Quote

People are NEVER whom they, at first, seem to be.
-A. Curtiss

Test...

The true test of any college student, to prove if you have properly assimilated into life on campus is if you can navigate the endless throng of humanity with a plate of food or a cup of hot beverage.

Journal Page

Stagnation is death

My heart bleeds thorns, razor blades of pain.

Je suis le cadeau que ne personne merite.

Mission Statement

The more I quest and question life, the more I discover how little I actually know. College is supposed to be an amazing time of discovery of you as a person, and I would submit that you may discover things ABOUT yourself, but you choose things, paths, directions in college that ultimately shape you. You create your self. Who you are. You must have a set of vices though. A "mission statement" if you will, that will be edited and revised over time but what you based it on will remain.

1st Peter 3:15

If you are truly and deeply a Christian, when you write, or make any sort of art for that matter, it will come from your world view, regardless of the number of times you mention God or his name.

What is in your deepest psyche will come out in your art.

Personal experiences are held within a person,
as you go through life, memories surface
Secrets lurk behind your soul's windows
How can you hold such dark spirits within?

Soul Searching
finger tendrils
running over old scars
opening unhealed wounds

Purging Thorns
Removing festering thorns
spikes, knives, spears
cleansing dirty blood

Healing/Pain
Salt sweet tears
chasing away fever
unwilling duty

Growth
Pruned branches shiver
in the cool breeze of spring
loss leaves room for new growth

Journalling

Spilling confessions
in the black-blood-ink tattoo
on the pale white skin of the page
crossed with,
little blue veins
carrying the life-blood words

Age

Is it not sad that I should feel more at home among the silent, verbose tomes of the world's poetry and non-fiction?
Should my company not be among my peers? But who, are my peers? I have non that match my age. I have only those older than who are of my mental peerage, and I state that no to boast.
More or less, I am alone in the classification of my youth. Hamlet lends me consolation when I am depressed. Sonnets when I am in and out of love. Athol Fugard, a feast of exquisitely chosen words.
With whom may I meld minds? With whom may I quest the stars in the heavens? Discuss philosophy, art, religion, faith, science, life?
None that are here now. None that are in my love.

Time Warp

Wow. That last post seems like so long ago. But really it wasn't that long. THe Diary of Anne Frank opens next Friday and hopefully we'll have the set painted and fixed to the director's liking.
I got to knit for the show though. Anne makes her father (Otto Frank) a scarf, which she knits in the dark after she's supposed to have gone to bed. After two years of knitting, it's really difficult to go back on your instinct and let some of the stitches fall all the way to the bottom of the scarf. To make YO's for the sake of increasing without thinking about it. It's really rather a cute scarf, made from random bits of yarn that begin and end without planning.
I'm also making a sweater for Mrs. Frank to wear later because she knits during the show, so why not make a sweater and a half? It's really cute, but not done yet.

Time does fly

Well, what's happened in the last three weeks? The Sound of Music closed, (sadness!) with a standing ovation, many tears, and the sound of drill motors tearing down the set. Closing Night it always kind of jarring for me, because I get so used to seeing this set, a place where we "live" as it were for a month and a half. Then, in a matter of hours, the place is gone again. The stage once more resumes it's life as a church, and we actors are left with nothing more than memories and pictures. Which, for veterans who understand the way of theatre, are comforting. There will always be another play, and the memories you made on the last will survive for a long time

Make that one...

We've only one day until TSOM opens! As it is past midnight and i'm still awake at the theatre. There was a preview tonight, (last night) and we had a small but nice audience. Tomorrow should prove to be a packed house.
Being in theatre is such an amazing process, going from the first reading of the script, into laborious rehearsals wondering, "will it ever come together?", and finally standing upon the precipice of Opening Night. However, that's not the end of a play. You still have some many performances to do, and not by rote. You put your all into each and every one so that by the final, you're at your top performance. Sadly that's when the walls come crashing down. Your show is over, the costumes you wore that made you into another person are put away to be embodied by someone else. Your props are disbanded, put in boxes, to await thier next foray onto the stage in the hands of another person. All in all, it's an awfully someber event. The worst of all is watching your set come down. That set, minimalist, or grandiose, was your world. It was the place you came each night to tell a story. It may have been your house, your town, someplace that was all your own. In a matter of hours, and with the aid of power tools, it's gone. Like a wind in the grass.
However, to add a note or two of hope to this somber post, I'll end with this:
For all the sadness of closing a show, there is equal and greater joy in opening another.

TWO DAYS!!!!

MAH! The Sound of Music opens it's invisible curtains in two days! I'm really excited. I understand that's rather an odd thing, being excited for opening when most actors are terrified. I'm happy because it means we're getting into the final stage of this show.
Yes, there was a hint of "I wish this was over" in that. It's been a trial and tribulation. Sadly, there have been a few more trials that tribulations, but the latter seem to be grand enough to make up for the former.
I did finally get my nun-ette costume last night! It's really spiffing! The cute thing is, that in the costume, I end up looking rather like a nurse from World War One, than a Benedictine Postulant in 1938. But it's super cute. So now I'm completely costumed and don't have to perform in my street clothes.
I need to post some pictures of the Nuns, maybe I'll have five seconds to do that later tonight.

Dead Poet's Society

My math teacher is just like the teacher from DPS. We're doing story problems in class now, and he told us to open our books to the chapter, and look at the first example. "Stuipd," He said. The next, "Stupid." On and on, through four or five of them until he closed his book with a snap. "Now, if this was the Dead Poet's Society, I would tell you to take out a ruler and rip out this section, but since you probably want to sell the book back, you don't have to."
I wish this was the way all teachers thought. It's not about memorizing a string of facts and regurgitating them on a test and supposedly, you've learned something. Learning is about thinking. It's about knowing how to attack a problem, find the answer and conquer!
Now, not all teachers have to be rather cavalier and rip up books, but I do believe they ought to instruct their students in the art of thinking. Of solving things by your own brains, which most of us don't give enought credit to. I know I don't.

It's been a long, long, long, long time....

Yes, I think that's from a Beatles song. Maybe not. In any case I've not written here for something on the order of 21 days, which, if you're in a play, isn't that long. We're about to open The Sound of Music in 7 days! MAH! It's a little daunting. But fun nonetheless.
I've been knitting, as I have some down time between singing in latin, and doing French homework.
My mom bought this beautiful hooded scarf quite a while ago, and I love it. However, the only problem is that it (of course) belongs to my mom. So, being the crafty knitter that I am, (not to mention being tired of a cold neck and back of head) I decided to make one of my own. After all, how hard can it be to knit a scarf, and put a hood on it? Not very hard at all.
Here's the parent, and origional:



It's kinda hard too see, but it's really darn cute! A friend said I looked like a mushroom head, I prefer to believe I'm either an elf or a gnome.

And, introducing the scarf! It's still in it's infancy. Sweet thing!



Everyone who sees me knitting it comments on the color. I got the yarn at a Street Fair for way less than a dollar. I purchased something like 10 skeins that day for about $6. So cool! I really wanted a skein of the recycled sari silk yarn, but not at a whopping $10 a skein. (That's expensive for a collge student who only works part time!) Maybe next year if I save my pennies.

Accumulate

That is my new mantra for French class. Accumulate! Accumulate! Accumulate! Learning a new language ic cumulative. You have to let it steep in your brain, if you will, until it's fully brewed, and then you can use it. I'm an instant gratification person, slowly teaching myself to be a delayed gratification person. Learning French is one of those teaching methods, although it is fully unrealized.
("Unrealized idea. Unrealized." laugh if you get it, if you don't, read on)
Um, yes. French. So I have resigned myself to the fact that I'm just going to have to spend tons of time memorizing words until I know them all and how to use them. That way I'll have something gratifying to do that builds on the language learning.

It's really interesing being in college because it expands your mind. Some of it you may reject, saying, "No, that's not right according to me!" but it still sticks in you brain, naggling at the edges until you decide to chew on it a while. AFter ruminating, you discover that you've learned something, and change your view perhaps, or reenforce it. You shouldn't let your views and ideas, personal standards and dreams get eaten up though. But you do need to listen to what other people are saying. "Agree to disagree." I learned that my first quarter of my first year, sadly the person teaching didn't figure it out, but it was a good example to me to keep to that rule. And to recognize when someone is mad deep inside and they really don't care that what they say makes others feel bad about themselves. Elanor Roosevelt is quoted "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." I love writing that quote in margins of paper when I'm in a bad class. Repeating it over and over in my brain. Hamlet also comes to mind.
"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether tis nobler to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them....
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs os disprized love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That paitent merit of th'unworth takes"

Poor Yarn-ic

The product of a tired brain, too much time, and a love of things knitting/theatre:




The caption is, "Alas poor Yarn-ic, I knit him well."