugging, forest-sprite wannabe nature nut. There is something about being in such a place that energizes me, calms me down and quiets me, no matter what craziness I was mucking about with before. I love to take photos in the rainforest because of the interactions with light and water that take place there. A fern frond backlit by the sun, a tender shoot growing in a rotting log, the slow and breathtaking unfurling of a fern finger. It's like everywhere I look some little nuance of creation is screaming for my attention: "Hello! Can't you see I'm a miracle, right here in front of you?" There is so much variation that takes place even in a short walk through, the changes from full sunlight to murky shadow to dappled path, a wide open clearing with enormous trees framing the distant sky, to a roof of those ferns, lovingly enfolding and shielding, brushing my head as I walk underneath. There is so much life there, even the dead things are already being used to support new life. And of course, a plant can't just be a plant all alone. You can have a tree growing with moss on one side of the trunk, some other kind of prickly foliage on the other and yet another plant growing in the forks of the branches. There was even a sense of new discovery that was pervasive, like maybe I wasn't the first person to walk through here, but it may be that I'm the first to notice how the light hits that little cataract of water or how feathery this one clump of moss looks. This all sounds a bit hippie-esque, but I hardly care. I'm just trying to reflect the experience accurately.

Well, after we got back from our trip it was time for the Halloween party. I was going to say something about that as well, but I feel that it is not quite worthy of keeping me up all the way until 2 in the am, and this post is already quite long enough. But I would like to say, for your sake Katie, that in the decorating I did make a rather spectacular arrangement of post-verdant greenery. That is the most noteworthy thing you can choke out of me tonight.

Aeh-I must go to bed. I have consecrated tomorrow as a day in which work much take place all day long, and I will be subjected to the most fearful sort of ire and rage (my own) if I sleep in tomorrow...goodnight.

Take the floor

You know, it's kind of denigrating, especially for a future writer (ha!) to read other people blogs who have 46 or 37 comments on each entry and then come home sweet home to my own little blog and stare down the barrel of straight zero's since I don't know when. Just a thought...

Sydney-Fling

Oh, fine little internet. Isn't it funny how you can just log on and fall in and doodle about for a seemingly unlimited amount of time and then something happens like a bird flying into a screen glass door and you're snapped back into reality, suddenly asking yourself, "Now what did I get on here to do?" Wretched little cybersnare.

At any rate, I will try at this present point in time to inform the general population of the universe about my recent trip to Sydney and the various and sundry things that happen there. Hopefully I can manage not to be too long winded, since I kind of hoped to do about 1/2 my research for my exegesis paper this afternoon and have only read one commentary (again, I blame the internet). Well, we spent just about all of Friday on the train, but then on Saturday we got up and managed to get out of our hosel (such as it was) fairly quickly and headed right for the Harbor. Most of that morning was spent at that indomitable edifice, the Sydney Opera House. I have to say, I have seen a fair number of famous buildings in my time, but I think from here on out I will have a very special corner of my heart reserved for the soaring lines and vaulted spaces of the SOH. It seems funny to most of us now to think of the controversy that surrounded the planning of this building, as well as the public scorn it was met with initially, before becoming the emblem not only of Sydney, but of all things Australian. It is, obviously, a very unorthodox design, but brilliantly executed and so sensible when you learn more about it. The design for those large and characteristic arches are drawn from a perfect geometric sphere, so the ceiling can be made almost entirely from concrete (great for accoustics) and yet not need any interior supports that would obscure the view of an audience. The curved ceilings of the concert hall, the intimate spaces of the playhouse, the Australian hardwood paneling, all of this was engineered for the purpose for which the SOH was built. Even the multitude of stairs, based of the idea of stepped Mayan temples, were fully intentional, indending to carry the idea of ascending away from the common world into the fantastic world of the theater.

And for me, that is the heart of the Opera House, not just a great feat of engineering, but a truly beautiful building. It sits out on it's own platform over the sparkling water of the harbor, admired from both sides and all angles (I should know, we saw pretty much all of them). The clean white lines hover over the waters, resting serenly as a gull on a rock. Yet the hard-edges and dramatic curves give it a sense of power, of calmly suspended motion, and if it ever springs back into the action from which it seems to be resting, the city better watch out. I love the way in which the building draws together the ancient and modern, curves and angles, movement and stillness, land and sea. There is something quite magical for me about a space entirely devoted to creation, to splendid music, the soundtracks of humanity, and to the creation of fantasy worlds, to the telling of our stories (because Medea, Twelfth Night, The Dollhouse, Death of a Salesman, and 6 Characters in Search of an Author are as much my stories as they are anyone's). Perhaps part of the design is meant to capture that wild and unearthly spirit of the Arts, the participation in the creative process, both grueling and divine.

We spent a great deal of time that day in and around the SOH; it rapidly becomes very difficult to tear yourself away. The rest of the day was spent happily exploring The Rocks district arts market, clambering over the harbor bridge, trying to dodge the crowds of brides that infest the area, having their pictures snapped. That evening we met up with a friend of Katie's at her college, they were having a fall party. It was a nice party, lots of food and the girls who planned it spent a lot of time coming up with games and entertainment for everybody. It was nice, but a little disconcerting since it was an entire party full of people that I didn't know, and I'm not the kind of person who likes to invest time and energy and risk my fragile self-esteem putting myself out there to make friends if I'm only in town for one night. But still, nice party.

The next day we were up and out bright and early to attend the much famed and controversial Hillsong Church! It was an interesting experience, just to see how my response to the whole idea has changed since my time in London. It was in fact, completely identical to the Hillsong church I attended while I was in London, as all Hillsong churches are entirely identical to each other. They are good for what they are, but I have more problems with the whole idea than I did a couple years ago. The worship is nice, but it really honestly is awfully concert-like, and sometimes I do feel like I'm being manipulated. Why is this the case when I'm on their turf, and not true when we sing Hillsong music at my home church or at school? I don't know. Also, I thought it was really funny that in a city that is as multi-cultural as Sydney, everyone on the worship team was Caucasian. The message was interesting too. A woman spoke on Psalm 103, about all the benefits that we have as Christians, about how we don't need to live in fear that life will be awful because God doesn't really love us or want us to have good things. A good message, but I was kind of nervous because the whole framework in which she put her message was our entitlement as the people of God, our right of access to the blessings of God. I don't really believe that the Christian life is a kind where we go around with our hands out all the time, demanding things from God on the basis of his promise. God knows that most Christians do not need their sense of entitlement to be further inflated. I don't want to be overly critical, because the individual points were excellent and well made and passionately supported, but I felt like the framework of the whole message was one that was so theologically unstable.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the beaches. I could write a whole other entry on Australian beaches, let me just say, this isn't your average American day out. The weather was beautiful, though not quite hot enough to make braving the icy water altogether worth it, so we didn't spend much time swimming. The beaches themselves were gorgeous as well though, and it felt good to lay out in the sun and just not have to think about anything for awhile, except maybe what our friends were doing in drizzly Melbourne or frigid Houghton. :-)

That night was one of paramount hilarity, but I think I could not possible make it make sense here, since we were so jagged from eating almost nothing but pancakes and candy for the past couple of days, so we generally staggered around laughing like drunkards and everything struck us as funny. We spent a great deal of time stumbling around in the dark of the Royal Botanic Gardens, looking for the fabled "Mrs. Maquarie's Chair." We may or may not have found it in the end, it was honestly too dark to be altogether sure. But we did come to a chair shaped bunch of rocks that had the name Maquarie carved in the back, so our reaction to the semi-failure of our little quest is best summed up by Misty's immortal words: "This looks like a frickin' chair. I'm sitting in it!"

Our last day in Sydney we took a train out to the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains do, in actual point of fact, manage to look respectably blue. Something about a gas that's emitted from the gum trees that cover everything and hangs over the valley and horizons, giving a blue cast to every particle of light that ventures into the valleys. I love the Blue Mountains. The horizons are hazy and full of alluring and beckoning possibilities. The trees form a thick carpet over everything that can be see from the lookouts, displaying a myriad of green shades and textures. White cockatoos can be seen winging their way somewhere far, far below you. The Blue Mountains would be a place that I can see myself returning to, getting lost in those mists for a few years and discovering every nook and cranny of, eventually coming to fully own it and allow it to own some bits of me as well.

After we returned from the Blue Mountains, after stopping for a 60 cent soft-serve cone from Hungry Jack's (aka Burger King, for those of you who are stateside) we were back on the train for the 11 hour overnight push to Melbourne. And tomorrow morning...we turn right around again and leave for our weekend field trip to the Great Ocean Road. Yeah, it's a rough life, I can tell ya...