Close-up: February 2010

Lisa

I have spent most of my time lately doing this:

(found here.)

I would love to be as classy as that lady when I study. But I sit here in the library...with unkempt hair, a floral hat paired with a striped shirt, and pants that are unfortunately short on me when I sit down, revealing my blindingly white, bony ankles. Sigh. It seems I missed an appointment with the fashion deities this morning.

Perhaps because of my extraordinary ability to be un-put-together, I've noticed lately my extraordinary affinity for all things generally classified as nerdy. I don't believe that nerdiness is a negative thing, however. I certainly hope it isn't anyway, because lately, I've developed a powerful testimony of my own nerdiness.

*Exemplary examples:

-In my Writing Fellows class today, I was asked to show the class how to use JSTOR database, because I use it for every paper that I write. I got really excited about showing them the wonders of JSTOR's bounties...and I also got blank stares from most everyone in the class. Oh well.

-I like to use weird words like "scintillating" in casual conversation, even though I don't always know what they mean. I'm generally talking about English-y things when I use these words, but still. (I do actually know what scintillating means though. I looked it up. Go on. Look it up yourself. It'll be scintillating, I guarantee you.)

-I ecstatically read the title of a scholarly article out loud to my roommate last night...before I realized she was staring at me with raised eyebrows and starting to laugh.

-I go to academic conferences and lectures for fun. Why do I do this?!? It's just like more class! (And the one today about Milton's treatment of temples and sacred spaces was awesome. Even though John S. Tanner is lots smarter than I am and I didn't understand nearly everything he said.)

However, despite my nerdiness, I feel like I am so behind and stupid in most of my classes. Everyone else always has better ideas. But I love their ideas, and I love finding out all these cool things from everybody else, so I'm just the nerdy class slowpoke, trying to keep up with everyone else. Hopefully I'll have things more figured out by the time I have to graduate. It kind of goes back to something the speaker at a stake RS meeting last night talked about--we have these crazy difficult weaknesses, but we want so badly for them to become strengths that we just keep attacking them, no matter how weak we feel when we do it. I want so much to learn and know all these cool things that I hear about in my classes that I just keep clinging on to the hot-air-balloon of smartness by my fingertips and try to stay on. Even though I'm closer to falling off than actually being the basket, I still want to go along for the ride and see wider vistas.

Sigh. Is it normal to love your major this much?

P.S. This is a more accurate depiction of me most of the time, I think. Minus the glamor. :)

(found here.)

P.P.S. I really am a relatively normal person who likes fluffy chick flicks, stupid YouTube videos, and playing Rockband on occasion.

3 comments |

The. Best.

Lisa

(via http://maryelizabethinspire.tumblr.com/page/7 on vi.sualize.us.)

By the way, I was going to post this along with yesterday's post. But I forgot. This is, in my opinion, the most understatedly beautiful love poem that I can think of. In addition to what it says outright, talk to me about gold and concentric circles, and it adds a whole new meaning to the last couple stanzas. It's a little tricky to understand the first time through, but I promise you, that if you haven't read it before, it is totally worth reading it a couple of times--the more you read it, the more beautiful it becomes.

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne
AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
    And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
    "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,                                       5
    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
    To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
    Men reckon what it did, and meant ;                              10
But trepidation of the spheres,
    Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
    —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove                                     15
    The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
    That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
    Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.                           20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
    Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
    Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so                                          25
    As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
    To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
    And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    35
    And makes me end where I begun.

(via http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http://todaysp....83.jpg on

vi.sualize.us.)

2 comments |

In honor of the day...

Lisa

I went to the house of one of my best friends from high school tonight to hang out and catch up with several people I haven’t seen in a while—mostly with the friend whose house it was, as he just got back from a mission a short while ago. It was really great to see everyone, but I left with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.

As I drove home, I was thinking of high school and was reminded me of some negative memories from then that I haven’t thought about in a long time. Don’t get me wrong—my high school years were really quite easy, compared to many. I didn’t get involved in he-saids and she-saids, so they were pretty drama-free on the emotional/friendship end of things. But I guess the feeling that came back to me as I drove home tonight was remembering all those times that I didn’t live up to my real self or what I knew I could be because I felt insecure and vulnerable. I remembered what it felt like to be a teenager, driving home from a party, replaying something I said in passing over and over again because I was afraid others would misunderstand and think I was been critical or rude or stuck up. I remembered being afraid to talk to certain girls because I wasn’t sure if they liked me. I remember the general feeling of being a teenager that I didn’t know was there until it left later—a feeling as though I was on trial, and that if I did or said the wrong thing at the wrong time, that would count against me in my final sentence.

I haven’t thought about the emotional insecurities of being a teenager in a long time. (Which is good, I think.) I’m definitely past most of those feelings now, even though I really wasn’t in high school that long ago.

But why am I past that? I think that answer is the whole reason for today’s holiday: love. I went away to college, and I remember consciously deciding to love whatever I liked and to love myself, no matter what other people thought. I remember being tired of letting other people influence my emotional health, like I did in high school, and though it took some doing (old habits die hard), I feel like I’ve finally learned to love all of myself, insecurities and stupidity included, in a way that I didn’t know was possible as a teenager. More importantly, I surrounded myself with loving people, who accepted me unconditionally. It’s not that no one I knew in high school was truly loving—all the people I was with tonight were certainly like that, plus many others. I think it was more that I wasn’t ready then to learn the things I did in college through others’ love. Because the people I associate with now loved me like that, they unknowingly granted me the freedom to change who I was and to become who I wanted to be. I didn’t have to fill any particular role for them; I didn’t have to act a certain way. The love of these beautiful people even freed me from the inhibitions and expectations I’d placed on myself. And thanks to their love and confidence in me, I gained that myself.

And that’s how God loves. God places people in our lives that will love us in ways we can’t love ourselves. Thanks to them, and even more, to Him, we love more deeply and fully than we ever could on our own. Our relationships and interactions with everyone we meet have the potential to become mini “love stories.” And these love stories can happen every day, no matter where we are, no matter our romantic relationship status, all depending on the kind of love we choose to radiate.

And as much as the romantic in me wants a “happily ever after,” these God-given, pure love-inspired love stories are the ones I want my whole life to become.

...and these are some of those people that I was talking about. I love them.

3 comments |

Lisa

(photo from http://kari-shma.tumblr.com/post/84670863/quote-book-via-ventisette, via vi.sualize.us)

This is how I've felt the past week or so. I cannot wait for the first block of this semester to be over on Feb. 24th. I've been treading water, barely keeping my nose above for breath, and I'm getting tired.

A real post will come soon, I hope. It's been crazy enough that I just haven't been able to think about for-real writing. Oh boy.

3 comments |

For Jen...

Lisa

...not to mention the fact that I am super, super stoked for the Charity Ball this year too. It's on March 26, 2010, everybody. Mark it on your calendars, and everyone come. It's going to rock. It always does.

More information forthcoming.

(P.S. Michele, I totally get brownie points for plugging it like this.)

Last year's Charity Ball, March 27, 2009

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macmacmacmacmacmacmac, part 2

Lisa

I did it.

It'll be here by Feb. 8th at the latest.

Cue angels singing.

5 comments |

macmacmacmacmacmacmac

Lisa

When I was in London, my computer died a very dead death. And I was sad, but not too much because I got a lot of really good usage out of it and it had served me very well and I was planning on not needing a computer too much after this coming semester. Not to mention the fact that my cousin had an extra laptop that he wasn't using and that he said I could use for this semester. And although this laptop is pretty old (6 years--which is old as far as laptops go), I figured it would be fine.

As it turns out, this laptop doesn't get wireless, doesn't have an authentic version of Windows on it, doesn't play CDs or DVDs, and has a lot of software that isn't even compatible with most other softwares and program functionings and such. The trouble is, I don't know how to fix these problems, and I don't even know if many of them are fixable. I'm sure they are, but I also don't know how much they would cost and I don't know if they would be worth fixing for the cost.

And I just recently had a large expense removed from my life that I thought would be in my life. (That makes it sound like a tumor. That's probably pretty apt. I think many expenses feel like tumors. Or they at least serve the same purpose.) But since this expense-tumor is gone, I have more money than I thought I did...

So this is what I've been dreaming of...

http://www.apple.com/macbook/

Wouldn't it be nice if we could guarantee that dreams come true?

4 comments |