Close-up

I think I write the least when I'm feeling the most. Interesting, because isn't writing supposed to be this cathartic release of all one's emotions? Isn't it by very nature supposed to be a beautiful and liberating process through which I explicate all the complicated, convoluted workings of my inner soul?

Ha.

But it's not. And I think most people who "like" to write will agree--writing can be wonderfully cathartic, but most of the time, it's not. Most of the time it's just hard work, and the end result is never quite as good as it sounded when you were talking about it with one of your dearest friends for three hours last night. So you feel silly and frustrated, and you delete what you've written and try again to explain it. But you keep on keepin' on, mostly just because you know that sometimes, sometimes you feel like you actually did say what you meant, even if no one actually reads that writing where you said what you meant. And the words worked for once. And that, my friends, is where the liberating beauty comes in. That's when writing serves as purgative source of peace, cleansing out your soul and restoring whatever it was missing in the first place. Or the second place. Or what it never really had and didn't know it needed until now, when your previous misconceptions are gloriously cast aside.

Or, you just write and write whatever thoughts are in your head and you don't even know what you mean by them. Like this.

I made a decision on Saturday that galactically changed my microscopic universe. I'm pretty insignificant, but it was big for me. And this post was originally me trying to write about it, but apparently I can't do that yet, except in exceedingly abstract terms.

I guess I just need more time.

I rediscovered this song again the other day. And I was re-enchanted all over again...and for those of you who don't know it, SHAME!

It makes me want to dance cheek to cheek with a really handsome man. Which probably won't be happening any time soon, but it's fun to imagine.



Thank you, Etta James.

For my secondary ed class, I have to do a project where I do fifteen bazillion lesson plans on a specific novel. (Okay, take off the bazillion, and you'd have it right, but it seems like a lot.) And I can't decide on which book to do. It has to be a book that is commonly taught or could easily be taught in high school or junior high, but I'd prefer it not to be too terribly long (as I have to read it twice in the next month) and something that I've not read several times before (having read it once is okay by me). Both classics and young adult lit are acceptable. So, with that....

Any good recommendations?

Like so many other people posting these days, I'm feeling like a back to school post is in order. Yesterday I thought that my semester wasn't going to turn out to be as hard as I thought it would be. It sure seemed like that yesterday. But upon revisiting at my new and improved schedule, (with English 363 dropped--sad, and Women's Chorus and my Writing Fellows classes added--happy) I realized that there is a seriously large chance that I Will Be Taking Eighteen Credits This Semester. Yikes. And not just eighteen normal credits, ladies and gentlemen. But the eighteen-much-more-work-and-class-time-than-the-actual-amount-of-credits-you-get kind of credits. Plus my job. Yet, I'm strangely not freaked out about it.

The 18th credit of these fell into my lap (figuratively speaking--college credits, unfortunately, do not fall from the sky) last night, when my dear friend Jordan came over, and offered to take a dance class with me, since I ended up having to drop the one I'd signed up for. The trick is, Jordan wants to take Social Dance 280, for which the pre-requisite is Dance 180....which Lisa has not taken. Hm. However, my brother, Will, and several other gentlemanly gentlemen have taught me most of the basics to the dances in the class, along with several other steps only taught in 280, and I've learned dancing in other places...so hopefully that will work out. Technically, I don't even know if they'll let me add it. Hopefully since a boy is coming with me, they will. And hopefully they don't ask if I've taken the pre-req. Or maybe I'll just audit it. We'll see.

On a slightly different note, here are some ponders I have been pondering lately:

I wonder how many times I have been on Facebook on campus when the person whose Facebook profile I was perusing has walked past right behind me. Or worse, I wonder how many times people have been Facebook stalking friends of friends/people they don't know and the not-known person walks by and sees that someone they don't know is creeping their profile. That would be really...disconcerting, I think.

When writing a sentence with parentheses in it that needs a comma on the clause before the parentheses, does the comma go right before the parentheses or after the parentheses, just outside them? I've seen it the second way a number of times (like this is), but I think that's kind of weird looking. Thoughts? (Note: I am an English major, so yes, I do wonder about grammatical placement of commas on occasion.)

For those of you who have taken Dance 280, how hard is it? Is it extremely unadviseable for me to take it without having taken 180, even if I've taken a different 100-level dance class and have done quite a bit of dancing informally with several different friends?

Why is my hair decently curly still, even though I'm back from London and no longer in a humid climate?

Fairly often, I will be looking at someone or something or somewhere that I love very much and have a lot of really good associations with, and I'll feel like kind of surge of feeling for whomever/whatever/wherever I'm looking at. The best way I can think to describe it is that it's this kind of bubbling over of love, just bursting out of me and soaking the other person, thing, or place in love. I'm just really happy lately, I guess, and I'm feeling a lot of love. :) Does everyone get that, or am I just weird?

And, the age-old question...

What should I make for dinner this week?

Oh Provo. I've missed you the past six months. :)