Weirdly true. Weirdly.

Find your own pose!

Things I will NOT miss about BYU

1. Women's Conference, Education Week, and EFY.
2. Idiots on cell phones.
3. Infuriatingly fundamentalist letters to the Daily Universe.
4. People who black out all the swear words in books.
5. Sitting through long and boring classes in which literature was discussed in squishy, non-academic terms.
6. Endless crowds of supermormons, especially the highly intimidating ones in my ward.
7. Spending all day on campus and seeing maybe one person I know.
8. Not ever being able to step outside my apartment without having to greet someone from the neighborhood.
9. The excess of pregnant women.

Things I will miss about BYU

1. All of the nice people who live in my stairwell: Jenny and Joey, Lindy and Kelly, Ginger and Nathan.
2. All of my darling co-workers here at the BYU Bookstore.
3. The botanical gardens and the happy deer who live there. Especially the little spotted fawns.
4. Having beautiful mountains so close to my apartment. They are incredibly gorgeous in the mornings, especially foggy mornings.
5. Spring in Provo. I love all the blossoms. Especially outside my window.
6. My favorite professors (not listed in any particular order): Hickman, Gardner, Rudy, Oaks.
7. The library, especially the periodicals section, which smells deliciously academic and always makes me feel productive and smart.
8. Being close to Seth, Scott, and Mandy.
9. Getting mail and e-mail from home.

Stuff n Things

Things I’ve Said Recently That Abe Made Me Promise I’d Post on My Blog

“What if someone syphillised on the sidewalk and I stepped on it?”

“Our plant seems to be having a manic reaction to death.”

Assertiveness Training

OK. Big news. I had a wild moment of assertiveness. Just now. My heart is still feeling acidic. I don’t know if that means I shouldn’t have been assertive or if I just am not used to being assertive or if my psyche is wired to think that being assertive is bad. But anyway. It’s not even all that big, but I’m kind of proud of myself. I let myself be pushed around a lot. But not today, Batman. Not today.

So this is My Big Moment of Assertiveness:

I’m at work.
Punk Boy enters office.
Punk Boy: I bought this book and it only had one CD and now they’re saying they’ll only buy it back if I have two CDs.
Me: Yes, I’m sorry. We can only use books that have both CDs.
Punk Boy: Yeah, but I bought this book here. It’s not fair that I should suffer for your mistake.
Me: I know it stinks, but…
Punk Boy: There’s no but.
Me (rush of wild adrenaline): Yes, actually, there is a but. Sellback is not a privilege. It’s not a promise. It’s something we do to help students and because we like used books. I’m sorry that it’s not working out for you, but we can’t use a book that only has one CD.
(and yes, if you couldn’t tell, that was my Moment-o-Assertiveness)
And then I directed him to the manager.
And then I had heart acid.

Interesting e-mail Conversation w/my friend Loriann

So this all started with a reference Loriann made to something Holly said about how people should have babies in order to be obedient to God. (Holly is, by the way, pregnant.) This is what Loriann said that kicked off the whole coversation:

The thing that really gets me was her whole OBEDIENCE TO GOD comment at Christmas. If she's gotten pregnant she had better damn well want that baby as much as you want one, cause if this is one of her obedience things I swear I'll pull my hair out.

___________________________________________________________________

My reply:

I envy your religious position. You seem convicted, but not, I don't know, overly so. You go to church and help others and believe in God and like the scriptures and stuff, but you're not wandering around obsessing about fulfilling God's will. I can't ever seem to find that middle ground. I'm always swinging back and forth between atheistic humanism and fundamentalistic mormonism. Like, even though I dislike it very much, I can totally understand Holly's position of maybe choosing to have a baby because it's a commandment. Like, that's GOD saying stuff, right? If we're granting God the position of the Supreme Being of the Universe Who Makes All the Rules and Sends People to Hell if They Don't Play Fair, then why don't we make babies or move to Mexico or eat raw chickens when he decrees it? For me, believing wholeheartedly in the Mormon God is a slippery slope towards fundamentalism. First you believe in God, then you believe in all the Mormon scriptures, then you believe that anything any prophet or apostle has ever said is God Almighty's Holy Will, then you shape your life and every decision you make around that assumption. And then before you know it, you're eating nothing but whole grains and fruits and vegetables and arising every morning at 4:00 am to read the scriptures for an hour by yourself and then another hour with your spouse and then another hour with your children and squeezing out babies as quickly as humanly possible and not saying any swear words and only reading books purchased at Deseret Book and fighting against gay marriage and going to the temple every week and scheduling your visiting teaching early and making casseroles for everyone you know and saying prayers with your family five times a day (morning, three meals, and bedtime). Right? And I'm not saying any of these things are BAD; I just think it sucks when you're doing them because you feel that you HAVE to rather than because you genuinely want to help others or squeeze out babies or gorge yourself on freshly ground wheat. I guess that's why I'm so reluctant to believe whole-heartedly in the church. I hate, hate, HATE being told what to do and what to think and that using birthcontrol makes you Bad and that doing your visiting teaching makes you Good and that not going to church makes you Bad and that growing a garden makes you Good and that disagreeing with a church authority makes you Bad.

___________________________________________________________________

Her reply to my reply:

Ahh, Rachel, thou shalt not envy my religious position. Hee hee. I do have a very strong conviction, but I don't let it... I don't know control my whole life. But in a way it is my whole life? My religion is a blueprint of my identity. I blame it on my parents, who raised me badly, ergo I figured things out on myself. I didn't have anyone indoctrinating me with this is that and that is this. DO IT THIS WAY OR YOU WILL GO TO HELL. The only person I felt responsible to was Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ (who as a child I kind of thought was the same person... I was highly confused). But I just knew that he really loved me. My childhood was one of loneliness and I was all about my buddy Jesus Christ. It was a personal relationship that developed young.

And then as I got older I definitley didn't fit the mold of the "mormon child". My young women leaders were trying to censor me every chance they got, but at the end of the class. I had gotten my point across, and usually they understood my point and felt that I had put forth a good teaching lesson.

And I don't believe that ANYTHING an apostle has ever said is God's Almighty Holy will. If it comes from the prophet I take it more seriously, I study it and think it through (especially if I take issues with it). I love our prophet. But not every apostle I think can be perfect. (I know... i'm the devil)

The issue with mormons I think is that we take everything at face value and don't evaluate them. (that's a hypothetical "we") We just kind of follow blindly sometimes. I'm not a big fan of that. Also there is so much GUILT in the mormon church especially for the women. If we aren't rising at 4 and feeding the childrens whole grains and praying always. I think that you need to live your life the way that makes you and God happy and reconcile that with him. Personally, I would be miserable waking up at four and eating whole grains and reading scriptures non stop. And frankly, most of the books at Deseret book suck. Also, I don't eat casserole. Or MAKE casserole. But hey it works for some people. You've found a man who works with your method of doing things. Hopefully I'll find a man who will work with my way of doing things and we'll be able to agree on how to raise our children (they will NOT sing nursery rhyme songs, they will listen to the beatles, I will teach them yoga at a very young age, I will not be popping one out every year) That's simple right?

The thing about our religion is that it's really very simple. It's just a few simple principles. And I think people make it SO complicated. Holly overthinks it. David Ader overthinks it. Stop overthinking! You are torturing yourselves.

I may be wrong, which is entirely possible. But I'm really quite happy. And I have a firm testimony of the gospel. So I feel like I've reconciled myself with God quite well.

HA! Also what has attributed to my fabulously laid back attitude about the gospel. My grandfather who was a bishop. Here is the joke he told on Easter Sunday. At Easter Sunday dinner:

Two brothers decided they were going to go out to the barn and practice swearing. The first brother would say damn, the second would say hell. So they practiced their swearing all day and went back into the house and went to bed.

The next morning they went down to breakfast and their dad said, "Well boys what did you want for breakfast?" The first son said, "I'll have some of those damn cornflakes." The father got up and slapped him so hard he flew across the kitchen. When the boy landed the father looked at the second son and said, "Well, what about you?" And the second boy said, "Well, I sure as hell don't want any cornflakes."

Yes, that was my grandad the bishop. He used to get up in church, at the pulpit, on Sunday and tell jokes such as the one above. As a youngster I thought this was completley appropriate. Only did I start to become suspicious when I noticed my grandmother shaking her head in her hands and muttering, "Oh Donald" to herself.

____________________________________________________________________

I like her reply. I don't know how to go about embracing a convicted/casual position toward the church, but it seems to really work for her.

What do you all think?

Talking in my sleep.

Abraham delights in listening to my nighttime babblings and encouraging to say more weird things when he can. He doesn't usually remember what I say, but this morning he reported that last night I told him, very distinctly, that

"They all go back to their rubbery goodness."

And then I went back to sleep.

An un-Announcement

Remember that MoFo PMS I discussed in a post a few days ago? ("This will be my first non-birth-control-regulated period in over two years, and I think my body really wants to make it spectacular. I'm zitty, tired, bloated, moody, headachy, pee-ey, and perpetually hungry. I wish it would just come. PLEASE painful menstrual flow, JUST COME!") Yeah. Well. Turns out that there's ANOTHER reason a girl who just quit birth control might be zitty, tired, bloated, moody, headachy, pee-ey, and perpetually hungry. I'm just saying is all.

Because it would be bad to mention any such an occurrence in my life for another three months. And it would also be bad to have allowed such an occurrence to have occurred in my current fiscal situation. And I wouldn't ever be bad. Hm mm. Not me.

Ya know. Sometimes I've entertained the notion that pregnancy would be a Filler of Emptiness. That a baby would grow in your womb and fill, fill, fill you. But as I'm settling into the reality of my own next eight months, I'm realizing that's simply not true. A baby is not a filler. It's actually a squisher. It doesn't swell into your every empty orifice: it pushes all of your organs and all of their contingent cracks and crevices aside. It needs room for itself. And it doesn't care if that means you have to pee every fifteen minutes or if you feel nasty sick all day.

I guess maybe there is no filling. Or maybe the filling comes from me. Or maybe from God. Or maybe from potatoes. We shall see.

Running on Empty

by Robert Phillips

As a teenager I would drive Father's
Chevrolet cross-country, given me

reluctantly: "Always keep the tank
half full, boy, half full, ya hear?"

The fuel gauge dipping, dipping
toward Empty, hitting Empty, then

--thrilling!--'way below Empty,
myself driving cross-country

mile after mile, faster and faster,
all night long, this crazy kid driving

the earth's rolling surface,
against all laws, defying chemistry,

rules, and time, riding on nothing
but fumes, pushing luck harder

than anyone pushed before, the wind
screaming past like the Furies...

I stranded myslef only once, a white
night with no gas station open, ninety miles

from nowhere. Panicked for a while,
at standstill, myself stalled.

At dawn the car and I both refilled. But,
Father, I am running on empty still.


I'm sitting alone in my apartment right now. It's a quarter to eleven and I just spent the last hour unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep. It's obviously not happening, so I thought I'd drag my bum out of bed and do some writing.

If this writing sounds a bit angsty, it's probably because I'm listening to my pandora.com radio station called "Girl Angst," which features fabulously tortured artists like Alanis Morisette, Avril Lavigne, Jewel, Tori Amos. And I'm listening to it in the dark.

So yeah, with all these hormones pumping through my veins, I've been feeling a bit...down. Feeling down, of course, gives me pause for reflection on the more depressing aspects of my life. So brace yourself for another downer.

I have this sense inside myself of emptiness. I think Emptiness first crawled into my being in my later teen years, probably starting at about age sixteen. At first I tried to feed it, literally, with lots of food. But that only left me with a lot of stomachaches and thirty extra pounds. Then I tried to fill it with braininess. And then I think I tried to stuff it full of sex. And of course, dispersed throughout this saga of Trying to Fill the Bucket With a Hole in the Bottom, I imagined the emptiness to be Jesus-shaped, and tried to shove that poor fella in there as well. But so far He's ended up being just as runny as everything else. Even marriage-- which, don't get me wrong, has brought me huge amounts of happiness--hasn't made it go away. So over the years my Emptiness has been labeled in a lot of different ways: hunger, ignorance, supressed libido, spiritual yearning, need for companionship.

And now I've got this ridiculous feeling that if I Only Had More Friends I wouldn't be so sad. If only I Participated in More Fun Activities I would be happier. So now it's been labeled loneliness.

But I don't know if that's really what it is.

Maybe Emptiness results from discontent. Those damn Buddhists, they always seem to be onto something. They say suffering comes from desire; I say Emptiness comes from discontent. But it's basically the same thing, oui?

But anyway. Does anyone here ever get that icky feeling that everything we're doing is all for naught? That we're just running around Doing Stuff in order to distract ourselves from the inherently empty and purposeless lives we lead? Is there really any sense in all of this?

Also, referring to another earlier entry, I'm still puzzling over the issue of how to love people. To really love them, not just force myself to pretend I love them, but really, genuinely care about and wish for the happiness of every human being I encounter. Is that possible? The Dalai Llama seems to think it is. Perhaps I'll report more on that later.

So this entry seems to be saying that maybe I should just become a Buddhist. Or maybe a Bahai with strong Buddhist leanings. (Speaking of which, Cotty, as I was trying to force myself to sleep earlier this evening, it occurred to me that you might want to consider the benefits of the Bahai faith in terms of raising a family.)

Some thoughts from my good friend Jewel.

Hands

If I could tell the world just one thing
It would be that we're all OK
And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful
And useless in times like these
I won't be made useless
I won't be idle with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
For light does the darkness most fear
My hands are small, I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken
Poverty stole your golden shoes
It didn't steal your laughter
And heartache came to visit me
But I knew it wasn't ever after
We'll fight, not out of spite
For someone must stand up for what's right
'Cause where there's a man who has no voice
There ours shall go singing
My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
I am never broken
In the end only kindness matters
In the end only kindness matters
I will get down on my knees, and I will pray
I will get down on my knees, and I will pray
I will get down on my knees, and I will pray
My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken
My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken
We are never broken
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's mind
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's heart
We are God's eyes
God's hands
God's eyes
We are God's hands
We are God's hands