Season's Wane (A Pessimist's Apologies)

Paper faces on parade, and all we are is phantoms in the dark.

We burn with tightly-controlled magnificence and sought-for food for pride.

Welcome to the masquerade—do you make my day or shall I make yours a misery?

The fountain of looks and laughs like a rain of fiber-optic falsity.

Throw a gaze over your shoulder; keep that eye out or someone may take it out for you.

We say nothing in forward motion; we dance in code.

Dare to breathe and only my sickly sallow jester’s face stares back.

The feathers on this mask make hidden knives:  of steel or words.

Invent my exit for you: “Bravo, bravo!” they cry, knowing not a single name.

Feet never stumbling, maverick like a thousand mavericks before us.

A highwire burdened under the weight of seven billion souls: it now sags to mere inches.

Bright gowns that cover all skin, lest my rabid acne shed the illusion.

Even the eyes that show—that summon silence—speak no words true,

Immortality gleaned from the labyrinths of a thousand star-stuffed nights.

Words fall to the floor like glass, but no slippers for Cinderella are left in their wake.

What prince, if he should exist, would seek queens as dazzling as these?

A masquerade is no pride of a fairy tale.

Paper faces, paper faces...a masquerade is no more than a parade.

Celebrate the Day

It's Christmas again!  It's a tiptoeing holiday; I never remember it until it's here.  Though this year, I literally completely forgot about it until about three days ago.  I'm kind of ludicrously excited and yet, at the same time, feeling disappointed-in-advance, like a niggling wormhole of paranoia that Christmas isn't going to be all that i'm hoping for.

This is my traditional Christmas Eve song.* (This year, instead of just listening to it, I actually found a chordsheet and played it on the piano.)  It always gets my brain in the right place right around now.  It sort of oddly imparts a sense of peace, a sense of closeness, a sense of relief that i'm not the only one who arrives at Christmas Day realizing I've barely given "the Reason for the season" five minutes of thought, let alone personal attention.  I can take some time to reflect, and talk, and go to bed truly feeling that there's really a bigger reason for this grandiose, astonishing holiday besides merely me.

One of the lines in that song I linked to says "And here is where you're finding me in the exact same place as New Year's Eve"…I feel like that every year.  My resolve to spend more time with Jesus never quite makes it past a wobbly trial run.  But even though I still lacked effort in doing devotions or whatnot this year, I feel like God did a lot in me.  I'm more confident, I've started feeling a compassion for people I've certainly never had before, I've experienced freedom from a couple of really chronic issues I was dealing with, and I've discovered that being thankful for lots of little arbitrary things is actually a really enjoyable pastime.  My prayer life, at least, has seen some improvement.  I've discovered that Jesus is much better at cheering me up than wallowing in self-pity is.  And today's his birthday!    Whatever does or doesn't happen, I want to feel him smiling at me.  It makes me giddy just thinking about that.  Even if falling in love with a fellow human being ends up being absent on the roster of my life events for the next year, I really hope that truly falling in love with Jesus finally is.

Look at that, two "deep" posts in under twelve hours.  Lucky you, blogosphere.  I send concisely-wrapped wishes your way for an uber happy, joyous, jolly, convivial, cheery, very-merry Christmas.

  * [This is my "serious" Christmas Eve song.  My traditional goofy Facebook-status-material Christmas Eve song, also by Relient K, can be found here. ]

A post made of sapience.

Depth is not something to be measured.  It is not calculated in inches or miles, but the fragments of eternity we choose to invest in something valuable.  It is ten percent shadows and dark words, but ninety percent honesty and the warm glow of the most commonplace sunlight imaginable, with a scattering of clouds and a drizzling of rain and the lightest touch of the year's first snow flurry.  Depth is not wrought by distance, but a tilting of the world so that what once was a shallow, pale pool gradually seeps into cool, fertile black earth and grows a tree or two, with cherry blossoms and usually a season of fruit.  It isn't lack of compatibility that dams the pool; it's lack of a shovel with which to dig out the mud.  It's neglect.  It's fear that keeps us cowering in the dying red sunlight, never knowing that if we could just muster on through the night that the ever-changing sunrise is more beautiful than the neverendingneverendingneverendingneverending sunset, that depth breathes more wonder than the mere prettiness of faint surface chatter.  Investment comes back with interest, while buried treasure just attracts parasites.  No plumb line can fit through the soul.  Depth is not a recipe, but a sure and steady madness…or so it seems, even to the most illogical of observers (like me?  Sometimes?).  It is the electric light in a land without power outages—no candle to flicker, to dim, to burn out into nothing, leaving only dim smoke of memory behind.  It's the fuzzy socks that are so cozy you want to keep them forever even once they're wearing thin.  It's an analogy in Kiersten's plumbed-out brain this Christmas Eve…

A few disparate oddities...

I am in Panera on Gull Road, waiting for the bus, so I can go to school and give a presentation for my final class of the semester.  I desperately wish I could sit down and take a two-hour exam instead of standing up and talking for fifteen minutes; however...no such luck.  I'm starting to stress out and thusly feel rather ill.  Something has gone wrong every time I've had to do one of these things, and this professor is really stringent.  I brought it up at C&C yesterday, though, and everyone prayed, quite fervently.  Aaron M. even threw in a bit of prophetic awesomeness.  and this super nice, very extroverted girl named Kimmee (only other one there my age, actually) hugged me about eight times and gave me her phone number with strict instructions to text her and tell her how it went.  It was amazing; Jesus rocks.  I've been praying like mad.

They had no asiago cheese bagels today—alas and alack.  And I had to wait eight minutes for my caramel latte, so my bagel got cold and didn't melt the butter.  I should have splurged on some cream cheese.  In other weirdness, I am almost positive I stood in line behind Sam Patrie and Lonnie Saunders about an hour and a half ago; however, since I have only met either of them in person twice, and it's been seven months since I saw Lonnie and three years since I saw Sam, I'm not positive.  I'll have to Facebook Sam and ask, because my curiosity is quite piqued.  (I'm not brave enough to stand up and walk the twenty-five feet to where they're sitting and ask who they are. Haha.  And...now they've just gotten up and left.  Ah well.  Yay for the handiness of social networking; otherwise I'd never know.)

On to more carefree things—such as (hopefully!) ice skating on Thursday when Hannah is back in Kalamazoo!  And the Frentheways are coming; the Frentheways are coming!  Yay!  Now that it's starting to sink that that school is [almost, five and a half hours from now] done, I'm starting to get all aflutter for Christmas.  I haven't even thought about the fact that it's in five days.  I rather need to think about shopping.  I also need to stock up on library books; I've only got ONE out right now (The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins; unfortunately it took too long to get really interesting, and now I won't get to finish it) and it's due back today, so I won't have any books to sustain the introverted part of my life over my three weeks' break.  I wonder if I can check out books from the KVCC library even though it's the end of the semester?

Aah, no more time to write now...

Kiersten's Not-Quite-Ultimate-Because-I-Think-I-Left-Something-Out-By-Mistake YouTube Accomplishments of Awesome List for Christmas Break 2010:

1. Marathon the Vlogbrothers videos
2. Watch the Charlie videos that I missed
3. Look up all the musicians that Hannah and Emily post on each others' Walls
4. Watch the rest of Alex Day's (appropriate) videos
5. Finish A Very Potter Sequel
6. Try to find out where my posted MovieMaker project disappeared to

I think Emily's a trendsetter.

Kiersten's Ultimate Accomplishments of Awesome List for 2011:

1. Finish (writing) at least one novel.
2. Witness to somebody.
3. Come up with a system to start memorizing Bible verses. 
4. Read the Bible regularly.
5. Befriend S_____ more successfully than I did in 2010.
6. Put music to some of my poetry.  
7.  Actually give birthday gifts to non-family people.   
8. Finish learning the basics of playing guitar. 
9. Read at least three more of C. S. Lewis' books. 
10. Learn to practice good time management at least 70% of the time, including bedtimes and homework  
11. Grow my hair back (out).   
12. Exercise regularly.
13. Finish Anna Karenina.
14. Acquire a sonic screwdriver.
15. Acquire a Hadhafang replica if I don't get one for Christmas (and if I can find one at a reasonable price).
16. Start being consistent about intercessory prayer.
17. Grow closer to my family.
18. [Possibly] investigate learning to play the violin.
19. Memorize my phone number.
20. Start overcoming my phone fears.
21. Figure out what I'm going to do if anyone I like asks me out (e.g., figure out where I stand on dating, for me personally, at this point in my life).
22. Learn how to ride a bike.
23. Acquire a bamboo plant.
24. Come up with meaningful things to blog about.
25. Sleep.
26. Reread The Lord of the Rings (again) in a month or less.
27. Reread the Silmarillion.
28. Have consistent pen pals (e.g., be consistent about writing letters back to people who've written letters to me).
29. Draw (not just doodling) more than once or twice a month.
30. Mange to read something by Charles Dickens.
31. Finish Romeo and Juliet.
32. Read Hamlet and Macbeth.
33. Watch Disney's Snow White.
34. Get to know some of the people at C & C.
35. Get in the habit of tithing (at least, once I have any income).
36. Read The Phantom Tollbooth.
37. Do something genuinely crazy (but not illegal, utterly pointless, or life-threatening).
38. Take my driver's test, pass it, and get my license.
39. Buy shoes that fit.
40. Be bold.
41. Buy new flavors of tea.
42. Name my laptop.
43. Name the dancing monkey on my laptop.
44. Name my teapot.
45. Acquire some pragmatism to balance out my excessive idealism.
46. Practice writing concisely so I can do so when necessary.
47. Overcome my fear of overhead showers.
48. Get my Technician and Demolitionist awards on Star Wars Battlefront II.
49. Write out a thorough and intelligent explanation of why I dislike Twilight.
50. Consider what I'm going to do after graduating KVCC.
51. Fast something (besides books, because I've already done that, and food, because that's probably impossible for a college student) for a month.
52. See Glowfriends in concert, if possible.
53. Attend at least one epically awesome rock concert with friends.
54. Get drunk in the Holy Spirit more than once.
55. Learn six new long words and use them in regular conversation.
56. Brush up on my French.
57. Develop an appreciation for one genre of music I currently dislike.
58. Organize my room and keep it at least relatively clean.
59. Write about the random stuff I research on a whim.
60. Read The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien.
61. Develop an appreciation for more spicy food.
62. Do laundry more regularly.
63. Finish reading A Room With a View.
64. Spread the word "uber" beyond my church family.
65. Acquire at least three more awesome hats.
66. Write letters to at least eight people telling them what I appreciate about them.
67. Refine my Jamaican accent.
68. Speak in a foreign accent for at least one full day every month.
69. Help spread accomplishment in the important life skill of Giving Good Hugs.
70. Find someone to have deep and pointless theoretical conversations with.
71. Acquire at least two sundresses.
72. Create and DM (run) one Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
73. Learn to juggle.

I apologize in advance for the inarticulate tweenyness of my fangirlness in this post.

So, I just watched the most miserably, helplessly tragically sad, infuriatingly vague and mysterious Doctor Who episode ever.  I teared up and was just about crying through the whole last half.  And even though IT WAS THE ONE SINGLE EPISODE WHERE NODOBY DIED—even the imaginary people who never existed—it was definitely the saddest episode out of the forty-five or so I have seen to date.  And now I feel all wound up and pensive and am not going to bed.
I FREAKING LOVE THIS TV SHOW.

Because, today, it made me cry.  Any fictional creation that makes me cry when it's not three in the morning has done a good job.  (Geez, David Tennant almost cried; that might have almost done me in even if it hadn't been a really sad episode.)

And, I figured out something before the Doctor did.  He was trying to figure out this bit of alien logic like always, and I was like "Oh, oh, oh, it's_____!!" and then four seconds later he did that thing where his eyes get really big an he says in that quiet 'lightbulb" voice, "It's the_____..." and then freaks out.  And I was like "OHMYGOSH I WAS RIGHT I feel so TimeLordgenius right now!" (I actually said this out loud and my mother laughed at me.) That kind of totally made my entire night. 
(Well, it made it until the episode got really sad and maddeningly mysterious...but also mysterious in a potentially-conceivably-nice way.  I love having all the answers and backstories and obscure details {probably the source of my Tolkienmania}, but just this once, I know enough to let it go.  After all, I've got my own imagination, right?)

(Though, referring back to the second paragraph, the episode prior to this one involved a giant wasp who murdered people with a lead pipe.  That was decidedly lacking in awesomeness.  That was just absurd.  And really gross.  So...most of the time I love this TV show.)

In the homestretch...

...just over six days until semester's end.  I got in eleven of my required volunteer hours at the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission on Friday and Saturday, went to the New Day Christmas party, saw HPA's Little Women, spent the night at Emily's, and had a snow day on Monday (during which I was able to [mostly] catch up on sleep and get some desperately-needed alone time.  I love people, but being around them allthetime for days straight is exhausting!).  Adventure, hurrah.  The snow day also meant that I got out of doing mock interviews in Career  Decision-Making last night (yes!) and that our final online quiz for Modern Culture & the Arts is untimed because we didn't get to go over the material in class.  Just three more days in-class...math review tonight, humanities tomorrow, research portfolio due for English and math final Thursday, then humanities final and CareerDM final oral presentation (yuck) next Monday (again, yuck).  Almost there!  I'm quite excited to be done.  I'm pretty confident I'll four-point all my classes.  Though I still need four more volunteer hours by the beginning of January, and I need to purchase my books for next semester (and sell back this semester's).  I'm so excited to be almost done!  Right now I'm sitting in the Student Commons listening to (what I think is) a choir recital, which sounds great.  I'm also formulating plans to finish my math review packet for tonight and work on my English portfolio bibliography (26 pages so far...hurrah).  

One week from today, my blog posts can stop revolving around school and stress—at least for three weeks, ha.

Okay, I know I'm not the only one who's frightened of the future.  I know I'm not the only college student wandering around wondering what the heck I'm supposed to be doing, or what I'm doing right now for that matter.  But it definitely looks to me like everyone around me either 1) has everything neatly, confidently planned out, or 2) doesn't give two beans about their college career, so long as they graduate and have a halfway decent chance of making six figures.

But, oh God, I'm scared to death.  I feel like everything rests on me, you know?  I have to keep up my grades and plan out all this community service and make sure I'm not wasting time and money on classes I don't need to take (basically, I don't get to take any electives, because my stupid honors courses ate up all my electives.  Sucks.  — That's another thing.  I feel like like a crappy honors student.  I can do the coursework, for sure, but I'm not exactly the most confident or responsible 18-year-old out there. All I do is write good essays!)  I can make so many wrong choices.  I could do so many things wrong. There are so many ways to just mess up.  I feel so pressured to make the most of my time (I feel like I wasted a lot of it already.); to do something with myself.  

And I'm so scared, because I don't know what I'm doing.  I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.  And I don't have the self-motivation to take time to listen to God.  [expletive deleted] self-motivation that I don't have.  Being a spontaneous person instead of a goal-oriented one sucks so much right now.  I know I need to change, because, face it, I tend to be a rather irresponsible person and I can't afford to stay that way.  But I don't feel an urgent, desperate need to change, except in crunch time, and by then it's too late; and then I get through it, and on the other side it never looks so bad.  So I just keep doing the same stupid things over and over and never change.

And then there are things I'm terrified of—like taking a required physical education class.  I would, in all seriousness, do almost anything to get out of taking one.  Just thinking about it, just looking at the gym, makes me want to run, literally.  And I have no idea why I dread it in any form so much.  Even classes that seem like they'd be lots of fun, like karate or yoga or scuba diving, still scare the daylights out of me.  But I have to pick one eventually [eventually meaning "SOON!"].

Still, I'm scared to death.  I can't graduate in two years without either taking seventeen credits both semesters next year (impossible, unless I undergo some really drastic personality changes), or taking at least ten credits over the summer (am I capable of going to school full-time for twenty-one straight months without going insane?  I doubt it.)  I'm so frightened that my GPA will drift just a bit too low, or I'll procrastinate one day too far or on one project too many, or I'll get one night too little of sleep, or I'll fall in love with somebody and screw up my whole life, or I'll just plain lose my mind and go crazy.  Literally.  And I can't even listen to God, who I've been desperately asking for help.  I can't even bring myself to do that much.  I feel so desperately out of touch, out of time, out of anything but emotion.

Star-crossed freight trains, E. coli, hummingbirds, and a lame duck who may have stepped on a land mine.

How not to use figurative language:

• "John and Mary had never met.  They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met."
• "The politician was gone but unnoticed, the the period after the 'Dr.' on a Dr Pepper can."
• "The shot rang out, as shots are wont to do."
• "Long separated by cruel fate, the two star-crossed lovers raced across the field, like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at a speed of 55 mph and the other having left Topeka at 4:19 p.m. traveling at a speed of 35 mph."
• "He was as tall as a six-foot three-inch tree."
• "He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like  a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high school about the danger of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it."
• "His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling-Free."
• "McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup."
• "The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil.  Unlike Phil, however, this plan might actually work."
• "The little boat drifted gently across the pond, just the way a bowling ball wouldn't."
• "It was very confusing, just like when you're out of state and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 instead of 7:30."
• "It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing children around with power tools."
• "The young fighter looked very hungry, the sort of look you get after not eating for a while."
• "He was as lame as a duck.  And not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something."
• "He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River."
• "He was deeply in love.  Whenever she spoke, he fancied that he could hear bells, just like a garbage truck backing up."
• "He grew on her like he was a colony of E. coli and she was room-temperature Canadian beef."

...This is what we spent the majority of my English class studying this afternoon.  Real creative ridiculosity from real college students.  Don't try this at home, kids.

Also, the fire alarm went off today.  Not the most fun of adventures.  I also witnessed the magic of an erasable pen, which was a fun adventure.

This picture always makes me really happy.

I felt the need to advertise it. This picture has always made me really, really cheery.  It's just a very smile-inducive picture, in my experience.

I should print it out and stick it somewhere.  It's so optimistic and jocular (Happy.  Happy is a good word for it.  I like the word happy.), but not in a sick fluffy way.  

Plus, It's also a great musical compilation made by a great bunch of guys, who I kind-of-sort-of [well, fine, almost] met once at a youth conference.  (Yes, I'm going a tad bit link-nutty lately.  Sorry about that.  Sort of:)  I know this album is four years old, but that serves naught to lessen its amazingosity.

I survived making lots of scary phone calls over the weekend!

official tally:  

two phone calls to my aunt Lise, so I could interview her about her career.

three phone calls to Terry, group mate #1. 

four phone calls to Jairen, group mate #3.

one phone call to the Richland Community Library, who had no ideas for potential interviewees.

I think my fear of bad grades is more influential than my fear of talking to people on the phone.  Combining both equals a lot of stress.  But it all went well  (err, mostly)!

That research project that I had to start over four days before the due date? I got my grade last night—100%!!  Simultaneously ecstatic and slightly disappointed.  By no means was that project my best work, so I'm actually slightly disappointed I didn't get a lower grade.  But I didn't get a terrible grade, so I'm also rather elated!  He put lots of nice comments on my paper, as well as pointed out some thought-provoking points he didn't agree with.  Interestingness.  YAY!

Amanda Lindauer gave me Jesus' Culture's new CD yesterday.  It's pretty darn awesome.  I hope my week is as awesome as this album.

I realized this morning that i forgot to put any of The Weepies' albums on my Christmas list.  Darn.  I wonder how I missed them when I was going over my List of Music I'd Really Like To Own Sometime Soon to make my Christmas wishlist.  Ach.  (This is what I can use my New Day Today Podcast iTunes gift card on!)

Alrighty.  Well, I must depart.  School calls.  Two weeks left! [ Plus an extra Monday.  :P ]

Perambulations on stress

I've only been out of bed for twenty minutes and already this is not shaping up to be a good day.  I was going to see Harry Potter with Emily today, but due to problems in obtaining a ride and a realization that I had a lot more homework than I thought I did, HP sadly had to be expelled in favor of less fun pursuits for the day.

And now my nervous system is a bit overtaxed.  Because I have math homework, and essays to read for English, and thirty pages to read for Modern Culture & the Arts.  And Career Decision-Making is the worst still, because I have to finish a paper for that class but I don't have enough material to fulfill the page requirement yet; I have to interview a publisher author/editor about their career and write a paper on that, but the person I thought I could interview fell through and now I don't know who I'm going to interview; and only one of my mates for the group project has followed through so far, so now I have to call up two guys I barely know and nag them (in a friendly manner) about sending their parts of the paper to me so I can put them together. 

Yes, you're probably all tired of hearing me list off all the things I have to do that're stressing me out, but that's pretty much taking up the bulk of my active prosencephalon right now. I'm kind of just venting to get this all out somewhere. I freaking don't know how I'm going to manage this (mostly the interview, since that's the one thing I absolutely cannot afford to not get done, except the group project, but I can still turn in my part even if no one else does, so I'll get at least partial credit.  But if I don't turn in my interview questions and the paper I have to write on it, I fail the whole class.  No joke.)

And I'm going to New Day today for the "community worship night" hosted by WorshipArts.  Under normal circumstances I would be at least fairly excited, but since this is cutting four hours out of my loaded day, I am not.   Help!

I cannot sleep.  
This is the insomnia that bleeds through the whole universe, that makes my mind run at such a speed I can almost hear the little organic gears whirring and clicking—that makes me ache to live.  That creates characters made of personhood and not my own perceived need for circumstantially-bred catharsis.  That makes my quill shriveled up by three months of writer's block shiver in the zest of fresh ink.  That invents poetry at meteoric rates too quicksilver for my fingertips that run like clunky mouse feet over my keyboard.  That makes eyes glow in the darkness, makes color become texture; that makes the whole of the universe prowl around my infinitesimal compass of existence, sunrise and sunset in one, teeming with possibility.  That gives me an hour where I can take a knot of befuddled emotion and bind it with logic and rationale and observance and senses, and take logic and wrap it in emotion and moodiness and the tumbling swiftness of a hundred burning poems, and call them sentience.  I can create people made of people, even without a universe in which to put them.  I can create dragons made only of emotion; and breathe the magic made of the unfathomable, ever-roving tides of unplumbed knowledge.  
I cannot sleep, but for threescore minutes more, might I dream and live in one seamless conflagration of existence?

If I wrote a song about this, it could be turned into a 1940s-era reenactment of Barbara Manatee.

I hate it when you grow up and you start realizing that everything doesn't come in black and white.  Morals, people, opinions, relationships, politics...everything deals in ambiguity.  Maybe that's one reason I hate drama (as in, melodrama)—why I like "sword-and-sorcery" fantasy books where there's a valiant hero and a dastardly villain and you always know who's going to come out on top, and what's right and what's wrong.  Maybe that's why so many people write those books.  Because, no matter how much we wish it did, life doesn't operate like that.  Things I thought were secure might not be.  People I thought I understood metaphorically up-and-move to another planet.  People have stories buried in dark alleys in another world.  Except—none of this is as dramatic as that made it sound.  Nothing is really fantastically drastic.  

I'm just finding out that the world isn't as idealistic as I am.  I'm feeling hopelessly, incurably naïve.  And it's bundling more confusion onto me than I think is my fair share, what with being a brand-new adult and trying to get the rest of my life sorted out and all.  Can't I just live it moment by moment, and let it all work out for itself?  But, see, that's not black-and-white, either.  Apparently you need forethought, vision, necessities like that.  Since when have those been my forte?  Since when was I a good candidate to sort out my own life?  Who thought it would be a good idea to drag me out from the cupboard under the stairs? (Yes, book reference, sorry.)  People don't work like I spent eighteen years thinking they did.  And that sort of explains a lot, like why I spend so much time wanting to beat people I've never met over the head with something large and heavy and perfect for knocking sense into human brains.  I'm starting to understand why I don't understand so many things about why the world is the way it is, even if that's all I'm understanding.  I really miss being naïve without understanding what naïveté was.  But I can't afford to live like that, can I?  Ostensibly...no. I cannot.  

Good golly, I'm a moody lil' woman.