Lost Keys + Lost Notebook = SADNESS

I am back from Boston and overwhelmed with trying to recover from such an exhausting weekend and homework. I like the city of Boston a lot. It is beautiful. The Amnesty International conference was not as big or impressive as I had expected compared to the other two conferences I had been too, but it was still interesting. The author of the recent book about Child Soldiers was there. His name was Israel something, but he has been on late night television quite a bit recently. There were also some professors from Harvard, one of which that had just been released from prison in China thanks to Amnesty International. His speech was very moving and both he and his wife started crying when he was up there. It was beautiful. I also went to a breakout session on Indigenous Women and the severe problem of domestic violence. I also went to one on how terrible it is that the US is the only developed nation that hasn’t signed CEDAW declaring women’s equal rights. I learned about the Umbrella campaign they are working on at Amnesty, which is a picture petition. I was taught how to start the petition at my own school, but we had an unfortunate event happen. It was pouring rain after our last session of the conference so the president of our group offered to put our folders in his backpack. I put my folder with all of my materials from the conference in there as well as my notebook. When he was at one of the several bars he went to the last night, he claims the bag was stolen. I want to be angry about it, but he lost more than anyone else. His i-pod was in there and a new book he had bought. I am thankful I didn’t lose anything of materialistic value since I spent a lot of money in Boston and I have to pay $40 for my lost keys. I am going to spend one more day looking for them tomorrow, but things are not looking good. I am most upset about losing my notebook though. I had a year’s worth of writing. It was going to be the first notebook I filled up. I was so close to having it finished. I lost my journals from falling into depression as well as climbing out of it. I lost all of my first drafts and brainstorming of things in the past years. I am most upset about losing my journals from New Orleans and when the kids from Pine Ridge were here. I will never be able to look back on those times again. It feels like I lost something valuable even though it was a notebook that was so crappy it had duct tape on it to keep it together.

I am almost finished reading Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar.” She is crazy as hell, but it is very well written. I have been enjoying it a great deal.

I am feeling stressed about working on my schedule for next semester. I just don’t know which classes I should take in addition to the three I am certain about. I just don’t want to be stuck here for more than four years, because I can’t afford to be. I worry I will if I am not efficient enough with scheduling. I am off to study for an exam I have tomorrow. I am killing time at the library like I do so well.

I Think I'll Go to Boston

I leave for Boston at 2am tomorrow night. I have a lot to get done before then, and here I am at the library wasting time. I wanted to blog about the beautiful sky I saw on my way here. It was like day North of me with the bright blue sky with white clouds that almost looked like a bunch of lines in a painting. South of me there was a gray and bluish type sky that was rather gloomy. To the West there was a beautiful sunset with orange, blue, pink, and purple. Then to the East there was just a solid salmon color. I felt like I was in a cartoon. I had never seen anything quite like it. It was beautiful and put me in a good mood despite the fact that I spent most of today alone and lost my keys yesterday.

I noticed my keys were missing when I noticed my bag was unzipped yesterday after my religion class. I retraced all of my steps then cleaned my room to look for them. After no sign of them I e-mailed my religion professor to ask if he had seen them as he left. He did not, but told me to check in the Dean's office in that building because they had a lost and found. I did, but they did not have them. I was able to leave my information in case they do find them. I also checked both desks in my dorm and the cafeteria. I have no idea where they could be. I hope that it was just me being dumb and that they are hiding somehwere I have yet to look, but I think I remember putting them in my bag...so who knows where they could have fallen out at.

We had a great discussion in my religion class about religious experiences and if we think these epiletic seizures that make people think they are experiencing God are real. It was interesting to hear everyone's personal opinions. I finished my book about the nun with that type of epilepsy and it was beautifully written. I am now half way through Sylvia Plath's. "The Bell Jar," James picked it up for me at a used book store because he knew I had been looking for it. It is brilliantly written. It is an autobiographical novel and with her being so weirdly brilliant it is easy to see how she was so depressed and crazy.

Today a friend of a friend that sits by us in class told me, "I was so glad I saw you yesterday. You looked so cheerful and happy. You are just one of those happy people that makes it contagious." I couldn't believe it, because all I did was smile and wave at this girl on her bike. Not to mention I felt like a Debbie Downer for so long, it was amazing to hear that I seem so joyful. It made my day. I have been feeling pretty good, which is exciting. I just agreed to go back to New Orleans over Christmas break. I am looking forward to going back and being mentally and physically healthy. It should be great. Well, I am stressed. I have a ton to do, but I am going to go listen to an author read some fiction with James instead of work. I am sure it will all gone...anyway, "I think I'll go to Boston where noone knows my name."

Impossible

I have four papers due next week, three of them due Monday. I am feeling so overwhelmed, which is frustrating because I actually have been feeling creative and I can't allow myself to write much unless I stay up late. I am reading this novel for my religion class about nuns and it is wonderful. It is about a nun with epilepsy that is trying to deal with the fact that all of these "unique moments she had with God" were seizures. There is actually a kind of epilepsy that is located in the temporal lobe and a kind of schizophrenia that increases "relgious experiences." They also can open up your head and mess with these parts of your brain to make you see and believe things. This nun then has to struggle with her faith. I have to write a paper on how I feel about this kind of thing. I find it hard to believe--when the mind controls everything and if someone messes with that it can distort your personality, beliefs, and senses. I am interested to see how this book ends, because I don't think that the amazing ability we have in our minds is any sort of let down. I think it's just as amazing and divine as anything else. There was one part in the book where a nun sprays a bird that is bullying another one in the fountain with a hose and another nun gets pissed. It is very amusing and reminds me of some stories my friend, Ashley, who is in the convent, has told me. Nuns are interesting characters.

Tonight we had a tornado warning that caused me to miss half of Grey's Anatomy. I also had my window open and several books got wet, luckily I caught it quickly and could dry them off before the watter seeped in.

Today I had lunch with my friend, Heather. I think I am going to go tracking with her in January. She has motion-activated cameras now, and while she has not gotten pictures of wolves like she is hoping for, she has gotten some cool pictures of bears and coyotes. I like that she is always very down-to-earth. She talked about feeling lonely lately because she is never in one place and is constantly bouncing around from place to place, so it's hard to have a group of people to be with. I love hearing stories about lonliness. I think everyone does, because how many books and movies are out there that address the issue from centuries ago until today? People like to hear about other people feeling lonely to ease their own feelings of isolation. I would like to write a piece that addresses loneliness in addition to other issues.

I talked to my religion professor yesterday about signing a religion minor. He has published a book called "Minds and Gods," (you should check it out--It's interesting). I asked him about being published and what that involves. He said he studied creative writing and considers himself a writer before a religion professor. He said he is interested in teh fact that I am a writing major and a religion minor. I like him a lot, but I am kind of intimidated by him. He said something about how teaching is not what he does, and without thinking I said something like, "well it doesn't show." Then I realized what a suck-up that made me sound like, and I was like, "that wasn't meant to suck-up. I swear." There was an awkward, but funny moment after that. It was kind of discouraging when we talked about how tough it is to get into publishing fiction. I told him I wanted to get into creative non-fiction, and when I named some of my favorite authors he said something about how to become a writer like that people have to trust you and the way you think, which takes people knowing who you are. The way to do that is usually to start with fiction or be a journalist for a well-known magazine, which involves living the "American Dream." It is so frustrating, because it seems impossible to do what I want. He did say that once you have a phD that people come to you to ask what you are writing. He referred to academic non-fiction as, "a little boys club" where everyone knows eachother and they all make sure the others gets published. It's all about who you know no matter what profession you want to go in to.

Tomorrow Drew, Elise, and Ryan are coming up from my South Dakota experiences. It was Drew's birthday yesterday so it will be nice to go to dinner with everyone for that. It always lifts up my spirits to see people from the Omega project. I wrote Enoch (from the Rez) a letter last week, because I remembered that he loved T-Pain and he did a concert at Central last week. I miss everyone from the reservation and from our group here. I just miss all of us together more than anything.

I need to go write. I have those four papers hanging over my head so I need to take advantage of what little time I have left to be creative.

Trying to Light a Fire

I am listening to my rainy day mix and feeling tired. The bottom of my pants are wet and I just got done straightening my bangs, because the rain made them stick up, untamed. I am looking at what classes I want to take next semester, because registration for sophomores begins in a week or two. I have selected which intro to creative writing class I want to take, which will be the one class I work everything else around. I always have once class I am certain about that sets the rules for the other classes. I selected this one, because I recognized the professor’s name as the woman who is in charge of the “Creative Non-Fiction” Majors in the writing department. I read a lot of creative non-fiction. I like writing all types of genres (I often feel like I wish I could write every form of genre, plays/movies, songs, poems, fiction, non-fiction, and anything else really). Natalie Godlberg, one of my favorite authors is a professional writing instructor who works with celebrities and already published authors, says that you need to read what you want to write, because you write what you read. I thought I should therefore focus on creative non-fiction. I am not certain, so I am hoping to get to know this professor well enough to share my interest in it and have an educated decision on if it is worth pursuing or the same type of style I am going for.

Yesterday I stopped in my Literary Analysis professor’s office to discuss reconstructing my paper on Anne Sexton’s poem about Sylvia Plath’s suicide. I also asked him about signing a major, and if there was any internships or work I could do in the English department. He is a very straightforward kind of guy. He told me that he was disappointed in my paper, because I was so taken by this poem, but the paper didn’t show that. He said it was too short for a “woman of [my] intelligence.” What I like about him is that he went on to elaborate and said, “I think you are very intelligent, but I can tell you that all day. You will just be like, ‘oh that old flatterer’, and you won’t believe me. I want you to write a paper that shows yourself you are intelligent so that I don’t have to tell you and neither does anyone else.” That made me feel good, because it was a real compliment without being so flattering that I shake it off. It was not cheesy or surface level, because he was telling me that my paper was crap. It has been said that he grades really tough, but he does let us resubmit our papers, but it must show almost a total makeover with many changes and insightful thoughts. He warned me that I needed to start gathering a portfolio of my creative writing work now, because he said that so many upperclassmen are naïve to the competition out there. He was like, “You don’t have time to [mess] around. You need to start TODAY, because if you want to be a writer and get a PhD in creative writing then you are going to be applying to universities that will get 300 applications for that same position-throw out half of them without hardly glancing at them, select 30 to really look at, and then pick 15. I think students from Central are more than ready to compete against the top competitors in the nation provided they are driven and know what they are facing. Ignorance will get you nowhere.” I then discovered that he had to hound my former lit professor that was accepted at University of Miami to teach and work on his PhD in literature. He made me laugh when he told me how much he had to light a fire underneath him. “We all need that, and other professors will tell you that there is plenty of time, but there’s not if you want to excel.” I felt really motivated after speaking with him. It is incredibly intimidating to think about, but it’s better to think about it now when I can do something, rather than think I am okay and later find out I am just another mediocre writer in the world.

I have a lot of work to do as I prepare to leave for Boston next weekend. I will spend a good chunk of this weekend working on multiple things that are due while I am gone, because I wil have to turn them in early. I feel like I am doing a decent job at taking charge of my life this year. I hope it continues to stay that way.

Content

I have been feeling really good this weekend. I took a weekend to myself. I didn’t go to any parties or hang out until late. I hung out with people a bit, but spent my nights watching movies, reading, and writing for fun. It really helped relax me. I woke up at a decent time yesterday and today and I went to the library for three hours today and really made a dent in my load of homework for midterms week. I also worked out. It feels good to have some free time without homework loitering over my head. I have been feeling creative again lately, but having a hard time finding ways to release it, because I am frustrated with both poetry and prose. A cute Venezuelan guy from the band that played at Peace Song told me I should think about script writing because, “that’s where the money’s at.” I don’t think I could pull of script writing, but it might be nice to try a new genre out and release some of this rare creativity. I am writing more though, which is always nice. I don’t blog as much, because when I have time to write I feel like I waste my writing time by focusing on reality and my opinions instead of trying to weave all of it subtly and creatively into a piece of writing. I am trying to keep up with pieces, because we are now doing on-line submissions for writers group at the beginning of the month for those who can’t meet. I am the only one that has sent stuff out and only the three regulars sent back feedback. We have like twenty people in our on-line group, but very few participate. I like the core people though. I always love writers. It was the same main three who I received feedback from in person, so it feels familiar. I like working with people whose style I am familiar with. It makes it easier to take and listen to criticism. It’s like you develop a sense of trust in their suggestions and learn what to ignore and how to use their strengths.

I enjoyed going home during the middle of the week to see Adam off and observe a peace concert for World Peace Initiative. I was able to take one of my treasured walks with Adam D. while we walked the nature trail by the labyrinth, meet up and chat with Jenn on a bench at Siena in perfect weather. I also enjoyed dinner with the family Tuesday night, was able to see many fun people at a Peace Makers meeting, go to Big Boy late at night with lisa, Adam D., and Ashley (the nun), go to Big Boy early in the morning with Leslie and Beth, and ride the bike a bit. Not to mention I got to hang out with the cute band members with accents. The one from Jordan is like a pop star in his country and I saw his fan club on facebook. It has such a cute picture of him. He was a very sweet guy. I can see why everyone loves him.

I thought I was done with my weird mood courtesy of my Sylvia Plath/Anne Sexton paper being done, but my professor handed back my paper and I got a B-. I have been told he grades really tough, but he does let you resubmit it for a higher grade. It’s not even an average. I could still get an A, but he grades just as tough and said there will have to be tremendous changes that show a lot of insightful thoughts for him to make a grade higher. I am enjoying the challenge, but it is just that… a challenge. I found this Ryan Adams’ song called “Sylvia Plath” that I have enjoyed listening too because it contributes to my weird mood when I read and write about her. The paper is actually about a poem by Anne Sexton, but the poem is focused on Plath so I feel like I am studying her more than Sexton.

This Friday Elise, Drew, and Ryan from my South Dakota group are coming up to visit. The following weekend I go to Boston for an Amnesty International conference. The weekend after that Leslie and Alicia are coming up. That gives me a lot to look forward to. When that is all over the next weekend will be the second one in November! Who knows what I will have planned then, but that will have me close to Thanksgiving break. It’s amazing how the time is flying. I am off to do some “real writing” haha.

Meaningless

It is so unbelievably hot in the dorms. I can't believe it's October. It's hard for me to blog and write on my computer because it gets hot. I am surviving and staying unfortnately busy, and I am really looking forward to getting away for a few days and going home. I am procrastinating finishing my paper I entitled, "Climbing the Pyramid," about Abraham Maslow's theories of religion. I am enjoying it, because I like him so much, but I worry I am getting off topic with too much personal stuff, so i should probably look up some more facts.

Today lisa stopped by on her way to a workshop up north. It was a lovely surprise. We went to coffee, had cookies, and I showed her some writing. I miss writers group a lot. I will also get to see Chris from writers group this week at Peace Song, so it will be nice to reunite with some of them.

Today I remembered this quote while talking to lisa. It's from the movie I watched about the Beat poets with Adam. It is something along the line of, "If we love to protect us from hate, then maybe we hate to protect us from love." I really like that quote. This is a meaningless entry, but I needed to post something new.

The Pre-Drag Show

My friend, James and his roommates are in a drag show for the Gay Straight Alliance hosting "coming out week." Beth and I will be out of town for World Peace Initiative so we went to watch them practice tonight. They are dancing seductively with chairs to the song, "Cell Block Tango (He had it Coming)" from the musical Chicago. Watching four stereotypical gay guys along with two straight guys and a girl learn a dance together proved to be very entertaining.

I got a kick out of many things. One of them is the way the entire gay-straight alliance (regardless of gender or orientation) is so touchy-feely with one another. They are always all over eachother and it makes me smile. Secondly I enjoyed when my friend, Kent, was telling James that "women walk with their hips and men walk with their shoulders. So forget about your shoulders," while he tried to show James how to shake it. Another guy in a pink shirt asked if they could "gyrate on a pole" for a part of the dance. My friend, Steven pranced around gracefully and with an atitude while breaking down the dance moves slowly for others and counting loudly. He also was signing "bitch" to anyone that was talking crap. It is funny because he talks in sign language often, and is not deaf.

James is straight, but a theater major so he blends well. The other straight guy was complaining about missing the Red Wings game. I couldn't help but laugh at all of the stereotypes taking place in the room. Beth got scolded by our friend Christine for laughing while they were dancing, which made me laugh. Christine gets to play the role of all of the trashy men in the song. It will be quite a show when they are all in heels and full costumes. I am sad I will not be able to see it.