Humanity

"The woman had a coat thrown over a nightgown; the coat was slipping open and her stomach protruded under the gown's thin cloth, with that loose obscenity of manner which assumes all human self-revelation to be ugliness and makes no effort to conceal it."
-Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand makes me bitter.

It's only been four days since I last posted, but it feels like a year. Every day, I wake into this world, but slip suddenly into another, lost existence. This book, this trapdoor into an alternate universe, sits innocently open, masquerading as nothing more than dead words on aging pages . . . But I know better. Words are the last things in this world to taste death. There is no stagnation in the solemn black print; eternity, but not stagnation. Every phrase is unabashedly alive, weaving an intricate and untraceable path through my own reality. By the end, I have nothing to do but stare out across the knotted landscape and attempt to separate my anger with the human race from the crumbling precepts of true morality.

If I haven't drowned in the last 300 pages of Atlas Shrugged, I'll hopefully have a more insightful post within a week.

Exchange

So . . . I've been piddling about with a bunch of disjointed ideas; writing for the sake of writing, living for the sake of living (is there a distinction?). Maybe eventually I'll post the whole big entry, and give you all a frightful insight into the workings of my mind.

But not now.

Instead, I'll tell you that I am reading Inkheart, and that I just ate one of the most phenomenal desserts in the world:

Caramelized cashews, fresh strawberries, and melty vanilla ice cream.

Makes me giddy.

Much Ado About Nothing

9:00 last night found me carrying a blanket and a belly full of strawberries up a steep dirt hill towards the Rock Castle Amphitheater in East Provo. The setting sun gently withdrew his hot fingers from the back of my neck and bid farewell 'til morning.

I found a seat in the center of the theater, and spread my blanket. The rocks were warm, like living things, and I pressed my back into the step behind me, letting the sleepy calm descend. A man with a red sash paced the stage, singing The Crane Wife while strumming an old guitar. Suddenly, a group of people flooded the stage, and the performance began.

The sparse set and costumes quickly faded out of perception as the characters took over. Words flew flawlessly, and the energy was infectious. The audience laughed and applauded, hissed and booed, as if on cue. All throughout, an orchestra of crickets added their melody to the lone guitar and accordion.

This, I think, is exactly how Shakespeare intended his plays to be seen.



If you're at all interested, you should check out the Grassroots Shakespeare Company to see when and where their next show is going to be. I'm definitely gonna try to see them at least once more.

Interstella 5555

Okay, if there's a better way to spend an hour, I have yet to find it.



Get up and dance. You know you want to.

Bradbury

I am in love with carnivals.

There is some undefinable surrealism that dwells among the tents. During daylight hours, the thing sleeps, waiting. Then, just as the sun dips below the horizon, a surge of electric blood trickles through the veins of the great steel frames, and the carnival really comes alive.

I went out to the Strawberry Days carnival last night, and once the sky had gone dark and the firefly lights had begun dancing, everything changed. No longer did I belong to a world of sunlit frivolity. Here, indeed, was that infamous Pandemonium Shadow Show. G.M. Dark himself slunk elusively through the crowd - those roaches of society that seep up from dark basements for no other purpose than to add their own confusion to the mass of twitching chaos. Faint snatches of a buzz buzzz buzz could be heard throughout the night; perhaps from a generator . . . Or a stinging tattoo needle?

The carousel was beautiful. Angry, paint-chipped stallions screamed on their posts. I was Jim Nightshade, riding forward, counting the passes around. Once, twice, thrice - I was 21. Again and again, the years went flying past, my mind pressing against the hard walls of reality in the hope of seeing a physical change - to no avail. The broken tinkling of music that shrieked over the crowd was not the Funeral March, backward or forward, and I was still the same.

Finally, I rode the Ferris Wheel. The bench stopped at the very top, and I wiggled forward to look down at the world below. Hundreds of bodies squirmed past one another, inwardly laughing with joy at the power of even the slightest human contact. A few pinpricks of light were the insect eyes that watched the riders. They stared so intently and twinkled so brilliantly that I could not believe them to be anything but sparkling intelligences, asking and answering the very question of life with a single glance.

Hah! Everyone in this world deserves a night that neither offers nor needs an excuse to eat funnel cake and strawberries and cream for dinner.

Dribblings

"Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's."
-Amelie Poulain, Amelie

I picked up the violin today. I am determined to tame the wild, unruly potential that resides therein. Sheer determination is the thing that is keeping me going. She's a beautiful instrument. I want the tones that come from her to be beautiful, too. Musik ist eine Sprache. Ich werde üben.

I've gone on hikes up to the waterfalls for the last 5 days. I love walking alone, because I can get wrapped up in my thoughts. I need no company. Sometimes I listen to my i-Pod, sometimes I listen to the birds. Both are marvelous.

I am becoming incredibly aware of my body and its limitations and power; and I love it. It is nothing short of thrilling to me that such elegance and strength is mine to own. Singularly mine. Each muscle is mine, each drop of blood, each tiny cell. For the first time in my life I am truly comprehending that I am a temple. A glorious, functioning temple.

Also, I'm learning to skip stones. I'm getting fairly good at it. Today, one of them skipped four times straight across the pond. It was so beautiful.

I take so much delight from the simple things around me.

Loveliness

This is one of my favorite songs from The Mountain Goats:




I love the line, "In your eyes were all the colors that the rainbow forgot." It never ceases to astound me that such a simple combination of common words can evoke such a strong emotional response.

Disappointment

I just listened to the (relatively) new Decemberists album, and I have to say, it was not what I expected.

I was hoping for something beautiful, and I guess in that respect they didn't disappoint; Colin's voice is divine, and his lyrics are poetic. It's just . . . Really dark. Their other CDs haven't been super happy. I'd probably go so far as to call some of the songs exquisitely tragic. This album certainly fits into that category, but I think I'd add "haunting," and "chilling," as well.

I'm not blaming them, and as I said before, it's definitely beautiful. But based on their previous albums, I wanted something different. The music was cold (especially The Rake's Song), and that wasn't what I needed today.

In other news, the travel bug that usually dies down at the end of winter is not going away. If anything, it's getting worse. I've just got to hang on 'til August and pray that a brief trip to the East coast will satiate this ever-growing desire.

Also, I'm trying not to lose my faith in humanity. I know there are good people out there. I just need to look harder.

Adventuring

Yesterday was an amazing day full of Vegetarian foods, skipping stones, and candy kabobs. Also, an amazing mix CD:

1.Und Wenn Ein Lied - Xavier Naidoo
2. Les Limites - Julien Dore
3. Comptine d'un autre ete l'apres-midi - Yann Tiersen
4. New Slang - The Shins
5. West Virginia - RuRu
6. Desert - Emilie Simon
7. Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left - Andrew Bird
8. The Crane Wife III - The Decemberists
9. Der Erlkönig - Schubert
10. 156 - Mew
11. This Year - The Mountain Goats
12. Red Right Ankle - The Decemberists
13. Past and Pending - The Shins
14. Love Love Love - The Mountain Goats
15. Wuthering Heights - Pat Benetar (cover)
16. Winter Windows - Sea Wolf
17. Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - Gregorians (cover)
18. Bublitschki - Gogol Bordello

Ah, summer!