Mixed Feelings

I'm glad I actually went to the devotional today instead of being a slacker. I have never been so simultaneously inspired, insulted, and infuriated--apparently those emotions are not mutually exclusive. A full blog review of the subject will have to wait until it's rebroadcast on Sunday, possibly sooner if it goes up on BYU Broadcasting before then. Suffice to say that his remarks reminded me of concepts from Abolition of Man by CS Lewis, "The Literate Family"--an old forum talk by Douglas H. Thayer--and, horrifyingly enough, Fascinating Womanhood. And yes, I am aware that the speaker was a seventy.

What else, what else . . . . Oh, interesting podcast brought to my attention by the Pre-Law office: Spirit in the Law is about being LDS and a lawyer. Interesting stuff. One more reason for me to get around to buying a memory card for my phone so I can start listening to podcasts on the go again.

An Invitation

Woah, that double post on Friday must have completely knocked me out of the blogging gear for the weekend. Actually, not. We were just playing sardines again, this time in the library. Ah, well, I'm working on lowering my expectations for consistency anyway. It's good for me. :D

The other night we had a stake Relief Society fireside. During the first talk, the speaker made mention of a long passage of scripture on which she based her talk, and even gave us enough time to look it up. Yet no one pulled out their scriptures. But when the next speaker specifically invited us to pull out our scriptures and read along with her, almost everyone did. No one looked up the scripture during the first talk wasn't for lack of resources or lack of desire. The only difference between the two speakers was the invitation to open our scriptures. All of us had come prepared to read from our scriptures, and no doubt many of us wanted to do so. But nothing happened until a specific invitation was issued.

Which brings me to my philosophy on invitations. (Yes, I have one. I'm beginning to think I have too many theories and philosophies. Anyway . . .) People will rarely do anything, even something they really want to, unless you invite them to do it, not once, but twice. Yups. Theoretically, you should only need to ask people to do something once, especially if it's something they already want to do. Yet, if you issue a second invitation, you can usually double your attendance. And I think you get pretty good returns from third invitations, though fourth invitations tend to look desperate.

This lesson was solidified for me when I was on the ward "communications committee," otherwise known as the glorified directory- and flyer-making squad. You'd think announcing the thing over the pulpit and putting it in the program would be enough to make any decently conscious person aware of it, but no. The activities that we got flyers out for got attended. Those we didn't, well, didn't.

And like I said before, I don't believe this to be from a lack of desire to attend. I admit, there is something to the principle of inertia: objects at rest tend to stay at rest; people in routine tend to stay in routine; and people resist anything that breaks up their natural state. We don't like things taking away from "our time," as CS Lewis would say. From this we derive the other rule of invitations: invite early. The closer you get to the point of action, the less likely people are to change their plans, unless they are in an energetic mood.

Still, there are plenty of times when I've received a flyer for an activity I thought looked fun, but I didn't go because I was worried that it would be lame because no one else would know about it and go. I think double and triple invites make people assume that others are going, therefore making them more likely to go. Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?

Yeah, that was random, but really, so am I.

Fly-By Advertising

So the other week, this helicopter was flying really close over our apartment complex. It didn't look like a scary black government helicopter, so our guess was that it was taking some sort of fly-by footage of the stadium for a football ad. Sure enough, Cosmo Cougar.

BYU's advertising techniques have been getting very interesting lately: all the new ads for stuff on the bookstore TVs (which are hilarious), Volleyopoly, . . . . um, I guess I can't really think of anything else. But I think it's amazing how sophisticated advertising is becoming, even on a college level. I wonder if they'll ever get into viral marketing?

Oh, and Marisa, I'll get to your comment about music soon. But if you do think music means something, you should help us work on finding the answer to this puzzle. Music skills could definitely come in handy.

Speak of the Devil

Or, to completely contradict myself, someone needs to do a study of where in the world Utahns get their ideas about appropriate names. Witness:

Testimonial #1: A Tribute to Utah town names. I mean, really. Where do half of these come from?

Testimonial #2: Utah Baby Namer. Gross, gross, and more gross. Utahns have perfected the art of what I call the "three-syllable girl's name, preferably ending in a vowel with as many extraneous y's, l's, and awkward vowel combinations as possible," otherwise known as "would-fit-in-in-a-B-list-fantasy-novel."

Maybe this will be my project for ELang 322? But really, the horror of Utah naming deserves more attention than that.

No Love of Words

You might think that because I'm an English major that I have a love of words. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I probably would have paused a bit and tentatively agreed with you. But the other day I was asked to write down my vision. Not for anything in particular, just in general, and what came out of my head was not at all what I had expected. I'll spare you the details, but the general idea was this: I want to spend my life helping people realize their potential, to use my talents to help them become more fully themselves.

This is a particularly odd mission for several reasons. First, as I've lamented several times, I'm not generally a people person--that is, people hold no innate attraction for me. So why I have this idea stuck in my head of doing something for other people for the rest of my life is beyond me. Also, English seems like a silly thing to be going into if you want to make an impact in the lives of people. Like Las Vegas, what goes on in the English department, tends to stay in the English department. As Katherine and I have discussed, not many people care about what English majors care about. Not that Chemistry is any better. Granted, science has a slightly more direct impact on your life than lit crit, but it's less suited to help with philosophical things like reaching your potential.

It started me thinking about what kind of impact I wanted to have on people's lives and how that relates to a love of writing and of words. What I've realized is that the words don't matter. Or, more precisely, that words matter tremendously, but not because of themselves. Let me explain by an example. Rhetoric, as I understand it, is the study of how you can put words together--how the practical relationships between words and ideas can be best exploited to convince someone to do something. But I have to agree with Plato's Phaedrus when he says that there's no point in teaching rhetoric unless we can also answer questions about what we should do with this power of words. Tools are useless unless we also teach "what," and "to whom," and "when," and "how much." If rhetoric, or words in general, aren't studied in conjunction with the truths they should convey, then who cares?

I also realized that many of the subjects I dislike lack this ability to convey truth. Music and dance have always seemed a little strange to me because there's no way to get any specific message across. A general message, yes, but overall it's difficult to have a melody change your perspective on life. Also, grammar and usage of English seem a little pointless to study. Yes, they can help convey meaning more precisely, but can studying the details of how paint is made get the Sistine Chapel painted? Granted, some knowledge of these things is necessary, but spending too much time on them and you miss the point entirely. Same thing with studying a foreign language. Too much time spent on the medium rather than the message.

For me there is no love of words, except in the power that words have to link two minds together. A well written novel or essay takes you through another person's logic and emotions. For one instant, you can be wholely understood by another person, to completely share their thoughts and feelings. Words are very much the power of God in that way--the ability to know and understand something independently animate and outside yourself. Maybe that's why I don't like debaters or purple prose or long-winded descriptions. There's no particular glory in an eloquent arrangement of letters; only the idea behind them matters to me. Words are simply words, but when they convey powerful ideas, they gain the power to change people.

Gorgias, in his Encomium of Helen, compares words to love because these two alone have the tools necessary to change the soul, to lift it up or bring it down.

I like that. No love of words, but words=love.

Too True

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
- Terry Pratchett

What's a Spherical Chicken?

So today I'm going to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time, that is, write a full explanation for the title of this blog.

When it comes to blog names, as Milton Glaser would say, just enough is more. Coming up with a title for a blog is sort of a pain. It's like picking an email address, only perhaps worse, because the people you give your email to already know you but your blog title may be your first impression to strangers. You don't want to pick anything too cliche and obvious, but also not anything too trendy and random. A blog name needs to be generic enough to fit the many moods of your blogging career, but be different enough to say something about you to the people who wander over to your blog from goodness knows where.

In titling this blog, I toyed around with a lot of different ideas, but finally settled on "Spherical Chickens." The name is derived from a classic physics joke, which I usually tell thusly:

A farmer noticed that his chickens were sick, and called in a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist to help diagnose the problem. The biologist observed the chickens, concluding, "I can tell you there's something wrong with your chickens, but I don't know what's causing it." The chemist took fluid samples from the chickens back to his lab, and returned saying, "I can tell you what's infecting your chickens, but I don't know how they got it." Meanwhile, the physicist had been sitting on the floor, scribbling maddly on several notebooks worth of paper. Suddenly, he jumped up, exclaiming, "I have the answer, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vaccuum."

Okay, okay, so it's not very funny, especially if you aren't in the middle of a physics class. But I think the joke has a good point: in all branches of knowledge, the only people who can be perfectly certain of all the answers are those who make vast simplifications and wildely inaccurate approximations. In my humanities classes we called them "vast over-generalizations," in chemistry "useful lies," and in physics simply "spherical chickens," but it's the same concept. In order to make any sense of the world, we must ignore and leave out a lot of inconvient details, or work only with very special cases that happen to work out.

In my writing, I find these sort of spherical chickens popping up a lot. I am not one who can be satisfied by mere criticism of other people's ideas; instead, I insist on creating my own theories and justifying some sort of positive assertion of truth, rather than a negative assertion of falsehood. But there's no way to account for all cases in every theory. There are a lot of underlying assumptions in everything I write. For example, I pity anyone not familiar with Mormon culture and more particularly with BYU culture who tries to read this blog, since it contains so many implicit references to these aspects of my life. Yet it would take much more time to explain the background behind these things than I actually have. So I tend to just leave these things unsaid, which of course leaves my writing wide open for attack. Basically, I count on a friendly audience who doesn't need me to justify my spherical chickens to them.

I've been pretty satisfied with my blog title, though I have thought of changing it to something like "Seeking Balance," since that seems to be the conclusion of so many of my blog entries. However, I've stuck with "Spherical Chickens" because, in addition to its higher meanings, it also gets across the fact that I am extremely odd. And random.

Memorial

for those who stand for courage and hope in the face of evil

The first word came from the teacher across the hall.
"A plane flew into the Trade Center." "An accident?"
"Where's the Trade Center?" "In New York, you idiot."

Fumbling for buttons
An institutional TV screen
A flash of images
A thunder of confusion
Once tall and straight,
Now torn and broken.

An announcement
Over the intercom
Switched the TV off.
They told us
Nothing would change.
They would continue on.

Papers fluttering through the air
Like a thousand shot birds
First quarter analyses
End-of-year reports
The bottom line
Raining down
A woman
Staring
At the
Sky.

A grown man sitting on the street crying
Watching this scarred world being born
Pain and blood and screaming out for air.

Write, my history teacher says.
Write, because you will want to remember.
Write the day your world changed.

But as I begin,
I don't understand.
Somehow my pen fills the lines,
Committing the confusion to the page.
I can feel a shifting in the foundations of the world.
Then I know
Everything will change
But how can I continue on?

Amid the rumble,
Firefighters
Policemen
Army, Navy, Marines
Volunteers

Shattered glass
Burnt steel
Broken concrete
There shall not be one stone upon another
That shall not be thrown down
As they sift through the pieces
Searching for a world
That seemed a thousand miles away
Contained in fragments of office equipment
And a wall of missing faces
Spilling over into the hall.

At that moment, we are no longer
Americans & Europeans & Asians & Africans &
Whites & Blacks & Latinos.
Americans caring about Americans--

No,
Not Americans--

People caring about people.

We were all in New York that day
Anxiously gazing at news tickers
Full of Destruction
Evil
Despair
Loss

And when we felt we couldn't go on
This world born of fire might destroy us
There was also Good
Courage
Kindness
Unity

Though the wounds of this new birth
Marred our minds, stilled our hearts,
Still that day, and everyday since,
We chose to
Switch the TV on.

Everything has changed
But we will continue on.

Progymnasmata: Fable

So, for my History of Rhetoric class, we're doing the progymnasmata, a series of rhetorical exercises used in ancient Greece. The first exercise is to write a fable, which is harder that it looks. I really sort of like what I came up with, so I thought I'd share it with you all. You may be getting a few of these cop-out homework-as-blog-entries this semester, since blogging time has been severely eclipsed by homework time. Oh, and sorry about the lack of a creative title.

***

The Squirrel and the Cat

In a small park in a quiet town, there lived a squirrel and a cat. During the heat of the summer, the park was often visited by people from the town going on picnics, who would stop to feed the cat with the scraps left over from their feast. The cat soon warmed to the park goers and became a particular favorite of the children who frequented the playground. But the squirrel did not stop to enjoy the company and generosity of the people in the park. Instead, he spent the summer rushing around from tree to tree busily gathering more food for the approaching winter.

When the summer ended, the squirrel had worked so hard that he had collected enough food to last not only for this winter, but for many winters to come. The cat, on the other hand, had no such stores to fall back on. As the winter waxed on, the squirrel was happy and content with his store of nuts, while the cat rummaged through garbage cans for food, and very often went hungry.

But, one bitter cold day in January, some children came to play in the park, and they took pity on the cat, taking him home to live with them in comfort. Meanwhile, the squirrel survived the winter on his supply of nuts, but when the spring came, he discovered that the surplus he worked so hard to gather had rotted during the winter, leaving him to spend the next summer as he had all the previous ones. So, though it is good to work hard, it is still better to have friends.

***

In other news, I passed my pre-requisite test for Math 302 on Friday! Certainly not with flying colors, but enough that I feel good about taking the class. Also, I've started reading Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Gospels for my New Testament class. I think I have to agree with Dr. Griggs in saying that he does a beautiful job with the language: understandable yet poetic and as close to the original syntax as possible.

Apt 15 Quote of the Day-ish: "I'm not Marisa." - Marisa (Figure that one out. :P)

Carp the Diem

Tonight I did something I've been meaning to do since I came to BYU. I played Sardines in the HFAC. Oh yeah. I can definitely recommend it for anyone who's never tried it. Although, the HFAC is extremely creepy late at night. Lots of long dark corridors, stages full of maze-like exits and entrances, under-construction staircases, trumpet music coming from practice rooms . . . . stupid people jumping out at you from behind things.

I am a huge fan of crazy games like this. If you ever need a good idea for an activity, I highly recommend Sardines, or alternately Backwards Scavenger Hunt.

Standard Issue

There's a problem with dating in the church.

I'm aware this is the understatement of the century. What I mean to say is, there's a particular problem with dating in the church that's been on my mind lately. It's basically the problem of where we draw the line within the church. Let me explain: I can't remember where I read this lately--I think it might have been by Orson Scott Card--but outside observers have remarked that Mormonism is a faith with few strongly held universal beliefs.

I know, at first this can be rather shocking to us, but at some levels it is certainly true. Yes, the LDS Church has pretty clear conceptions on the most important points of our doctrine--the plan of salvation, the atonement, priesthood authority, necessary ordinances, etc.--but when you get away from the main doctrines necessary to salvation, there's a lot more wiggle room. Political beliefs, Sunday observance, media standards, and more are all left up to the choice of the individual, and you get faithful Latter-day Saints at all parts of the spectrum (well, almost all anyway).

And for the most part, we manage to tolerate each other within the church. Granted, we all believe that there is one true standard, but usually we're humble enough to realize that we have little way of knowing whether that standard is closer to ours or the next person's. We're content to let each person within the church follow the guidance of the Spirit towards the truth, even though the path may look extremely different for different people.

This is all fine and dandy most of the time. But then we reach a problem. It's called marriage. Alright, I couldn't resist that one. I promise I'm not usually this pessimistic. Anyway, the problem in marriage is that it's not a commandment you keep by yourself. It requires the agreement of two faithful church members on one set of standards in which to raise their children. Given the number of possible variations of beliefs within the church, I think it's highly unlikely that any person could manage to find someone who they are attracted to who has precisely the same set of standards.

Now, it's much easier to tolerate differences in standards when you aren't close to people. What do you care what the person across the row from you in sacrament meeting believes? Unfortunately, in dating, you become a lot closer to a person (again with the understatement) and standard differences begin to become a problem. The more liberal person begins to feel looked down on by the conservative one; the conservative one acts more self-righteous than they intend to; and things just go downhill from there.

I've heard some pretty terrible break up stories come from this problem--horrible DTR lines like "I can't feel the Spirit in your apartment," girls breaking up with guys they really like because they felt looked down on. Well, let me be frank (as opposed to Bob): the specific problem I've noticed is guys (, at BYU, among the people I hang out with,) being a lot more conservative than girls. Maybe this has something to do with the mission thing. Maybe it's just that men tend to be more gung-ho and focused on a single goal than women.

I don't know what it is, but it is really annoying me lately, and frankly I don't know what to do about it. Lately, it's seemed like if I meet a guy who has my standards, we really have nothing in common, but if I meet a guy who seems perfect for me, he's way more conservative than I am. I don't know that I want to hold out waiting for both to show up in one person, but how am I supposed to choose which is more important? Do I change my standards because of someone else? Even if it's revising them "upward," it still doesn't feel like the right thing to do. Married people/relationship gurus out there, any suggestions on dealing with this?

Of course, this is all sadly hypothetical. Well, mostly.

On a less serious note . . .
Apt 15 Quote of the Day: "Grammar is lazy."

A Return to Normalcy

As normal as it gets at BYU anyway. Whew, I forgot how nice it is to be in school. Besides New Year's Eve and the end of the school year, there's nothing I like better than the first week of school. Don't you just love Provo in the fall? Boquets of newly sharpened pencils . . . .

Movie quotes aside, there's nothing that invigorates me like collecting syllabi and making new productivity goals. And this year I've tried to be a little more realistic about what I can accomplish. One of the pieces of advice for oldest children I found in my recent birth order research was that oldest children need to relax their expectations for themselves a little, to be happy with what they do accomplish instead of depressed at where they fall short. As I've been applying this method, I've noticed an opposite change from what I expected: I've become more productive instead of less. I think that lowering my expectations for myself has also lowered the activation energy (sorry about the chem analogy) it takes for me to start doing something. Since I don't need to spend as much time recovering between activities and worrying about not getting everything done, I can actually exceed my expectations and have a wonderful time. Why didn't someone tell me about this paradox earlier?

Along with the new school year came New Student Orientation, which I volunteered at last weekend. I suppose it counts as a service activity, and a pretty impressive one, clocking in at about 36 hours of time during the last few days you have to make money for school. But really, I do it purely for selfish reasons. First, I like schedules and bureaucracy, so I fit in very well with the routine of NSO. Second, where else can you get an instant group of friends and a social schedule given to you on a platter? NSO is my way of forcing me to have a social life. :D However, the most important reason is really that NSO gets me pumped up to go to BYU again. I've been listening to the NSO CD that I made, which includes a mix I made of Switchfoot's "Dare You to Move" and a bunch of quotes about BYU by President Hinckley, President Samuelson, and BYU radio. It's pretty much an amazing piece, for someone with no experience or musical ear.

That CD also has a really great talk by President Hinckley, "The BYU Experience," which I think every BYU student should listen to regularly, along with "Out of Your Experience Here." These two talks have shaped my philosophy of BYU which goes something like this:

1. Your first priority at BYU ought to be to be grateful, both for the tithing that is spent to subsidize your education (up to 70% of costs, according to my sources) and for the opportunity to study in a place that invites the Spirit.
2. In keeping with this gratitude, you should work hard in your classes, striving to really learn something rather than just to pass. Additionally, we should not learn anything without the Spirit with us.
3. Unlike most other universities, the mission of BYU goes beyond the "can-opener" approach; rather than just providing a gateway to a better job, BYU seeks to help us grow as individuals both spiritually and socially. As a result, our spiritual devotions and our social experiences should be equally important with our academic studies.

Alright, soapbox over. But you should really read those talks. Good good stuff. Oh, and did I mention that the calculus is coming back to me much faster than I thought? I went to my first review session for the pre-test for Math 302 today, and I just kept remembering everything that they talked about! Hurrah! That relieves a lot of anxiety about that class.

On Holiday?

Labor Day's a funny name for a holiday where you don't do anything. I know, I know, it's a tribute to the labor movement. Whatever. It's definitely just another excuse for being lazy, as Scrooge would say. And I can defintely say I have taken full advantage of that opportunity this Labor Day. But, after all this laziness, I feel very ready to go back to school.

Someone remind me of that in about two weeks. :D

In Defense of the English Major, Part II: Dealing with Evil

Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity--thou must commune with God.
-Joseph Smith, Jr.

"Shall I sit down and read the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Covenants all the time?” says one. Yes, if you please and when you have done, you may be nothing but a sectarian after all. It is your duty to study to know everything upon the face of the earth in addition to reading those books. We should not only study good, and its effects upon our race, but also evil and its consequences.
-Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 2:93-94

(In Defense of the English Major, Part I, is related to this post, but not necessary for understanding this post. It deals mostly with the issue of whether lit crit is meaningful or not.)

Some recent posts on Ben's blog have brought to the surface of my mind one of the other issues that plagues the image of the English major, which is that of the subject matter they are called to deal with in their literature. The English department is one of the more dangerous departments on campus when it comes to objectionable material. (Other dangerous departments include the fine arts and art history.) We often read material in novels which would be considered objectionable in recreational reading. How do I justify reading books filled with violence, crude language, rape, and explicit sexuality?

Well, this post originally started as an attempt to explain logically and definitively exactly what types of literature I consider appropriate and those which I don't, and why. And for the sake of being explicit, here's a quick and dirty (no pun intended) rundown in that direction:

1. First, like Katherine, I believe there must be some meaning behind the objectionable material in order to make it appropriate. Books and movies that are violent or crude simply for the sake of such, of course I can't watch. They are idiotic and inane, and I have not part in them mostly because of their thoughtlessness and lightmindedness, and only secondarily because of their obscenity. But oftentimes portrayals of immoral things are used in order to make a valid and important point. Immoral things are often powerful life experiences, oftentimes evil, yes, but nonetheless powerful and important. They deal with real issues of real people. A person seriously seeking to understand life must seek to understand all its aspects, not just those that are pleasant or common.
   
2. Second, I agree with Sean's comment in that I can't hold other people's expression to the same standard as I hold myself. Wait, I've phrased that incorrectly. I do believe things like swearing, violence, and sexual humor are usually immoral and not becoming to anyone. However, just because I don't like their method of expression does not mean I should ignore their opinion. Indeed, I can't afford to ignore their philosophy. I always look for the meaning behind what they are saying and doing. However imperfectly or offensively they may have said it, their thoughts, I eventually find, are not so different from ones I might have, and often mean the same thing as the truth I have arrived at some other way. As a result of understanding their lives, I can either build on my own store of truth or learn pitfalls in logic to avoid. I can learn from their negative example what is wrong, but I can also gather the grains of truth that provide meaning in their lives.
   
3. Though it is true that even the portrayal of immoral things can get them stuck in your head, it's what you choose to do with them that is important. If my understanding of the Atonement is correct, the Savior has seen, heard, and experienced all these things, and additionally has a clear recollection of them. Yet do we say the Savior is evil because he has all of these evil experiences inside His head? Absolutely not, because we know he's not seeking to imitate them. He sees them for what they are and uses his knowledge of them for righteous purposes. To draw a more secular analogy, it's like the ridiculous people who want to ban Harry Potter because it portrays wizardry and some pretty evil things. Let's look at the message behind it, rather than the surface impressions. Some novels portray some pretty horrible things, but do so in pursuit of truth. Likewise, some novels stay in the safe zone as to crude things, but their final message is still one of evil and despair. Message matters considerably more than content, to me at least.
   
4. That said, of course we should not take in more objectionable material than necessary to gain an understanding of 1) why these things are evil, 2)how Satan uses these things as tools to our downfall, 3) why humanity is drawn to these things, and 4) any truth that might be hidden behind these painful experiences. Again, we should seek the guidance of the Spirit in knowing which things are worth viewing because of the truth they express, and which are too filthy to be worth our trouble. Also, we should be wary of letting these worldly things hold greater sway in our lives than the truths we can learn from the gospel.
   

Now that those "spherical chickens" are out there for anyone to pop, let's get to what I see as the real heart of the matter. In thinking about this issue, I've realized that the real reason I feel comfortable reading and seeing things that others would find objectionable is not found in this logical train of arguments. The real reason I feel okay--actually, I don't just feel okay, but I actually feel a desire to read these things--is because of my uncle.

Alright, not because of my uncle per say, but because of the chain of emotion and truth that his story stands for in my life. Let me explain. I had an uncle who really lived what the world would consider the high life. He was a wealthy man working in the world of finance, closing lots of big deals and raking in tons of money. He went to wild parties, spent time with lots of beautiful women, took vacations often, lots of expensive clothes, sports equipment, huge house, etc. He had pretty blatantly rejected the religious values taught to him by my grandparents. Then, on 9/11, his business crashed along with the trade centers, sending him spiraling into a world of alcohol and depression. Our family lovingly worked with him to try to pull him out of both of these things, and at some times he really seemed to be doing better. But eventually, he died unexpectedly of alcohol-related causes.

Now, to your standard religious audience, his story could serve as a great example of how those who live the way of the world are living a lie and of how it will eventually come back and destroy them. And I feel sad to admit that I felt sort of vindicated when I saw what my uncle had become, because his success in spite of his immoral behavior had always rubbed me the wrong way. I felt that his downfall justified my righteous living.

But then I went to his funeral, and my whole perspective changed. All anyone could talk about at the funeral was how generous and considerate my uncle was. He was always giving his money away to those in need, and not in small quantities either. The story that touched me the most was from after his business had failed and he had lost everything. At this same time, one of my other uncles was laid-off and his family was struggling financially. One day, my troubled uncle showed up at their door and handed them a sum of money that he could ill afford, considering he was unemployed. Where I saw only immoral decisions and poor choices, these people had seen through to his good heart.

It hit me like a flash of lightening: no person is worthless. No person is without a moral compass. Even those who seem to reject everything that I would regard as true and good have some shred of the light of Christ in their lives. It's what keeps them living from day to day, gives them direction, and may eventually lead them to the truth. A person has to work extremely hard to be completely free from the light of Christ. (One of the nice things about being a Mormon is that I get to believe that very few people will actually go to hell.) As I see it, these small moral compasses within people are what will eventually draw them to the gospel. Conversely, to people at a higher level than me, it may look as though I have no morals, that I am so useless in the cause of good as to be hardly worth bothering about. We cannot divide people into good and evil because no person is wholely one way or the other. We all carry some measure of offensive, immoral things inside ourselves. Is your opinion completely invalid because of the imperfections you have?

You see, portrayal of evil is only a problem when we see at as something outside ourselves. From that perspective, we can safely say, "I already know how wrong those people are, so I don't need to see what they are doing to themselves and others. I wouldn't do it myself and it can only bring me down." But, when we realize that the people perpetrating this evil are actually part of humanity, part of us, then the reason for the portrayal of it comes to life: we must understand what led these people to become this way, and what redeeming qualities they have which might allow us to lead them out. When we come to see these people as our brothers and sisters, then we feel the need to read about them, to understand them, in order to see some way to keep ourselves out of their position and to find a way to help them to the better place we've found.

The Savior has seen and experienced all the evil in the world, both as the victim and the perpetrator. How can we truly become like Him unless we seek to understand the suffering and the malice and the ignorant mistakes of others? I do not believe that it is possible to gain charity for these people until we reach out to them with an understanding head and a sympathetic heart. This unconditional love does not deny that what it portrayed is evil, but it still loves the person underneath--the love of truth that is at the heart of each person. Then we can truly call out to them and say, "I understand your truth. Even underneath all those layers of immoral behavior, I can see your heart. Let me expand on it with what I have, and together we can progress towards that truth that neither of us have, until the brightest day."

Changing Your Birth Order

Another thing I've been doing whilst the blog was down is some research on the birth order/sibling theory of personality. By research, of course, I mean some random browsing on the internet, an article from the July 10th Time magazine, and some obscure popular psychology book from my mom's collection. For anyone who's not familiar with it, or couldn't guess, here's some basic personality types based on your birth order:

• Oldest Children - Parents often have high expectations for the first child, especially since they have little to no experience of what raising a child actually means. This means that the oldest is often treated like a mini-adult, with high expectations for behavior and responsibility. As a result, oldest children tend to have high standards for themselves, and a perfectionistic streak a mile wide.
• Middle Children - The novelty of having a child is worn off, but the special position of baby of the family is given to someone else. This leaves the middle child striving for a way to make themselves stand out from the pack. Middle children vary widely, but you can usually see how they choose activities and traits purposely opposite their older siblings. Middle children also usually end up with good negociating skills, since they must mediate the authoritative streak of the oldest and the baby princess attitude of the youngest.
• Youngest Children - Obviously, the baby of the family gets a lot of attention, which often leads to outgoing, manipulative little superstars. They have a wide variety of examples to choose from in their older siblings, and therefore don't the same differentiation complex that the middle children do. As a result, they often don't take life very seriously and just want to have fun, trusting that everything will just work out in the end.
• Only Children - All the high pressure of the oldest child with all of the attention and drama of the youngest child put together. Perfectionistic complexes blended with people manipulation skills and a sunny exterior.
  

Any of you who know me at all might have noticed I fit the classic oldest child stereotype: I love rules, I'm obsessed with doing well, I care about how others see me, and I take life very seriously. But most people aren't as perfectly cookie-cutter as we sometimes seem, and this is one of the weaknesses behind the birth order theory. Not all young children are self-destructive rebels or baby princesses, and not all middle children are insecure and forgotten. And the genders of the children in the family also matter: both the oldest boy and girl can end up with the first-born complex, but an only girl in a family of boys can easily end up with a youngest child mentality, regardless of birth order. What I'm try to say is you can only predict the influences from the outcome, not the outcome from the influences. I can't take someone's family situation and try to figure out how they will turn out based on that, but I can take their current personality and family situation and draw correllations between the two.

However, in my mind, there's another very useful way to use these three personality types, and that is to see them as different sides to your own personality that you need to keep in balance. Instead of "oldest," "middle," and "youngest" personalities, I've decided to see them as three different desires that change how we mold ourselves: our desire to be successful; our desire to be a different, unique individual; and our desire for fun and attention. Too much of any one of these can be bad--perfectionism leads to low self-esteem and depression, a desire to be different causes us to be contrary and hard to get along with, and an obession with attention leads us to be easily swayed by peer pressure and caught in bad relationships. None of these desires should be pursued to the exclusion of the others, but rather in harmony to create a whole person.

I'll go back to me as an example. As I said before, I'm your classic first born personality, but I also see traits I have of the other two. I resist doing classic girly things as a way to differentiate myself from the crowd, and I love playing random ubiquitous games where I can be crazy and outgoing. But I've allowed my middle and youngest child sides to be overwhelmed by my oldest child perfectionistic desires. I think my life could be a lot happier if I learned to let go of at least some of my high expectations for myself and take on some more traits from the other personalities. I've been working on being more "youngest child" lately, and I think it's helping me a lot. I feel less stressed and more interested in other people. It's good stuff.

Here I Come Back From the Dead

Hallelujiah!!! After many, many frantic emails to the Blogger Team, my blog has been salvaged from the crushing jaws of the Blogger Beta switch-over. And it couldn't have come at a better time. My blog withdrawal symptoms--composing blog entries in my head on my way to work, strong urges to write long comments on other people's blogs, cursing Blogger (even Google on occasion) in my spare time--were getting so bad that I was about to do something drastic like switch over to another blogging site. I don't think I could have faced a new school year without this outlet, so good timing, Blogger support. (I think I'm probably addicted to Blogger.)

So here's a run down of some of the insane things that have been going on during the downtime.

Trapped by weddings - People around me should stop getting married. It makes me depressed. *pout* But really. Two of my cousins got married this month, plus several couples in our ward got engaged and/or married, and "Someday" from The Wedding Singer musical (track 2 on the sample player) has been stuck in my head for the last week. I seem to be surrounded by weddings and I don't like it one bit. I know it's odd, but I've yet to encounter this problem at BYU--somehow I made it through two years unscathed by the marital influence of Happy Valley. Now all of these weddings are suddenly contributing to a strange transformation in my life, that is, I'm becoming a hopeless romantic. I'm trying really hard to resist it, but I feel a bizarre compulsion to read romance novels (which my collection appears to be lacking in--why in the world do I only own classics and fantasies?) and watch chick flicks (ditto). This whole business annoys me to no end, since I've always thought romantics were a little out of touch with reality. Now that I'm becoming one of them, I know I was wrong: romantics are a lot out of touch with reality. Reality, come back! I need you! Snap me out of it, because at this rate I will either become insanely depressed or insanely flirtatious, and I don't think anyone wants to see either of those.

Writing fiction - I've still only made it about half way through "Swan Song," but hopefully I'll get to spend some good hours writing on Labor Day and finish that up. It's probably going to end up a little too long to post here, but if you guys are interested in reading the rest, let me know and maybe I'll, I dunno, make it downloadable from my BYU webspace or something. And I've generated a few other short story ideas that I'm going to work on after that's over. This is really exciting, since the last time I wrote something creative and entirely fictional was . . . elementary school? Yup, I think so. I just didn't feel like I could write fiction; I didn't know where to begin. But after actually, you know, trying it, it's not that hard.

NaNoWriMo - Speaking of fiction, my withdrawal period from blogging made me realize how much I really enjoy writing--not just for self-analysis and communication and that, but real creative writing. And I don't do nearly enough of that. Through some random internet surfing way too late at night involving massive amounts of sugar-derived energy, I've made the decision to participate in National Novel Writing Month 2006 (affectionately known as NaNoWriMo). Yes, this November I am going to complete a novel of 50,000+ words in less that a month. While still in classes. Right after midterms. And working 15 hours a week. Ha ha, I am insane. Try to stop me. No, no, don't try to stop me. In fact, I challenge anyone who reads this blog who has ever thought about writing a novel to participate with me. Don't be one of those "someday" novel writers--the best time to write is now! You don't need experience or a plot. Just sheer will power. Do it with me! Plus, I need a support group to force me to write--we're talking the equivalent of four single-spaced pages a day in order to finish. :D

But I really like the concept behind NaNoWriMo: force yourself to write, and don't think too hard about how crappy your writing is. I like this quote from a review of No Plot? No Problem!:

The key is to lower your expectations "from 'best-seller' to 'would not make someone vomit,' " says Baty [founder of NaNoWriMo], who maintains that stress and a deadline are important parts of writing.

True that. If you just do it, it will get better. And I've already got an interesting idea for the novel. So I'm set to go. Hurrah!

Bonus points if you can figure out where the title of this post comes from.

Oops, I Bwoke It

A repost from the comments of the previous post, just in case none of you read it.

Yeah, so Blogger released Blogger Beta and I wanted to try some of the new features--tags, CSS-based layout, etc. (Incidentally, I've been feeling really unsatisfied with the look of my blog lately. As I've researched a bit, I've got some good ideas, but I'm too lazy to bring myself up to speed on CSS enough to do what I want. This seemed like a lazy-woman's way out.) In my over-zealousness, I merged my Blogger account with my Google account, assuming that my blog would carry over into the new account. So far, it hasn't. I'm desperately trying to get a response from someone at Blogger to fix this and get me control of my blog back. Luckily, I remembered that I enabled email posting, so hopefully this will post. If I can't get it up again in a few days, then I may resort to simply creating a new blog. But I really want to keep the old one because I like the address. Grr. Curse technology.

Meanwhile, it's nice to know that you people are actually reading my blog. Nothing like being gone to find out people miss you. :D So I've been using my blog time the past few days to work on a short story that's been rolling around in my head. Here's two paragraphs from near the middle to keep you entertained.

Excerpt from "Swan Song" by Liz Muir

As the guests mingled, the band slipped through the darkness onto the stage to test their equipment. Under the dimmed floodlights Jane could see the lead singer, a lanky man with hair too greasy and matted to be called flowing but too loose yet for dreadlocks. His eyes stared earnestly at the microphone he was adjusting. He always manages to look so surprised that they actually set up for him, as if he hasn't been doing this for years, she thought, watching as he tilted the mike back and forth on its stand with intense concentration. His wide-eyed expression contrasted with the scruff on his face, lending him the look of one who, having reached past the boundary of adolescence, had run from adulthood, striving to keep from acquiring the knowing expression that experience would mark him with.

He held his guitar like a father might hold his newborn son: loving, proud too, but still slightly uncertain how best to position this new extension of himself. Placing the shoulder-strap around his body, he slowly removed his right hand from under the body of the guitar, as though making certain the strap could bear weight. His now free hand reached down to adjust his grey striped running shorts—too short to seem natural on any man over thirty. His skinny legs poked out of them, whiter and hairier than would be considered desirable, but he was a seasoned singer, not a pop icon. Meant to be heard, not looked at.

Nearly Everything

Speaking of stories, I've recently been reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Within the pages of this book, I've finally found an answer to the question people always ask me about my majors (Chemistry and English if you didn't know), namely, how do those work together? Up till now, I usually stick with the tried and true "They don't" or an extended "Well. . . ." Sometimes I just laugh. But really, this book shows that there's not as much difference between the sciences and the humanities as modern education might lead you to believe.

Although the science in the book is a little below my level, I've nonetheless enjoyed the book because of the history it gives behind all of our modern knowledge. When you learn this stuff in science class, they sometimes throw a name at you, but that's about all you get. (Much like what I was talking about yesterday with politics.) But in A Short History, you get the entire wacky personalities of the scientists themselves, including personal quirks, grudges, and mishaps. Seriously, it's a wonder that we ever learned anything between geniuses who solve the mysteries of the universe but tell no one, scientific societies full of social climbers anxious to knock off anyone who actually does serious work, and feuding researchers taking away each other's funding. Plus, it makes fun of the French; what more could you want?

As I read this book, I realize that the majority of scientific discovery is not done in a lab, but in writing. New understanding comes through the stories we tell ourselves to explain our experiments, not through the experiments themselves. Each test gives definite results, but establishing what those results mean is quite another matter. It's a debate over truth almost every bit as subjective as what you might find in lit crit, including some really out-there theories. (Someone once proposed that the craters on the moon were caused by swarming insects.) In fact, this book oddly reminds me of nothing so much as Hesiod's Theogony, in that it's almost a religious text for our scientific non-religion. It is the story of how our modern world--and our beliefs about it--came into existence, including the quirky personalities and the ironic inescapability of fate. I mean, as I read the pages, I wait for all the classic Gods of science to step in--Newton, with his secretiveness and alchemy, Einstein with his brilliant start dwindling into a tragic backwater--along with the lesser gods--the Curies, Planck, Bohr. This is the stuff of myth, not science, of storytelling, not empiricism.

Which is why I'm excited to discover that one of the unfinished scientific stories in the book was finally concluded today. As of today, you may live in a universe of twelve planets, not nine. Finally, a definition of planets that makes sense! Very exciting to see science moving along. :D

Story of Diplomacy

Reading this article in the NY Times today describing the negociations over the cease fire in Lebanon reminded me of what initially attracted me about history and politics: the story (of course). Usually, political articles speak in terms of ideals and generalities, and history textbooks talk about overall movements and large events. Both of these bore me as much as the next non-history buff. But when you get down to these primary accounts, the large scale events disappear into the people and personalities involved therein. There's such a sense that it's actually happening and that people just like you are really involved in changing the world.

It's what initially got me involved in Model United Nations--the opportunity to understand what time, effort, and personality go into the diplomatic dealings that get reduced to a single sentence in a textbook. And this article made me realize how similar MUN is to the real deal. I can't tell you have many times I've faced similar situations to those described in the article. An amazing compromise resolution grinds to a hault when the opposition absolutely will not agree. Then just when you think you have them, they bring up some minor wording or timing issue. Your resolution looks like it's going to fall apart, and your rivals have siezed the opportunity to create a brand new resolution. Just when all looks hopeless, you pull a late night caucus session and manage to come out with the last minute resolution that's the hit of the session. Ah, it's a beautiful feeling.

Oh man, I miss MUN. I wish I had the time to sign up for the BYU team or volunteer with RHSMUN again this year . . . .

Now I really want to go read Diplomacy by Henry Kissenger again. Nothing to make Cold War politics exciting like the first hand story from someone who was really there. Yes, I did just use "Cold War politics" and "exciting" in the same sentence. I didn't appreciate it enough when we had to read it in IB World History. Hurrah for Ms. Nicholas!

After All We Can Do

Mormon culture is interesting: nowhere else could someone feel justified, and perhaps even comfortable, in speaking before a group of 100+ people with little or no preparation. Of course, when you believe in revelation, this becomes a little most understandable. Still, whenever I hear someone introduce their lack of preparation using the idea that the Spirit will guide them, my writer's heart groans inside and I hunker down for a disorganized mess of ideas. My qualm about the whole extemporaneous speaking thing is that people often skip over the condition upon which this blessing is predicated, as found in D&C 84:85:

Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say; but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man. (emphasis added)

I worry that people think this promise means that they don't have to prepare when they are speaking, resulting in some of the worst talks I've ever heard. Look, it's simple: if you are speaking to an audience, you need to prepare. Flaunting a lack of preparation is awful, since it implies you don't care enough about your topic or audience to bother. But really, speaking is a very transient form of communication, and if your thoughts aren't clearly organized, it's impossible for your audience to follow. Preparation is crucial.

My interpretation of this promise is that you don't necessarily need to write out your talk word for word--recited talks are responsible for the other half of really bad talks--but you need to study your subject as thoroughly as if you were. It's much like relying on the Spirit when you take a test. The Spirit will guide your ability to recall what you know and to organize your thoughts, but it will only rarely bring knowledge to your mind that you did not put in, and then only if you really strove in your preparation. You need to understand the material for your talk so thoroughly that it becomes part of who you are, and then and only then, after having put your best into the subject, rely on the Spirit to guide your delivery.

In fact, the more I think of it, the more I see this principle in the gospel. We are saved by grace, but only after all we can do. In prayer, we don't expect God to give us an answer unless we have studied the matter out in our minds. God will not help us unless we are willing to put our whole selves into the attempt. (For the most part. I recognize there are exceptions.)

As for my talk writing process, I usually start out by looking up my topic in the Bible Dictionary, True to the Faith, and the most recent Conference Ensigns. I look up the scriptures referenced in those, bringing in other stories and scriptures as I find them. Since writing helps me organize my thoughts and receive inspiration, I'll usually then write out some version of my talk. However, I rarely ever actually read the talk. I recondense my written thoughts back into an outline of ideas and references--the key here is to organize the principles I've learned so that it's more than a tangled mass of doctrine. When I speak, I just try to explain the concepts I've written out, allowing for elaborations and tangents as prompted by the Spirit.

Oh, and I pack lots of tissues, since I usually cry through the whole thing. :P

Subtle Messages?

It seems like lately life has been conspiring to send me certain messages. Or maybe it's just that I'm more able to synthesize them because of the amount of writing I'm doing. Or possibly it has to do with my increasing training in lit crit, which has caused me to start seeing patterns and meaning in almost everything. Or maybe it's that I'm feeling a lot more in tune with the Spirit lately. Whatever combination of these it is, I certainly got one straight message in the past few days: don't waste your life simply enduring, waiting to do what you want to do.

Some of the factors leading up to this realization:

• Our discussion Thursday at CS Lewis Society. Somehow, we got off on the topic of going and living in a primitive hunt in the planter box inside the HFAC, and maybe living off farming and fishing in the JFSB courtyard. You scoff, but the real point to me was that mankind always thinks that it wants to go back in time because it seems so much simpler, that there might be more time for real life in that era. But in reality, in almost all times, men have found ways to fill their lives with dull tasks that seem necessary but don't really mean anything. But there is also hope, because in all times, we can also find a way to get past all the unimportant things and feel in touch with God, ourselves, and joy. The key is not to go back in time, live in a hut in the HFAC, or to throw out your computer/TV: that only treats the symptom. The real problem is wasting time--letting it slide by us without caring how we've used it. The solution is simple. It's simply to think about how you are spending your time, and eliminate those things that don't bring you closer to the person you want to be. The key is to truly long to become what you should be--and then to do what you can to move yourself there. The very longing to become something, the passion that it stirs up within us, makes the road worth traveling, regardless of whether we reach its end.
• Reading Joni's first blog entry. Welcome to the blogosphere dear Lilymaid. But really, her comment about realizing she wasn't a bookworm anymore really struck me. I had exactly the same realization at the beginning of this summer as I started reading Ben's blog. I looked at all the books he was reading and things he was doing, and I thought, what I am doing with my life? In elementary and middle school, I used to plow through two to three books a week. I loved reading and learning and doing. But since I let the busy-ness and pressure of high school and college take over, I hadn't made time for those things that I once enjoyed. Even worse, I had started to hate reading because it was so associated with the stress of classes. Which is why I've been so insistant on reading this summer, even during Spring term when I felt like I was going to collapse. I needed to remember why I used to love it. And now I do.
• Seeing You Can't Take it With You at Hale. (Arg! Someone remind me whether play titles are supposed to be in quotes or italics.) In addition to a hilarious printer character who sort of reminded me of Ben, the message of the play was right on target. It's about a romance between the daughter of a family of eccentric, poor playwrights, dancers, and firework-makers and the son of a wealthy Wall Street banker. Predictably, when the two families collide chaos ensues. But the message was that even though the artistic family was poor, strange, and disorganized, at least they went out and did what they wanted to do, whereas the businessman spent six to eight hours a day doing things he found boring, just for the pursuit of money that he could spend in his one hour of free time. There was one especially moving part where the father of the eccentric family talked about the idealistic dreams and plans we all make in college, pointing out that only a few lucky ones get to say they did even half of what they planned. It made me so sad, to think of all the people out there wasting their lives working for "that which cannot satisfy."
• A radio commercial. Yup. While driving home from the play, I heard a commercial for some auto repair place. The guy said, "I spend eight hours at the office fixing transmissions, and then I go home and do exactly the same thing. I work on cars in my garage. After [some-odd] years, my work and my hobby are still the same." That's the kind of life I want for me, and especially for my husband--I've seen the effect of a hated job on a man and consequently on his family. Everyone has something that they would love to do; why don't we all stop aspiring to be doctors and lawyers just because we will make money, and go out and do the thing we love?
  

I'm resolved to either start loving everything I do, or just getting rid of it. And that's really the thing: to be able to love everything you do, mundane, intellectual, or otherwise. Cooking, homework, reading, spending time with friends, cleaning your house--all should be things we bask and glory in. Down with the separation between work and leisure! I am determined to love it all.

Choose to Celebrate

*insert soapbox here*

What's the deal with people making such a big deal about not making a big deal about their birthdays? Said in a less confusing way, people seem to go out of their way to avoid attention on their birthday, to the point of outright asking people not to do things for them, or avoiding letting people know about it in the first place. For example, Katherine, Ben, Nicole . . . . From what I can tell, the front seems to be some sort of humility thing--you don't want people to think you are so self-centered as to think the world should revolve around you, just because you were born on this day--along with a desire to avoid public attention. Maybe it's just leftover from my obsession with The Giver, but I feel very threatened by this desire to eliminate the specialness of birthdays.

Okay first, I see no reason that you should treat your birthday like any other day. There's nothing essentially conceited about celebrating your birthday--it's your own personal holiday; might as well make use of it. There's nothing wrong with a putting a little extra fun in your day. I mean, I personally look for all the excuses for celebration I can get. I go all out for St. Paddy's Day (March 17th), Saint Agnes' Eve (January 21), Pi Day (March 14--3.14), even National Waffle Day (August 24--coming up soon!). With so much to stress out about in our everyday lives, why shouldn't we seek out the little reasons to celebrate--be it your birthday or just Mole Day (October 23). No, it needn't be elaborate, but don't be so embarrassed about having a little fun for the arbitrary reason of your birth! There's almost nothing better than being joyous for no really good reason, being less hard to please and more eager to celebrate the beautiful joyous aspects of life. Try it some time.

Second and probably more important, choosing not to celebrate your birthday actually seems more self-centered to me. That's because celebrating your birthday is really not about you. What? Yeah, that's right. Here's the reason: your birthday exists so that your friends and family have the chance to show their love for you, not so that you have the opportunity to receive love from them. And by cancelling or diminishing your celebrations, you deny them an opportunity to express their feelings, serve you, and build charity. In fact, charity is a good way to understand what I'm talking about. Always being self-sufficient keeps you from the uncomfortable position of having to ask for service or the embarrassment of actually receiving it, but it also denies others the opportunity to serve you. If everyone avoided receiving service, then how could we build charity?

This is much like my opinion on wedding celebrations. First, no need to act casual and cool, like a wedding is no big deal, cause it is! Second, having a small little reception doesn't show that the bride and groom are more modest and humble than others; rather, it indicates to me that they are so self-centered--thinking the wedding is all about their comfort--that they deny well-wishers the opportunity to wish them well in their marriage. The wedding is about the guests and the relatives, not about the couple--they have the whole rest of the marriage to spend together. Sacrifice a little time and effort for the people who helped you get there.

So, try to think of people's birthdays as more like their own personal Mother's Day--you wouldn't possibly downplay that holiday, would you? Maybe yes--people seem to be more hesitant to celebrate in general these days, and it makes me feel sad. It's as if they don't want to be caught looking childishly excited about a holiday. But didn't Christ tells us to become as little children? And yes, I really think being eager to celebrate is part of that council. We should be full of joy and happiness, not shying away from celebrations because they might cause you to take some attention from others.

Or maybe it's just because I come from a party-throwing family.

*soapbox end*

Musings on Fiction

Writers are mean. *pout*

I just finished reading OSC's Rachel and Leah. The strangeness of the Rachel/Leah/Jacob story always irked me in the Bible, and I'll admit I had my doubts that even the amazing OSC could pull it off convincingly. To my delight, the book is full of very believeable characters: the women are very distinct and yet each holds character traits that I see in myself. He strings a delicate path of influence between these women as they grow and change, and not in simple ways either. And I absolutely adore Leah's character, which is why the ending hit me so harshly. There was one brief moment of ecstacy, where I thought he had figured out a way to end the story happily, before it came horribly crashing down around me.

Well, at least he's not a "ruthless killer" like some authors I know. *coughJKRowlingcough* (Great interview, by the way. I always forget how hillarious that woman is.)

Ah, the power of stories never ceases to amaze me. It's the only thing that keeps me clinging on to the idea of becoming a fiction writer, though my grasp of characters and settings will probably never be good enough to suit the task. My characters are the sorts of cardboard cut-outs that horrify me in other's work--dare I say the women of Austen? No, too many of you love her. But I can't help the comparison in a novel as full of women as Rachel and Leah. Each of the women in Pride and Prejudice represents one, maybe two, important concepts and that's all. Their characters are almost perfectly resolved at the end of the plot. The characters who are bad you get to simply hate.

I'm constantly in awe of Card's ability to recreate believeable characters, who in addition to seeming real are recognizeable in the people around me. (With a little tweaking, I can see my sister and myself in Rachel and Leah. No, I won't tell you who's who, though I suppose it shouldn't be hard to guess. Especially if you know my sister.) As in Austen's work, the characters fulfill the purpose of the narrative, but they also take on a life of their own because you understand why they are doing what they are doing. Zilpah, who could have ended up becoming a Lydia-like character instead becomes sympathetic as I recognize her motives as some I have felt in my own heart (though clearly never taken to her extreme). Same goes for Bilhah, even though she goes from good to worse. And even the seemingly evil characters are not left completely hateable. In this way, Card's fiction is truly moral because he forces us to look at every character as someone sympathetic, worthwhile, redeemable, not a mere villian or silly girl.

As for settings, I never did have the patience to describe anything properly. I've got a short story in my head in which the setting is absolutely crucial, but doing it without creating the same drawn out descriptions which I hate in writers like Dickens and Tolkien is another matter. I can't stand reading pages of descriptions--you lose the reason why the setting was so important in the first place--and yet my reader would need to have an extremely good feel for the place. There must be a better way. Again, OSC could be a model for me in this, since his descriptions never bother me. (Does he have many? Maybe I should try to study them.)

But the heartless part of being a writer, I'm sure I could be great at that. Killing off characters is a piece of cake. :D

Wiser than the Children of Light: Parables

Parables are interesting things. The way in which they convey their meanings is somewhat of a mystery, and yet they do it so effectively and consistently. Reading these simple stories brings all who read them to an understanding of very specific doctrines, so much so that the gospels rarely need to provide explanation outside of the story, other than the context in which Christ provided it. For a more eloquent explanation of the wonder of parables, I turn to the OSC:

It's no coincidence that so much of Christ's labor in this life was devoted to creating [parables]. . . . The Church he founded eventually failed him. His doctrines were distorted, forgotten, and lost. His followers were slain. The people he healed eventually died. But his stories, those deceptively simple parables, persisted. Where doctrines consisting of language can be and usually are reinterpreted into convenient new meanings, stories consisting of causal relationships between events are very hard to reinterpret without the audience noticing and crying "Foul!"

. . . If I tell you that the "so-called Good Samaritan" was really a clever businessman who acted as he did so as to impress the innkeeper in order to get a purchasing contract with him later, and if I tell you that Christ's message was that you must do good PR in order to succeed in business, you know I'm lying. (Orson Scott Card, "Art as an Act of Charity," A Storyteller in Zion, p. 112-113)

Generally, the meanings of the parables are just as obvious as that of the Good Samaritan. But in my scripture reading yesterday, I stumbled across the one parable that I view as an exception. And it's become one of my favorite parables not only because of it's meaning, but because it is not as obvious. (Maybe it's just the elitist in me.) For your reference, here it is, the Parable of the Unjust Servant from Luke 16:

1 And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had ^awasted his goods.

2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an ^aaccount of thy ^bstewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.

3 Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.

4 I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.

5 So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?

6 And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.

7 Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.

8 And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the ^achildren of ^blight.

9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the ^amammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

10 He that is ^afaithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.

11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your ^atrust the true ^briches?

12 And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?

A very strange parable indeed. Here are a few of the things I draw from it. First, we must be able to obey lesser commandments before receiving higher ones. If we cannot be trusted to keep the lesser law, how can God reveal more unto us? We must make better use of what we have. And rushing at the last minute like the unjust servant will not do. The gospel demands the "tranquil and steady dedication of the lifetime" (Elder Oaks, "The Dedication of Lifetime" --the half not on dating!). If not, when we are called to be accountable for our actions, we will be found short.

In that same vein, I believe that the master commends the unjust servant because, even though what he did was wrong, at least he went after what he wanted with zeal. He found himself in a dilemma, weighed his options, "resolved" what to do, and pursued it full-throttle. In this way, those who work evil are often better than those who are good: how many of us go after truth and righteousness with the same determination and single-mindedness that the unjust servant shows towards evil?

Not many, I think. Rather, we wonder and worry about not receiving a special witness that our course is right, and hestitate to act. I am as much guilty as the next person of faith. We want a voice from God to confirm our every action, when He has told us plainly that "it is not meet that I should command in all things" and men should "do many things of their own free will" (D&C 58:26-27). Thus "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." (Thanks to James Joyce for that bit of insight, even if it's the only thing I've ever gotten from him. Cursed Dubliners!)

The usually most troubling passage of this parable is "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." Is the Savior telling us to make friends with evil people? Perhaps yes. Perhaps not. I could see it either way. First, if we are friends with the unrighteous, then we can lift them up, and, in spite of our imperfections, they will testify of our goodness at the last day. Or, the Savior could merely be encouraging us to have many friends, for when our own situation or willpower fail us. If we lack the strength to bring of our salvation on our own, it is our friends who create the tide that we will drift along in.

I love thinking about this parable--so complex and so satisfying.

Categories

This post is kind of like a Jeopardy category: three completely different things, tangentally related by the same word, coincidentally "category" itself in this case.

Heh, heh. Yes, it did take me this long to feel more awake. Between seeing Harry and the Potters and then a Relief Society sleepover yesterday. Anyway, H&tP were so funny. Their songs are, of course, mediocre to bad, but seeing them performed was hilarious! And I still have "Save Ginny Weasley (from Dean Thomas)" and "the Weasel" stuck in my head. But you didn't really care to know about that. The more interesting matter actually happened before the concert. There were several other bands playing that night, and since I was about 30 mins early, I got to listen to some of the other music from this really strange band. Very apocalyptic and creepy, not really my fare, though it gave me a great idea for a short story.

Mostly, I tried to block out the music and just spent the time watching people. Highly amusing watching a bunch of indie music fans mixing (or not) with Harry Potter fans, and seeing how some people manage to fit in both groups, but they still act differently in each mode. It's interesting how people self-sort into categories. Everyone's rebelling against something, but in rebelling, we find ourselves among a group of people exactly like ourselves, which runs us into complacency. I'm not sure if I think that's a good or bad thing. Rebelling and redefining yourself all the time takes a lot of energy, especially when gliding along with a certain group can get you the same effect, mostly. But then again, you've also got to remain alert enough to jump ship when the group starts heading somewhere you don't like . . . .

Speaking of categories, at the RS sleepover, we talked about the five love languages, which led me to wonder what my love languages are, and how I can improve on some of the ones I don't have. Being a writer, of course, I would have to say Words of Affirmation is my top language. Quality time I love, but pretty much suck at, only because my schedule doesn't coincide with other people's. I guess I should start making more of an effort to spend time with my friends and roomies, if they'll take me back. Gifts/Service aren't mine except on rare occasions, but I realized a year ago that this is my Dad's, and it has helped me understand him so much better. Touch . . . not so much. I tend to feel very uncomfortable around touchy-feely people. Don't get me wrong: touch is very important to me, but it's not something I do casually. It's almost a sacred thing, and I get very annoyed with people who do it casually. For me, only really with family and very, very close friends--people I really trust and am loyal to--are allowed. Though the Hug Video has helped with that a bit. :D (If you haven't seen it, ask me to show you.)

And finally, how about categorizing yourself? Where do you think you fit on the Five Kinds of Mormons? I'd hope to put myself in the CM category, though I may have some OM and LM tendencies. (Sorry for the random blog link, but there's no place with the official text. If you want this in book form, I recommend buying the Robert Kirby compilation Sunday of the Living Dead. Dirt Cheap and Pretty Dang Hilarious. Kirby is someone I would probably put in my personal cannon of good LDS lit, as a social critic, which we need more of. But more on why when I get to writing about LDS lit.)

Short Lines: A Fib

Here.
Saw
these guys.
Very odd place,
Hillariously
good wizard rock: I bought the shirt.

(About Fibs - Math + Poetry? I'm there!)

Yes, truly, Voldemort can't stop the rock. If you are in SLC, go see Harry and the Potters tomorrow! I promise further elboration when I am less deaf and more awake.

Life Suspended

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do with the rest of my life. I mean in terms of a career. Assuming I have one.

And that's precisely the problem. I really dislike my position at this point in life because there isn't enough certainty to build any sort of plan on. Basically, I feel like I'm caught in a Murphy's-Law-like situation, with no way to avoid having my heart broken. If I base my dreams on a brilliant public career, I will probably be happily married and stay at home in obscurity. If I set my heart on marriage, I will become the sweet old maid Primary teacher of some family ward (Katherine, you know who I'm thinking of).

Of course, my preoccupation with this topic has a lot to do with my anxiety about myself not being marriageable material. I think I've wallowed in that trough of self-pity and what-if-ing enough to bore you readers--if you still exist--to death.

But a fear of being miserable in life is not really the problem right now. I have no (or little) doubt that, with Heavenly Father's guidance, I will end up in a situation that will make me happy. The problem is that the two possible natures of that situation leave no room for a certain course. And so in trying to cover all my bases and prepare for either possibility, I worry that I will pay too much attention to the wrong one, or fall in the cracks between. Basically, it's an issue of cosmic suspense--like being in the middle of a novel and just wanting to know how this one thing will turn out so that you can relax and enjoy the rest of the book. I just wish someone would tell me which way I should set my heart.

In Elder Oaks' famous Anti-Hanging-Out Talk, he says this to the single women:

If you are just marking time waiting for a marriage prospect, stop waiting. You may never have the opportunity for a suitable marriage in this life, so stop waiting and start moving. Prepare yourself for life—even a single life—by education, experience, and planning. Don’t wait for happiness to be thrust upon you. Seek it out in service and learning. Make a life for yourself. And trust in the Lord. Your dedication of a lifetime should follow King Benjamin’s advice to be “calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come” (Mosiah 4:11).

Good advice by any standard. Even most dating-tip books tell you to go out and be involved since that's inherently more interesting than sitting around and waiting. Good for either plan, right?

So I attempt to plan my future: Grad school in either English or Chemistry is out. Though I love each subject dearly, I couldn't take being steeped so thoroughly in the dogma of any one specific area--especially considering grad school requires specialization, which I tend to abhor. I adore and covet the idea of going to law school, but not because I would enjoy a career in law--I would probably hate it. I would go there just for the experience, and to learn to think more analytically. But could I really justify spending that much money just because I find it fascinating? (Especially if I did get married . . . .)

If I were to pursue a career, it would be probably be writing--everything and anything, fiction, non-fiction, articles, novels, everything. But if I did that, I couldn't settle for obscurity. I have an innate thirst for fame--I'm sort of ego-centric that way. I would want to be big. I would want to write things that would change the world. (Thus, I'm currently reading Writing to Change the World, and thoroughly anticipating the chapter on blogs. Great book thus far, though the attempt to hide Pipher's liberal bias is quite superficial . . . but a more thorough review later.)

But if I try to go for my dream, try to be famous, revolutionary, life-changing, at what point have I gone to far and ruined my chances of ever truly being satisfied with being quietly at home? And what if I wasn't done with school before my husband needed to go somewhere else for grad school or work? And would I still be able to pursue even higher education, for no other purpose than self-enlightenment and fulfillment? Could I really spend our time and money that way? And as much as I tell myself that I could still write if I got married, that I could do both, I'm not sure it would really happen. I would get so wrapped up in the joys of a family--and it would be joyous, probably more than any fame--that writing, real writing, would get pushed out of the way.

Guys don't have this problem. At least, not the way I see it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the path to a fulfilling life looks exactly the same, whether you end up single or not. You will need a career you can enjoy, regardless. If you happen to get married, than all the better. If not, then you just keep working on it on the side. But for women it is different--marriage is a life-redirecting experience, for good or ill.

All I want is to know what avenue to throw my passion into, and then to be able to let that passion run full throttle, without the risk of crashing and burning when I attempt to turn.

But it's clearly too much to ask: Heavenly Father apparently writes great suspense novels.

In Which We Find Truth in Fiction

Sheesh, this debate over creation versus criticism has been taking over my life! I keep seeing it everywhere I go. For example, I picked up Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell a week or two ago. Yes, a work of fiction. Yes, even a fantasy.

But the theme is there. The book begins with at the Yorkshire Society of Gentleman Magicians, but these aren't the magicians you would expect. None of them practice any magic, nor would they ever want to. You see, in this alternate Napolean-era England, magic has fallen from practical use. "Magicians" are more akin to historians, who study the works of the ancient magicians, and write long theoretically treatises on theories of how magic might work and whether this or that magician was influenced by the other, without ever attempting to try the spells they study. The implications on critical tradition are obvious.

Enter John Segundus. He questions why no one has tried magic, demands that we try and create new magic, to do new things rather than just reviewing the old--in other words, for creative work, rather than just analysis. The Society introduces him to the titular Mr. Norrell, who proves to be the practical magician Segundus is searching for. But even this new creative force has its problems: Mr. Norrell guards his art jealously, and can't stand the thought of sharing his books with other magicians. Also, he focuses so much on the agenda behind his art that often the creativity of it is lost. Then along comes Jonathan Strange, the other practicing magician, and things get interesting. . . .

But I'll spare you more plot summary, and I haven't quite finished the book yet anyway (300 pages left!). Even at this point, though, the implications for this criticize/create debate are clear. First, the worst state a society can possibly be in is one of pure analysis, where creation and creativity are looked down on. But just as bad is the society where creation is worshipped as a sacred, mysterious force, something for the elite, not to be shared with the masses, something jealously guarded.

The lesson I take away is this. Creativity must be taught, in as much as it can be. I realize it isn't a subject you can teach like math or even like a sport. Some essential parts of it cannot be taught, but others can. And we should teach them, even demand them. And demand the other parts too. I might even go so far as to say we should take a leaf from programs in the Fine Arts, and create a Writing major where you actually have to audition to get in.

I think one aspect that has led to the current fouled-up state of affairs in lit crit is the attempt to make it too scientific. We have tried to make our discipline too much like the social sciences, which in turn have tried to become like the hard sciences. We have tried too hard to squeeze writing into some comprehensible form instead of revelling in its marvelous creativity. In my opinion, the focus of the English major ought to be shifted to writing, with lit crit serving as a tool to help us understand other writers and through them ourselves.

There seems to be some third view, represented by Strange, but as I'm not yet sure of his fate, I will refrain from comment.

(Might as well finish off this book review properly. My only complaint about this book is that it is long. 800 pages type long. Now, I've read books that long before, but most of them didn't feel that long. I mean, HPs 4-6 felt so small! I attribute the "longness" of this book to the author's style: she's channelling Dickens so strongly that, were he alive, I might expect a copyright infringement case. And you may write down for the record that I detest Dickens--or his style anyway. But it's a sign of the brillance of the ideas that I am willing to put up with a style that drives me batty to get at them.

The only part of the style I really like is the very serious scholarly footnotes explaining when a character is wrong or giving large background stories and folktales. Pretty hilarious. And the old timey spelling is interesting. . . .

Additionally, this book is exactly the wrong size for reading. Too big a spine and too large of pages. I really want to get the three volume edition so that I can actually read it comfortably.)

P.S. I have started memorizing the Lady of Shalott, as per my post Saturday. I've almost got part one down! I feel very Anne-ish. Joni, you should be proud. :D

Happee Birthdae!

To Harry Potter, the boy who lived!
And to J.K. Rowling, the woman who wrote!

(Leaky B-Day page)

Top 10 Things I Learned while Attempting to Hike Timp Today

10-The Romantic poets were right.
9-Water bottles left at home don't quench thirst
8-Mountains are steep. Very steep.
7-I need to pick up photography again. If only I still had that camera . . . .
6-I need to memorize more poetry.
5-Why mountains are so closely tied to temples.
4-Nature can overcome anything.
3-Stop and look at the beauty around you . . . .
2-But watch for rocks.
1-Know your limits.