Regrets

I believe I've aged decades in the past year. I'm not entirely sure what brought this about, I'm 24 years old and hardly a child anymore, and haven't been for 5 years or so. Chronologically, at least. Mentally, however, it's a whole different story. I've been slowly realizing this over the last several months, but I've only recently had the epiphany that made me really realize it. Stupidly enough, it was TV that brought it home. Well, TV and movies. I've seen a few things recently that I had last seen only a year or two ago, but I had a much different reaction to them now. This epiphany led me wonder just what it was that brought about such a striking change. I guess you could say my outlook has broadened. I've learned to see things from a different angle, from several different angles. I don't see just black and white anymore, I know that the world mostly exists in shades of gray, and what happens in that gray is rarely pleasant. I've learned far too much about people, about the good and the bad and the often sad. Compared to a lot of people's, my life has been positively Rockwellian. The trouble with my parents last winter really shook me up, but only because there had previously been nothing but tranquility. Well, okay, tranquility is maybe not quite the right word, but there hadn't been anything serious or even all that upsetting prior to The Event. Since that episode forced me kicking and screaming to grow up and join the real world, my eyes have been opened. I've started to delve into the morass of human frailty and limitations, and learned far more than I wanted to about what humanity is capable of.

Now, remember, when I say I've learned, I mean I've read. I'm living in Small Town, USA, where people are still old-fashioned enough to actually be nice to each other and therefore I have still never seen the terrible things with my own eyes that I read about daily (for which I can only be thankful). However, while a picture is worth a thousand words, a few hundred words can be quite effective as well. Words can well portray human suffering and cruelty, and the emotions and reactions associated with them. I was an English Literature major in college, so words are my bread and butter, so to say. I may not as talented at wielding them as other people, but I am a connoisseur of them and very good at critical analysis (thank you, my dear alma mater), so I know that of which I speak. But I digress. To get back to my main point, when I say that I know, I do, but I still don't really know. That's probably a good thing, because I'm sure that there are too many things that once seen can never be taken away. There are too many good people screwed up because they saw or did something that can never be taken back. So to sum up, I guess you could say that I've finally grown up. Peter Pan flies no longer.

All of this soul searching had had another side effect. I've also started to look at my own life with a much more critical eye. Since J moved out I've had too much time alone with just my own brain for company, and I've been reviewing various aspects of my past, things I've done and decisions I've made, and discovered that unfortunately, all too often these have led to regret. Oh, nothing serious, no life or death situations, just small everyday things that could have gone one way but instead went another due to my choice made at the time. I wish that I had done some things differently because I think they would have been better, more enjoyable; or at least I would be able to regret having done something rather than not having done something. Do you know what I mean? It's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. I ask permission. Or say nothing at all. And miss out on what might have happened. Instead nothing happens. I'm a very safe person. I don't take risks. Ever. I miss out on so much because I'm afraid. Not so much of danger, of actually, physically, being hurt, but mostly of stupid social things, like of failure or being embarrassed or put in an awkward situation or just generally humiliating myself. I think that is my fatal flaw: I care too much about what people (even complete strangers) think of me. I care too much about my image. I need to get over this so I can live. Because right now, what I am doing, I don't think qualifies as living (italics necessary). Life is not a dress rehearsal, and as my sister reminded me just a few weeks ago, we only live once. I need to do things while I'm young and able, and not let my fears stand in the way.

It's a brand new day.

Feline Feature -- Two Days Late

My Feline Feature for this week is two days late, and it's only the second one of the series! Wow, that's just sad. I've really got to do better. The single pathetic excuse I can offer is that I've been really busy this past week. J got off without a hitch, she's all settled in at her internship and completely loving it. I miss having her here, but I'm glad she's happy and I'm really glad that she is able to be out doing something that she loves and feels so strongly about. I haven't been able to find that yet, much less get to do it.

Anyways, like I said, I've been busy working, as well as re-organizing and cleaning my apartment since it's a lot emptier without all of J's stuff. And believe me, it needed a good cleaning! I'm not exactly the best housekeeper. Okay, I'll be honest, I hate cleaning and therefore do it as rarely as possible. Hence the need for a thorough cleaning while I had the chance.

And now, this week's (slightly late) Feline Feature Photo!


This is Malaika, my roommate's (and now my) cat. She's really adorable when she's not racing around the apartment destroying things. I managed to catch her here while she was napping, which by the size of her eyes you would never be able to tell. She just has these huge brown eyes and does quite a bit of staring. I also like the contrast of the blue blanket behind her, it really makes her face, and especially those big brown eyes, pop so that they're the first thing you see.

Substandard

Okay, sorry, this one's not that great. I haven't been taking many photos lately, not really sure why not. Just haven't. I'll try to do better from now on.

Feline Feature

As it's raining and miserable outside and I'm therefore bored (I canceled my cable service as my roommate J is moving out this weekend and I will no longer be able to afford such luxuries), I've been killing time by going through old pictures on my little Canon point-and-shoot digital camera. I freely admit it, there is an overwhelming majority of cat pictures. Apparently my cats are all I ever take pictures of (I can't help it, they're just so cute!). Anyways, as there are so many that more than a few aren't half bad, I've decided to institute a new feature of this blog: The Feline Feature! Every week I will choose one of the better shots of one of the cats to feature. Since today is Thursday, I am arbitrarily choosing Thursdays to implement this new wonderful profile. Now, you attentive readers might remember that only two of the three cats currently residing in my apartment are mine, so that would imply that one will soon be leaving with J. Well, for the next nine months I have temporary ownership of the third, and craziest, cat. My roommate is taking a (miraculously) paid internship at some sort of bird research foundation, studying and tracking wild cranes. They are providing housing at the research place and no pets are allowed (probably afraid they will eat the cranes), so Malaika is staying with me, Mouse, and George for the foreseeable future. Lucky me. I swear, that cat is systematically destroying this apartment.


And now, for the first time ever on this blog, the Feline Feature Photo!

(I realize that for continuity's sake I should probably spell "Photo" with an "F" but I hate it when people do that, it really irritates me and I refuse to ever be that cutesy)

The subject here is my Georgie. This picture is one of my particular favorites, hence the choice of putting it up first. I like to think of this as a portrait, because it really shows George's personality (and don't even try to argue that cats can't have personalities, because I will never believe you). I used the black-and-white option, which is one of the things I like so much about the little mainstream point-and-shoot digital cameras, they make features like that easy! But one of the reasons I like this shot so much is that even though it's in black and white, you can still almooooost see the color of George's eyes and face.

The Mad Ones

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."

-Jack Kerouac

Chronicles of Copenhagen, Part 2

I was reading through my old Xanga website and I found this little blurb I posted about a really funny story from my Nordic Mythology class I took in Denmark. The funny thing is, I was just thinking about this particular anecdote not too long ago. I'll copy and paste the entry in its entirety for your edification.

February 9, 2006

Okay so I'm studying for my Nordic Mythology class and I found this story that strikes me as really funny. I don't know, maybe it's just my slightly screwy sense of humor, but I found this really funny. It's a Norse myth called "The Binding of the Wolf". (By the way, anything in parantheses is my explanation of characters and places and anything else the average person wouldn't know)

The Binding of the Wolf

The most terrible creature in Asgard (heaven, home of the gods) was the wolf Fenrir, who was brought up in Asgard, but grew so huge and fierce that in the end only Tyr dared to feed him. He was so menacing that they knew he must be bound, but every fetter which they laid on him was easily snapped. Finally, guided by the wisdom of Odin (the head god), the dwarfs forged a chain for him, made from the secret and impalpable things of the world--the roots of a mountain, the noise of a moving cat, and the breath of a fish. It seemed no more than a silken cord, yet no force could break it. The wolf thought it harmless, but he would not allow it to be laid upon him unless one of the gods placed a hand between his jaws as a hostage. Tyr alone was prepared to do this, and so the wolf was bound, the chain held, and the gods laughed -- all but Tyr, who lost his hand.

Isn't that funny? Okay, I know, I know, I'm weird. My sense of humor is slightly off to find that funny, but I do.

Well, I still think it's funny. :) I do have a slightly eccentric sense of humor, hence my appreciation for offbeat things like this and the character Aaron in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and movies like Snatch.

Spring Has Sprung!

Finally! It is a balmy 57 degrees outside right now, which feels amazing after the freezing weekend we just had. Of course, it never lasts--as proven by the forecast for this weekend, which calls for snow and ice. Yay.

The Old Lie

Lately I've been reading too much about war. So here for everyone else is a taste of what I've been learning too much about.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen, 1917

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(Translation from the Latin: "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country" -- from Horace's Odes)

This poem was written by a soldier in World War I about one particular incident so common that it became the defining weapon of that conflict: gas attacks. Mustard gas, more specifically. When I read this poem a few months ago, it brought to mind what I've read about fears (later proven baseless) of chemical attacks on troops during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and all the precautions taken because of that fear (if you don't know what I'm talking about, read and/or watch 'Generation Kill'). That correlation between wars separated by 90 years, numerous technological innovations, and the development of peace activism, really brought the point home that no matter how much technology is developed, the basic essence of war changes very little. It's still horrible, no matter how many 'smart bombs' and non-lethal ammunition developments there are. By the way, the poet, Wilfred Owen? He died a year after he wrote this poem, just one week before the war ended.

World War I, early twentieth century.

And Operation Iraqi Freedom, early twenty-first century.

Nothing ever changes.

DISCLAIMER: Neither of these pictures are mine, I found them both online.

No Peddlers or Agents

The building I live in is really old, I have no idea how old it actually is, but my guess would be that it dates from the 1930s or '40s. It has this great sign on the window next to the front entrance, which makes me smile every time I walk in. It's such a relic of bygone days, when door-to-door salesmen showing up on your front steps was a common occurrence. The whole concept is just so wonderfully dated and completely fantastic, I love it! The sign is even hand-painted, I can tell by the lettering. It's like something out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie. I can't believe it's survived this long with almost no damage.

Chronicles of Copenhagen

I just replied to an email from my sister asking for advice about places to visit in Copenhagen, and suggestions for any "typical souvenirs" people buy in Denmark. A coworker of hers is going to Copenhagen for two days next week for work, and so my sister emailed me on her behalf asking for advice. Well, I don't think they quite had in mind the book I emailed back. I realize that she's only going to be in the city for two days, and since she's going for work she'll be busy most of the time, but I couldn't help myself! I LOVE THAT CITY!!!

But do you want to know the bad part? When I opened that email and read the message, I had to sit back and actively try to think of places to send this nameless, faceless co-worker of my sister's. I sat there for a minute thinking, and at first nothing came to mind! I spent four months in that city, I lived, breathed, loved Copenhagen and three years later I can't think of any of the main tourist attractions!

Luckily, however, after a minute a few of my favorite places came to mind, and once I started to list them they just kept coming, hence the really long email I ended up sending.

The whole process just made me really homesick for my city, so I pulled out my disks of pictures from that semester in CPH and started looking through them. I just can't say this enough, so here I go again: I LOVE COPENHAGEN!!!!!!!

The picture above is from that city and that semester, I don't know where I was in the city when I took it. I was on my way to the Black Diamond (the nickname for the National Library) at the very end of the term for the program's closing convocation when I took this, so it's somewhere in that general vicinity.

Curves

Another old shot from this summer. I'm fortunate enough to live right next to the railroad tracks, which makes my ears unhappy but works well for photography!

On How I Was Almost Just Killed By a Lamp

A few minutes ago I was just sitting on the couch minding my own business watching Leverage like I do every Tuesday evening, petting my cat Mouse who was sleeping on my chest, while my roommate J was rearranging furniture, like she does on occasion. I have this big old floor lamp that's been broken for a while, it still works but doesn't stand straight up. Something broke on the base so it has to lean up against something or else falls over. It's right next to the couch, in front of a bookcase that I've had it leaning up against for months. Well, J was doing some rearranging to make a clothes rack fit on the other side of the bookcase, and she just had to try to fix the broken lamp, because she's kind of OCD like that. So she fiddles with it for a while, and we discuss the poor broken lamp's tenuous future (chucked out when I move, most likely) until she exclaims "Oh! Look! It's fixed!" I look up to see her triumphantly moving away from the lamp, which is now standing straight up, all by itself. I congratulate her, then go back to watching my show. She moves away and goes into her room to get something, a minute later moving back to the door to her room, which is directly across from the couch I'm sitting on, and I hear some sort of incomprehensible exclamation, neither of us can remember just what it was that she said even though it only happened about 5 minutes ago, but somehow I got the message that the lamp was falling towards me and about to clock me on the head. I must have looked over and seen it coming for me, so I screamed and put my hands up over my head, completely panicking, and..........................................................................



the lamp just misses me, the top big bowl landing on the cushion right next to me. Then the adrenaline kicks in and J and I both start laughing hysterically. Of course, we occasionally do that anyways, so there might not have actually been any adrenaline involved, but I think there was because if anything is going to trigger an adrenaline rush, it's a near-death experience. And maybe the lamp wouldn't have actually, literally, killed me (although I still maintain that it had it in for me) but at the time I certainly thought so, so I think that qualifies as a near-death experience.

Catpaw

My cat George was giving himself a bath, with this paw stuck up in the air like this. I just couldn't resist!

If you are wondering why I would name my cat "George," well, the answer is that I didn't. Please. Like I would really name my pet something so lame. Give me some credit for being more creative than that! My mom did it. George was our family's cat first, and when my parents got him as a kitten he was really sickly and little and kind of funny looking. My mom got the crazy idea that he looked like Boy George, so that's what she named him. I thought it was ridiculous, so I usually called him "Georgie," which is much cuter and fits his personality much better. Now I call him a lot of things, because I'm really bad about nicknames. I always give my animals a lot of nicknames. Some of my current favorites for George are: Peorgie, Mellow Yellow, Submarine Kitty, Cuddlebug, and Dork. Now, if some of these don't seem exactly complimentary, they aren't. But the thing about me is, the more I insult someone, the more I like them. Yes I'm strange. I think it's got something to do with my family and the way they raised me, because they all insult each other on a regular basis. So coming from me, insults are a good thing! Isn't that nice to know?

Spires

Just a nice shot of a beautiful local church, taken a few months ago. I was walking down the street and I loved the way the spires looked in front of the bright blue sky.

Quote of the Day

"My husband's not a criminal! He's won awards!"

--from the new episode of Law & Order last night

Fire Hydrant

I like this one. I don't really know why, it's rather blah. The colors, I guess. I like the bright yellow and red next to the white and little patches of green. Oh well. No accounting for taste!

Carpe Diem

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fancy Feet

Here's an old one from an old high school friend's wedding the summer before last. Several of my friends and I road-tripped in (we're from Iowa and the wedding was in Oklahoma), got a hotel room together, and spent several days there as a kind of a girl's getaway weekend. We've all scattered, so we are rarely all together, and make the most of it when we do manage to meet up.

Malaika and the Bathroom Sink

My roommate's cat Malaika has an odd predilection towards curling up to nap in our bathroom sink. It's really cute, because it fits her perfectly. Maybe that's why she likes it so much?

Jubilant

I'm not really sure why I put this picture up, the only explanations I can offer are that I like the angles, and I'm really tired.

Today has been a loooooong day. I worked from 7am-5pm, yes, another 10-hour day--which also meant that I missed all the inauguration hoopla. That was really disappointing; I've been looking forward to this day since Nov. 4th! However, at work we keep a radio/CD player in the kitchen, and luckily Obama's speech came during a lull in the meeting we were catering, so my roommate and I were able to actually listen to Obama being sworn in and then giving his inaugural address live, while it was actually happening, rather than just catching repeats on CNN later. Of course, as soon as we got home we made a beline for the TV, instantly tuning it to CNN and collapsing on the couch with our eyes glued to the screen, not to move for several hours (aside from answering the door to pay the pizza delivery guy, of course).

My reaction to the day's events in DC?

Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

Another good poem

Lost Sister
by Cathy Song

In China,
even the peasants
named their first daughters
Jade —
the stone that in the far fields
could moisten the dry season,
could make men move mountains
for the healing green of the inner hills
glistening like slices of winter melon.
And the daughters were grateful:
They never left home.
To move freely was a luxury
stolen from them at birth.
Instead, they gathered patience,
learning to walk in shoes
the size of teacups,
without breaking —
the arc of their movements
as dormant as the rooted willow,
as redundant as the farmyard hens.
But they traveled far
in surviving,
learning to stretch the family rice,
to quiet the demons,
the noisy stomachs.

Whirligig

Can you guess what it is?

Another of my favorite poems

The Song of Wandering Angus

by: W.B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;




And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.




When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.




Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

Queen of the Mountain

I recently walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge and leaned down to pull something out. When I straightened up, I just happened to glance up. Guess what I saw?

Malaika!

Playing queen of the mountain again, I guess. We consistently find her perched on the highest thing in the room.

What dreams may come

I had this nightmare last night. I barely remember the dream itself; what I do remember doesn't seem all that terrifying. But wherever the fear came from, it was there. I woke up absolutely terrified. I don't think I moved for 10 minutes from the moment my eyes opened, because I was just too scared to. Even after I woke up enough to know what was going on, that the terror was irrational, I was still terrified. That kind of fear is something I'm not accustomed to. I guess most fears are irrational by nature, but it still confounds me, that I could be so absolutely bone-shaking scared of nothing. Just...nothing.

After spending the day ruminating on it, I've come to the conclusion that it must have been a stress-induced nightmare. I'm really stressed out right now, and I have a long and distinguished history of not dealing well with stress. I ignore it when I'm awake, so it bides its' time and my subconscious hits me with it when I'm asleep. That explains why what I remember of the dream itself is so innocuous; it was more a stress thing than a straight-up nightmare, brought on by events currently taking place (or not taking place) in my life right now. Knowing that, though, doesn't make me any more eager to fall asleep tonight.

Tempus fugit

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."

- T. S. Eliot

an excerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Impossible Things

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

- Alice in Wonderland.

Disclaimer: I did not take this photo. I found it on the Internet.

Intelligentsia

The local coffee shop. My roommate and I had a long discussion here over coffee earlier tonight. We went to a presentation at our alma mater by an alum and her husband who are in the Peace Corps, about their experiences with it so far (they still have 18 months left). It was really fascinating, and cleared up a lot of questions we'd had about the program and whether we wanted to do it or not. We're both leaning towards "not". It sounds like an amazing experience, but maybe just not quite right for either of us, for different reasons.

French Doors

My apartment building is really old, which for the most part translates as run-down, but it means that it has these great french doors and hardwood floors, a huge clawfoot bathtub, and all this dark wood paneling. I love old buildings, they have so much more character than the brand-spanking-new utilitarian condos and high-rises. If I had my way, I'd always live in old buildings.

Mortality, and immortality

I've been thinking about death a lot lately. Not in any morbid, macabre, suicidal way--don't worry, I'm not going to off myself with my Gillette Venus any time soon. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I've been thinking a lot about mortality lately. Death in the detached intellectual abstract rather than the in-your-face reality of it that far too many people are far too familiar with. Luckily for me, I'm not one of them. Most of my experiences come from books rather than real life, something that can be frustrating at times but which I'm grateful for at others. This is one of those. To me, death is a concept rather than a reality.

I've always had the Hamlet problem; I think too much. And now I've been reading too much with too much time for thinking. I like my job, but it usually doesn't require a large amount of brain use (gotta love menial, manual labor), leaving far too much time for my thoughts to wander off in different directions. Also, the very nature of my workplace leads my cogitations down this particular path. I work at an assisted living retirement home. NOT a nursing home; most of the residents maintain the majority of their physical and mental acuities. The thing is, while all are mobile and some are positively spry, with mostly complete memories and active brains, they are still old and getting older. Occasionally we lose residents to the hospital or the nursing home. We rarely lose them straight to death, but it has happened. When I'm there, I can never forget that death is waiting for them, and every step they take brings them closer to it. None seem to fear it, in fact most are ready, or at least resigned. Some even seem to welcome it, as they have lost spouses who they believe are waiting for them in another life. Don't get me wrong, as I write this. I LOVE the residents, I truly do, I enjoy joking around with them and hearing their stories, and I'll be sad to leave them when I finally get a job. But the fact that I just can never seem to shut my mind off makes getting to know them rather bittersweet. The straight truth is, you never know if they'll be there the next day when you show up for work.

If I've learned one thing from my time there, it's this: I never want to get old. It's miserable and humiliating and sad. That thought has led my twisting and turning musings down one particular road I never thought they would go: that maybe it is better to die young and vital, in your prime. Now, don't think I'm convinced of this, because I'm definitely not. I think it's always better to live than die; that to die young is the worst tragedy in the world. But I'm starting to understand a concept that just never made any sense to me before.

There is this idea of a "glorious death" that constantly appears and reappears in history, in literature, in art, everywhere. It's even in the recent "Lord of the Rings" movies. I first ran across this particular idea in an ancient Greek lit class I took at the local college my senior year of high school. It is one of the resounding themes of The Iliad, appearing on page after page, interwoven so thoroughly into the story that there is no separating the two. The basic tenet is that according to contemporary thought, it was better to die young and strong and vital in the heat of battle, than to slowly wither away of old age. And it wasn't just the Greeks. This idea has popped up numerous times in my history classes, showing up in ancient Rome, with the Vikings in Scandinavia, in Renaissance-era Britain. Even now, among soldiers fighting modern wars. And each time, I thought that was crazy. It's always better to live than to die, right? But now, I don't know. Maybe I've gained some wisdom in the ensuing six years, or just learned to validate opposing opinions. At any rate, I understand the concept better now. I still don't quite agree with it, but I understand it and can even sympathize with it.

The best example of it is Achilles, from The Iliad. In fact, he's pretty much the ultimate example. His mother, the goddess Theta, offers him a choice: to go to Troy and fall in battle but have his name live on in immortality, or to not go to Troy, live a long and full life, have lots of children, and die peacefully in his bed. If any of you have seen the movie "Troy" you know which option Achilles chooses. He believes it's better to die valiantly in the prime of life and be remembered forever for it, than to live to a ripe old age and die "shamefully" in bed. I always thought he was crazy.

After working at the retirement home for 9 months, it's finally starting to make sense.