My story...

A few days ago I posted a link on facebook to a blog post from the website FreeBYU.org.  As the site was created by and maintained in large part by one of my best friends, I've become more involved in their movement than I likely would have otherwise.  So I came across these two profiles: Travis and Tucker.  I know both of these guys, but I had not previously heard their story in terms of the church.  Reading their stories, so similar to so many other stories I've heard, made me want to try and put my own experience into words.

When I was younger I had this reputation for being quite a scriptorian.  Whenever we'd play games in primary revolving around Book of Mormon stories my team would always turn to me when it was our turn.  And I almost never disappointed.  Clearly I had a deep love of the scriptures.  Or, something neither I nor anyone else around me considered, I might instead just have an amazing ability to recall stories.  Years and classes later, after being the go-to student to summarize the reading we were all assigned for homework last week, I've come to believe it was most likely that latter explanation.  Because one thing I don't remember growing up is ever doing a single thing to deserve that reputation I had.  I mean, I read my scripture with some regularity because my mom made me bookmarks and charts and any number of other devices to remind me to do so.  But I don't recall ever particularly loving them.

I can remember one and a half times in my life when I've ever felt what could be called The Spirit.  The first was on some teenaged birthday (perhaps my sixteenth? I don't have the journal from that time to verify).  It was late enough in my life that my grandma was already starting to show the earliest signs of dementia.  She and my grandpa had given me a card with some money, perhaps $20, and as I laid in bed that night I had one of my first ever panic attacks as I worried over whether or not they could afford to give me that money and what was going to happen to them both as they continued getting older and their lives continued getting harder.  I was so afraid for them, and I felt so helpless to do anything about either their futures or my own current anxiety.  And though I cannot now remember the actual feeling (and I am actually often tempted to discount my memory of what happened), I do know that that night I felt comforted.  I was finally able to stop worrying, trust that my grandparents would be ok, and fall asleep.

The other time, the one I call a "half" time, was when I was about 20.  I was living with my dad and my step mother and my two step brothers and I was, all things considered, not in a great place in my life.  I'd come home from my study abroad completely broke and I made the decision to leave school for a year and try to earn money.  In retrospect I can say without reservation that it was the wrong decision, though a few good things did come from it.  So I spent a year and a half living with family, working at Target, and literally doing nothing else with myself.  I would wake up between 11 and 1 every day and surf the internet till I had to go to work.  I would work from 3 to 11 and then come home and stay up till 3 or 4 or 5 watching movies or TV shows.  I avoided my family and had almost zero social interaction.  Literally the only good things in my life were my cat and my ward.  I loved that ward (and the cat, but that's not relevant to this story).  And it was eventually my ward and my bishop that helped me get back on my feet.  I started thinking about serving a mission.  I was nearing the age and I can't even count the number of times I'd heard that if I wasn't married by 21 it was my duty to serve a mission.  I talked to my bishop about it, and we discussed the preparations I would need to make for a mission to happen.  I knew I didn't feel like I was spiritually "fit" enough for a mission yet, but I was hopeful that I could become so.  But as I considered the mission I kept thinking about school.  I was thinking about all my friends and how I was already a year behind them now.  If I went on a mission I'd be another year and half on top of that.  Basically all my friends would be done by the time I got back.  So one day I was praying about whether or not I should go on a mission or I should go back to school.  Now, depending on who you talk to either I just had a moment of clarity or I received an answer to my prayers.  Either way, I realized that when making my decision it was ok for me to factor in what I wanted to do.  School and mission were both good, worthy choices; this wasn't an issue of right or wrong.  So I wasn't somehow sinning to consider what I wanted to do as I made the decision.  And what I wanted to was to go back to school and all my friends.  Which is what I ended up doing.

If you ask me right now to tell you about all the times I've felt the spirit, those are the two stories I'd come up with.  I would also tell you one more.

The actual decision to come back to Provo was somewhat abrupt and I ended up moving into the first place I could find.  I moved down in the middle of the summer of 2008 and I lived in the place I found through winter semester of 2009.  I can't tell you exactly when this event occurred besides sometime while I lived in that house.  Essentially, one night I had a...spiritual breakdown shall we call it?  It began simply with loneliness.  I've always been susceptible to the latenight lonelies.  But that night it got worse and worse.  I remembered all those New Era articles I read about how other people had felt lonely and then they prayed and they "felt the arms of [their] dear Savior surround them and His love fill them."  So I asked God to let me feel that love.  Let me feel those arms around me.  I didn't feel anything at all.  And as I waited to feel the love I'd been promised was there waiting for me I started to ask myself a question.  It was the question that I think a lot of other people my age are also asking themselves.  What if none of it is true?  What if it is all just a big lie, or manipulation, or even just a well-intentioned wish?  What then?  I think I can say that it was the worst night of my life.  Because as I asked myself that question, I also asked God.  The God who, in all my twenty-some years of life had only had anything to say to me maybe two times.  And all this time I'd been ok with that.  I knew I wasn't good enough or devout enough to warrant the sort of constant spiritual intervention that I'd heard about other people having.  I didn't blame God for thusfar leaving me be.  But that night was different.  I needed something, anything at all.  I would have been content with a brusque "get over yourself" even.  I just wanted the tiniest shred of reassurance that my entire life hadn't been built around the world's greatest self-sustaining con.  I eventually cried myself out and fell asleep exhausted.

I woke up the next day with the the question in my head "What now?"  What was I supposed to do?  I'd been let down by God.  I had asked and He had said nothing.  But on the other hand...I had survived.  I'd made it through that awful night, and, thankfully, in the light of day I didn't feel the same passionate anguish I'd felt the night before.  I was just confused.  I didn't know what was supposed to happen.

A few days later in one of my classes we were assigned to read a book of poetry called The Stream and the Sapphire by Denise Levertov.  In it I found this poem:

Suspended
I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummetted.

I have never ever cared for poetry, but that poem practically slapped me in the face when I read it.  There it was.  I had grasped at God's garment that night and my hands had slipped.  But what she said appealed to me.  "For though I claw at empty air and feel nothing, no embrace, I have not plummeted."  Neither had I.  I had made it through my night of pain and abandonment and I came out the other side.

There were many more hours of thought that went into it, but this is where I ended up.  God didn't answer me.  Not even when I was desperately begging Him to do so.  I could interpret that two ways.  God couldn't or wouldn't answer me because He either doesn't exist or doesn't care, or He didn't answer me for reasons of His own that I don't know but trust to ultimately be for my own good.  I have at least one friend who, upon reading this, will quickly point out to me that those two options are actually the exact same thing, except one includes me basically making things up to make myself feel better.  And to him I say yes.  He's exactly right.  Because those two options ended up being a microcosm of my entire attitude toward religion.  Which is this:  Either God doesn't exist and everything I've been taught and believed in my entire life is a lie and I've been wasting all my time and energy on nothing more than really persistent myths.  OR.  It's all true and there are things I don't understand and probably never will and I accept them and try to figure things out as best I can.  Those may not be the options for everyone, but that's what they were to me.

So I made a decision.  I chose to believe.  I chose to tell myself what may well be a straight up lie because when I weighed my options, my life looked better through that lens.  In the church there is a lot of talk about faith.  I doubt a sacrament meeting goes by that doesn't have at least one mention of it.  Faith, we are told, is the foundation of our testimonies, and through it we progress to knowledge.  Well, knowledge is something that I have accepted to be pretty much beyond my reach.  Because I just don't think I could claim knowledge unless God or the Spirit told me something straight out.  And that doesn't appear to be something that's going to happen.  But if I'm being honest, I have to say that I wouldn't even classify what I have as faith.  What I have is hope.  Hope is the very lowest rung on the spiritual ladder in my head.  I have hope that this church I've committed myself to is true (though certainly not perfect).  I have hope that one day I'll understand the world and my place in it.  I have hope that God loves me.

That was five and a half years ago.  Things haven't been easy since then.  I've seen a lot of friends go through similar experiences to mine, but with very different endings.  They couldn't accept hope as a good enough reason to stick with the church.  I don't blame them.  In fact, I often worry that the real reason I stay with the church is simply because I don't care enough about topics that should be much more important to me.  Maybe I just lack enough conviction one way or the other.  It's actually a pretty constant issue in my mind.  But whether that is the case or not, I will say that I have thusfar stuck with my decision.  I may have doubts and questions and hurts and plenty of issues with the church...but I have decided to stick with it.  I think the hardest thing for me these days is jealousy of my time.  Lacking the devout conviction of my fellow saints I find it difficult to sacrifice my time so willingly.  I'm working on that.  But I will also say that having an...academic? reasoned?  well, either way, a far less emotional attachment to the church has had its upsides. I think I have been able to offer a supportive and understanding ear to my friends who have suffered through the disillusionment and pain that comes with a lost testimony (at least I really hope so). I am able to hear a lot more criticism of the church without getting angry or defensive (unless that criticism is idiotic and unfair ;).  And I am able to look at the church more objectively and see places it needs improvement without writing it off entirely.  And that is, I think, the biggest "blessing" that has come from my story thusfar.  Because if the ones with questions and concerns just leave, and all that is left are the devout and unquestioning, then how will anything ever change?  Each side serves it's purpose, and you need both of them.  So I am grateful, I guess, that I can be a questioner.

I told my bishop an abbreviated version of this story a few weeks ago.  It is something I've mostly kept to myself.  I've been ashamed of the fact that I can't claim to have faith or knowledge.  It is hard not to think that, if I was a better person--a better Mormon--I would have those things.  But my bishop, instead of calling me to repentance, said "I think that is a great story."  Small as it was, that little bit of acceptance was so comforting to me.  It inspired me to try and look at my story in a different light--to recast it from a failure to a success.  It's hard to even write that.  And maybe I'm not quite at success level.  But as I've gone back through it all and written it all out, I have been able to see more goodness in my story than I ever have before.  Enough that I can hope to call it a success one day...

Am I doing nothing?

First of all, if you know what "TLDR" means, then this post may not be for you...

I'm going to post some links.  Please read all the articles before you read the rest of this post.

The most hated man on the internet

The Village Voice profile of Hunter Moore

Taking on the Revenge Porn industry

And as a reward for slogging through all of that, here is a tumblr called "Faith in Humanity Restored" full of lovely things people do for each other.  Take some time and feel better...

Maybe it's just cause my emotions have been especially close to the surface lately, but as I read those articles I felt my soul curl up in the fetal position and start rocking back and forth while moaning.  See, my life is spent wrapped up in the soft, warm cocoon of good people and Mormon society--which, while certainly not perfect, is made up primarily of good people trying to become better (at least in my experience).  Thusfar I have not been forced into a personal acquaintance with the horrifying realities of the world in which we live.  I can, if I choose, live my life in innocence of the things people in the world do to one another.

But then I read articles like those above.

I have an overwhelming sadness for the experiences of these women and what the cruel actions of others have put them through.  I am angry that the wonders of modern technology have been corrupted into a means for people to indulge in absolutely the worst parts of their nature.  I am hurt that my brothers and sisters can treat each other so poorly.  And I must confess, I feel so much pity for these people posting these pictures, and most of all for Hunter Moore, this poor poor young man who has so willingly abandoned his humanity in the pursuit of fame (infamy is a better word) and money, and who is, as yet, so completely unaware of what the real cost is.

But even more than all that, I feel guilty.

I feel guilty that I live such a serene and unmolested life.  I feel guilty that women who are likely better people than I am are being put through something like that.  And I feel guilty that, not just in this situation, but that in all of the sufferings and pains of this world I do so little.  And most of all, for the knowledge that, despite all that guilt and all the wretchedness in the world, I will never be a crusader like Charlotte Laws has been.  As I read her account of her crusade against revenge porn (it seems so inadequate even to ask "why is this a thing?") I am so in awe of her.  She is absolute evidence that one person can make a difference.  She is a fighter--a true warrior in a world of cowardice, anonymity, and apathy.  And I will never be like her.

I once wrote a blog post about what I call my "small life".  Here it is.  I was angry when I wrote it.  I'd been having a conversation with a friend of mine in which he repeatedly belittled all of the choices I had made about how I want to live.  I wanted to defend my decisions!  I have the right to live my small life and be happy!  And maybe that is true.  In that post I talk about Washingtonian style activism.  That's the sort of activism where you focus on your little corner of life and you work as hard as you can to improve it.  In my head that translates to worrying about me, my friends, and my family (both current and future).  I do the best I can to make sure that those people are taken care of, and in turn, they all do the same for their circles, and thus it spreads.  And I said I was ok with that sort of effect on the world.

But then I read about Charlotte Laws.  She is a Duboisian if ever there was one.  And as I read her story, I started to question my Washingtonian philosophies.  Because reading stories about digital rape and invasions of privacy, they're just the tip of the iceberg.  What these articles are really doing is forcing me out of my cocoon of safety and comfort to see the world around me.  Because horrible as this story was, it is only the smallest fraction of the awful things that are happening in the world.  And I am not exaggerating when I say that trying to contemplate all of the problems humanity faces physically makes me ill.  I feel nauseated and achey.  Which is why I espouse Washingtonian activism.  Because I simply cannot face all of that hurt and suffering and damage, and focusing only on my small corner of life is the only way I can manage.

But I don't know if that's good enough.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" *

It's a cliche quote, but still true.  Am I doing nothing, but dressing it up in a fancy costume of something so that I don't feel bad?  Because imagine if we were all Charlotte Laws.  What if we all stood up as warriors against the triumph of evil?  How much more quickly would the world change?  If nothing else, a poor misguided soul like Hunter Moore wouldn't think that his ticket to success was to be a "professional life-ruiner"...


*possibly a quote from Edmund Burke, possibly from Leo Tolstoy

Because learning without creation is pointless

I've been trying to write a story for the last couple of weeks.  On a good day I write about 1,000 words.  Prolific I am not.  It's because, surprisingly enough, I find fiction writing to be exhausting in a way that writing here is not.  Writing on my blog is casual--just me spitting out whatever is rattling around in my head.  Writing a story is different--it needs to be "right".  And finding the right words to explain the right actions in the right way leaves me exhausted after just a scene or two.  Which is ok.  Because there isn't actually a time line on anything and if I it takes me till October of 2015 (which is what the NaNoWriMo website is predicting based off my current rate of writing) then...ok.  Why not?

oh, it's actually November of next year...hooray!

But, it also means that today I just wanted to take a break and do some writing that wasn't quite so difficult for me.  Perhaps later I will write another scene in my story.  But for now, it is the mental equivalent of sweatpants and chocolate time for my brain.

Miley...I think you're doing that wrong...

So let's talk about the usefulness of education.  In my last post I mentioned how I'm adjusting to adult, non-married life.  I talked about my recent interest in researching fairy tales and how I questioned whether or not reading arcane academic articles was a better use of my time than perusing facebook and buzzfeed.  I left it open ended, implying I wasn't completely sure about the answer.

Well, inasmuch as I am capable of being completely sure of anything (I'm not), I will say that I am sure.

With qualifications.

Whether it is my Mormonism or just me, I have to say that educating myself, even about the most obscure and useless of topics is an improvement over entertainment-grazing the internet for babies and kittens (which is not to say that there isn't a place for babies and kittens and gif-fests).  If for no other reason than that the latter requires absolutely nothing from your brain.  And if my primary pass-time is something that I can do equally well when I am literally half asleep, there is something wrong with my pass-time.  Hence, I declare obscure research a winner!

But frankly, it's not actually a huge step up to go from facebook to obscure research.  There's a last step missing.  And that is where my qualifications come in.  (guys.....I'm sorry, but I'm having a really hard time focusing on the rest of my post with that gif repeating above me over and over...)

Ok, refocusing.  What I'm talking about is synthesis.  This is a thing that, ideally, you learned about in high school.  If you didn't learn about it in high school then I am praying that you learned about it in college.  But since I've been a college TA, I know that many many people did not, so I will give a quick summary, though I'm pretty confident that none of you, my 12 lovely readers, are these people.  Anneke, if you're reading this, bear with a non-education major as I try to explain this.  There are different levels of learning, each one implying a certain depth of understanding.  Because understanding is not the same thing as knowing.  Think of it....think of it like acting.  Imagine a scale, and on one end you have Antonio Banderas learning his first Holywood part phonetically because he didn't speak English at the time.  He knew his lines, but he didn't understand them.  All he could do was repeat back exactly what he had memorized.  On the other end of the scale you have, um...someone like Robin Williams or Anthony Hopkins.  These are men who know their lines, know their characters, know the story, understand all those things, and using them, they riff and improvise and actually create more than what is in the script.  This is synthesis, and this is what is necessary to make education worthwhile.

hey look! A little picture about exactly my topic!

It is a hard lesson to learn, especially for those students who made it to college without learning it.  So many kids would email me or approach me in class to ask "Why didn't I get an A?  I covered all the study points."  Even setting aside my feelings on grade inflation, the most basic answer is that simply regurgitating a list of facts is not demonstrative of complete education.  It's Antonio Banderas speaking out sounds whose meanings he couldn't comprehend.  To show me that you actually understand what those facts mean you have to synthesize them into something greater than the constituent parts.  Tell me why those facts were significant.  Tell me why we're studying that story.  Tell me anything, as long as it shows that you've not just memorized the information, but actually digested it and comprehended its significance.  Be Anthony Hopkins disappearing into his character so that you forget that he isn't actually a terrifying madman in real life.  Be Robin Williams riffing so much during the making of Aladdin  that they could have made three movies on his material alone.

Which brings us back to research for research's sake.  It's true, pumping my brain full of facts is better than turning it off entirely and tucking it away in a corner.  But better still than that is taking all those facts and doing something with them.  In my case, right now, I am using my research to write my own version of one of my favorite fairy tales (I hope to adapt more in the future).  Sometimes I write quasi-scholarly analyses of stories or movies or books here on my blog.  Maybe I just tell my boss about how strange the stories are.  Whatever I do, about not just fairy tales but any other topic I research, the point is that once I've put the information in my brain I need to work with it.  If I don't, it might as well not be there in the first place, taking up space.  Because not only does synthesizing your knowledge demonstrate a deeper and more thorough understanding of it...it actually creates that understanding.

Synthetic thinking is a..."higher" level of thinking than consumptive.  It takes more work.  In practical terms that means that you just don't really do it without making yourself do it.  And you don't make yourself do it without a reason.  Now that reason may be simply because you enjoy it (that is why I write this blog).  But until I sit down and write a blog post about the importance of College Girl literature I don't actually fully understand that importance.  The bits and pieces of my thoughts are all floating around in my head but I've never taken the time or energy to straighten them all out and organize them and make something of them.  This is actually exactly what is happening when you're talking to someone and you explain something and they get all excited and exclaim "Exactly!  That's exactly what I think, you just put it so much more clearly!"  What they're actually saying is "I had all those bits of idea drifting around in my head, too, but I never sat down and put them all together like you have just done and I can recognize the idea all put together there in your words!"

If only more people understood the principle of synthesis I think the world as a whole would be a much better place.  Synthetic thinking leads to an understanding of and ability to both articulate and support one's own beliefs and ideals rather than a blind defensiveness.  It leads to developments of philosophy and art and science.  And the thing is, everyone is capable of it.  It's not a "smart" vs. "dumb" thing.  If you want to be that reductive you could, I suppose, argue that it is a "disciplined" vs. "indulgent" thing.  But even then, you can't expect someone to discipline their mind in a certain way if they have no understanding of what that way even is.

But maybe I've managed to explain it successfully here.  And maybe someone who didn't quite understand it will read this and then they will  (or maybe not...I'm not so optimistic about my writing/explaining abilities).  And then, just maybe, they will have the discipline to start trying to think this way.  And I suppose that if I can manage to inspire that series of events with my blog for just one person then that will be a good day's work.

Filling the time till I die...

So...post-college life.  As you all know, it kind of snuck up on me (sneaked?  really?  whatever, we're sticking with "snuck" because I'm a rebel).  I haven't had my moment of college closure.  Rather I've been doing a lot of thinking, and the conclusions I've come to are...depressing.  Especially for me specifically (that is, a single Mormon girl getting uncomfortably close to 30).  Growing up Mormon I never questioned that after college I'd be married and making/raising the babies.  But shoot!  I'm out of college and ain't no babies up in here.  And there aren't likely to be any for a while.  Suddenly I am faced with the realization that there is no guarantee that I'm going to get married.  I may not get to have the babies.  Don't worry...I'm still holding at bay the full-on panic of that thought.  But what I am doing is trying to figure out what an adult life is supposed to be full of if it isn't full of family.

The fact is, up till now I've been living my life like a video game (for lack of a better analogy).  I've had all these benchmarks that are like leveling up.  Start primary; level up.  Go to high school: level up.  College; level up.  Just like a video game, the goals have been clearly explained and set in front of me.  But graduating from college was pretty much the last level I could beat on my own.  Like I said, the next level has always been family...but I kind of need a partner for that one.  Which means that, for the first time in my life, while I do have a next level in mind, it has become a much more misty, on the horizon sort of thing rather than a planned, scheduled surety.  And maybe the next level I have in mind isn't even the right one!  Basically, my life has gone from Tetris™ to Myst™.  Lots of wandering around and exploring with only minimal actual game progress.

well, technically this is Riven. It had prettier worlds.  

So here I am, unable to level up, stuck exploring for secondary games and sub-challenges and easter eggs and any clue what I should be doing.  The big one I should be working on is a career.  After all, we Americans are all about our careers, right?  That's what TV tells me.  You all may remember that post a while back flirting with the idea of buying a bookstore.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending) that idea hasn't exactly progressed.  But I have been thinking a bit lately about my current job situation.  As I've said many times before, I absolutely love my job.  But I mentioned that I worry that perhaps part of the reason that I love it is that it is so safe and doesn't challenge me at all.  Honestly, I'm not really sure if there's anything wrong with that.  But I will admit that I'm starting to think maybe I should pull a resume together and at least have my ears open for any opportunities.

But that means that, for the time being, the sub-quest of Job is taken care of.  I have a job, achievement unlocked, plus 250 coins (per month)!  So what else should I do?

Well, the depressing truth is that life doesn't actually have clearly delineated quests, achievements, or levels anymore.  I don't have any more socially dictated benchmarks that can reassure me that my life is progressing.  All I have is an indeterminate length of time that ought to be filled before I die.  My job is to fill that time in the most worthwhile way that I can.

Quick story.  Way back in 2010 when I worked at Target, in a desperate attempt to find some way to keep my mind occupied, one day I started asking every person who came through my line which was their favorite fairytale between Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, and why.  Sadly, I no longer have the exact results (though I remember them generally).  But I did come up with some really interesting anecdotal data.  At the time I came up with this great idea for a research project built on that data and I was legitimately excited about it (almost as excited as I still am about my epic Batman/V for Vendetta/Sense and Sensibility analysis).  However, all that actually got done was the research about one single fairytale that ended up as this blog post.  And there it ended.

it is absurd trying to find non-Disney images of these stories...

This week, as anyone who follows me on the fbook knows, I returned to my fairytales.  Unfortunately, I have no idea now what my great research project was going to be.  But I decided to go ahead and finish researching the history of the stories anyway.  I think it's fascinating and, who knows?  Maybe in the course of my research I'll remember the overall project?

 But mostly, it just seemed like a better way for me to spend my evenings than they way I have been--either drifting aimlessly in the directionless eddies of facebook and buzzfeed, or turning my brain entirely off on TV binges.  Surely there must be more value in learning than there is in comatose internet browsing....right?

I guess?

That is...yes.  I cannot accept that nearly vegetative clicking is on par with learning; even if that learning is pretty much without use or even reason.  Because that is what my research is.  I don't remember what that project was supposed to be, so as of now I'm just learning about early fairytales for no other reason than that I find them interesting.  And that's the problem.  My Mormon conditioning tells me that information and education are worthwhile for their own sake.  But another part of me keeps whispering that simply taking in information is...kind of a waste.  After all, what really is the difference between three hours of facebook status updates and buzzfeed articles vs three hours of JSTOR and wikipedia articles about 18th century marriage traditions and the literary tradition of the animal bridegroom?  Cause the facebook time is giving me information too.  I'm learning who is pregnant, who is engaged, who is hungry, and who is addicted to instagram.  So why do I feel less like I've "wasted" my evening after the JSTOR articles than the facebook?  Is that feeling justified?  Why?

baha! this came up when I googled "what's the point?"

I'm actually still working on these questions.  Because I feel like answering them will help me with the bigger question of where is my next level up.  Or rather, with no levels left to reach, what exactly am I supposed to be doing now in this game?  How should I be using the time I have?

I would legitimately like to know what you all think...

Some things I like...

I really like when intersecting sidewalks don't meet at the outermost edge of the corner.  It's something you only see on old streets, typically when the walk itself is narrow, rumpled with 20 years of jostling tree roots, and befriended by grass on both sides.  Somehow, taking those extra two steps into the block before you turn to cross the street feels like a microcosm of nostalgic small-town life.  Back when people had the time and the openness to connect even with the unimportant and the fleeting.  They didn't perch on the extreme-most edge of a sea of impersonal concrete, nearer the passing cars than any human contact or living thing.  Maybe it's a lot to read in to a street corner, but it's what I felt tonight walking home.

and then imagine an intersecting sidewalk equally set in to the block

I like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.  I could probably even say I'm more than a little obsessed with them just now.   They're brilliant and clever and unbelievably well-made.  You can feel and see and otherwise experience all the effort and care that went into them at every turn.  And they made Pride and Prejudice feel like a fresh, new story, which is no small achievement.  I deeply wish there was someone I could discuss them with in the nauseatingly analytic detail I love so much.

please everyone go experience this project.  Google "the lizzie bennet diaries"

I like brick buildings, particularly homes and schools.  There is a comfortable elegance to brick that is unique.  Brick-built schools typically avoid that prison look of so many schools built out of more contemporary mediums.  Brick houses feel warm and inviting and...settled.  It's a beautiful material.

When I go out walking at night it is usually very late.  I love how quiet the city gets and how many secret details, usually masked by the busyness of daylight, you can discover.  But I also like walking in the early evening.  Unlike late night walking, you still hear the noises of people, but the sounds are calmer, homier, and more personal than daytime sounds.

I like the feeling of solitude surrounded by communal strangers.  To be aloof, sitting alone at a table, while still engaging in the loosest possible network of unknown people who shared your thought to come to this specific place is a very particular kind of experience that is worth having and paying attention to.  Historically, giving one's hospitality and the act of eating together created a bond of peace that was nearly sacred.  I think society retains the slightest vestige of that mentality today in a subconscious kinship with those around us in a public place like a restaurant.  Or perhaps that is just me.

alone at a table somewhere in that group

And finally, I like this sentence:

"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition."

I like that sentence more than I can say and maybe more than it deserves, coming from a cheesy horror show on The CW.  However, regardless of its origins and despite having rather a more Protestant flavor than many Mormons are comfortable with, it feels like the most perfect answer that was ever given to the question "Who is God?".  And as a bonus, it is a phenomenally well-crafted sentence; it is in perfect trochaic meter, it has a beautiful and evocative linguistic flow, and the word choice is just unusual enough to catch your attention without crossing the line into pretentiousness and distracting you from the overall impact of the idea.

A Quick Thought

Two blog posts in a week?  What is this madness?

I read this thing a while back.  It was one of those "7 Things You Should Learn To Be An Adult" or "21 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was 25" or whatever.  I can't remember the name specifically so I can't find and link it.  But suffice it to say, it had all these things that 20 somethings or young adults or whoever need to realize if they're going to start being adults.  It was one of the better of that breed of post and I remember it had this one point that really just sums up this whole blog post.  It said "Learn to spend money on things".

"Well that can't be right!" you're thinking.  "Being an adult means that you save your money like a responsible human!"  And you would be right.  But you'd also be wrong.  The post went on to explain that when you're in high school and then in college you are saving saving saving to pay for high school and college.  Mostly college.  It is big and important and expensive and you're constantly poor and not spending money becomes practically an art form.  You learn to get by and make do and live like a Russian peasant.  But after school you need to stop thinking like a college student and learn to spend money on the things that are important to you.  Because not spending money is a waste.  You might as well just not earn it...so to speak.

And like I said, in a nutshell, that is the point of this post.  It is about the difference between frugality and cheapness.  The simplest explanation, I would say, is that frugality is action-based and cheapness is attitude-based.

What it comes down to is this--money is a really great and important thing in life.  Having it makes pretty much all the things possible.  Not having it can literally kill you.  Thus it becomes important to be responsible with your money, learning to prioritize your spending and save for a rainy day.  However, as with so many things, it is possible to become unbalanced in your attitude about money.  Money, and the process of saving it, become the end themselves rather than the means to an end they should be.  When you start resenting the expenditure of your money; when you start perceiving a larger number in your bank balance as more valuable than a night out with your friends or a new and exciting experience, then I think you have become unbalanced.

I have realized lately how valuable a trait generosity really is.  Actual, real-world generosity is one of the greatest attributes a person can have in my book.  Because money is great, but only because it allows you to buy gifts for the people you love, and travel to new or familiar places, and supply and enrich your life, etc...  Money is valuable insofar as it enables you to live.  It is not valuable in and of itself.

this seems like a good thing to post here...

Just life and stuff...or whatever......

It has been brought to my attention (by someone other than my mother, amazingly enough), that it has been rather a long while since I last updated my blog.  I usually try to update at least once a month, but time seems to have gotten away from me.  Guess I just didn't have anything to say.  I know I had a request to review The Host, but unlike most of you, I actually kind of liked that movie, which doesn't really make for a particularly entertaining review.  But maybe I'll still work one up one of these days.

The fact is that I still don't really have anything in particular to say, but if people are asking you about your blog, surprising as it may seem, it would appear that at least that one person is interested in reading stuff you've written.  So I guess I'll write some stuff for them to read.

Dear Bill Waterson...is this an illegal use of Calvin?  If you feel that it is,
please email me and let me know. I'll take it right down...

Let's see.  Last thing I was talking about was the beginnings of the car hunt.  It seems anti climactic to just say "Well, I ended up buying a car."  But I did.  I bought a car guys!  It is actually really exciting.  I mean, I've had the car for two and a half months and I still think "dang I love my car!" every time I see it.  Because guess what.  Remember how I said that my dream car that I would never ever ever be able to buy because it would be crazy times out of my price range was an '09 Honda Fit?  Well, after careful perusing of KSL and several disappointments I came across an orange '09 Honda Fit for exactly how much I was willing to spend!  Downside?  Turns out it was so cheap because it was a rebuilt title.  Right at the same time I came across an '06 Scion XA for about the same price.  There was some serious (and I do mean serious...I was giving myself stress headaches worrying about it) debate between the two.  But in the end, after taking him to the Honda dealership and getting him checked out by their mechanic, I settled on the Fit and promptly named him Chester.  And we've been ever so in love ever since.

The next big problem for me to solve was Sharry Baby.  What was I going to do with this now superfluous car that was cluttering up the street in front of my house.  Though my roommate's boyfriend offered to sell her for me, I decided to give it a try on my own.  Through keen and penetrating reasoning I decided to list her for $1000.  I needed to get $800 for her and I figured I should give a little room for people to barter so they could feel good about themselves.  If you're friends with me on the fbook then you may have seen my post about a rather insulting text I got from someone who was mildly interested.  While I posted the text because I appreciated the humor of the situation, I must confess, it was not a little upsetting being treated like that.  Not to mention discouraging.  Especially as that text was the last response I got for several days.  I was starting to worry it was a no go, when I got a text at work asking me if I still had the car.  The highlights of the story are as follows: car wouldn't start, guy says he's a mechanic and can fix it, I pick guy and his buddy up, guy and his buddy tell me all about how they just got out of prison where they both found Jesus, guy magically makes car start, me and guy and guy's buddy go on a very extended test drive, guy buys car for $900, parents express a lack of enthusiasm that I'm hanging out alone with two ex-cons (they were actually super cool guys, albeit a little unorthodox).  And that is the story of how I managed to sell Sharry Baby for $100 more than I expected to.

for some reason this felt like the right thing to put here...?

Let's see...other news I guess would be that I spent a couple of months seriously considering altering my living circumstances.  For a while I was going to move in with Kara and one other mystery roommate.  That didn't pan out because Kara works in Salt Lake and I work in Payson and there's no way to split that commute so that both people are happy.  So I guess Kara and I will have to live together another time.  But that then got me started thinking about how, now I'm not a student, I have no actual reason to stay in Provo.  So I started looking in to finding a place a little closer to my job.  I did find an adorable place down in Payson with a really nice guy for a landlord.  But it just didn't feel right...as amorphous a reason as that is (especially for me).  Part of it was the fact that I really really love my bishop and ward here in Provo.  I think that Bishop Pickering is exactly the right bishop for me right now.  He heckled me today because I haven't come in to talk to him lately and he said the reason he likes me so much is because I give him so much crap.  His words.  Yeah, we get along well.  But anyway, I decided to stay here in Provo at least for one more winter.  Perhaps after that I'll move down to Payson, or somewhere else entirely.  I can't deny that the idea of having my own place really appeals to me.  But now isn't the time...

this is 100% what it would really be like
pic from Pretty Bland Comics

I went home twice in the last month's time.  The first visit was for my grandma's memorial.  It was just too inconvenient for all the family to come up back in January for the funeral, so it was decided that we'd have a big memorial later in the summer.  My grandma's death has been the first time I've really actively mourned for anyone and it has been harder than I ever expected it to be.  I was hoping by the time the memorial came up it wouldn't be such a big deal, but I'll admit, I spent a fairly significant part of the service crying.  A few days after the memorial Jesse and Grandpa were going to be driving down to North Carolina, so I also was dealing with the realization that if I don't make it down to visit Jesse and Erin relatively soon, it is likely that I won't see Grandpa again.  Suffice it to say, it was an exhausting weekend

Just a few weeks later Kara was heading up for her nephew's notfarewell and she invited me to join her.  I thought it would be nice to get to visit mom and dad with a little less stress so I decided to go.  It ended up being a lovely visit.  And while we were in LaGrande one day we passed by my favorite little bookshop.  I don't remember if I wrote about how I realized at Christmas that what I really really want to do, like for real, is to have my own little bookshop that has tons of personality and can get you whatever book you want.  I also don't remember if I mentioned that Sunflower book is the inspiration for that dream.  I found out at Christmas that it was up for sale and would be closing soon if no one bought it.  When I saw it again a few weeks ago it was all closed up and I think it was one of the saddest things I've ever seen.  The owners, who decided to retire, just never could find a buyer.  But it started me thinking.  I started to wonder just how crazy it would be for me to.....buy it.  Right now.  See, when I decided I wanted to own a bookstore in my head it went something like this: stay in Provo and work for Caleb for a few more years while I pay off all the debt and get my feet under me, so to speak, as an adult; spend a few more years saving money; in about 10 years when I'm rather more solvent and prepared, apply for a loan and open my store.  But here's a sobering thought--in 10 years I'll be 37.  37!  That's nearly 40!  And who are we kidding?  I totally plan on being married with at least one kid by then (well...plan is maybe a strong word...I really hope to be married with a kid by then).  The point is that 37 is not really an age you think of when you think "crazy decisions to take major risks".  Nope, see, that's the kind of thing you're supposed to do when you're young.  So suddenly I'm looking at this empty store and I'm thinking "What if I did it now?  What if I tried to open my bookstore right now when I have student loans to pay off and absolutely no idea what I'm doing or how I'm going to do it?"  Even just thinking about it like that, like it was an actual possibility, was absolutely, physical-response-inducing terrifying.  See, the thing is...I'm not exactly a risk taker and I'm not exactly an efficient, get-a-million-things-done-a-day person.  But then I started wondering if maybe the very scariness of it wasn't a pretty good reason why I should do it.  I started to wonder...is my plan to stay here in Provo and work for Caleb really a good solid plan?  Or is it a nice safe plan?  Much as I love my job (and you all know how much I love my job), do I actually love it for the right reasons?  I mean, how much of that love is actually just a love of comfort?  This is a job that doesn't challenge me at all.  It allows me to sleep in and set my own hours and just hang out with one of my best friends.  These are all great things, but what if I could be doing something even better but I'm too afraid to inconvenience myself to discover it?  When I try to look objectively at my life I cannot say that these are not reasonable worries.  So what if I decided to...well, to completely ignore my personality and dive into the scariest possible (realistic) adventure I can imagine?  I'm nearly 27 years old.  There truly will never be a better time for me to take that kind of risk than right now.  If I crash spectacularly and burn my life to the ground the consequences will be so much more manageable right now than they ever will be any other time.

um...this picture actually feels freakily applicable...

Explaining this all makes me get all anxious and excited about the idea again.  Thinking about the "what if....?"  But sadly, it isn't so easy to ignore one's personality.  Your habits of behavior exist for a reason.  Usually it is because you've spent a lifetime cultivating them.  So even though I can rationally think through why it might actually be the perfect moment for me to dive into a nausea inducingly terrifying adventure...I just don't think I can do it.  It is too scary.  Scary seems like such an insufficient word to describe the feeling that envelops me when I think about the idea.  C'est la vie?

And...I guess that's it.  I'm not sure how I feel about these "this is just a big update of what's going on in my life" updates.  They feel so...narcissistic.  But then, my great long philosophical treatises are just plain boring, so maybe this is a step up?  I don't know...

How life is these days...

I was asked to write a review for the movie The Host, and I will.  But first I'm feeling like I ought to post a general update on my life and things.  Sort of a philosophical update though, cause this is me we're talking about.

First for the update part.  Most momentous update of my life is that I will likely be graduating either in August or December.  I will be taking one final gen ed class (an "advanced writing" class that is completely unnecessary but required...bleh) through independent study and then I will be done.  This means that I will have my Humanities degree, but no minor.  It also means that, for all practical purposes, I am basically done with school right now.

The other major thing in my life is my recent decision to really get serious about buying a car.  It is a thing that I am putting a lot of time and thought into, going so far as to spend actual time physically in the library researching the best used cars.  My ideal purchase (with reservations as I've not actually driven one) is the 09 Honda Fit

yes, I am aware that it looks like a baby mini-van...

I didn't really imagine that my college career would end quite so...anticlimactically.  I expected I would take my last year of classes like any normal student and I would walk out of the testing center from my last final and I would feel that lifting of the weight of school I get at the end of every year, but multiplied several times as I realized that I wasn't just done for the year, I was done forever!  I'd have a big graduation and I'd send out invitations and my parents would come down and go to the ceremony and it would be a great moment in my life.  That's how I imagined it.

I did not imagine that I would be in school for 7 years.  I didn't imagine that I would be graduating due half and half to a lack of money to continue and to an intense (and I do mean intense) aversion to continuing.  I didn't expect that my student experience, rather than ending with a definitive bang! would trickle down like a faucet with a weak nob.  I didn't imagine that, by the time I finally did graduate I would be so sick of school and tired of the entire stress of it that I would want nothing more than to let the bloody event pass with as little notice as was humanly possible.  No big graduation ceremony, no invitations, no family gathering.  I just want it to be done already.

just stop.

Ironically enough, my own apathy about the entire process makes me sad and kind of makes me wish I still wanted to do it all up proper.  College is the last possible bastion of juvenile life.  Sure, they say it is supposed to be your first steps into adulthood, but really it is your last steps as a child.  You're still in a highly structured environment over which you have only some control.  You still have a host of precautions in place to catch you just in case you crash and burn.  Perhaps this sense of extended adolescence is exaggerated due to the fact that I went to a Mormon school, or perhaps it was just a different sort of adolescence (no one will ever convince me that drinking unto shit-facedness is a mature thing to do, which is the only stereotypical college behavior I can think of just now).  The point is that when you finish college you theoretically are really and truly and for once and all stepping out on your own.  You're to get a "real" job and buy a "real" car and finally have a "real" relationship.  All the things are suddenly becoming real.  That transition deserves to have at least some sort of deal made over it--big or otherwise.

But I find that it is happening very gradually.  Last year was supposed to be a year of working and earning money to go back to school.  It wasn't supposed to be my first "post-college" year.  But that is exactly what it was.  And now, here I am, having made the decision to be done with the whole thing.  I'm looking at my life and slowly grasping that it is no longer divided into 4 month segments, after each of which my schedule and the entire structure of my life gets jiggled around.  I'm not "working till I go back to school" now.  I'm just....working.  It's both liberating and frightening.  On the one hand, I have always struggled to commit to things in my life when I know that in a few weeks or a couple of months I'll probably have to ditch it to accommodate a new class schedule or whatever.  That is no longer the case.  My schedule is pretty much set for the foreseeable future.  But that in itself is quite scary.  Now, if I get bored it's not just "well, you can hang in there through the next two months and then things will change."  If I want something to change in my life I will have to actively change it.

But most of all, I am noticing a gradual but distinct change just in the way I view and interact with the world in general.  Last night I actually said the words "well, and I'm sort of in a different part of my life than you" to my roommate Karissa...and it was quite obviously true.  I think I always sort of filed phrases like "different part of my life" and even "adulthood" into a folder clearly marked "married and making babies".  That has always been the great life event that changes my relationship with my friends--that makes me feel like we're no longer in the same part of life and we have less in common to talk about.  I have one friend in particular--she has been married now for 6 or 7 years; she lost one baby, and another spent the first couple of months of his life in the NICU; she has bought and sold a house; she is living a completely adult life.  When we get together I ask her all about her life and she tells me about her husband's job and her kids and what she is doing to utilize her talents and skills as a mother and it is a completely different world.  So when she asks me what's new in my life (she always does, she is always interested in what I'm doing) I feel absurd.  She just told me how incredibly difficult it has been for her to deal with the death of her child and I'm now going to tell her how hard it was for me to...what?  Get over a boy who didn't like me back?  Her life contains deeper sorrows (and thus deeper joys) than I am experiencing yet and I simply can't help but feel the contrast.  So I usually just say that there's not really anything new with me (which is usually true) and turn the conversation back to her.

That has been my perception of true adulthood.  Things are more serious, more poignant.  But last night I was talking to Karissa about buying a new car.  She is also looking to buy a car.  She wants something cheap that will get her from home to work.  It doesn't need to be pretty, or even run especially well.  It just needs to get the job done.  I, on the other hand, am looking for, as she put it, "a grown-up car".  I'm ready to have a car that I can count on, one that is going to last me several years without ever once refusing to start due to high or low temperatures.  In the most pragmatic of terms, I'm ready to buy a car that I can't simply pay for straight out of pocket.  I'm going to have to get a loan and have a monthly car payment.  Like you do when you're an adult.  This is an idea that I wouldn't have even considered while I was in school.  There was just no way.  But the prospect of working full time...full time (not just for four months of summer) changes things.  It quite literally changes the way I look at my life.  I'm no longer looking a maximum of four months ahead.  I'm planning now without an enforced deadline.

I may not have moved to the part of life that is being married and making babies.  That level of adulthood is still before me.  But I am done with school now.  I am finished with the very last days of my adolescence and I have, without quite realizing it, stepped fully into the murky waters of being grown up.  The wait for my life after college is over and I'm now living it.  It is both scary and wonderful...

Gatsby? What Gatsby?

How could I not write a review of The Great Gatsby?  It's Baz Luhrmann for heaven's sake and we all know how much I love him (I love him about five heaps...just in case you didn't know).  It is safe to say that The Great Gatsby is the movie I've been most excited about for the last six months (now that it is out Ender's Game officially takes over that job).  But how could I not be?  Look at this trailer!

Alas....I will say that the trailer is just a shade more satisfying to a certain aspect of my Baz Luhrmann love than the movie.  See, what I've always loved about Baz's movies is their passion.  They don't go in for restraint or subtlety, when Baz does passion it is explosive and vibrant to the point of nausea and I absolutely love it...probably because it is exactly the sort of experience of emotion I am unlikely ever to have in my own life.  And that trailer?  It is positively dripping with classic Baz Luhrmann passion.  The movie?  Surprising as it may seem, I think I could say that it was his most restrained film thus far.  Which is not to say that there isn't plenty of emotion there, nor even plenty of over-the-top visual gluttony.  But those emotions were restrained, veiled, veneered over and divorced from the orgy-like party scenes.  Thematically it is a brilliant move that reinforces the central idea of Luhrmann's adaptation of this specific story....but it did leave me a little bit disappointed in terms of a Baz Luhrmann movie experience.

This is the sort of heavy-handed passion I'm talking about.  This

is one of my favorite scenes of all time...

But never fear!  If I felt a little disappointed in terms of the blatant emotions of the film it was more than made up for in the casting of it.  I have long argued that Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the best actors we have today and I don't think he's ever given a better performance than as Jay Gatsby.  Of course, we all knew he would.  I don't think I have talked to a single person who didn't share the same moment of "of course!" as soon as they found out he was playing the central character.  Once you think of him as Gatsby there is absolutely no one else who could have played him.  And Leo didn't disappoint.  I am one of the few people who didn't study the book in high school (I studied a grand total of one complete book in my high school, and it wasn't till I made it to AP english my senior year...hooray for The Scarlet Letter!) so the first time I read this book was the end of last summer I think (or possibly it was fall?).  I didn't really connect with Gatsby when I read it.  I didn't understand why Nick would come out of this entire experience and say that the only person he didn't loathe was Gatsby...he seemed to be just as degenerate as the rest of them to me.  No, it wasn't till I watched Leo's twitchy, nervous, and intensely anxious performance that I came to connect with the character of Jay Gatsby.  He was magnificent.  I mean, right down to the smile that I thought couldn't exist as per Nick's description of it:

He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

And when DiCaprio turns smiling to the audience in his big moment of reveal...smiling right at me so it seemed...suddenly I knew exactly what Nick meant.  But that was just Gatsby.  Though Karissa and I agreed that Tobey Maguire is possibly tied with Michael Cera as the most awkward human on the earth, I think he absolutely nailed Nick Carraway.  He has this knack for hilarious expressions that say 50 times more than any amount of dialogue possibly could.  I read an interview with Maguire about how it was difficult trying to find a way to play Nick that captured his role as outside observer whilst allowing him the space to be a character who actually did things. I think that trick of expression was a major part of that balance.  As he gets drawn into an Epicurean afternoon with Tom and his entourage his face expresses that dissociated observant quality in the midst of his own participation in the whole thing.  And even though Maguire seems to have somehow become ridiculous in pop culture (I still love him and think he is terribly under-utilized) I think he carried his darker more dramatic moments wonderfully.  Carey Mulligan, too, was magnificent.  She caught that breathy, melodramatic way of speaking that you somehow just can't help but associate with flappers.  Even more amazing was how in moments she could appear bored--old and almost haggard.  Carey Mulligan.  Let me remind you what Carey Mulligan looks like

seriously...so damn adorable

She was great.  But then, every single person in the movie was great.  The greatest triumph of this film was its casting.  

Slightly less great were my constant flashbacks to Moulin Rouge.  As Riss and I discussed on the way out, Moulin Rouge was based heavily on La Traviata and the Orpheus myth.  Now, if you were to read either of these stories your first thought would not be "Wow, this is just like The Great Gatsby!".  But the way Luhrmann decided to play the story I was constantly reminded of his earlier film.  First you have a conservative somewhat naive young man who moves into a new environment of excitement and indulgence.  He is caught up in this hedonistic world and is consumed and nearly ruined by it.  He slowly rebuilds himself afterward by growing a stubble and writing it all down.  There is an ephemeral and unattainable beauty who glitters brightest in this world of color and excitement and all men worship her.  Despite all the best efforts of her true love to win her and take her out of the artifice and corruption he fails (though in this case he is the one who dies rather than she).  The party scenes gave off the same frenetic energy as those in the dance hall. This recurring deja vu was mildly irritating, but on the other hand...this is a Baz Luhrmann film.  I can't blame him for returning to the same themes that appealed to him in a previous movie.  After all, Spielberg and Burton and any number of other big directors have been making the same movies for years.  We can't help that certain stories appeal to us.  

But similarities to Moulin Rouge aside, this was a remarkably true adaptation of one of the most famous works of American literature in existence.  One of Baz's trademarks is also the trait that makes his movies so divisive; either you love him or you hate him.  I'm talking about the willing suspension of disbelief.  This is a principle you talk about in humanities classes--it is the implicit request of the author or director or whoever that you the audience member suspend your awareness of how the real world really is and you instead step into this story and accept the rules that exist here.  Most movies cultivate this in their viewers.  They attempt to make it as easy as possible for the audience to invest in and submerge themselves in their fictional world.  Baz, on the other hand, strives actively to reject it.  This is what is so jarring to people who don't love his movies.  The fact that things seem so very insincere and theatrical and just plain contrived.  Isn't he aware of it?  The answer is yes.  Yes he is.  He did it on purpose.  See, the very idea of movies and acting is about playing pretend and building and fantasy between the actors and the audience.  At least, that is what it is to Luhrmann (I'd link you to the interviews with him where he basically explains all this but I don't want to hunt them down).  So he wants his audience to be aware of what is happening.  He is constantly reminding them that this is all a big show, a big game of pretend, in the effort to force them to get involved.  They are watching a grand play and their reactions to it are an important part of the overall production.  I am one of the people who absolutely love this aspect of Luhrmann's movie-making.  And I think that his willingness to acknowledge the falseness, the facade of it all, is what made him possibly the only director who ever possibly could have adapted this specific book--widely deemed "un-filmable"--into a successful movie.  Of all its strengths, the text and Fitzgerald's gorgeous use of the English languages is arguably the greatest the book offers.  And Luhrmann is the one director who is capable of stopping in the middle of the film to just straight up put that text on screen.  Because none of it is real why not acknowledge that the whole thing is coming out of a book?  I thought it was fantastic.

As I said, I didn't study the book in high school.  I just read it on my own last year.  I didn't have anyone forcing me to analyze the symbolism of the book so, while I could see it was there, I didn't really care about it.  Obviously the green light was symbolic and probably there were some others and they probably meant something and it was probably really deep and interesting but I'm not picking up on it right away and I just don't really care.  When I invited Ben to come see the movie with us he confessed he hadn't read the book and he asked "Is it really such a classic?  What is so great about it?" and I'm not going to lie, I told him that to me the reason it is worth reading is solidly the aforementioned elevation of English to true art.  I mean, some of the sentences in that book literally made me catch my breath.  Like, I had to stop and reread them several times just to luxuriate in their craftsmanship.  I told him that was why it was worth reading.  The themes and such were fine, but nothing amazing.  I know.  This is shameful for a literature person like me to admit.  Especially when I follow it up with the confession that watching this movie completely changed my mind.  Suddenly the symbolism and the allegory and the significance of the thematic development was engrossing.  I'll definitely need to watch it several more times to work through it all.  And sure, I feel the appropriate shame that I needed the rather heavy hand of Luhrmann to pick up on these things.  But on the other hand, I'm going to blasphemously argue that this adaptation, true though it was, actually opened up some new and different analytic options.  If nothing else, watching actors color the characters with their own takes on motivations and reactions forces a reevaluation of the characters in this new light.  My point is that watching this adaptation opened up the original text to me and I am ok with that.  

So what is my final opinion?  The Great Gatsby is pure and unadulterated Luhrmann.  If you don't like his style then you're not going to like this movie any more than you've liked any of his other films.  If you do like his style then you won't be disappointed (equally you won't be surprised...he's not really breaking any new ground).  As I've said before, Baz Luhrmann is truly the master of the post-modern pastiche and surrealism.  While Moulin Rouge remains my favorite of Baz's movie thusfar, I still can't wait to add Gatsby to my collection.  

My thoughts on the ordination of women

My former roommate Andria has been getting deeply involved in the political sphere.  Pretty much every day my pinterest is flooded with her pins about equality and feminism and all sorts of good things.  She keeps a feminist blog.  She was recently featured as a guest blogger on youngmormonfeminist.org.  She was addressing the current debate about the ordination of women to the priesthood.  Here is the link to her post.  

As I was reading her ideas I came up with some of my own and I wanted to share them.  

Andria is firmly in favor of the ordination of women.  Her post systematically addresses each of the most common arguments against it.  First she addressed the claim "if God wanted women to have the priesthood then they would already have it."  I think she makes a valid point when she says that there have been very clear moments in the history of the saints where God has waited for us to ask before he has given us greater knowledge or light.  She says that perhaps God is waiting to grant women the priesthood, but he is waiting for us to be ready and to ask for that gift.  

As I said, I think she makes a fair point.  And I would look at Elder Holland's talk in this weekend's conference to confirm the principle of asking and questioning that I think many people often forget is fundamental to the LDS faith  (tangentially, just everyone please go and watch that talk again because it was one of the greatest talks I think I have ever heard).  But I think that there is a corollary that comes with that idea that Andria doesn't quite address.  As she says, sometimes the Lord is just waiting for us to be ready.  But...what if we aren't?  What then?  I think Andria would say that that is what the Ordain Women movement is all about.  Getting us ready so it can happen already.  And I can understand that.  But I think it is important to remember the balance--that is, no matter how ready you think the world and the church and the people are, if you truly believe that the Lord is in charge and that the Presidency are abiding by His wishes and it hasn't happened...well...then it isn't time.  I understand how defeatist that might sound.  I don't mean it that way.  All I mean is that, again as Elder Holland said, you have to keep perspective and remember what you do believe.  Don't abandon something you know to be good because it is not yet perfect.  I guess that is what I'm trying to say.  Don't get frustrated if things don't happen as quickly as you want.

Andria addresses men who dismiss the Priesthood as busy work and women who dismiss it as just another responsibility to add to their already maxed out schedules.  I'm slightly bemused at how she tells men who belittle the duties of the Priesthood that they deeply misunderstand the fundamental nature and significance of the authority they wield, whilst simultaneously telling women to calm down because it's not such a big deal in terms of the commitment required.  Be that as it may, I think I can respect at least the hesitancy of women on these grounds.  When I think about the possibility of adding priesthood duties to my life I literally think "awesome...another aspect of my life to feel guilty about for failing to maximize my potential..."  Perhaps it is petty of me to feel that way, but that is, unfortunately, the way I feel.  I don't think I'm "lame" for this.

And lastly, she addresses two points which I am going to combine.  She talks about the "men and women are different but equal" argument and the "men have the priesthood and women have motherhood".  Both of these are, to me at least, essentially rephrasings of the argument that men and women have different strengths and different roles to fill.  She asserts that if women are equal then they should be equally able to care for themselves or their families (or visiting teachees) if they do not happen to have a man handy to take care of the blessing and the household running--as many women do not.  She says that motherhood is not a true compliment to priesthood.  Fatherhood would be the true compliment of motherhood, and priestesshood of priesthood.  She very interestingly points out that motherhood is more a physical ability (no matter how nurturing a man might be and how rejecting of gender stereotypes...he simply cannot bake a miniature human within his lower abdomen; there is no oven there) and priesthood is a spiritual gift and discipline (a woman is absolutely capable of humbling herself and making herself in tune with the spirit).  I think that is a really fascinating distinction that I personally haven't really heard addressed before, and is definitely worth considering further.  

But this was my thought as I read her comments on these issues.  It was actually prompted by my dad and step-mom teasing me.  My dad texted asking me if I wanted the priesthood and I texted back absolutely; eventually we'd manage to excise men from the church entirely.  And I realized that that was actually an important thought.  

I'm going to go all historical on you now and take us all back to high school.  Do you guys remember Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education?  These were two of those landmark cases you learned about in your social studies class that shaped the history of America.  Specifically, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education dealt with the philosophy of "separate but equal" during the time of segregation (were gonna go ahead and pretend that time is past, despite this slightly gratifying (they're forcing change!) and simultaneously vomit-inducing (they even had to have this fight in 2013????) story that recently came to my attention...I just can't get side-tracked by that issue just now).  Essentially, in Plessy the courts legitimized segregation, claiming that as long as everything was equal it was totes fine to keep them dark kids separate from them light kids.  This was in 1896.  60 ish years later, Brown overturned this legal precedent, famously asserting "'Separate but equal' is inherently unequal".  Integration painfully ensued.

Those words.  "Separate but equal is inherently unequal."  I think those words have sunk deep into the American psyche since 1954.  I think they have really been at the heart of the seemingly endless struggle for equality for all the people (all of them...women, gays, blacks, immigrants, whatever).  See, we look at something like Plessy v. Ferguson and we can see exactly how awful that decision was.  There was no equal.   "Separate but equal" meant "We get the nice stuff and you get the shitty reject stuff."  During the days of "separate but equal" everything was horrible.  During the days of "separate but equal is inherently unequal" things started to get better.  And we've spent the last 60 years drilling that into our minds.  If it is separate, distinct, or apart then there is an inequality there.

At the same time, however, somehow that idea has paradoxically been fused with a sort of obsession with personal independence.  Equality has come to mean that every person is able to do every thing for themselves.  If you are dependent on another human being that means that they hold power over you and must therefore consider themselves superior to you.  Sometimes, of course, this means opportunity if not actual ability--"I could definitely learn to be a mechanic if I wanted.  I simply choose to invest my time elsewhere and pay this fellow to mechanic for me."  You get the point though.  Everyone must know they have the option to do everything for themselves if they wanted to.

So when I joked with my dad that ultimately we feminists were going to get rid of all the menz in the church and get things done ourselves it suddenly occurred to me that maybe we should think about that.  The Ordain Women movement is, as Andria said, about granting women the ability to take care of their and their families' priesthood needs themselves.  Which is good, right?  Equality is being able to take care of yourself by yourself.  You don't have to depend on anyone else; no one else has power over you.

Except I can't help but think about the idea of a community of saints.  That is the ideal toward which we are working, isn't it?  A loving, close-knit community of saints who care about and serve each other.  That is the goal.  If we are all striving to become fully independent so that no one needs anyone else, somehow that just doesn't feel like a loving community to me.  So let me ask you this.  What if the reason that women don't hold the priesthood has absolutely nothing to do with their abilities or the lack thereof?  What if it is all about teaching us to come together?  What if the whole point is that you can't do it alone?  Even that single mother.  Maybe the gift she needs isn't that she can bless her children herself; rather it is that some brother in the ward has the opportunity to come serve her and strengthen the bond between them.  

It requires a fundamental shift in perspective to look at the "gender" rolls of the church in this way.  It is a shift from viewing male and female interaction as competitive and antagonistic to complimentary and constructive.  I can understand why such a shift may well be impossible for a lot of women.  I don't think I will ever become a true feminist (a fact which I am completely ok with) because I will never see the battle in every day life like they do.  And I'm glad that they do.  Their efforts have materially improved my life.  But I think that this is an idea worth considering.  "Separate but equal is inherently unequal" may or may not be the great truth we believe it to be, but I submit this: "different but equal" is not the same evil as "separate but equal".  As some banal YA book once said: a key and a lock look completely different to the point that if you knew nothing about them you might never believe that they were companions; indeed, each serves a completely separate purpose.  Yet neither can fulfill that purpose without the other.  Sometimes differences bring us together so that we can combine our strengths and abilities and become better than either of us were apart.  Better than we ever would have suspected had we insisted on doing everything alone.

It is important to understand that I don't have any sort of fundamental problem with the idea of women being ordained to the Priesthood.  I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of lobbying the leaders of the church to affect changes we think are necessary (aren't we supposed to believe that they're inspired?) but I appreciate the importance of having the debate.  If the first presidency ever comes out with an announcement that women are to be ordained to the priesthood I will not have a problem with that, though I understand many likely will.  But I wanted to share my thoughts on this topic because they feel true and important to me.  I hope they do so to you.