georginasand | Entries tagged with old guard -musings

"Because it is beautiful, it is truly useful" ~ Antoine de St. Exupery The Little Prince

Story's are like...actually, no they aren't. They aren't like anything and more importantly they don't do anything. They just are. They are stories and we tell them because it is in our nature to do so. Because we need them. But they don't fight crime, they don't solve injustice, and they can't jump over tall buildings in a single bound. And they don't need to.

It drives me bonkers that we seem impelled, as an intellectual society, to justify our stories. That we can't just put them into the world and let them be. That we have to interrogate them: what does this story do for us? Why is significant? Why is it significant now? Here?

The story doesn't need to function as anything besides a story. Something that people, for a moment, can simply share. Like communion. People don't analyze communion (Well, okay, religion majors do.) But in the moment of ~~communionizing~~ communing, it just is. Bread, wine, bada-boom, bada-bing, and you have something to share.

Stories function, not as microcosms or as metaphors or a symbols, but as little pieces of beauty that can be shared among people. A sort of communion, between people who know each other well, people who have thousands of years of history together but still tell the stories because that is what reminds them of what holds them together. A megillah. And orange on a Seder plate. Or between people who have never met but in passing, who sit together in a dark theater--don't sit together, sit six rows apart and never so much as make eye contact--but because now they know the same story, have something to share.

I remain,
Georgie

“The most annoying thing about the saying "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is that it is usually true” ~ Anon Y. Mous

shamelessly stolen from McSweeney's:

Dear Herr. Velociraptor,
Thanks for ruining my ability to take reading quizzes or objective English tests without serious psychological trauma. Seriously, the words "you could have gotten an A instead of an A- on that test, but you were thinking too hard" escaped the lips of my current English professor (who has a soul, by the way).

Also, it turns out that I'm competent, borderline smart. Thanks for holding out on me.

Sincerely,
Georgie

Dear 18 years of Christian Science Sunday School,
I. thought. we. were. over. It would be nice if I could take simple precautions for my health without the crushing guilt. I'm not trying to cheat; I'm trying to be careful. I know it; you know it, now leave me alone.

I turn twenty on Saturday. Goodbye.

Sincerely,
Georgie

Dear Ed. Psych Professor,
I know this may come as a shock to you, but I am a mature, independent adult. I don't want you to like me; I want you to respect me. If I am wrong, tell me. And please, please, do it without all this "I value your contribution" nonsense. If I'm wrong, how valuable was my contribution, really? Also, you may not have a personal space bubble but I do.

Sincerely,
Georgie

"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning." ~Bill Gates

It's amazing how, in strange small ways, the world just seems to make sense. I think things like these are the last thread letting me believe in an ordered universe.

In Intro to Sociology we were discussing Max Weber and his work on religion and economics. The short story is that he studied five major religions and discover that only one could have given rise to the efficient bureaucratic capitalism we know today. He published his results under the title "The Protestant Ethic," you can imagine what the result was. But if you think about it, Protestantism is the most efficient way to get to heaven. No confession, no mitvot, no "Patience, my blue friend." Who knew that, among other things, the Grace of Gd, was so efficient.

Note (for people who don't know me in real life, because "woah, there are people I don't know reading my journal!!!"): This is by no means an endorsement of Protestantism, or a degradation of any other religion, including the force. My personal theology looks a bit like what Jesus, George Fox, Peter Abelard, and Hillel in a smoothie maker might look like, so I'll poke fun at anybody, because I'm probably poking at myself.

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Between "Durkheim" and "The Law"

"The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists." ~Antoine de Saint Exupery Le Petit Prince

At the moment I could think of several thousand reasons why I like President Obama at this moment in time, but you don't have all day and I have a psychology reading to do. But here are two that may not have been mentioned yet.

I am glad to have an orator in office again. He ripped off Lincoln, Washington, Shakespeare...and the Bible, but he did it well and he understood what it meant. Despite the snarky tone of the rest of this letter, I am incredible proud of him.

I am glad to have a family in the White House. Variety page analysis of the First Lady's wardrobe seems a little petty in these trying times, but since we haven't got a Queen to take social cues from, what's a country (not to mention Variety page editor) to do. In fact we don't have a Royal Family to taunt or adore depending on the time of day or quality of cake, so to have a real first family (devoted parents, cute kids, a dog) may be more valuable in times like these than in others. Even Bucannah brought his sister to be his first lady, and Jefferson's daughter filled in for her late mother. It's nice to know that our president has a family and is grounded in something besides the sludge of policy. If nothing else they will be a distraction, memoires will be written and it will all work out in the end.

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: Washington DC
Current Music: Hail to the Chief

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one” ~C.S. Lewis

So I have come to the conclusion that it is the people with whom we have life, not blood, in common that are our true families. Those who would go to the ends of the earth for us, knowing only that we would do the same for them.

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: content
Current Location: home

"Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs." ~Pearl Strachan

It has always amazed me how powerful small or otherwise insignificant words can be. Take the commitment evading "sort of:"

-- "I like pancakes, sort of." Great. You'll probably eat them if forced to by the mafia, but it wouldn't be your first choice.

-- "I diffused the bomb, sort of." Okay, is it safe for me to eat those pancakes, or should I run for my life?

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: amused

"When I speak Polish now, it is infiltrated, permeated, and inflected with English in my head. Each language modifies the other, crossbreeds with it, fertilizes it. Each language makes the other relative. Like everybody, I am the sum of my languages." ~Eva Hoffman

Although explaining that I was going to school in Minnesota (where, yes, it is cold. You know no one have ever told me that.) involved a lot of jokes including the words "Yeah, sure, you betcha" I had no idea that in some ways I really would have to learn new language.

And one that isn't particularly regional.

I came from a place where “onward into glory” is a directive not limited to battlefields and crusades, a group of friends for who the plea for “Clorox and a brain brush” is an appropriate one when you really didn’t want that image in your head, a theater where “one, two, six” is proper counting, and a debating society where more than art is “sketch.” In my family it is understood that “absonotely” means “no, I don’t want cream cheese on my bagel, thank you” and “zoomean” is a proper, albeit archaic, perversion of museum.

So now I live on a floor with people from all the various regions of dorkdom. From them I have learned that “intense” isn’t just for camping, and “epic” isn’t just for poetry. I have met people who really do say “dangnabbit” and “tarnation.” People who, like me, understand the subtleties of snark (sarcasm with more cynicism and more love) and the use of punctuation as nouns (question mark?), but also are quicker than I to identify fails, of both the epoch and at life variety. And we’ve ended up at a college where a class pass/fail involved "Scrunching" it (because grades of S/Cr/NC), and that living "off" can mean in Europe, but "off, off" is in an apartment two blocks from campus. Where "floorcest" is a real moral dilemma, but streaking, apparently, isn't. (I have not, will not...ever.)

But, as any sociologist will tell you (hi Yoda) that language acquisition is a collective process, so as a group we've replaced couture with “arb garb” (fashion for the ‘intense’ campers) and we have forged a universal noun in the form of "to yoink". (In English: I yoink. In French: je yoinke. In German; du yoinkst). We’ve learned to "fudge that chicken" rather than any other f-explicative of choice. We’ve combined pigeon Spanish (vamoose) and vector physics to “put out moose in vam direction” and quite often “let’s put our net vector in the ____ (usually dinner) direction.” We’ve also learned that actions speak louder than words, that the Mulderesque Dodgeballers facial expressions (of the “oh, y’all are pathetic” variety) are not only louder, but also more frequent.

I am seeing first hand the making of a very unique dialect.

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Location: Dorkdom
Current Music: Spanish Panic

"A million people can call the mountains a fictions, yet it need not trouble you to stand atop them" ~xkcd

General Gage hadn't seen anything yet. The state that clinched the election of the first minority President voted to limit marriage to union between a man and a woman. That's the world turned upside down.

I remain eternally baffled,
Georgie

Current Mood: surprised

"Past tense means you used to be nervous" ~ Anonymous (Once I read a quote credited to Anon and spent ten minutes on wikipedia trying to figure out who he was)

The boys on my floor, particularly the Flying Dutchmen, have made a habit of trying to scare the living daylights out of me, would probably scare the dead daylights out of me too, but they aren't that ambitious. This is a habit that they practice at any moment since they learned that I am a bit on the jumpy side. Stepping through the steam of a recently put out fire to appearing horizontally around my door frame, if it will make me scream or dissolve into a fit of giggles they will do it. This of course embarrasses me to no end, because...well I like to think of myself as a strong and brave person, which I am in some cases, but this is not one of them.

I am jumpy because I am a ridiculously tense person. Merry is the only person I know who is more tense, and only because her body is on crusade to drive her up a wall. That and she watches more sci-fi than I do, so he brain rushes to worst case scenarios only slightly faster. Part of why I am so tense is physcological. I am terrified of people, I don't know why... so hands off Freud, and it is the natural tendancy to tense up around things that scare you. Let's face it, I spend a lot of time around people. I associate relaxing with letting my guard down. It has only been of late that I can handle hugs, thanks to several really touchy friends and their sheer persistance, but before I couldn't tell the difference between a hug and an outright attack. The other half is physical, muscle memory. I have going on ten years of ballet teaching teaching me not to be relaxed. And yes, I understand the irony that you have to be relaxed to dance and that I dance to blow off steam, but as much as is about art and asthetics, ballet is about pain, and stretching, and fighting to make your body do something that it shouldn't be able to do,but you're a dancer so by sheer force of will and a little bit of theatrical magic, you'll do it. So on top of the fact that my muscles have largely forgotten how to relax, I equate relaxing with giving up.

Being uptight is how I get things done. My former co-costume crew-chief has asked me innumerable times (read: at least once) to "go smoke some weed and mellow out." She was kidding, but she wasn't. I don't get stressed, but I get focused (that is to say, zen damnit) and then I am a not so relaxed force to be reckoned with.

So as the Flying Dutchman has started this crusade to get me to relax, I've thought a lot about why I do or do not relax. On the one hand I know that being able to relax would make me a better dancer, a much better actor (and I quote the Actor's Neutral Expert of the TAWT acting workshop: Everyone holds tension in somewhere, Georgie just holds it everywhere), a more personable person, and generally less nervous. But at the same time, it's like the previously mentioned thorns, being uptight is so much a part of who I am I don't know if
I could bear to part with it.

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: relaxed (or not)
Current Music: Death Cab for Cutie - Cath...

" There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good" ~Edwin Denby

I think I wrote a story, I'm not sure, but it has a beginning, middle, and end and it's fiction, so it must be a story.

The strange thing is that I created them, but I don't know who these people are. I don't know how they are related, or why the dance to begin with. I can guess, but I don't know for sure. I don't know why they hated each other, or when, or how long ago they stopped, or why.

But here is is.

( The Thing About Swing )

Current Mood: shocked

"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful." ~ Buddha

There will be a forthcoming letter on what a total box of wierd that college theater ( I know it's hell week, my analogies are falling apart at the seams), but for now:

I slept very little yesterday, I may not sleep today, I accidently slept though my first class and then didn't go to the last half to finish homework, I have a paper and a half due tomorrow, I talked about shakedown, and I kind of want to curl up in a ball and cry, but then the house lights go down and the stage manager calls "places" and I remember why I do this: becasue it will always be worth it.

And there is something about theater people. Whether we mean or not, we have ingrained gratitude into our language. When time a time or places is called we say "Thank you...ten minutes" to show that we heard them, when a director thanks us for our work we don't say "you're welcome" we say "thank you" because we know we've been paid a compliment. And even when back stage must be quiet, even when we "are on standby, so you better shut up, darn it!," you can here thank you's whispered through the darkness, and through head sets, through significan glances and nods of the head. Because even when it is hell week ,and even when it's midnight , we are grateful to be doing what we are doing.

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: backstage

"Cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education" ~ Mark Twain

I have found the flaw in residential colleges. If you put a bunch of very intelligent, interesting people in a small area they will get exactly zero work done. Yes, I spent the last hour and a half debating the ethics of marriage and adoption with my floor mates. Yes, then we calculated the energy used by an elevator going up two floors...in kilo calories. Yes, I have more homework to do.

I remain, very busy,
Georgie

Post Script: and clearly this letter was a good use of time. G.S.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: The town of cows, colleges, and contentment
Current Music: Young Pilgrms- the Shins

"Author's, like coins, grow dear as they grow old. It is the rust we value, not the gold " ~ Alexander Pope

I am going to London in four days, and I had a panicky moment this even in which I thought I had four days to learn what has always appeared to be the vastly complicated British coin system. It's amazing how appearances can be deceiving. Apparently in 1971, the British coin system was decimalized (real word, not kidding). Well, I never would have know because Jane Austen still uses shillings and guineas and farthings and whatever else. And while I am vastly relieved that I don't need to be able to tell the difference between a guinea and a farthing (because I really didn't want to be that American), it strikes me as a little sad that what used to be a complicated but historically-rich currency system has been reduced to 1 pence =1/100 pounds sterling, and issued in 1,2,5,20 pence and 1,2 pound coins, for ease of tourism and goodness knows what else (I am probably vastly simplifying the decision here) Similarly the coin of the Eu: instead of uses any of the marvelous examples of architecture that Europe is know for, a generic bridge or cathedral is printed on their bills so as not to hurt anyone's nationalistic pride. Some how I feel like that is counter-productive, to use sterile icons to protect nationalism.

Then again, it is also probably a little sad that this happened before I was born and still hadn't noticed.

I remain perpetually behind the times,
Georgie

Current Mood: surprised
Current Music: You're Family is Poor - Draco and the Malfoys

"I'll be half way to heaven with paradise waiting, just five miles away from where ever I am" ~Paradise

This is so much more complicated that I though it would be. I had yet another dream after which I could have sworn when I woke up I was on the bow of a Flying Scot. I have summer jobs that most people I know would kill for, and don't get me wrong I love them and am immensely grateful for them, but...

...some how chlorine isn't doing if for me. I miss green water.

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: not so filled with folly
Current Location: not Tuxedo
Current Music: LaRue-- 7 Reasons Why

"The wonderful thing about science is it doesn't ask for you faith, it just asks for your eyes" ~xkcd

These things shouldn't keep shocking me, but they do. Apparently Christian Scientists don't believe in gravity. Gravity! Medicine was one thing, death was just abstract enough, but GRAVITY! I, please excuse the pun, am down with gravity.

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: shocked
Current Music: Dazed, Beautiful, and Bruised (Catatonia)

" The attempt to combine power and wisdom has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while" ~ Albert Einstein

There is no greater feeling of power than that felt while making a whole line of cars wait for you to cross the street because pedestrians have right of way, yes we do. That is power to the people

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Abbey Road

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today ~ William Allen White

What does it say about your future when your cap and gown are run over by a car?

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: second star to the right
Current Music: Stars

" The only thing we have to fear it fear itself" ~ FDR

It is entirely possible that someone already thought of this and I am just crawling out of my cave, but I take full credit for it anyway. (How can you plagiarize someone you don't know exists?)

Terror= Fear
Terrorism= The ideological use of fear to attain one's goals, political or otherwise
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?

I remain,
Georgie

Current Mood: philosophical

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georginasand

September 2010

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Page Summary

An Old Rant
Open Letters to Persons or Entities Unlikely to Respond
A Communist Manifesto on the Protestant Ethic
A Social Historian Take on the Obama Presidency (...a half century or so early)
Life in Common
Little Words for Big Matters
Dialects
The World Turned Upside Down
Zen D@$* It ?
The Thing About Swing
Thank You...Half Hour
A fatal flaw
Sterile Sterling
Can you be homesick without ever leaving?
Up with Gravity
People's Power
I wonder...
Possible Bit of Profundity

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Letters of a Voyage

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth

Entries tagged with old guard -musings

An Old Rant

Open Letters to Persons or Entities Unlikely to Respond

A Communist Manifesto on the Protestant Ethic

A Social Historian Take on the Obama Presidency (...a half century or so early)

Life in Common

Little Words for Big Matters

Dialects

The World Turned Upside Down

Zen D@$* It ?

The Thing About Swing

Thank You...Half Hour

A fatal flaw

Sterile Sterling

Can you be homesick without ever leaving?

Up with Gravity

People's Power

I wonder...

Possible Bit of Profundity