Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
A Piece of Pi
Suppose I made a pie.
It's a delicious pie, my favorite kind: frozen chocolate, effectively homemade chocolate ice cream in a crust of crushed graham crackers held together with butter and sugar.
Of course, now I have some choices as to what to do with this pie. I could eat it all myself, or I could eat half and give half away, or I could cut it in thirds and share it among three people... and, of course, the more people who wind up eating some of it, the less there is for each.
Pie is like that. It's limited; the only way to give everyone more is to make another pie. What I've been noticing lately, though, is that while not everything in the world functions the same way pie does, there are people out there who are very invested in treating all things as if they were pie.
Oppression works like pie: if you give it away, you stop having it, and that's scary for some people.
But the thing is, love doesn't. Love works much more like the number pi.
Let's say I decide that the first three digits of pi are mine, and then you come up to me asking for a piece of the number that same size. I've already claimed 3.14, but 159 is available, and now we have 3.14159 and a greater degree of precision. And then someone else comes along and wants a piece of pi. Great, now we have 3.14159258 between us, and our calculations are getting better. That's how love is, that's how justice is: the more of it you are willing to share, the more of it can come back to you.
It's a delicious pie, my favorite kind: frozen chocolate, effectively homemade chocolate ice cream in a crust of crushed graham crackers held together with butter and sugar.
Of course, now I have some choices as to what to do with this pie. I could eat it all myself, or I could eat half and give half away, or I could cut it in thirds and share it among three people... and, of course, the more people who wind up eating some of it, the less there is for each.
Pie is like that. It's limited; the only way to give everyone more is to make another pie. What I've been noticing lately, though, is that while not everything in the world functions the same way pie does, there are people out there who are very invested in treating all things as if they were pie.
Oppression works like pie: if you give it away, you stop having it, and that's scary for some people.
But the thing is, love doesn't. Love works much more like the number pi.
Let's say I decide that the first three digits of pi are mine, and then you come up to me asking for a piece of the number that same size. I've already claimed 3.14, but 159 is available, and now we have 3.14159 and a greater degree of precision. And then someone else comes along and wants a piece of pi. Great, now we have 3.14159258 between us, and our calculations are getting better. That's how love is, that's how justice is: the more of it you are willing to share, the more of it can come back to you.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Telling the Truth
Telling the truth means
my vision clouds,
my head spins,
my heart races,
and I think I'm about to faint.
Telling the truth means
putting myself in danger
when I have another choice.
Telling the truth means
giving up the privilege
that comes with being a liar.
Telling the truth means
another shaky step
towards becoming the person
I always wanted to be.
my vision clouds,
my head spins,
my heart races,
and I think I'm about to faint.
Telling the truth means
putting myself in danger
when I have another choice.
Telling the truth means
giving up the privilege
that comes with being a liar.
Telling the truth means
another shaky step
towards becoming the person
I always wanted to be.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
My Life in the Perfect Passive Participle
In Latin--almost never in English because our version is so much more complicated, but pretty much every other sentence in Latin--there is a certain construction known as the perfect passive participle. It can best be translated as "having been [verb]ed." Despite its unpopularity in English, I think in the perfect passive participle a lot. This is partly because I speak Latin, and partly because I have an automatic predisposition to like anything unpopular, but also partly because I think of it as an inspiring way to use words. It's a way to describe the past in a way that necessarily links it to some later event.
Having been bullied for many years, I resolved never to let anyone treat my friends that way.
It sounds weak in English, as the passive often does, but to me that only makes it a better way to convey the meaning of that sentence. Even on the obscure, "meta" level of the language I used, it demonstrates passing from weakness to strength.
It's simpler in Latin, where a perfect passive participle is only one word long. Though it won't be a perfectly literal translation, it is quite possible to translate it as an adjective without losing meaning. If you are reading this blog and have seen the title plastered all over it, or if you have seen the name under which I am writing this, you have seen this construction. Amata means "having been loved," or simply "beloved." Therefore, in the rather unusual conventions used by the first Latin textbook I ever owned:
iuliana amata iam amat.
There are two ways to translate that: either as "Now Iuliana Amata loves," or as "Having been loved, Iuliana now loves."
Having been bullied for many years, I resolved never to let anyone treat my friends that way.
It sounds weak in English, as the passive often does, but to me that only makes it a better way to convey the meaning of that sentence. Even on the obscure, "meta" level of the language I used, it demonstrates passing from weakness to strength.
It's simpler in Latin, where a perfect passive participle is only one word long. Though it won't be a perfectly literal translation, it is quite possible to translate it as an adjective without losing meaning. If you are reading this blog and have seen the title plastered all over it, or if you have seen the name under which I am writing this, you have seen this construction. Amata means "having been loved," or simply "beloved." Therefore, in the rather unusual conventions used by the first Latin textbook I ever owned:
iuliana amata iam amat.
There are two ways to translate that: either as "Now Iuliana Amata loves," or as "Having been loved, Iuliana now loves."
Monday, September 17, 2012
Maturity Redux
So, back a few months ago, I wrote a post about how I was worried I wasn't going to be mature enough for college. Turns out that not only am I mature enough, I'm far more mature than many of my classmates...
...Why, oh, why did I wake up this morning to discover someone had taped a giant cardboard penis to the common-room door?
...Why, oh, why did I wake up this morning to discover someone had taped a giant cardboard penis to the common-room door?
Saturday, August 25, 2012
A Letter to My Younger Self
I've been doing a lot of reading lately, about people who are different. I've found that there's a lot out there about being on the receiving end of different kinds of prejudice, and I am very grateful for those who do that kind of writing. It has inspired me to answer somehow. Today I reached some important revelations about what I was doing when I was younger and I was so fascinated by the stories of the people who were the targets of such behavior. In response, here I write an open letter to the little girl I was around first or second grade.
To the little girl who wants so badly to be different,
It isn't just your imagination. The prejudice you're sensing is real, and it has real causes in things that are just under the surface of who you are. Your mind really does work differently, and there's a proper name for it. It's called Asperger's Syndrome. In third grade, you will meet a boy who has it and doesn't like you, so you won't have much to do with him, but your class will be taught about what it is in ways that you'll hear but not understand until you look back and remember about him four years later. In fifth grade, there will be a boy who identifies you before anyone else does, and you'll feel a little sorry for him because he claims it as his own identity even though it's obviously a medical diagnosis.
And then, in sixth grade, you'll get the diagnosis for yourself and realize that you know exactly why he did.
You've been bullied all your life, little girl, and it will get better, but it will never go away completely. Your mommy will try to teach you how to deal with it and ignore it, but that isn't what you're looking for. This is:
Your concerns are real. Your worries are real and have good reasons for being there. You aren't just undergoing some twisted rite of passage--you're being attacked because your classmates can tell that you are different and want you to change. And your job, which will be hard but very much worth it, is to hold on to yourself.
You are going to be persecuted, just like you'll find out in fourth grade that Jesus promised--and the other half of that promise will be fulfilled too: the rewards will be great. Hold on to that promise. It'll help you survive a lot of trauma in fourth grade, and seventh grade, and tenth grade, and twelfth grade, and also in the spaces between the hardest fights. Pray, even when it's hard to find the words. Ask for help, but don't believe anyone who tells you that your senses are lying. The funny high-pitched noise that comes out of the TV is real too, and anyone who can't hear it just doesn't have hearing as sensitive as yours. You are different because you can see things, hear things, and do things that other people can't. You are different because you can't help these things.
There are other people out there who are different for other things they can't help, like where their families are from or what they look like or how they understand themselves. You're already fascinated by them--good. You're looking to their histories because you want to identify with them--to see your own life mirrored in what they have to face--and because you want to do something to make up for how other people have treated them. Keep listening to their stories and learning from their struggles, because you can learn a lot from them. You'll learn how to treat them with the respect everyone deserves, and you'll learn how to demand the same from the people who are hurting you when your turn comes to tell your own story. The most important thing you'll learn is that people who are supposed to be big and responsible and powerful can be wrong, and that they need to be challenged when they are.
I know you're looking at these stories because you're so desperate to see some kind of truth that will explain what you're seeing in the world. Keep looking. The truth is in there, even though some of these stories aren't about "your" people. Oppression is a real thing, and because you see it you have the responsibility to fight it. Because you are of a few of those groups, you have a story in there yourself. You don't know what you are yet, but when in due time you will find out what identities are in your blood and heart and mind. Value your own identity, and the ones that you can only watch and fight for. Don't forget that for every one you aren't a part of, you will one day know and love someone who is. Don't forget that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." All kinds of bullying are wrong, and if you can you should stand up to the bullies.
There is no forbidden knowledge. Don't worry about what the teachers say--it's okay to sit down and study everything you want to learn about. Learn about science, and when two books disagree ask questions about why. Immerse yourself in history, and you will have lived over a hundred years' worth of questions and culture and growth by the time you are old enough to look out at the present day. No matter what anyone tells you, this is worth learning about. You have the ability to be more than you are expected to be, and that is how you get there.
People will hate you for who you are. People will threaten and insult you for daring to exist. Worse, people who mean you well will try to make you hide yourself and harm yourself because your safety is uncomfortable to people who will hate you no matter what. If you realize taking that advice is hurting you, draw the line. Your safety is important, and your body belongs to you. By the time you reach seventh grade--as you'll calculate in second grade because of books you're reading and liking, that's the first year of junior high school and the year your body will start changing to look more like an adult--you will need to know that how you look to other people is less important than simply being able to navigate life without being hurt. If performing the woman-act interferes with your ability to do everyday things like going to school, the first priority should be to be able to do your everyday things. Mommy will talk a lot about priorities. You will set your own, and it's okay if they don't always agree with hers. Existing is the first priority.
Don't let anyone tell you that being different is bad, or that you aren't different. You are not capable of everything that everyone else can do, because you are capable of things that other people can't even imagine. You will know what you can and can't do before you are old enough for people to believe you. Keep telling the truth as you understand it, no matter what. They will come around. And--as you will understand instinctively--it will pay off.
When your feelings tell you something that doesn't make sense in the world you're told you live in, stop and think about it. You are living in a world that isn't fully real, that has been made for you to have a childhood in. The books you find will give you doors to other worlds--some are real, some are not, and all are worth exploring. You'll learn a lot of things about people from them. But the world you are living in is missing some important information that will come back to hurt you later in life. There is a part of your heart that the people creating that world want to erase from existence. They want you to follow a straight line through life that won't necessarily work out for you, without ever looking at the fact that you are designed to be able to do something else. They've already taught you to be confused by it, even though you're already seeing it. You can--and you do--fall in love with girls, the same way that you have been told it is only possible for girls to love boys. You already have had one girl you loved that way, and although you will never see her again after the first week of second grade, there will be others. They will make you wonder--she has made you wonder--if you are a boy on the inside, but don't worry: it doesn't matter whom you love; you can be a girl anyway. There will be boys, too, but that side of yourself is already accepted and you will never have any shortage of help in growing that way. Some grown-ups, even Mommy and Daddy, have tried to force you to ignore the other side of yourself. They think it is healthy for you to believe that that kind of love does not even exist, because they have been lied to and told that it is wrong to love another girl that way. It is NOT wrong. It is part of who you have been all your life, and it is not any different from how Mommy and Daddy love each other. As you grow up and the false world slowly falls away, you will see that you are not the only person ever to ask these questions; far from it, there are many. We are a minority, and one that is often fought against, but we exist and always have. We make people uncomfortable, by existing as girls who can and do fall in love with other girls--just like we make people uncomfortable by existing as people with Asperger's who look at the world and see things that most people don't notice instead of things that most people do. It's the same thing, really: seeing things and people differently.
You are different, and you see the world differently. Never be ashamed of that. The greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God, love others, and love yourself; never let anyone take that away from you. Never lose your will to learn, either; you will become a better person if you pay attention to everything. When something doesn't feel right, stop and think about what's going on. Ask questions. If someone tries to shame you and shut you down for asking a question, ask more questions. Learn how to forgive and whom to forgive, and watch people until you understand why they do things. Ask more questions about that. And always tell the truth, even when you're shivering with fear--as I am writing this now. Honesty is worth any cost, any shame, any harm.
As Mommy will tell you many, many times,
Honor. Courage. Commitment.
Our core values, in the Navy. Learn what they really mean, and live them.
With love and great good wishes,
Iuliana Amata
Your future self
To the little girl who wants so badly to be different,
It isn't just your imagination. The prejudice you're sensing is real, and it has real causes in things that are just under the surface of who you are. Your mind really does work differently, and there's a proper name for it. It's called Asperger's Syndrome. In third grade, you will meet a boy who has it and doesn't like you, so you won't have much to do with him, but your class will be taught about what it is in ways that you'll hear but not understand until you look back and remember about him four years later. In fifth grade, there will be a boy who identifies you before anyone else does, and you'll feel a little sorry for him because he claims it as his own identity even though it's obviously a medical diagnosis.
And then, in sixth grade, you'll get the diagnosis for yourself and realize that you know exactly why he did.
You've been bullied all your life, little girl, and it will get better, but it will never go away completely. Your mommy will try to teach you how to deal with it and ignore it, but that isn't what you're looking for. This is:
Your concerns are real. Your worries are real and have good reasons for being there. You aren't just undergoing some twisted rite of passage--you're being attacked because your classmates can tell that you are different and want you to change. And your job, which will be hard but very much worth it, is to hold on to yourself.
You are going to be persecuted, just like you'll find out in fourth grade that Jesus promised--and the other half of that promise will be fulfilled too: the rewards will be great. Hold on to that promise. It'll help you survive a lot of trauma in fourth grade, and seventh grade, and tenth grade, and twelfth grade, and also in the spaces between the hardest fights. Pray, even when it's hard to find the words. Ask for help, but don't believe anyone who tells you that your senses are lying. The funny high-pitched noise that comes out of the TV is real too, and anyone who can't hear it just doesn't have hearing as sensitive as yours. You are different because you can see things, hear things, and do things that other people can't. You are different because you can't help these things.
There are other people out there who are different for other things they can't help, like where their families are from or what they look like or how they understand themselves. You're already fascinated by them--good. You're looking to their histories because you want to identify with them--to see your own life mirrored in what they have to face--and because you want to do something to make up for how other people have treated them. Keep listening to their stories and learning from their struggles, because you can learn a lot from them. You'll learn how to treat them with the respect everyone deserves, and you'll learn how to demand the same from the people who are hurting you when your turn comes to tell your own story. The most important thing you'll learn is that people who are supposed to be big and responsible and powerful can be wrong, and that they need to be challenged when they are.
I know you're looking at these stories because you're so desperate to see some kind of truth that will explain what you're seeing in the world. Keep looking. The truth is in there, even though some of these stories aren't about "your" people. Oppression is a real thing, and because you see it you have the responsibility to fight it. Because you are of a few of those groups, you have a story in there yourself. You don't know what you are yet, but when in due time you will find out what identities are in your blood and heart and mind. Value your own identity, and the ones that you can only watch and fight for. Don't forget that for every one you aren't a part of, you will one day know and love someone who is. Don't forget that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." All kinds of bullying are wrong, and if you can you should stand up to the bullies.
There is no forbidden knowledge. Don't worry about what the teachers say--it's okay to sit down and study everything you want to learn about. Learn about science, and when two books disagree ask questions about why. Immerse yourself in history, and you will have lived over a hundred years' worth of questions and culture and growth by the time you are old enough to look out at the present day. No matter what anyone tells you, this is worth learning about. You have the ability to be more than you are expected to be, and that is how you get there.
People will hate you for who you are. People will threaten and insult you for daring to exist. Worse, people who mean you well will try to make you hide yourself and harm yourself because your safety is uncomfortable to people who will hate you no matter what. If you realize taking that advice is hurting you, draw the line. Your safety is important, and your body belongs to you. By the time you reach seventh grade--as you'll calculate in second grade because of books you're reading and liking, that's the first year of junior high school and the year your body will start changing to look more like an adult--you will need to know that how you look to other people is less important than simply being able to navigate life without being hurt. If performing the woman-act interferes with your ability to do everyday things like going to school, the first priority should be to be able to do your everyday things. Mommy will talk a lot about priorities. You will set your own, and it's okay if they don't always agree with hers. Existing is the first priority.
Don't let anyone tell you that being different is bad, or that you aren't different. You are not capable of everything that everyone else can do, because you are capable of things that other people can't even imagine. You will know what you can and can't do before you are old enough for people to believe you. Keep telling the truth as you understand it, no matter what. They will come around. And--as you will understand instinctively--it will pay off.
When your feelings tell you something that doesn't make sense in the world you're told you live in, stop and think about it. You are living in a world that isn't fully real, that has been made for you to have a childhood in. The books you find will give you doors to other worlds--some are real, some are not, and all are worth exploring. You'll learn a lot of things about people from them. But the world you are living in is missing some important information that will come back to hurt you later in life. There is a part of your heart that the people creating that world want to erase from existence. They want you to follow a straight line through life that won't necessarily work out for you, without ever looking at the fact that you are designed to be able to do something else. They've already taught you to be confused by it, even though you're already seeing it. You can--and you do--fall in love with girls, the same way that you have been told it is only possible for girls to love boys. You already have had one girl you loved that way, and although you will never see her again after the first week of second grade, there will be others. They will make you wonder--she has made you wonder--if you are a boy on the inside, but don't worry: it doesn't matter whom you love; you can be a girl anyway. There will be boys, too, but that side of yourself is already accepted and you will never have any shortage of help in growing that way. Some grown-ups, even Mommy and Daddy, have tried to force you to ignore the other side of yourself. They think it is healthy for you to believe that that kind of love does not even exist, because they have been lied to and told that it is wrong to love another girl that way. It is NOT wrong. It is part of who you have been all your life, and it is not any different from how Mommy and Daddy love each other. As you grow up and the false world slowly falls away, you will see that you are not the only person ever to ask these questions; far from it, there are many. We are a minority, and one that is often fought against, but we exist and always have. We make people uncomfortable, by existing as girls who can and do fall in love with other girls--just like we make people uncomfortable by existing as people with Asperger's who look at the world and see things that most people don't notice instead of things that most people do. It's the same thing, really: seeing things and people differently.
You are different, and you see the world differently. Never be ashamed of that. The greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God, love others, and love yourself; never let anyone take that away from you. Never lose your will to learn, either; you will become a better person if you pay attention to everything. When something doesn't feel right, stop and think about what's going on. Ask questions. If someone tries to shame you and shut you down for asking a question, ask more questions. Learn how to forgive and whom to forgive, and watch people until you understand why they do things. Ask more questions about that. And always tell the truth, even when you're shivering with fear--as I am writing this now. Honesty is worth any cost, any shame, any harm.
As Mommy will tell you many, many times,
Honor. Courage. Commitment.
Our core values, in the Navy. Learn what they really mean, and live them.
With love and great good wishes,
Iuliana Amata
Your future self
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Teaching Versus Learning
A few years ago, I wrote a story about the adventures a character of mine had when she was in second grade from the perspective of her teacher. In the middle of a lesson, my character asks the kind of question I always wished I was brave enough to ask in school--pointing out a gap in a lesson, specifically asking why they didn't ask the people who knew the recent historical figure they were studying about the "mysterious things" that had just been glossed over--and the teacher has a moment of resenting the question because she was hoping to avoid getting into the place where her lesson plan was pretty flimsy. The little girl wants to bring the conversation to a higher level, and the teacher is invested in keeping it down to simple things.
That's not necessarily what I would want in a teacher, but it's what I've usually gotten. And I've had some wonderful teachers who did go above and beyond what's on the test, but not many. There haven't been nearly as many as I wish there had been, and that comes out in my writing even when I don't think about it.
College, they promise, isn't like that.
I'm going to start college classes on Monday, and when I do I'll be looking for what was promised: real conversations, real questions, real learning. Finally, classes where I can be engaged. Asking questions, looking for answers deeper than just the obvious, I might be able to succeed.
Because it's when I'm bored that I fail.
That's not necessarily what I would want in a teacher, but it's what I've usually gotten. And I've had some wonderful teachers who did go above and beyond what's on the test, but not many. There haven't been nearly as many as I wish there had been, and that comes out in my writing even when I don't think about it.
College, they promise, isn't like that.
I'm going to start college classes on Monday, and when I do I'll be looking for what was promised: real conversations, real questions, real learning. Finally, classes where I can be engaged. Asking questions, looking for answers deeper than just the obvious, I might be able to succeed.
Because it's when I'm bored that I fail.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Projecting My Voice
I've been in a succession of church choirs for a long time, since probably fourth grade. And there are certain things that you hear all the time, when you're in a children's choir--most commonly some variant on "I can't hear you!"
The technical term for singing or speaking to be heard by the people listening from the back pews is "projecting your voice," or just "projecting" for short. I've always been good at it. And so, my mom frequently reminded me, the admonishments to "sing louder" and "project more" never meant me.
I wanted to be heard. I love my voice, and it felt good to sing out loudly, but I was always chastised for it, because even though I was so often the only one with the will and the voice to be heard, I wasn't supposed to be so loud. It was worse because there were often microphones, so I would have to quiet my voice further so as not to overpower the amplification systems.
In choir, that kind of point is fair enough, since a choir is meant to be comprised of voices in harmony rather than one loud singer surrounded by a bunch of quiet voices. (That's called a rock band--a valid technique, but not the goal here.) If it had only been in choir, perhaps it wouldn't have left such a mark on my memory. Unfortunately, everywhere else I looked, the same tensions were in effect, repeated over and over again. Don't sing so loud. But I love the way it feels. Don't attract attention. Why not? It's more interesting. Don't sing here! But I sing everywhere else--I communicate better in song. You're supposed to be quiet and obedient. My voice is just loud like that. Children should be seen and not heard. I want to be heard more than seen.
I recognize now, it was all of a piece. I was supposed to grow up to be "normal," or at least easy to ignore. I wasn't supposed to be loud and opinionated, and especially not with unpopular opinions like "I like the body God gave me." (Side note: it's crazy, how much it's discouraged for girls to be happy with how God designs them. Apparently I'm supposed to hate all the little advantages I'm so grateful for, that make simply walking around and existing in my body easier, but why in the world would I?)
Last year, I acted in a play at a Shakespeare theater--one that didn't have microphones on the stage. And, finally, during rehearsal, the director told me, "Project louder! I want to be able to hear you from the back row."
At first I was shocked and almost offended, but then I realized what she was saying. I was allowed to use the full power of my voice--in fact, I needed to. Be loud. Be yourself. Be heard. Use your gifts, the way they were meant to.
I think everyone needs to hear that, in their own way:
Be who you are, and use what you have, and don't limit your talents because they're too big.
The technical term for singing or speaking to be heard by the people listening from the back pews is "projecting your voice," or just "projecting" for short. I've always been good at it. And so, my mom frequently reminded me, the admonishments to "sing louder" and "project more" never meant me.
I wanted to be heard. I love my voice, and it felt good to sing out loudly, but I was always chastised for it, because even though I was so often the only one with the will and the voice to be heard, I wasn't supposed to be so loud. It was worse because there were often microphones, so I would have to quiet my voice further so as not to overpower the amplification systems.
In choir, that kind of point is fair enough, since a choir is meant to be comprised of voices in harmony rather than one loud singer surrounded by a bunch of quiet voices. (That's called a rock band--a valid technique, but not the goal here.) If it had only been in choir, perhaps it wouldn't have left such a mark on my memory. Unfortunately, everywhere else I looked, the same tensions were in effect, repeated over and over again. Don't sing so loud. But I love the way it feels. Don't attract attention. Why not? It's more interesting. Don't sing here! But I sing everywhere else--I communicate better in song. You're supposed to be quiet and obedient. My voice is just loud like that. Children should be seen and not heard. I want to be heard more than seen.
I recognize now, it was all of a piece. I was supposed to grow up to be "normal," or at least easy to ignore. I wasn't supposed to be loud and opinionated, and especially not with unpopular opinions like "I like the body God gave me." (Side note: it's crazy, how much it's discouraged for girls to be happy with how God designs them. Apparently I'm supposed to hate all the little advantages I'm so grateful for, that make simply walking around and existing in my body easier, but why in the world would I?)
Last year, I acted in a play at a Shakespeare theater--one that didn't have microphones on the stage. And, finally, during rehearsal, the director told me, "Project louder! I want to be able to hear you from the back row."
At first I was shocked and almost offended, but then I realized what she was saying. I was allowed to use the full power of my voice--in fact, I needed to. Be loud. Be yourself. Be heard. Use your gifts, the way they were meant to.
I think everyone needs to hear that, in their own way:
Be who you are, and use what you have, and don't limit your talents because they're too big.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
A Sketch
It's five in the morning, but I still can't get to sleep. There's a half-dreamed image in my mind, one that I'd draw if I had the skill, but since I'm still working on the basics and this is far beyond that, I'll draw it with words instead.
There are three women in the scene, against a curved wall of dirt marking an enormous pit in the ground. One is deep in shadow and difficult to make out, further down than the other two, her hand reaching up in desperation the clearest thing about her. In the center, a young woman with light brown curls is clinging to the end of a long tree root by one arm, and with the other cannot quite decide whether to reach down to the one in shadow or up to the third woman. That third is blonde and holding a fiery torch in one hand, providing most of the light in the scene, while her other arm is wrapped around the same root higher up. All three are frightened and the one in the middle is deeply conflicted. She wants to save the one down further and yet wants to join the one up higher in safety; it is all but impossible to do both.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Things That Make Me Less Shy
Normally, I'm very nervous around people. I can't even talk to people in terms of ordering lunch if I don't know how to explain what I want. That said, there are a few things that make it easier...
I can always talk to someone who is walking a dog. Animals have always made me feel safer, and there's something that breaks down barriers about loving another creature.
People's T-shirts also tell me things about them. If I see someone go by with one of the four Hogwarts Houses' crests emblazoned on their chests, or a shirt that says "I <3 <3 Gallifrey," or a "BRONY" shirt like my brother's, or any other sign that they share my nerdly interests, I can compliment their shirt. It's a moment's worth of sharing something of meaning with another person.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)