Madness

I had a strange dream last night. It involved a peanut festival. There was this farmish place and five or six peanut-celebrating events. Steve, my brother and I were playing dice to win some peanuts somehow, and he kept throwing in more dice than were needed. He wasn't cheating, he was teasing me. I was furious and stormed off. Then there was this Cathedral, because for some reason the choirs from Concordia were there. We (Chapel Choir) were all in our robes, and Tim the Amazing was there playing an electric piano and screwing up the acoustics. Rene Clausen was furious but nobody knew it was Tim because he was under blankets and a big beach umbrella in the balcony. And in the building below there was a hallway leading away from the church and there was a room, rather a wall that read: "The Recovery from Oostburg" and something to do with lemons. When I opened the door to the room it had a bingo bar in it, and the wall collapsed and made alot of noise so I ran down the hallway and woke up.
It was so much more vivid when I was sleeping.

Cast off thy nighted cloak.

Forgive yourself, Hamlet. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't all your fault.

Letter

Wouldn't you like to do Hamlet? I think he could be organised delightfully into three pictures: 1) Elsinore and Hamlet before the appearance of his father's ghost; (2) Polonius (scherzando) and Ophelia (adagio) (3) Hamlet after the appearance of the ghost. His death and Fortinbras...After Hamlet I considered Francesca, and she really is beginning to please me!...Then, if Iago worries you, why not do the tale of Othello by himself? Indeed, he does merit a symphonic tableau! As you see, Hamlet is the only new subject I've devised...but if only you knew how much I wish you'd write music on my subject....


Modest to Petr Tchaikovsky
"The Lives of the Great Composers"
Schonberg

Blue

If I am blue, I'm not certain that I want to change to another color. It would explain why certain things happen; it would explain my cycles of various shades of blue.
So I could go to an artist and ask him or her what color I am. And he or she may say that I am red, blue, or yellow. Because they're ARTISTS! They get PAID to tell people what color they are. They have no interests except to make money and to paint you. And even if they're RIGHT; even if they ARE right and I am in fact, a color I oughtn't be...even then...do I really want to change? I felt such joy when a certain magic penguin asked me a certain question concerning the rest of my life. I remember the profound joy I felt at that moment. But I don't feel that way all of the time. In fact, sometimes I feel more depressed than ever about my answer to him. If I were a shade of blue, it would explain this change of color. Varying from light to dark blue would be natural.
What if I'm being rational though? Given my age, the circumstances of the question, the circumstances of the answer...given the loneliness we'd both faced this semester, given the intensities and pastinesses of our lives...I don't see how I am not being rational in wishing to rethink this. It is most dramatic to say that I am a color I oughtn't be. Perhaps he's a color he oughtn't be. In fact, that thought is far more plausable than my color being ary.
As far as desires go, I feel that he is quite too hung up on them. I feel that this entire pallate can easily go badly because, after all, Boo Radley is involved in this, isn't he?

And then I remember my tearful frenzy of colors and personalities that never ceases to amaze even myself. I've got much to do, and extremely little time. But if such minds could save from death Astronauts of Apollo 13, certainly my far inferior one can accomplish a far inferior task such as studying for this silly final.

I don't want to switch to Google!

There are certain people on this earth that I cannot stand. I grant myself that I am not a perfect person. I also grant myself that I don't always make the correct choice or the right decisions. But I also don't know what I can do about certain people who look at me with their condescending eyes, knowing that they have succeeded and I have failed, and smirk because they are pleased that it is so. The thing that gets me the most angry about it is that they have the right to do so. They are better at this than I am. They also are loved by most other people and I gradually have become more and more bitter, even to the point at which I seek simple things, worldly, fleshly things to sedate my anger.

When it was boys, everything was fine with her, but a five minute conversation with my dad on the phone was altogether unacceptable. I find it a direct derivative of my gender versus her gawdy anger.

I love the look of things on other things, or in other things. Like when mixing paint or glue.

Magic Penguins

So, I've decided that I should create an insanity club. Perhaps akin to the Benevolent Mad People of our most gracious Captain. Of course, now things are much different. For one, stress is a part of life, like breathing. Or peanut butter. Stress is like peanut butter...
My roommates do not understand me. Simply put, they don't. They try. They do really try. But they don't understand my need to be crazy and "random" as they put it. There's nothing wrong with the way I am. I don't hurt anyone or wish them harm. I'm just different, I try to be, and it's not a bad thing. I just annoy them, I guess. So I'm taking this next couple of minutes to balistically type in the library, thus making as much noise as one can in an acceptable fashion.
So, on the subject of magic penguins, one has entered my life and reaped some havok, in fact. This particular magic penguin came into the room and stole all of the vending machines. Yes, and because of the lack of vending machines, I cried. Yea! I wept with tears of joy for my over-caffeinated existance was finally coming to an end as the great mountain dew spread upon my brow and itched.
Until of course, you realize exactly what I'm saying. Realize. Real eyes. Realize. Real lies. Real eyes realize real lies. Alright.
The benevolent madness hath permeated my existance for some time now. Per meat. Ed.
He came into my life, I welcomed him right in, not knowing what he'd be to me or the things he'd bring with him. I think that this problem is easily remedied.
No.

Fair is foul, foul is fair. I feel that because of my underlying foulness somehow I must have done something right along the way. After all, there is now a magic penguin in my life. I wonder about him though. He seems to be an aloof magic penguin these days.

How is it that I care so much about this person? This person I don't know. This person who is so different from me? It isn't sane. But what about my life is sane? What about my life has ever been sane? Partially I think he realizes how insane this is. But partially I think that if I disappeared from the face of the earth no one, no, not even he would notice. And that is a dangerous thought for me to be thinking this year, for, with all the ice in the sky, with all the glass on the trees, the world is full of edges. And, edges become chasms and chasms are things that will allow me to fall through. Sinisterly, I must go out into the darkness of midday and sing merry songs of hope, even though my present demeanor is strung so thin. Almost as thin as the strings of lights on the trees.

Fair is foul
foul is fair.
Hover through fog and filthy air.

I'm in a smoke filled room. My immune system is down. I need to focus on homework. Everthing is going so slowly. I feel awful. I am set up to go back to school early. I'm being very selfish. I'm missing out on Steve's birthday and missing all my friends. Elizabeth.
But this is of my own making. Damn. Why is it that I can never do anything right?!

If I only could, I would tell you just how fair foul is and just how foul fair is.

Many a day passes with Fair and Foul

I hate two things in the adult life I am entering. Money is one. Politics is the other. I hate politics not because I'm ignorant of them, snubbing them like so many people do. So many people are so ignorant of the current state of our country that it's rediculous. People don't use their right to vote, and it sickens me. How busy can you be America? The only power that we have is the right to vote. Millions of people have died fighting to preserve it in wars. The only foreward steps we have are the steps we take when we vote.
But then I think: if I could have voted in the last presidential election, who would I have voted for? I value almost everything the Democrats value. I value peace and government funding for higher education and better health care for the lower class. I value sticking up for the little guy in business, I value equality and justice. I value these things more than lowering taxes, fighting wars for reasons that change: oil, to stabalize the economy, to find weapons of mass distruction or getting a tyrant out of office. I think that to protect this country, we build a better funded CIA, and fund the institutions at which scientists may develop weapons of mass defense.
But the Democratic party has twisted their values to become something altogether different than what people are willing to vote for. Kerry in the last election was an abomination. Who wants to support public education? The democrats. Largely, the democrats want to increase funding so that everyone gets a decent education K-12. Kerry went to private schools. He studied abroad...there's nothing wrong with that, but it's the you-practice-what-you-preach thing. How can he improve public education when he never experienced it? HE volunteered for Nam? The single most outspoken democrat I know, a former teacher, was drafted and went to Nam too. He would make a great president, but he opposed Nam then, he generally opposes war altogether...and he would NEVER have volunteered for Nam. The only reason Kerry said that was so that he could appeal to the Right. But he doesn't appeal to anyone. I couldn't have brought myself to vote for him. This next election scares me too. I want someone who will try to find an end to Iraq. We need to fight terrorism with understanding and unite this nation before we try to fight the wars of other nations. I won't vote to the right, I refuse to vote left if they are as weak as they have shown themselves to be. That's got to be why many people don't go to the polls. The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools.

Fair is foul

Things are every bit as muddled as they were in the 70s. They're also every bit as clear. This is the beginning of another epic battle. The East versus the West. The two main groups that almost everyone on earth fits into. There are Pink monks eating Blue raisins. And there are Blue monks eating Pink raisins. Studiously I have observed. And I myself eat blue and pink raisins, but never, never have I ever eaten a monk, nor have I ever seen a raisin eat a monk.
It is when the food that we eat eats us that the trouble starts. And I'm not just talking raisins. I'm talking our religious beliefs, the food we live on, the mother's milk of our lives. The life we live is going to be hard and rough, much rougher than our parent's lives. I don't know if it's America that will be invaded, or if it is Saudi Arabia, or if Lebonon will attack and kill all of the people of Israel, or if Israel will attack and kill all of the people of Lebonon; Perhaps this whole thing will blow over peacefully and be forgotten in ten or twenty years. Kosovo was forgotten by many. I remember it only as a word repeated on the news as a child. I'm still not certain what it was about. There is no more great rallying for peace with thousands of people coming together to protest something. There is so little shouting in the streets, not like the 60s and 70s, when everything was a mob-scene-bordering-on-riot. I'm not saying I want to see rioting. I want to see people caring about the world and it's state. The world could be a beautiful place if people would step up and register to vote.

I'm so lucky to have a family who loves me.

Housework, the doldrums, and living with your folks, the beginning of the end.

They sit me down and decide that they want to have a serious discussion with me. I'm only going to be living at home for a few more weeks. Then I'm going to be stuck in a car mit sie for a few weeks. It'll be different, but I know from my memory and from journals that I'm the most difficult one to travel with in my family. I'm also the most difficult to live with. I know this, but there isn't much I can do short of sulking, in which case they pester me into confessing what is wrong.
My biggest fault is NOT that I am lazy. It is that I have alot on my mind. For so long I beat myself up thinking I was a slug, a rotten, good-for-nothing slug who was bound for failure because of lack of modivation and effort. Not true. My parents think that it's immaturity. It's not that either. I'm not a naturally organized person. I am naturally chaotic, not to a disgusting state...I like things to be sterilized, but cluttered. And who are my parents to judge me on that, they-who-invented-the-word "Glom"? My parents are every bit as disorganized as I am. And I admit that sometimes things don't get done that they ask me to do...however, when things DO get done, they go unnoticed. I clean the kitchen nearly every day, many days twice. But the kitchen is a place that is constantly being used, and because everyone has different schedules for eating...so the kitchen is never truly clean. If they decide to tell me that the kitchen must be clean at the end of every day before bed, I could understand that...maybe that's what I'll suggest. I also clean the bathrooms before any company comes over. The parents never ever notice this. I vacuumed the other day, and dusted the piano, and folded laundry and mopped the kitchen floor and brushed the dog. All of this went unnoticed. The only things that get noticed are the things left undone. But that's the way life is too, that's the way it is in any workplace or in any school project. Except with my parents it isn't a matter of passing or failing. It is a matter of appeasement, and I DO try to make them happy and proud of me.
I've never defied them, I've never gone out drinking, never played with fireworks or knives, I've never made a serious life-affecting choice that I regretted, I have a higher GPA than either of them did when they were my age. I am going to a much smaller, safer school than either of them went to. I have denied myself of every great rebelliousness to honor them...TV, videogames, pop music, materialisticness. I became a musician because my father is a musician, I remained shy and reserved because my mom is shy and reserved. I don't regret my strong bonds with them.
But this is my life. Not theirs. I shouldn't NEED them. I should love them. I should love them not because I need them but because I love them for raising me and because they are the wonderful people that they are. I shouldn't have come home this summer. It was a mistake, a grave one, because now my relationship with them has gone from "dependant minor" to "independant adult who is mooching off us and being immature about it to boot"
They worry about me, mom says, because I forget to do things around the house. She has told me that I am flaky. I agree. At college, I write everything down. They also think that I'm tremendously immature, or at least it seems that they must think that.

On my maturity. I connect with adults very very well. If Mom or Dad ever saw me in action at either of my jobs, they'd see how well I interact with adults. I had TWO intelligent conversations with customers today, one about Opera, the other about Russia. More often than not, I find myself knowing far more than they do about things. I never try to come off snobbish, and it's very arrogant of me to even have such a thought, but I am quite certain that I read and write more than and am all around better educated than many adults in Luverne. And I generally enjoy the company of those people who are as intelligent or more so than myself. Logan for instance...that kid is WAY more intelligent than I am...I have a year on him, so I keep up, but he knows alot, and if I make an error, he knows. Jessa and Bethany are the same way. Elizabeth is four years younger than I, but FAR better read than I am. In fact, there isn't a single one person whom I consider my friend whose talents or capabilities don't surpass my own. Thus, I hold every single friend in very high regard.
They don't think that I'm necessarily think that I'm immature in that sense, the connect-with-people sense. They think that I'm immature in the "small-town naive girl who knows nothing of the big bad world sense," that I don't know how to manage myself, a career, or money on my own without their guidance. But I haven't asked them for a cent since I left for college. They've given me plenty, and I've accepted all of their gifts with thanks, but not once did I write home saying "send me more money" and I was reluctant (and remain so) to ask for anything at all. They should not have to pay my phone bill, they should not have to pay any sort of loan bill at all...even though they are. I'm not going to give myself an ulcer worrying about my education and how I will pay for it. God will provide, and I am His and His alone. But I won't hold them responsible for "bailing me out" either. I understand why they are so worried about my financial security: they've experienced financial instability and they don't want me to feel that same way ever. They also don't believe in the "good debt, bad debt" philosophy. Good debt is when you take out a loan for a house or a car or an education, bad debt is when you go into credit card debt, debt because of things that prove little worth to you later on. My parents worry that I will choose the wrong thing and be unhappy for the whole of my life. But if I go the way of God how can I be unhappy? My life doesn't belong to them, my life doesn't belong to me, nor to Debt, nor to Happiness. My life doesn't belong to any thing of this earth. It is the things of the next world that I concern myself with, and therefore any debt or surplus is meaningless...something that will be left behind. But I don't think I can say that to them. I think if I said that to them, they'd have me committed...they'd accuse me of using my religeousness as an excuse for being immature about life choices. I think that they're torn themselves. I'm a musician, a dreamer, a poet, a scholar. None of those things make any money. Musicians, dreamers, poets, scholars...those people face lives of poverty (Mozart had a pauper's grave), hunger(Handel lived on the streets for 8 years when he was young), depression(Van Gogh killed himself). My parents are simultaneously impressed and dissappointed that I am this musician/poet/dreamer/scholar. They'd been hoping for someone who would be "successful" as well. They don't expect me to become a millionaire, but they seem to be disappointed that I don't have any monetary goal in mind for the future. They seem to be disappointed that I'm around the house so much. I think they'd hoped that I'd be living with them, but hardly ever around because of my work. I think they'd hoped that I'd be driven by money this summer, not by these dreams and rants and bursts of inspiration because of the wind or the Bible or an opera. Or perhaps they don't think that I'm inspired at all. I could be the most fabulous opera singer in the world, and my Dad would think I was so so. I've studied voice classically for nearly four years now, and he's never once shown any appreciation or even iota of being impressed. I've also composed things, and he doesn't even seem to like my compositions, though I've been told by upperclassmen at Concordia that my knack for it is extremely impressive. But I don't do it for him. He's a silly old man who made many sacrifices for his family, for his career as a means for that family. While that is terribly valient of him, he lost his creative edge. He hasn't composed, unless in secret, since his college days. Reality struck him, he put his musicianship and composership aside and he made a way for himself to have a family. And the fruit of that bounty is that he has one, one that loves him and always will. But that doesn't mean that it's going to be my path too. He expects it to be. They both expect me to fall deeply in love with someone very soon, and then decide that I too will want a family and a normal career and financial stability. But I don't know that. I haven't met anyone, I don't intend to go out looking, I DETEST most college boys and the ones I don't detest are all either gay or taken, and even if I DID find a college boy who wasn't gay or taken and I didn't detest him and I fell in love, well, then of course life will take it's due course and we'll manage somehow. But for me to plan all of that out at the age of 19 is a rediculous thing. They don't expect me to plan that all out at this age of course, but in order to keep my edge musically and intellectually and linguistically and spiritually, I have to close some doors. I don't have time for a computers class, nor do I have much interest in computers right now. I don't have time for a business class because I have no interest in running a business, at least until I'm retired, then I fancy running a little shop that would sell books and bakeries and candies and candles and coffees and soaps and my own knit scarves and all sorts of pleasant, comforting things. I can't keep all my options open. I won't live anyone's dream but my own, and that is to fulfill my calling, which isn't entirely clear to me yet, but at least I'm LISTENING and PRAYING about it, which is more than many people do. So many people follow only their own desires and they often wind up very unhappy.
I'm not unhappy, though I do have the doldrums. I am worried about my parents. I want them to be happy, but I know that regardless of who I was or what I was as long as they can still reach me and influence my life, they will push me to be more than I already am. I only wish that that push was coming from God and not from them. Perhaps God is going through them, perhaps that is it. I hope so. It's so hard to listen to what they have to say because they both can be so inconsistant, and I'm a basketcase half the time too. It's so hard because they are completely and TOTALLY wrong about some things, they are completely and totally RIGHT about some things, they are bad communicators at times, bad listeners at times and I am the same. It causes the situation to be full of ultimate frustration which gets nowhere.
They want to talk with me about something tomorrow, and all I know is that it has to do with my whole life and that it probably has to do with something that they feel is wrong or amiss with my whole life (otherwise they wouldn't want to have a discussion).

Fair is Foul, the inner perspective.

Here I am. This is me. A positive, forward-looking young woman who is willing to work to succeed, who has a huge list of dreams and ambitions. I can't WAIT to be there, I can't WAIT to get started, to direct my first choir, to ace everything.
Except that's not who I've been these last few days. I feel like a recluse. The other music majors don't really think much of me, the professors don't either. They have no reason to think that I'm special at all. In fact, I'm pretty common. There's a dime-a-dozen mezzos in the world. I can compose, but it's of no consequence because my knowledge of the science behind music is limited. I don't have the energy to study as much as I should. I don't enjoy rehearsing because I know I don't sound as lovely as I used to. I know I skwalk and schriek. I only wonder if I always sounded this disgusting or if it's always been that way and I was too musically ignorant to notice. Music is the only THING in this world that I love and have a passion for. Most of my youth was spent on it. And I am such a failure now, I see that I am so far behind the other students that I hesitate even to get help because I don't want to waste the time of the professors anymore. I feel like instead of getting ahead, living my dream, all my life so far I have been wasting my time on things which, although they bring me great joy, are useless to the world. My songs will never be played or sung with any joy. My voice will never be heard with awe of beauty because it isn't beauteous. I have grown myself in a world which I don't belong in.
I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why God would convince me that I was going to the right place, doing the right things, and then watch me fail so miserably at it.
But I can't blame Him for this. The only person to blame is myself. And Mozart.

http://twilighthush.com/sora/colors/

Fair is foul. The days are rocking by, they're passing even me. I guess that I don't really like being home, but I really don't like being at school either. I guess I'm caught right now. Luverne isn't a great place...but it's not bad. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.

I am appalled. I am appalled at myself right now. The work I've done for one of my classes is so horrible. It seems to be the work of a 4th grader. What was I thinking? Why is this so horrible? Do I have no thought whatsoever? What have I been doing this semester. Then I remember. All those other things: music, composing, rediculous other things, poetry, russian, thinking about Mike. Rediculous. All of it...rediculous. This paper is so badly done that I want to smack myself.

He's so much more detached than before. He doesn't love me and doesn't have time for me. Why should I be in love with him? There's nothing for us right now. I understand. I understand now. There is no demon keeping us apart. To be part of his life is to be more attached than I want to be. So until we speak again.


Fair is foul, foul is fair. Always.

Fire

I want so much more.
I am a woman. I want more.
I want more than to make babies. I want more than to sit and watch TV and work a job. I want to get lost. I want to go out in the world and be lost for a while...because, just as fair is foul and foul is fair, lost is found and found is lost! Here, in this small room where I sleep...I am found. Everyone knows who I am, where I am...what I am. I am woman. I am sitting here, learning, or wishing I wasn't. I always see the others and think: ah, how much better it would be to be them, neglecting their studies because they are free, they have the money to do so, they may do as they truly please. I am bound to try very hard through this education.

But I am freed. They are the slaves of their lives. They will never, in the long run, know more than making babies and watching TV and working their silly bland jobs.
I want to teach. I want to live in a world where it isn't just a good idea, but one can get lost in books. BOOOKS.


And yet to some I must seem profoundly boring

Because in my mind, I may go anywhere I please. And they will always adhere to the world around them. But in my mind, I may go anywhere I please.


Anywhere I please.

Inspired by Aristotle

Attaining the higher 'good'...is it possible? Is good always worth attaining? Happiness is virtue, and finding virtue is finding the mediant between excess and deficiency. If you are exceedingly hateful, though, it is a deficiency of love. If you are exceedingly loving, it perhaps isn't love, but rather a mask of insecurity. If you are exceedingly hateful, then, it is a mask of not wanting to mask your insecurity. There are no answers. Fair is foul, foul is fair.

Do I use the phrase to excape the exerted truths which, as our friend Aristotle believed, were easily attained if you think reasonably enough? I don't know enough about Aristotle to know whether he is right or not. My purpose is now to learn, however, along the road I keep having these strange visions of myself in a straight-jacket bouncing off padded walls in cell 203. Is it then, worth learning? Sacrificing sanity for knowledge? I've done that enough times already though.

Honesty. Is honesty always good? Honesty is adhering to the truth. Is the truth always good? What is truth? Jesus. But in Aristotles time, there was no Jesus. Truth for Aristotle was found in reason. But human reason is within onesself. Human reason for me is not the same thing as it is for her, typing at her computer, nor him, finding his books. Human reason deviates because it is found within the mind. Logic is what bridges the gap. I've never been a fan of logic, I like to notice, and be the deviant thing that doesn't adhere to the rest of the world...even if it doesn't go toward the greater good sometimes. Does that make me a villian? A poetic villain?

If I am a villian, I must realize that there must be villains for there to be heroes. If there was no evil in the world, there would be no good. So am I a hero by being a villain? I create the heroes. So, I am the most heroic hero of them all...I and my villainery. But Logic isn't the greatest thing in the world. The greatest thing in the world is love. Love is often the deviant thing, in this world full of hatred and tears. But, if Love is the hero, and Hatred is the Villain, than Hatred creates the Hero. Only, if it is an evil world that we live in and I care to be the deviant, I am the hero, and hatred is the villain. But without hate, there is no love, which is why, if I am loving I will love all of the others all the more. I must.

Fair is foul, foul is fair.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a think you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass, and there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you wil, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me."

The Friend Problem

I have this friend, at home, who gives things. She loves things. She understands things. I'm afraid she sees the dollar value in everything. I'm afraid of being her friend. Can I be called her friend? Does she understand friendship? Is she spoiled? Greedy? Rotten? I don't know. Am I a true friend if I overlook that part of her personality? She isn't disrespectful, really...but she must always have her way. Spoiled? Yes. Greedy and rotten, I hope not. We are not friends because of our personalities being the same. We are friends because of what we've been through together. We've helped one another through the hard times. But I can't help feeling sorry for her. She loves money, and spending it...something I have always secretly detested. I prefer to wear clothes from thrift shops...because they've been worn, and loved, and grown out of, and discarded.
But I sit there, mooching her chocolate, and using her things. Am I an accomplice? There's so much more to life than things? Am I doing what so many people do and seeing my own faults in her? Am I spoiled? I try not to be. I know I can be thankless...but that's only because I don't really understand thankfulness...does that make me horrible?
I believe that all things come from God, and not from us...God is the only one that can be thanked...that's why maybe thanking someone for something isn't really right. Also, by thanking someone for something, it's thanking them for spending money they should have kept. Thanking them for spending money that should have been given to someone who has nothing, not to me, who has everything she needs and more. What is a true gift?
These sort of thoughts are so far from the mind of my friend that I don't know how we can call each other true friends. Isn't friendship love? We tell each other, half kiddingly, that we love each other. But do we? Truly...no. It's just words.
Her family is split up. From what I can tell, her parents play against one another using her as the middle, they both want her to love them more than the other, they want her to choose out of some twisted sense of revenge that follows a marriage that didn't work out. She's lived her life like a tv show, where nothing is real. She doesn't understand compassion the way I do. She understands compassion as hugging someone who is crying, as giving and recieving gifts at Christmastime. The thing is, she's never told me, but I think she does give alot of herself....or she wants to, but then stops short, and I think it has to do with the fact that she loved her parents...but they didn't love one another. They use her to get back at one another, measuring themselves against her love. They use things to buy her love, words, however hollow or true to express their love...and I think it is wrong...because I don't think they really do love her at all. Neither of them. And I don't think she knows what love is...the friend love, the family love...and although it is none of my business and I would never ask, the romantic love. She uses the word love so flippantly...it frightens me. What frightens me more is that I could be becoming her...not the intense person that I am...becoming flippant, fake...hiding my love behind showing it falsely. That is what I fear.
I don't know about this one. She is stubborn, self-centered, egotistical, and can be very nasty about other people...and I feel that she can be about me as well. I think that she feels that I am too lazy, that I should aspire to more, that I shouldn't be so driven toward my education and more toward work because the bounty of work is money, and you can spend money...you can't spend intellect. She judges me as being to prudish, not cool with the guys (because I'm not), not quite as pretty (though she will never say it), someone who eats too much, aspires too much, and isn't the way she is. She assumes that if someone isn't the way she is, they are at fault. She finds herself faultless because her parents have always found her faultless...because they never could lose that battle with her in the middle of it...they couldn't lose it to the child that could hate them.

The truly sad thing about it is...I can't tell her this. I don't want her to cry and hate me either. Does this make me an accomplice? I don't think she would change for me, I don't think if I am anything other than a doormat sometimes that it would be appropriate. I don't know about her. I just, simply don't know. I think that the only way I can truly give her a gift is if I hurt her feelings a great deal. And it wouldn't matter because I don't matter to her that much. Nothing matters except the things she surrounds herself with. To the world, she shows amazing potential, a strong work ethic, an ability to focus and please, about the tough stuff, she ignores it, and feels flippant and happy...but inside, I think she's screaming...

Foul is fair.

Complaint Heeded

God must know that I was aching for a Shakespeare...although it's only poor Hamlet. I would rather move into the newness of a play I haven't read. However, tut tut...twill not happen.
I will only briefly include what happens, although I assure you I know...I've read this play more than once before, and seen the Kate-Winslet-as-Ophelia version of it more than once, recently it was shown in Olin.

First of all, a discourse about unfolding onesself: How does one in this day and age truly unfold onesself. Make yourselves known all ye people of the earth! Singing was described to me once as peeling the layers of an onion. The amount of focus involved, the amount of skill and time, and in the end, you achieve a level of "here I am, this is me." It's part of the thing I love about singing...performing. However, isn't writing too a means of performing? Life is a stage, and we are it's players. It is a performance, and it is real. Reality and fantasy combine, and everyone is being watched. I got away from this way of thinking when I was told that when I cantor (sing) at Church, it ought not to be a performance but rather prayer through song. The thing is, it is all a performance, not in front of the congregation, but in front of GOD. Here I will get a bit spiritual, but shouldn't we unfold ourselves to one another...and in doing so unfold ourselves to God? Excuse me from twisting Shakespeare's words to meet my needs, but it came to my mind and I could not bore it out until I had it written.

"No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is that time."
-Marcellus of Hamlet on Dawn (the moment the cock crew) because the ghost disappeared.
I am a fan of fantasy stories, so anything to do with witches and fairies and ghosts is interesting to me, but this is on the intimacy of Dawn. I think part of why Dawn is intimate is because I so rarely see it. I am a college student, my bedtime is around 2 am, and my waketime is never earlier than it has to be. Also, this reminds me of a quote from King Crimson's Lizard. "The reapers name their harvest 'dawn' " Perhaps the cock is the reaper, and he harvests dawn by crowing.

"A little more than kin, and less than kind."
-Hamlet on Family
Hamlet is a terribly sad character. His father died, he dislikes his uncle quite alot. He doesn't get the love and affection he needs from his uncle. I am so lucky to have a loving family.

"Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not forever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st 'tis common, all that lives must die
Passing though nature to eternity."
-The Queen on Grief in response to Hamlet's cynical nature.
The Queen is right, "all that lives must die" but also, it is wrong to just forget certain things, like, for Hamlet, the love of his father. Hamlet has been grieving for quite some time...and she's trying to get him back into the swing of life. However, I think it's very important to let grief run it's course. It's not right to tell a grieving person that everything is ok, that tis common, and not to grieve because sometime people have to. I myself have had little direct feelings of grief. I truly believe that everyone upon their death meets with God, and can enter the kingdom of Heaven if they so choose, once they apologize for their sins. Hamlet, doesn't believe this because his father died suddenly and had no time for 'reconciliation', and not only that, but he is probably angry with God, as many grievers can be.

"The funeral baked meats did coldly furthish forth the marriage tables."
-Hamlet, on his mothers marriage to soon.
I just like this idea.
Discuss love and revenge: Hamlet and his father, the ghost...

Discourse on Hamlet and madness
I am not certain whether Hamlet is truly mad or not. I know that he says he's just pretending...but what if he did go mad? What if the Ghost and Horatio and the sentenals at the beginning are only in Hamlet's imagination, the story is being told from his mad perspective. He did crazy things, and he knows he did them, but from his perspective, he was only pretending. By the end, is he really mad? I would be, if I slay my true love, and her father, out of revenge. Is revenge in itself a kind of madness? What is sanity? Is it sane to plot to kill someone because a ghost told you to?

"My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time.
Were nothing but to wast night, day and time
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. Your noble son is mad."
-Polonious in silly contradiciton of himself on Brevity.
Polonious is my favorite character, mostly because of his name, and another song lyric, from the same band, King Crimson, the entire line is sung "Go Polonious or kneel, the reapers name their harvest "Dawn", Go, the tarnished deviled spoons will rust beneath our corn..." And as a small child I imagined Polonious, from the song, to be a wizard and Neil (not knowing it was kneel) was his sidekick, so I've always thought of Polonious as a wizard...it was not until years later in High School that I learned he was poor Ophelias rather shifty father. He contradicts himself here...he rambles about day, night and time, and then makes his point finally..."your noble son is mad" Polonious thinks it's because of the letter that Hamlet wrote to Ophelia, because Polonious told Ophelia to reject Hamlet's love, which of course drove him mad.

"Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love."
-Polonious reading Hamlet's letter to Ophelia to the Queen
This is a bit sweet. I am a romantic and I believe firmly in passion and craziness to love. The last time I read this for a class, I was told that this could actually be like a secret message from the Hamlet within the mad Hamlet to Ophelia. "Don't worry...I know things are crazy, and will get worse, but I love you still."