merry christmas, belated.

Christmas was nice this year. Simple and thoughtful. Four items I received…quite nice. My class ring (recovered), a book about Christianity, a pearl necklace, and a digital photography book. This may very well be the best assortment of gifts I have ever received.

But like joe said...Christmas isn't about commercialism. It isn't about materialism. It isn't about Santa. It's not even about family and giving. It's about the most freakish event that occured in all of history, when God sent his Son -divinity- into this world-- sinfulness, confuisng, black, and messy. I really don't understand it, and i don't think I ever will., But that's what Christmas is. Wow.

2 a.m. excursions

fyi: there is a world after westminster...

the middle of things

I’m working again at Panera. And you know what? Despite all of my past complaints, all of my past stomachaches from cinnamon crunch bagels, all of my past migraines from picky customers and all of my past hazelnut-coffee-stained polos, it’s rather enjoyable. Not fun, not horrible. But stable. Predictable. Reliable. A bit tedious.

It didn’t always feel this way. When I started working a year ago it was simultaneously exciting and a pee-in-my-pants opportunity. I nearly died from fright the first day; handing people coins and bills and pouring coffee and cleaning toilets was definitely not my thing.

But now its not so bad. When I stopped trying to be the perfect cashier, the perfect cappuccino maker, I concomitantly stopped expecting to be the aforementioned…and somehow that paradigm shift moved me from the starting line to the middle. bill after bill, cup after cup, toilet after toilet…all of that repetition and practice and experience. In the end, that’s what counted.

And so now I am content. I am longer thrilled at the newness of creating I.C. Mocha masterpieces. And while part of me might be nostalgic for that youthful outlook I had at the beginning of All Things, I much prefer this uneventful consistency. After all, what’s so exciting about an I.C. Mocha?

I suddenly understand certain events that tainted first semester of my freshmen year in light of this quote: “Beginnings are scary….it’s what’s in the middle that counts.” First semester…dios mio, I don’t think I ever want to go there again.

It’s nice to know that I won’t…not in the same capacity, at least.

Everything was so new. New state, new time change, new dorm room, (x2), new people, new disposition (loneliness), new teachers, new age, new era. Depression and binging and more depression. Isolation and alienation and tears, tears, tears. My life, the enigma. My past and present and future, enigmas. Worry and fretting and wanting to transcend the newness…smother it, annihilate it. newness=pain.

But that’s over. I’m not going there again…the start is over. 2nd semester is beginning, and even though many things will change, I have my feet planted (though still shaky). With God’s grace, I will move from home plate to first base.

The Courtney of the Future will inevitably regret the Courtney of the Present saying this, but oh well. I can’t wait to feel stressed again. Stressed from homework, that is. For stress will be a product of work, and hopefully that work will be an indication that I have moved on from planning and dreaming and sitting and romanticizing….that I have moved from the beginning to the middle. It’s all about perseverance.

Being 18 is hard. At least it is for me.

But I cannot underscore how much hope I have. As Sandra Bullock once said, “Beginnings are scary. Endings are usually sad, but it's what's in the middle that counts. So, when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will.”

home

it's good to be back. my friends. my family. my city. my home.

jetplane

I sit in the slanted, narrow, rather uncomfortable airplane seats that so conveniently transform into flotation devices. (I wonder what it would be like to actually float on an airplane seat.)

I like airplanes. And I’m on my way home. To St. Louis. After a semester. Of college.

Yeah, so I don’t really have any profound thoughts at this moment regarding college, hence the fragments. That is how my thought-processing is functioning right now. My brain isn’t overloaded or burnt-out; in fact, it resents the prospect of a three-week hiatus, impatient for another semester. My brain has had enough under stimulus; my body has had enough 8-hour slumbers; my heart has had enough catharsis and enough self-reflection. I want to get out there and start mile 2 of the race. It’s a mile where the initial high wears off and the sweat drips and the muscles revolt.

I’m not a masochist, I swear.

I don’t want a new year. I don’t want new beginnings. I don’t want to start over. I’ve had enough of that; I want to keep going, “seguir, seguir, y seguir.”

all the small things

The lesson of today: It’s a small, small world.

Whoever claimed that the world is huge and insurmountable needs to think again. 6 billion (approximately?) people live in this world and I go to a college that is a 16 hour drive from my Midwest abode, yet I somehow run into familiar faces. A lot.

So last night I went to see the Nutcracker (live ballet+live music=euphoria for Courtney). Anyways, I accompanied my cousin to Greensboro Coliseum to see her nine-year-old friend, Mary Catherine, dance the prestigious role of Clara. I was in the auditorium for, oh, thirty seconds, and I ran into my college buddy Lander—cousin of Mary Katharine. So Kendra is friends with Lander’s aunt who is mother of Mary Catherine who is the recipient of both our flowers and Landers’. I hope my poor grammar doesn’t confound that convoluted connection…

It’s probably not a big deal, but I thought it was pretty cool.

I also found out that night that Kendra goes to a church called “Christ Community” which is the name of my own beloved Carolina church. Coincidence? We thought so, at first, but it’s actually the daughter church of the Good Shepherd, which has close relations with my cousin’s church.

Oh, and my pastor is the cousin of my high school friend’s father.

My cousin’s church friend has a myriad of friends at my church. We exchanged names and numbers.

There’s always a link. Or two. Or three. Or seventy-four and three links twice-removed.

I pondered this for awhile, as I am not used to knowing friends of cousins of pastors and what-not. Why?

I figured it was because I am young. And I figured it was also because I am the youngest. I have always been the backseat sister hanging out with friends of my older sis: college seniors and grad-students. I never really felt the need to get to know someone on a personal, one-on-one basis. Like a peer. This is because

I was content to sit
in the backseat
(imprudent)
and
just
listen
to the hum of the front-seat conversation
(intelligent)

But now I want to engage. Participate. Contribute. Partake. Chip in. Take part. Join. Share. Jump on the bandwagon. Interject. Butt in. Pipe up. Add to the pot.

I want to see the connections. I want to actually make the connections. I like it when it truly is a small world after-all.

belated/product of laziness/end of semester ennui...

I have one of those headaches that comes from sitting in the same spot for three hours straight. Boredom headaches. I get these all the time when I am driving to Chambana or sitting in the laundry room on the bottom floor of E-haus. I am so bored that I can’t even write an interesting blog entry. (Stupid laundry).

Okay, so I have no plan/outline/purpose for this entry. I probably won’t even publish it. I’m just bored. I think I might perhaps fill out a survey about my life. I think I might perhaps write a survey about my life and then answer the questions. Yes, indeed, that I will do.

And now, for something completely different…

1. Desired name: I used to be obsessed with some Rumanian circus performers because they had exotic names. They had exotic names AND they could jump from an elephant to a trapeze and back to the elephant again doing nifty somersaults in the meanwhile…I used to be angry that my parents weren’t Rumanian circus performers. Having an elephant as a best friend sounded fun, and besides, Aurelia is so much cooler than Courtney. That resentment was short-lived, however. In fifth grade I realized that my middle name was “Ann” and that is SO much cooler than the name of some Rumanian gymnast. So cool, in fact, that I scrawled “Ann” in loopy handwriting on all of my papers for school. Once again, that was short-lived, because I started getting zeros.
2. number of limbs: 4, I think
3. favorite quasi-big-brother- Josef
4. Favorite year of your life: who says that 18 is the peak of your life? Who deemed sweet sixteen “sweet?” I maintain that the terrible twos are, in fact, wonderful. Maybe not the best, but certainly rich. Too young to yield to the evils of socialization, too strong-willed to succumb to conformity and world-weariness, I knew who I was at age two. Oh, and I had a boyfriend named Timmy. He was swell. He once took me on a super-romantic date to McDonalds for a Happy Meal back in the day when you actually got a Happy Meal carton with cool handles.
5. a word that you absolutely cannot pronounce: well, we all know that I can’t say “moustache.” I used to horribly mispronounce “plethora,” thanks to my family. That ended when I read an English paper out loud in the eighth grade. People laughed. And pointed. And shunned me from the intellectual community.
6. Favorite Greek tyrant: Hippias was the hippest. He got ousted pretty quickly, though.
7. Favorite fricative: đ I like writing the d with a tail. It has class.
8. Favorite pet: my hermit crabs from my childhood. They had glow-in-the-dark shells and they would get naked and creep people out. It was freaking awesome.
9. chocolate milk or surge? Chocolate surge?
10. hookah or cloves? I have yet to try the former. Aladdin’s is calling me. Cloves are pretty sweet (no pun intended).
11. favorite pantry: the one at Karah’s house, of course! IT HAS STAIRS!
12. goals in life: to find a goal. I have a passion to find a passion. I’d also like to go to Djibouti, because I write about it enough. I’d like to skip on the Great Wall of China and take a photography tour of South America. I also want to get married. And be fluent in Spanish. And raise my kids to be multi-lingual, because I also envy international students have spoken five languages since their inception. Oh, and since I probably won’t do any of these things, I’d like to learn how to be satisfied in the real-world…right here, right now, in the laundry room on the bottom of E-haus.

FYI: Don't buy apples from Ram's Head Market. They go rancid in a day. And bubble.

reductions and tenth-grade papers

“Altamirano: Your Holiness, a surgeon to save the body must often hack off a limb. But in truth nothing could prepare me for the beauty and the power of the limb that I had come here to sever.”
-from The Mission

Reductions were colonies settled by the Catholic order of the Jesuits in the Tupi-Guarani areas of Portuguese Brazil and Spanish America in order to "civilise" and cathequise the native populations of South America. They came to be considered as virtually independent states; this, combined with their resistance to enslavement and the absolute dominion of Crown representatives led to their ultimate repression and the expulsion of Jesuits from the Portuguese Empire….
….The missions ended in 1767, with the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Spanish and Portuguese empires. The Guarani returned to the forest. All that remains today from that period are ruins of some of the Reductions, and the indigenous language, the Guaraní, which is the only native language to be the official language of a South American nation: Paraguay.
-from “Reductions,” Wikipedia Online


In tenth grade I wrote a twelve-page paper for my European Literature that described the bloody history of Ireland—a history between the oppressors and the oppressed. I condensed the entire history of Ireland into twelve paltry pages.

The paper was pretty awful. I don’t really know anything about Ireland.

But even though my paper didn’t do justice in underscoring the complexity of the ongoing struggle among Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, I do believe that even my unripe fifteen-year-old mind grasped the ugliness and pain concomitant with conquest.

It’s ugly.

I’m not going to delve into a multi-page rampage against the ugliness of colonization. I really don’t know much about colonization…I’d like to take more history classes to get the facts straight. I’d like to read more books like Things Fall Apart; I’d like to watch more movies like The Mission.

Colonization and conquest and imperialism are subjects that really aren’t taught much in high school; and if taught at all, they are taught from a euro-centric standpoint. Why must we study history in a straight line, as if everything occurred in a neat, tidy string of causes-and-effects? Why must we read the Great European Novels and analyze the Best American Literature? Why was the only non-western book required in my high school curriculum “Cry, the Beloved Country?”

There’s so much more to the world than is conveyed in the last four-hundred years of Western history.

English is my only language. Apart from Spanish and perhaps a bit of Mandarin or Korean, it’s the only language I hear about 98% of the time.

Nearly 1/6 of the world’s languages are contained on the small land mass known as Papua New Guinea. More than 700 indigenous languages are spoken in that country, whose motto is “Unity in Diversity.”

(Who said that America was the Mosaic?!)

At any rate, this is just food for thought. I haven’t yet refined my thoughts. I don’t think it’s really possible…conquest and imperialism and war and hatred really aren’t subjects that can be summed up profoundly on a college student’s blog. I wish I had the right answers….heck, I wish I had the right questions so other people could come up with the right answers. I’m just disturbed, that’s all. And I don’t really know what to do with that feeling. I know that tonight I will study for my Greek History final exam, turn out the lights on my 20-dollar lamp from Target, and sleep in a happy dreamland of sugarplums and fairies. I don’t like that dream-land, but I’m not really doing anything to “fix” the problems of the past, now, which still exist today…even though clothed in different garb.

How, then, shall we live?

star in the sky, falling.

overkill

I don’t like when things are matchy.
I used to like matchy things.
But now I don’t like things that are matchy.

I saw a girl yesterday wearing a pink hat, a dark pink coat, a brown shirt, khaki pants with a pink sash, and pink shoes. All shades of pink were slightly different and, in any other context, would have complemented each other quite nicely. But this particular combination was, to quote a beloved Westminster alumna, “heinous.” The sad thing is that she’s not alone in this ostensibly “fashionable” trend. Even the college-sweatshirt crowd matches. Baby blue sweatshirt, jeans, baby blue shoes, make-up. Why bother looking “grungy” if you have make your “grunginess” match? Besides, make-up and sweatshirts do not mix.

All things in moderation.

It’s funny how when things are too carefully contrived, they look fake. Cardboard cut-outs in a two-dimensional world.

I used to be matchy. In fact, I once o.d’d on being matchy. And organized. Even my organizational supplies had to match. I don’t think you would have liked me very much…maybe you don’t now, but that doesn’t bother me. Pink chair, pink and green bedspread, green trashcan, green storage bins, pink and green pencil cases, pink, green, pink, green, green, pink, green, pink.

I don’t even like pink….

…But things just had to match.

Don’t get me wrong, I approve when things match. Christmas would be rather dull without the reds and greens and silvers and golds. Weddings would be quite ostentatious of participants came clad in corsets and togas and fighter pilots uniforms. Some things need to match.

But not all things have to match.

That’s why I’m quite fond of the young British lad in Love Actually. His sweaters are pretty cool…

Did you know?

Pythagoras believed in reincarnation.
Pythagoras was a vegetarian.

Food for Thought (no pun intended): How do these two facts about Pythagoras relate?

hi 
ha. i did not mean to post this picture. honestly. i was merely tinkering with "hello," a supposedly "simple" blogging device. anyways, i'm not entirely sure how to "unpost" this, so you will simply have to put up with my ineptitude. padecer=the verb of the day.

past, present, future

"Worry"
We worry and wonder
what lies yonder.
We weep and ponder,
What lies under

Our very feet.
What of the heat?
The molten clay?
And yesterday?

Man is born curious,
Too serious
Delirious,
And furious.

Let come what may.
If we can't stop it,
Let life hold sway,
And try to live it.

Enjoy the day,
And the darkness.
Live as we may
in Life's starkness.

(Thanks Grandpa Roy).

a spanish lit poem is on my mind

Cuento histórico en un solo idioma sin moraleja
Saez Burgos

Había una vez
y dos son tres
y todavía es,
un pedazo pequeño de la tierra
en medio de la mar:
aquel pedazo se llenó de indios
desnudos como el bronce bajo el sol.
Pasaron vientos y pasaron olas
y llegaron en barcos unos blancos, y indios de
bronce
bajo el sol
lucharon y lucharon y murieron, y los blancos de barbas
bajo el sol
mataron y mataron y vencieron.
Viva la Cruz y Viva el rey
llenos de sangre porque así es la ley!
De una tierra más grande y más poblada se trajeron los
blancos unos negros
desnudos de caoba bajo el sol. Les pusieron cadenas, los
marcaron,
les hicieron beberse su sudor.
Por el Rey y por la Cruz llenos de odio rezan
a Jesús.



Segunda Parte

Había una vez
y dos son tres
y todavía es,
aquel mismo pedazo de la tierra
en medio de la mar;
aquel pedazo lleno está de gente
vestidos y mezclados bajo el sol.
Pasaron luchas y pasaron guerras
y llegaron en buques unos rubios, y criollos vestidos
bajo el sol
lucharon y lucharon; se rindieron, y los rubios
rosados
bajo el sol mataron y mataron se rieron.
Viva Wall Street y Santa Claus «and obey bastards this is
the law»
De su tierra más grande y más poblada se trajeron
los rubios unas bases
llenitas de bombas bajo el sol; les pusieron soldados y
cañones
e hicieron todo esto por su «sport.»
Por Santa Claus y Wall Street marchan hacia la guerra
«dirty spiks.»

Había una vez
y dos son tres
y todavía es . . .


wow. I attempted to translate this, and it lost all of its power. So I will just leave it as it is.

This may be, perhaps, my favorite latin-american poem.

Burgos is right on target…humanity is afflicted with a common plight, a common “badness” that transcends time and transcends historical context. We all have the same crap, the same selfishness, the same desire to conquer and be “right” and be “powerful.” Whether that “crap” is manifested in the guise of religion or law, the heart of the matter remains unchanged. The history of Puerto Rico is a sad one. The Spanish established power in Puerto rico and conquered in the name of religion “mataron y mataron y vencieron…aka they killed and the killed and they conquered.” Then we came, imperial America, and did the same thing, only this time we laughed in the name of “law” and “sport”. “mataron y matron se rieron…aka they killed and they killed and they laughed.” For Santa Claus and Wall Street is the law.

It’s not just America’s problem, though. It reflects something deeper and darker. Something human.

for real this time

Alas, the major of choice has changed again. As of today (and hopefully henceforth?): photojournalism and spanish. though the camera is not in my hands, that reflection is mine.

gnarly trees have much to say.

Two's and Three's

I like to take pictures of myself.

So on Saturday night I opened Blue Like Jazz and sporadically decided to read the chapter entitled “Alone” (on the premise that the previous one looked entirely too dull, though Don Miller is not really known for being lackluster). Reading about how Don began to hallucinate and talk to Emily Dickinson when he lived as a hermit in the mountains did strange things to me. (Did he know that I turn on the TV just so I have noise in my room? Did he know that I sit with random people at the library just so I can feel like a human and not a ghost that lives in room 654, sola y desanimada?) Weird. I had the impulsive to open my window, wake up the entire 6th floor of E-haus, and urge my somewhat reclusive suitemates to frolick in the rain with me at 2:00 a.m.

We aren’t meant to be alone.

I suppressed this thought for, well, eight hours or so.

While sitting down in Sunday school the next day, the pastor invited us to turn to Hebrews 10:24. For those of you, like myself, who haven’t memorized the books of Hebrews (unlike…Katie Myers? Ben Inman?), Hebrews 10:24 says:

24And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

The pastor then proceeded to discuss the essentialness of community—specifically, a Christian community (i.e. Church), but relationships in general, as well.

I thought of Emily Dickinson. And Ernest Hemingway.

(You can die from loneliness).

Later that evening, perhaps ten hours later, I decompressed with my fellow decompressee on the 5th floor of E-haus to watch Grey’s Anatomy, the climax of my Sunday evenings. (Seriously. That show is hella tight). Grey’s Anatomy is notorious for it’s quasi-thought-provoking “themes” and taglines. Guess what the theme of the evening was?

“No man is an island.”

Third time’s a charm, eh?

I had just heard essentially the same message three times. Man isn’t meant to be alone. We are made for companionship; why else do we talk to our dogs, or our televisions, or our petrocks when we are alone? Why else do so many college students lose themselves to their I-pods when walking alone?

Playmates, classmates, roommates, housemates, inmates, spouses, accomplices, bingo-buddies.

Life comes in two’s and three’s and five’s and ten’s and thirty-seven point five’s.

Not one’s.

english is a dirty theif

Ode to Words
A Spanish mosquito
landed
on an Italian artichoke
wishing
that it were a German pretzel.
The Slavic intelligentsia
swallowed
some Dutch sloop
longing
for some Hindi punch
(to wash it
down).

and we wonder
why
the immigrant
could not learn
english.

So English is totally an unoriginal language. We just steal words from other cultures. Here are some interesting, random observations from my linguistics textbook:

-The counterparts of the english words cow, calf, sheep, have the french origins of beef, veal, mutton, and pork. (still...i think braised sheep and cow stew sound enticing).
-Words stolen (the book says "borrowed") from Scandinavian: anger, cake, call, ege, fellow, gear, get, hit, husband, low, lump, raise, root, score, seat, skill, skin, take, their, they, thrust, ugly, window, wing
-Words stolen from Italians: motto, artichoke, balcony, casino, mafia, malaria
-Words stolen from German: poodle, kindergarten, seminar, nooodle, pretzel
-Words stolen from Dutch: sloop, cole slaw, smuggle, gin, cookie, boom
-Words stolen from Slavic languages: czar, tundra, polka, intelligentsia, robot
-Words stolen from Hindi: thug, punch, shampoo, chintz.

Fascinating, eh?

happy december?

The weather in North Carolina is absolutely ridiculous.
I woke up to a fifty degree "winter" and a radiant, somewhat oppresive sun.

North Carolina needs to talk to Illinois.

I deem the first day of December a day for tomato soup, hot grilled cheese, rosy cheeks, blown puffs of visible warmth in the air, and steamed apple cider. In an effort to spite the weather and greet December appropriately, I dressed myself in black tights, a warm, mauve, winter-eque skirt, a black cardigan, a knit scarf, and my fancy winter coat.

Yeah, so I pretty much discarded my coat, took off my cardigan, and shoved my scarf in the front pouch of my backpack.

Oh well. As much as I yearn for fireplaces and that cozy winter ambience, I used this autumn-like day to finally take pictures of the UNC campus.

And i had a glorious evening in my room with an open window...

But I am ready for a change. summer was too long...fall was overlooked, and now i just want winter. Please come soon.

asleep in back, my youth

Any day now hows about getting out of this place. Any ways.
Got a lot of spare time. Some of my youth and all of my senses on overdrive.
What's got into me? Can't believe myself!
Must be someone else. Must be.
Don't play Coltrane you will sleep at the wheel
Eyes on-horizon. Don't sleep at the wheel. Any Day Now
-elbow