Time to stand and stare

My roommate told me about this great article that was in the Washington Post this past winter, so I looked it up and read it, and it truly was amazing. It was about art and beauty and perception and context and not seeing what's right in front of you simply because it's unexpected. It's called "Pearls Before Breakfast" and is about an experiment done by the Washington Post. Read the article if you want to know more, and I highly suggest you do. Here's the link to the article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Cat's Eyes

My wonderful cat again! She has the most beautiful green eyes and the most penetrating stare. And she likes to stare. To be honest, she stares so much it freaks me out a little sometimes. But don't let her penchant for peering fool you, she's really very sweet and loving. And yes, I am a little too obsessed with my cats. But my family's been falling apart over the past year, my siblings and parents scattered to the four winds, so my cats are all I've got left. They're my family now.

Another poem that calls to me

The Hollow Men
by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.
    
         A penny for the Old Guy
 
              I
        
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
        
              II
        
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
        
              III
        
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
        
              IV
        
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
        
              V
        
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                  For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


                  Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

                  For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Moods

I'm in a lyrical mood right now. Moods are a strange thing. This morning I was depressed and pessimistic, and now I'm just introspective and thoughtful, pondering deep things and even getting a little existential now and then. What causes moods to change? I've always tried to figure it out. My depression this morning was undoubtedly caused by my dreams last night. I definitely did not sleep well. I've always had very vivid, intense dreams that seem to create more problems than they solve. You know how dreams are supposed to be your subconscious's way of working through your problems and occasionally solving them? Well, dreams work the opposite for me. All they do is increase my stress and agony. Often, my dreams are simply horror shows, highlighting all the possible things that could go wrong with an upcoming event that I'm nervous about and therefore increasing my fear. Then there are the straight-up nightmares. But we're not even going there, because those are the nights when I'm afraid to go to sleep and I'm so busy right now that I need my sleep.

Anyways, that was this morning. And now I'm in a more contemplative, speculative, not really happy but more content mood. I usually call this particular mood my "lyrical mood". The only reason I can think of for the sudden change is that 1. my dreams have faded and 2. it's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL fall day outside, and things are actually going fairly well so far this afternoon.

Now, when I'm in a lyrical mood that always calls for one thing in particular: poetry. Now with poetry, most of the time I can take it or leave it (with the obvious exception of Shakespeare because I adore Shakespeare and it's always the right time for Shakespeare), but if I'm in just the right mood for poetry I can't get enough. One of my favorite poems is Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. It's odd really, I'm a visual person rather than an audio person--meaning that I learn better when I see something rather than hear it, so I usually prefer to read poetry rather than hear it spoken. But the first time I read this poem my response was basically, "Meh". It didn't call to me the way it did when I heard an excerpt on Classic Poetry Aloud, a podcast I listen to. After hearing it read out loud by someone who is good at it, wow! It's such a beautiful, sad, bittersweet poem. And it fits my current strange mood. So I'm going to post part of it here and share it with you, my non-existent loyal readers. Helpful hint: if you have the same reaction I did at first, read it out loud or better yet--get someone else to read it to you.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol
by Oscar Wilde

In Memoriam
C.T.W.
Sometime Trooper of
The Royal Horse Guards.
Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
July 7th, 1896

I.

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow's got to swing."

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

Natal Day

I'm 24 today. I've been on this planet for 24 years, and what do I have to show for it? Two cats who love me? Well, I love them back, and its much better than being alone, but what else? An awesome roommate? She is awesome, and I love her too, but she's most likely heading off to Spain in a couple months for a fantastic job experimenting with sustainable living, which is one of her passions. What does that leave me with? An apartment I can't afford to pay for by myself, full of stuff that I'd have to drag with me anywhere else I move to. My job? It pays the bills. No, it's more than that, I do enjoy it sometimes, I like my coworkers, and my boss is great. But basically I'm working in a kitchen. Not exactly on my desired career path. My city? Small. Really a small town, about 30,000 people. Friends? None within one hundred miles other than my soon-to-be-leaving roommate. Desired destination? Chicago, DC, Copenhagen, London, Rome, basically anywhere with more than a million people. How am I spending my birthday? Alone in my apartment with a pizza, a bottle of wine, and my cats.

At this exact moment, my older sister is in Afghanistan, doing something doubtless fascinating and important as a representative of the FBI. Not an agent, but still. That's exciting, and exactly the kind of thing I want to do, travel to places off the beaten path where bad things are happening, and stop them. I want to help people, and yes, I might be a little bit of an action junkie as I always want to be in on the action, but that's not a crime. She's doing something important in a war zone, while I'm lying on my bed in Small Town, USA, trying to figure out what it takes to get someone to hire me.

Reflected

More Chicago and the Bean.

The Bean!

Millenium Park is by far one of my favorite places in Chicago. I love the row of older buildings lining the far side of Michigan Ave with the open park on other side. And the park itself is wonderful! I love the fountains with the faces that spit water, and the garden with the wooden walkway bordered by running water with a step that you can sit on and soak your feet, which is wonderful after hours of walking on a hot summer day!

Grand old time in Chicago!

I just got back from spending the weekend in Chicago with my family, and took this picture of one of the older buildings downtown. I have to say, Chicago is one of my favorite cities. I spent a summer there during college when I had an internship downtown, and got to know the city pretty well. I love it! It's so vibrant and loud and colorful and busy and alive! It's also one of the most beautiful cities, with all the parks (Millenium Park is my favorite) and wonderful old Art Deco buildings from the 1920s and '30s. It also has this, I don't know quite what to call it, kind of a feeling, an atmosphere, an attitude is maybe the best word. Chicago is undeniably Chicago, and could never be mistaken for any other city.

Finding Myself and Saving the World

Lately I've been rather obsessed with self-expression. I think that stems from something I've been dealing with since I moved out, which is figuring out who I am, what I want to be and where I'm going. I know, no small order, right? Well, since I've graduated college and started searching for a job I've had to figure out precisely what it is I want to do for a living. I know, I know, I'm supposed to have figured out all that in college, right? Well, I didn't. College is an amazing experience, but it really doesn't do a whole lot to prepare you for life and a career. As I've been wading through all these job search websites and job listings and talking to people and looking at grad schools I started thinking, and as usual, thinking is my downfall. I had originally planned, back in my naive, no-sense-of-the-real-world college days, that I wanted to work in book publishing and editing. Well, my new, street-smarter self has figured out that that is an EXTREMELY competitive field and nearly impossible to break into unless you have some connections. Which I don't. And even more importantly, I've come to realize that I don't want to work for some evil, giant, soulless corporation. I want to save the world. As naive as that statement is. I want to feel like I'm doing some good in this mad, mad world. That my existence has meaning. That I can help other people. That realization has led me toward looking at non-profits, human rights organizations, and things like the Peace Corps, which I never even considered in college. After all my research, sadly, the Peace Corps is out because even though it sounds fantastic and I would LOVE to do it, I have no qualifications for any of their positions and it is apparently really, REALLY hard to get accepted by them. GRRRRR! So that leaves non-profits and any other save-the-world type positions I can find. However, jobs are not as easy to come by as people seem to think. So until someone finally accepts me as the fantastic employee I will be, I'll have to stick with my resident penchant for self-expression to figure out who I am and make myself into who I want to be.