I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The starts go waltzing our in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
- Sylvia Plath
Who needs to wander a spook alley when we are all walking haunted houses?
Fell down a rabbit hole a few days ago when I found the Flickr profile for the British Library. (Thanks random Facbook post!) Proceed with caution. Once you're in, you might spend hours browsing through the galleries like I did. How can you resist beautiful painted papers that were found on the inside of some of the books? :
Also, things get a little weird you guys. Especially in the kids section. Here are some of the favorite images I found:
The first time I dressed up since before my mission! Katie and I had big plans to dress up as dead soccer players.
Most girls try to have cute/clever costumes. I usually rely on the un-dead. My favorite costume being a dead unicorn. Classic.
Anyway, we had about everything ready, when Katie saw on Facebook that one of her friends had tickets for the Real Salt Lake Playoff game that night.
AWESOME.
Our makeup was topnotch, we used lipstick to make our eyes look bloody, and put botches of eyeshadow all over our face so it looked bruised. Great.
The game was superb, we won 3-0. There were some fabulous costumes. We met a guy dressed as Satan. He tried to take his pants off for our photo with him. I wouldn't be surprised if he's related to this guy:
There were a plethora of costumes on campus today. A sight to behold. We had a ward FHE and I went as Katniss Everdeen. Needless to say, hardly anybody knew who I was. Oh well. Just give them a years time, and everyone will be dressed as Katniss. If you are still in the Halloween mood, then you should check out this story by Dave Eggers:
It's the first story, and just a few minutes long. I listened to it while I was jogging up to the Y. It was the middle of the day, bright and sunny. Gave me chills. A good listen. Here is the transcript as a last resort. Did you know that you could get transcripts of This American Life? I did not. Awesome. Warning: Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
When I was a kid in the suburbs of Chicago, adventure meant Quetico Provincial Park, up on the border of Minnesota and Canada. The name implies that the place was small, but Quetico is a million acre nature preserve, so big you could go days and days without seeing another soul.
We would go on camping trips up there, weeks of canoeing and portaging, seeing bears and moose and deer, sleeping under star-soaked skies. The park was isolated and so pristine that you could actually drink the water straight from the lakes. But I won't be going back to Quetico anytime soon. Not after what happened to a girl name Francis Brandywine.
Francis was 17 at the time, black haired and with a reckless nature, determined always to leave the well-trod path, to break new ground and be alone. A few years ago, Francis was up in Quetico with her family. They were in a remote part of the park, camped on the shore of one of the deeper lakes, a lonely body of water carved millions of years ago by a passing glacier. The deep part of this particular lake was rumored to be about 300 feet.
One night, after her family went to bed, Francis took the row boat out, planning to find a quiet spot in the middle of the lake, lay on the bench of the boat, look up at the sky, and maybe write in her journal.
So she left the shore, rowed for about 20 minutes, and when she felt satisfied that she was over the lake's deepest spot, she lay down on the bench and looked up at the night sky. The stars were very bright, and the aurora borealis was shimmering like a neon lasso. She was feeling very peaceful.
Then she heard something strange. It was like a knock. Clop, clop. She sat up, guessing that the boat had drifted to shore and run aground. But she looked around the boat, and she was still a half mile from shore. She leaned over the side to see if she'd hit anything, but she saw nothing-- no log, no rocks. She lay back down.
She told herself it could be any number of things, a fish, a turtle, a stick that had drifted under the boat. She relaxed again and soon fell into a contented reverie. She had just closed her eyes when she heard another knock. This time it was louder, a crisp plop, plop, plop, like the sound of someone knocking hard on a wooden door, except this knocking was coming from the bottom of the boat.
Now she was scared. She leaned over the side again. It had to be an animal. But what kind of animal would knock like that, three quick, loud knocks in rapid succession? Her mouth went dry. She held onto each side of the boat, and now she could only wait to see if it happened again. The silence stretched out. A few minutes passed, and just as she began to think she'd imagined it all, the knocks came again, but this time louder. Bam, bam, bam.
She had to leave. She lunged for the oars. She got them in place and began rowing. The water was very calm, so she should've made quick progress. But after rowing feverishly, she looked around, and she realized that she wasn't moving at all. Something was keeping her exactly where she was.
Again she tried rowing, she rowed and rowed on the verge of tears, but she went nowhere. She stopped. She was exhausted. Her heavy breathing filled the air. She cried. She sobbed. But soon she calmed herself again, and the boat was silent again, for 10 minutes, then 20.
Again, she tricked herself into thinking she'd imagined it all. But just like before, just when she was beginning to get a grip on herself, the knocking came again, this time as loud as a bass drum. Boom, boom, boom. The floorboards of the boat shook with each knock. Now she was so shaken she started making questionable decisions. The first was to lower one of the oars into the black water, trying to feel if there was some land mass, even some creature she could touch. As soon as the oar broke the water's surface, though, she felt a strong, silent tug at the other end, and the oar was pulled under.
She screamed, she jumped back, and now she had no options. All she could do was sit, and hope, and wait-- wait for the morning to come, wait for whatever was going to happen to happen. The knocking went on through the night. She passed the time writing in her notebook, and it's only because of this notebook that we know what happened that night. Frances can't tell us. She was never seen again.
The boat was found on shore the next day, empty but for the journal. On those pages were her frantic jottings, all written in her distinctive handwriting, all but the last page. When the journal was found, that page was still wet, and on it were four words, looking as if they'd been written quickly, with a muddy finger. They said, "I did knock first." Hope you had a Happy Halloween!
Happy Halloween!
Since All Hallows Eve falls on a Monday, I'm sure that most of you will be celebrating this weekend. Here is a mix to get your party started right.
Man.
This was just supposed to be a few songs for you guys, but it turned into something much more. I spent WAY too much time on it, so you have to listen to the whole thing. I even made sure to pick 13 tracks so that it is extra spooky.
John Waters is awesome. He's been rocking that mustache forever.
7. Have you heard of Julian Berntzen? Do you know how difficult it is to find his songs to listen to? Muy difficult. So you just click on that link and appreciate what I found, even if it is in Chinese. hahaha
10. I've been listening to this so a lot a lot a lot in preparation for the new Twilight movie.
12. I listened to this song a lot my 2nd year at Jacob Lake.
This is a post on death and dying.
Death is in the air. The death of summer. The death of freedom. The death of uncertainty. Pretty dramatic, huh?
Ha.
As I realized that the warm months were slowly coming to a close, I found that my choices in literature were had a morbid thread running through it. I listened to this book on tape:
This was one of my favorite books. I first began reading it on a plane back from D.C. The book took me a while to read, and for some reason, it struck a chord. But the audio version almost killed it for me. The narrator chose to deliver most of the writing as snide and clever. I didn't like that choice. It bothered me so much, that I traded off between reading and listening so that the book could maintain some of it's charm. I am quite sensitive. But ANYWAY. Spoiler: People die. Actually, you know right from the beginning of the book. Hannah Schneider is dead, Blue Van Meer found her that way. She leads us through the series of unfortunate events with name dropping and detailed references on the way. It is a nice fall read, but not a nice fall listen
I then listened to Chuck Klosterman's "Killing Yourself to Live". A much better choice to listen to.
Dr. Buonforte, one of my anthropology teachers, has taught the importance of seeing photos of the authors you are reading. Otherwise, you may build up a false image of them in your mind. So here is what he looks like.
Yep.
Pretty much how I thought he would look.
This was a great book on tape, all thanks to the narrator. His name is Patrick Lawlor. I feel like he is a guy who read this book, and said to all his friends, "Dude! this is an awesome book, let me read it to you!" So I'm saying, it doesn't really sound like Chucks voice, but the voice of some guy who really likes him and his writing. I especially liked the way he said "anyway". Kind of like this: ANYWAY - the pitch is high- AN- low-Y-middle-WAY; and very forced. wish I paid more attention in the dramatic linguistics class in high school. Then I could write exactly what it sounds like. Then I could explain to you what this is: É™ . Did you know there is a linguistics club at BYU? ANYWAY...
This book made me think about several things. First, if I were so inclined, would I be a "pot/creedence contingent" person or a "coke/interpol" person? I listen to more interpol, but I would like to think I am more good-natured, like the former category. But considering the hardest thing I will allow my body to ingest is Dr. Pepper I would probably make up a whole new category. I also really liked his section comparing Radioheads Kid/A and 9/11. Trippy. The book is not perfect, and his language is a bit loose for my post mission ears, and I really wouldn't want to have Klosterman as a boyfriend; but the audiobook is the bees knees.
OH.
I didn't really tell you what is was about. Klosterman goes all around to where rock stars have died. It seems like it is a rock rule that if you die an "interesting" death, you reach legendary status; more so than if you had simply aged gracefully. Hence the title. Rock star's music really comes "alive" after they are dead.
It's just like this poem I found by Emily Dickenson:
A death-blow is a life-blow to some Who, till they died, did not alive become; Who, had they lived, had died, but when They died, vitality begun.
Why is that? I will always remember NOT going when Elliott Smith played Redfest (which I think was his final show ever). I was just an awkward high school kid, and I don't think any of my friends at the time were really into him. Plus, the idea of college students being there was terrifying to me. I think he died a year later, and my stomach plummeted and my heart lodged up in my throat when I heard about it. But still, I wonder if people would still think of him as such a wonder if he were alive today? I think that I would.
Which bring me to another master of death that I have already mentioned, Emily Dickenson.
I've had a book of her poems lying around for literally 10 years that I hadn't gotten around to reading till last month. Interestingly, of the few bits of poetry I've memorized in my life, it is hers that I never forget.
I like a look of Agony, Because I know it's true— Men do not sham Convulsion, Nor simulate, a Throe—
The Eyes glaze once—and that is Death— Impossible to feign The Beads upon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung.
Quite something. That and "She walks in beauty like the night..." blah blah blah. I memorized that one to the tune of Weezer's "Butterfly". ANYWAY. I've never been much into poetry, so this is a pretty good start.
Well enough of this heavy stuff.
I'm still alive, in my second to last fall semester at BYU. There is so much to do. More updates coming. Thanks for being patient with me.
