On the Hobbit, and my emotions transcending the intra-Kiersten age gap

*Be forewarned, this is a long and maybe slightly ramble-esque post.*

So, I see all these things on the Internet about Harry Potter and how emotional fans got over the last book and last movie coming out, and how people cried when the Sorcerer’s Stone theme capped the epilogue scene of the last film, et cetera.  The thing is, even though I love Harry Potter I don’t have all this nostalgia attached to it because I didn’t read the books until I was sixteen (or see the movies until after the sixth one came out).  Most of the time I’m okay with this, but sometimes I really am sad that it wasn’t part of my childhood.  I feel like I missed out on this grand adventure that millions of people all had together.

Hearing the newly released Hobbit suite today, it struck me that Tolkien is a little bit like my equivalent of Harry Potter.  I read The Hobbit for the first time when I was seven, and The Lord of the Rings when I was eleven, and The Silmarillion when I was fourteen.  I’ve grown up loving them so much.  They made movie of LotR and I adore them, and I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for the film trilogy for eight years, and the Hobbit soundtrack has a lot of the same elements but combined with new ones.  I thrill at the new bits, and the familiar bits mixed in are wringing my heartstrings like crazy.  (I started crying when the Shire theme came in.)

They’re really doing it—making a movie of this book I still remember reading on a long car trip and being confused by because the seven-year-old introvert in me didn’t understand why there was any reason anyone would willingly cram fourteen noisy people into one hobbit-hole.  It’s the first book I remember reading with a dragon it it (although I’m sure it wasn’t actually the first).  It’s the first book I remember reading with trolls that turned to stone in sunlight.  I remember making up my own melodies to go with all the poetry; I remember wishing I had a map with moon runes and wondering why the elves got to invent the pinnacle of invisible ink.

I didn’t get back then why Bilbo was so keen on staying home and having a warm bed and robust food and tea, but now as a college student there’s definitely a part of me that empathizes with that, while at the same time thrilling to the adventure as always.  There’s a part of me now that understand Thorin’s crazy this-is-what-I’m-entitled-to-and-I’d-better-get-it spree.  There’s so much that I appreciate more after having read and reread so many of Tolkien’s other works.

I love The Hobbit.  I adore Tolkien.  I am so grateful that the rights for the films went to an amazing crew of people who are dedicated to carrying on the spirit of his works, and making a movie of the best quality they are able.  There is no way to convey how excited I am that The Hobbit is coming out this year and the next.  I feel like I’m at a perfect time in my life to really be excited for it and appreciate it, and it’s good timing for the casting and all.  This is like my childhood coming to life in a new way.

Literally, I had essentially all these thoughts—condensed of course into one big weepy explosion of emotion—when I heard the music.  It’s beautiful.  It;s going to be a fantastic film.  I can’t wait.  But at the same time, I have so much nostalgia that I could wait a long time, just staying in thoughts of happiness and appreciation like this one, and that’s how it’s been six months since the trailer and it’s still six months until the first film and I haven’t died yet.

There is no spoon.

I don't really know what I'm doing.

For all the philosophy of the universe cannot fit into one small, female, right-sided 18-year-old brain.  After all, girls never carry a map in their heads, because they actually have something inside them (like lots of family film references).  Sometimes my mind is incapable of housing even a single golden drop of philosophy.  Thus, I sit down and want to impart some moving, deep, insightful nugget of sageness to the Internetverse, and I have nothing to say but that I have nothing to say.

This is one of those mornings where I wish I were someone else.  Must be that perfectionism kicking in (except that you never saw that post, because I wrote it three times and never posted it.  It just wasn't right...)  Now matter how deep and creative I can get, I only have to peek around the corner to see so many people who are better at it than I, more well-rounded than I, who say everything that I wish I'd said and now cannot say, because that wouldn't be legal.  Or a very nice thing to do.

You know, I actually began this blog post with the full intention of writing about a spoon; but I can't fit enough logic between my eyes to say anything profound about a spoon (though I can make movie references about it).  Did you know New Jersey has a museum for spoons?

There's a tall old lady sitting two tables down from me at this retail coffee shop who looks just like Ian McKellen, except she's female.  It's a tad bit eerie.

It has come to my attention that November is National Blog Posting Month.  Whatever.  I don't know what you'd possibly get out of me if I actually wrote a post every single day.  It might be an interesting exercise.  Technically, I wrote three blog posts yesterday; I simply didn't post them.  So maybe I'll actually accomplish this.  If I care enough to try.

Normally I love/hate winter, but I'm excited this year to show off my amazing coat (even though it's the same coat I've owned for three years).  I wish coffee shops could take Metro transit bus cards as currency.  I wish they sold white hot chocolate in the United States.  They sell it at an airport in Zambia (Africa being, of course, the most logical place to sell hot chocolate [read with sarcasm]).

In the event of an emergency, plan ahead.

Don't ask me for help.  

All I can do is stare at spoons.  And write poetry. And make wishes.  And string words together in Victorianesque sentences that show up with far more regularity in my English essays than they do in my blog posts.  Sometimes I write sentences so long even I forget what the beginning said by the time I reach the end.  Maybe this month I will blog about authors and writing styles (or in other authors' writing styles...).  A notion that has just now intrigued me...

Am I merely writing reams of nothing?  How much of what I say is worth your time, or mine? 

College ~ semaine premier!

So, originally I was going to blog on Tuesday after my first day, but since I didn't get home until ten, I wound up starting a draft and not finishing.  I was then going to blog yesterday after class, so I could blog about my first experience in all my classes at once, but that opportunity was passed up in favor of impending homework due date concerns.  So, I now take this four-and-a-half hour interval to share my observations and escapades of my first week.  
Prepare for an indubitably lengthy post.  I will try to keep my stream-of-consciousness observations to a minimum.  :)

Tuesday:  After being dropped off by my gallant mother (can you use gallant in reference to women?  Hm.  Whatever.) an hour before my first class, I wound my way through throngs of tall people, bulging backpacks, enthusiastic and brightly colored staff, and offerings of free yoga coupons to the bookstore, where I waited in a very long line to buy my math textbook and be disappointed to see no silver Sharpies left for sale (I might go in there today and buy one). I encountered both eldest Demske sisters and their cousin Cassie, which brightened my nervous morning considerably.  (It turns out I actually have one of the same classes at the same time as Leah, though not in the same room.)  First up—Honors English 160, at 12:45 p.m.  (Afternoon classes:  one reason to love college already!)  

This was the class I packed the most stress about beginning, because it looked pretty intense—an intuition confirmed by the 75 pages of reading he assigned us the first day, to be completed two days later.  (As it turned out today, I was one of the only ones who actually did all the reading—and I took notes, which resulted in me having to catapult our small group discussion by reading them aloud.)  Mainly we went over the syllabus and course requirements, and he explained how our research project (or "Literature review":  essentially it will wind up being a giant annotated bibliography of articles on our topic) will be organized, and the types of essays we'll be writing.  It stressed me out at first, but we had the second class today and it was really interesting.  We practiced brainstorming and breaking down topics (my small group broke down the broad topic of "food" into a thesis debating the line between freedom of speech and ethics in advertising to children).  The professor seems really nice and fairly laidback, and he said he's really open to one-on-one discussion and helping us along, although he warned us the coursework would be really intensive.  My classmates are pretty cool, too.  It's awesome being in an environment where people seem to really think for themselves and care about their education (since I got the opposite vibe from most of my fellows in public high school).  I think I'll probably really enjoy this class, though I do foresee a lot of stress coming my way in future.  We also got out twenty minutes early, which was weird.  The teacher instructed us to brainstorm for potential research topics and told us we could "just leave" when we were done.  That will take a little getting used to (but I'm definitely not complaining!).

At 7 p.m. I had Mathematical Ideas.  I wasn't sure quite what this one was going to be like, but I'd heard it was pretty easy and focused heavily on applying mathematics and not just working problems.  The first meeting of that class was an interesting experience.  The professor confessed that it was her first time ever teaching a college-level course, and apologized in advance for treating us like teenagers ("I revert to treating high schoolers like elementary students, though, so don't feel too bad", she said, haha).  She's a bit of a goofball.  She split her pants and broke the projector five minutes in, so she walked sideways the entire two hours and scratched out the homework assignment.  So we talked about inductive vs. deductive reasoning and played icebreaker games.  (Apparently we were all enjoying ourselves, because she kept us seven minutes over and nobody noticed!)  The curriculum looks like a lot of review of midlevel algebra and geometry, stuff I learned or started to learn, and there's also a section on economics and finance, and a bit on statistics, which I haven't really done before.  i think it will be a pretty fun environment and pretty easy coursework.  Unfortunately it ends at nine (I'm quickly finding out that evening classes might not have been the great idea I thought they were.  My brain works really well at that time of night, but scheduling doesn't, especially when I don't have my own driver's license yet).

Wednesday:  I had Humanities 101, Modern Culture & the Arts.  I wasn't really sure what to expect from this class, either, but it looks fairly interesting.  Again, the professor seems pretty easygoing and friendly to all the students.  We had a couple of interesting discussions about the definitions of art and popular culture (the girl across the aisle from me stuck up for my grey corduroys, which someone in the back was disparaging [as a fashion item in general; I'm sure she had no idea I was actually wearing a pair]).  It looks like we'll have a fair amount of reading and frequent quizzes [timed, eww], as well as  a major research project early in the semester, but the class environment is interesting.  
We learned about this awesome guy who carves sculptures out of pencil leads.

I still am a little fuzzy on the exact content, but I think the actual class time will be entertaining.  I got some creative writing done (a hobby I have been neglecting sadly the past two weeks) in my hour-and-a-half wait afterwards.

That's my first take on the actual classes.  The KVCC atmosphere in general is really nice.  It's open, comfortable, people are friendly (but not creepy), and not being on strict time constraints the entire time is really nice.  Even though there are a lot of people, it's not really noisy, and I can do homework (and blog!) without being too distracted (though at the moment Oprah is on in the student lounge, which is not conducive to studying Seneca).  (Six people at home make more noise than this:)  The students commons have live trees and hanging plants all over the place, and a glass roof, which is pretty awesome.  The furniture is uber comfy; the rice krispie treats are huge and have chocolate chips.  My biggest complaint thus far is that the plastic silverware is enigmatically hard to find (and sometimes my classes are too, but thankfully I've done enough wandering around campus that my kinesthetic memory is starting to kick in).  It's a really nice environment to just hang out in (which is good, since I'm here from three until six-thirty on Wednesdays and Mondays, and eleven-forty till nine on Tuesdays and Thursdays!).

I also took a city bus today for the very first time (well, my first time alone, awake, and during the day—sorry, there's not as much of a story there as it sounds like there is), and I actually didn't mind it much.  I admit that I love moving vehicles.  There's something really relaxing about them, even as crammed full of bodies and conversations as this one was (and even if I was too short to see out the window).  I actually rather liked the experience, although I'll only get to do it once a day (maybe twice, until it starts getting dark by five in the afternoon, since I don't want to hop buses in downtown Kalamazoo in the dark, alone).  There was a girl on the bus with a sweet hat reading dc Talk's Jesus Freaks anthology (I liked her immediately and I don't even know who she is).  I overheard one woman speculating about whether she could trade in the earrings she'd gotten for her birthday for skis, and whether her niece would be able to play soccer since she'd fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her shoulder.  There was a guy who changed seats three times because he offered his seat to each successive elderly person (and one blind man) who got on the bus. One student downed two full cans of Monster in the latter half of our 25-minute ride (I bet his professors have their hands full with him today).  Three girls in the back carried on a heated...discussion (I'd say it sounded like an argument, except it was punctuated with a lot of giggling) in Spanish.  Overall, I thought it was a rather fascinating ride.  The only downside was there wasn't enough time for me to catch a nap...

Well, with three hours yet to kill before tonight's math class, I plan to go hunting for that plastic silverware and eat my lukewarm key lime yogurt.  And see how much a silver Sharpie costs in the bookstore.  And then maybe nip in my nap.  

              Adieu, inhabitants of the blogosphere...

Five days, nineteen hours, twenty-seven minutes.

I start college in five days, nineteen hours, and twenty-seven minutes.

That's when I start my first class, anyway.  I feel like college actually began months ago, with orientation, registration counseling, financial aid stuff, tests, interviews...I admit, this looming future scares me.  A lot.  I've been in a state vacillating between panicky avoidance and mild terror about it all summer.    There are some days I feel almost sick to my stomach thinking about it.  I feel massively unprepared—emotionally and practically.  I feel fairly confident I'm capable of the academia; it's everything else involved that worries me.  I can't shake off the compulsion to brood over everything that could go wrong (and I am not usually a pessimistic person).  My high school career was a train wreck for a while due to the chronic procrastination that I sometimes feel has me in a stranglehold; and I'm sure a lot of people who know me could tell you how much I despise schedules and time management.  There is so much I could do wrong, so many abd habits I could regress back into at the drop of a hat.  I'm not expecting to be perfect, but I don't want to walk around with a lit bundle of dynamite in my shoes.

I went to God today via my Bible, and found Philippians 4:6-7:  "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (NIV).  

The Amplified Bible says "[peace] shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds".  I like that—it conjures an image of a miniature army, sentient, with a careful strategy to vanquish whatever might come against it, from any angle.  God's peace isn't only a shield; it's a living thing there to protect me.

I've heard that verse I don't even know how many times.  It's one of the not-very-many I actually have memorized—but today i noticed the "with thanksgiving" line.  Of course I've seen that before, too—but somehow, when i'm trying to apply this verse to my own life, that line always gets omitted.  I have the prayer and petition down pat—not so well the thanksgiving.  Thus, I thought today when I took note of this, what am I thankful for in this uber-stressful future?

1. It's an entire galaxy of opportunity on so many levels:

2. I can meet new people and maybe have the chance to bend my lopsided/nonexistent social skills into shape.

3. I really like learning.  I want to better myself as a writer.  Where better to do that than college?

4. I have some solid incentive to beat down my obnoxious, horrible, late-blooming adolescent rebellious-and-irresponsible alter ego.

5. I get to get out of the house.

6. I'll be in an environment where people will no longer automatically assume the short person can still order off the kids' menu.

7. Maybe I will garner a sense of long-term purpose.

8. It's an adventure I haven't tried yet that probably isn't life-threatening.

9. I could use a lesson is dependency on God...yet again.

Yes.  I'm freaked out—really, really freaked out—by this prospect of being an honest-to-goodness college student.  For my entire high school career, I looked at college students with something like actual awe.  It's hard to believe I am one now.  Yes, I have practical things I need to do, things to which I need to apply myself and on which I need to take initiative—but I'm not all by myself in trying to buffet back stress.  God knows what He's doing.  I can actually get excited about some of this.  I can be thankful that it's not just a massive, dreaded chore.  

And, even though it's hard to believe sometimes because everyone looks like they have it all together, I have a lot of friends going through this exact phase right now, feeling similar fears—

We can do this.

Genesis of a Blog

I decided, around 28 hours ago, that I was going to start a blog, which is something I've been considering for a while.  Difficulties arose when I was trying to decide upon a name for said blog.   I considered using lines from songs, but those could be too easily misinterpreted, especially if I didn't even know what they meant.  Poems?  Quotes?  There are good ones, but I just couldn't find the right one.  Finally I tried to delve into the reaches of my own vocabulary to invent a phrase that would perfectly describe me.

The problem with being a writer—one tends to over-think everything.  The corner of my brain that takes control in moments like this is convinced that the cosmic balance of whether or not the world will end in 2012 (I'm positive it won't; the Mayan astronomers are rolling on the floor of their graves laughing at our misinterpretation of their calendar) hangs on the word I choose.  Oh, the lexicographical drama.

Yes, twenty-four hours later I had returned to my shiny white polycarbonate MacBook, having still not decided on a title.  One might imagine that for a poet/aspiring novelist, naming a blog would be cake.  But, like I said to someone earlier, naming a blog is "a weighty opportunity for creative license.”  I mean, this is ME I’m putting out there.  And  don’t know who ME is.  And I'd prefer not be one of those teens who wastes a good blog title/URL by dashing off one quick, badly punctuated post and leaves it to float, alone and forgotten until a neurotic 18-year-old starts typing random phrases into the blogspot URL and stumbles across it.  And dozens more like it — it saddens me. I intend to carry this blog on indefinitely, which means it really has to have a good name.  

The dictionary definition I have of rhapsody is "an effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling".  I love that.  I love it!  And it seemed at least somewhat fitting.  "Whimsical" can mean 1) "playfully quaint or fanciful, esp. in an amusing or appealing manner", or 2) "acting or behaving in a capricious manner".  People have used this word in both fashions to describe me before (thankfully usually in a positive sense), and it's just a fun-sounding word.  So I used a different form, and lo—after five solid hours of thought, my blog title was born. After the fact, I found out I could actually change it anytime I wanted, which would have been nice to know before I agonized through all that.

So now I am embarking on an adventure to share at least a portion of my obscure musings with the online universe.  I've kept a pencil-and-paper journal since I was four.  I spend several hours a day talking to myself because I have no one off which to bounce ideas, thoughts, and random weirdness.  So, here I am.  Read it if you like.  I can guarantee that at least some of it will make sense, especially once I start school (Nineteen days until my first day of college!  That is not right).  My brain tends to make more sense the crazier my life gets.  You'll probably be exposed to a mishmash of spontaneous observations, potential life philosophies, accounts of my stress, quotes, bits of poetry, rants at the many things that prove problematic to my wellbeing and happiness, funny tidbits of the oddness in my life, plans for the future, and peeks into my devotions (maybe a blog can my sort of accountability to myself.  Hm).  Some days my typed thoughts may ramble on for miles and some days they may be a few sentences.  
Anyhow, for now, farewell.  "Goodbye, trolley people..."  I will be back.   


"And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father." – Colossians 3:17 (NLT)