Can I Go Forward When My Heart is Here?

I've been here for five weeks now. I can't believe it. I don't know whether I want to come home and be a real person again.
But then, my nephews and niece are asking for me, so maybe I'd better head out before they don't care anymore.
Argh. I don't know how I feel about leaving this place again.

I'm not going to think about it.

You will see me waving from such great heights. I hope.

So . . . I think I might be going to grad school. And Elise, I want to talk to you about the library. And Janssen, I'm sure I'll be talking to you more as well. I really, really like this idea. And maybe I know what I'm doing with my life for a little longer. Cross your fingers.
This conclusion makes me much less scared about the impending end of my time in England. Also, I can't lie - I love the idea of having a Masters degree. So I hope I get one.

An answer to a burning question

I just saw this on Jeff Spehar's facebook and had to steal it.

Is Barack Obama a Muslim? Click here for the answer, at long last.

The One Who Loves You Most

Have I mentioned lately that I love postsecret? I really love these. I think they've both been my secrets at one time or another.

Also, this one is for Treb.


For those who have been asking what PostSecret is: It's a project where people send in their secrets as postcards to this guy named Frank, and then every Sunday he posts a new batch. Not for the faint of heart - some of the secrets will probably shock and offend some people. But there are definitely some gems, and it's a really cool project. They make books as well - I gave one to Miri for Christmas. There's a link to it in my sidebar if you're interested.

Um . . .

This is so much in the beginning stages of thinking that I don't even know why I'm posting it, but I can't stop thinking about it, so I'm going to post it anyway.
I've been thinking since quasi-graduation about what I want to do, and I thought I knew and felt good about getting a teaching job, but since I don't have one yet I've been thinking about it still, and I keep getting this funny feeling about it - probably fear, but it resembles dissatisfaction more than anything else.
Don't get me wrong - I loved student teaching, and I like the idea of teaching. But I keep going back and forth about whether or not I'm ready to teach full time now, and I really can't decide how I feel about it. I keep thinking about how much I love the work I'm doing here and wish I could do this kind of thing forever (not just be in London, but the kind of information giving and arrangement making stuff I'm doing here.)
I was talking about this the other day and mentioned that I had thought about getting a degree in library science at one point, and the girl I was talking to said she knew some people who had graduated with a Masters in that and loved their jobs. Admittedly I don't know enough about what this whole thing would entail to make a really educated judgment about it yet, but having been a source of information for a few weeks is making me think it would be fun to help people to find information . . . or whatever else library science people do. (I told you I'd thought this through a lot.)
Here's my thinking: I could get a teaching job and get a Masters of Education while I teach - the school district would probably even pay for it. But that doesn't leave me a whole lot of options, which is scary with respect to my current uneasiness (which may be silly or just fear of the new, but I can't shake it). Would it be better to have more options?
But then I started thinking about all that entails - applications, GRE, letters of recommendation, money issues . . . do I want to go through all of that? Will it be worth it? I'm wondering if I could do all of that during fall while I work somewhere, and then enter grad school during winter.
This is so crazy, and I'm talking like I'm doing it. I don't know nearly enough about it to be talking about it like this. But what if?
I don't even know how to start. I need to think about this. Is it just London fever getting to me or do I really want this?

Too long since the last xkcd anyone? Yes.

I beseech your grace, pardon me: I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.

This is going to be a weird post. I am going to post it anyway, because since when did I shy away from bizarre or nerdy subject matter?
Tonight, oddly enough, someone asked me which Shakespeare character I would play if I could play any of them.
Oddly enough, I have been thinking about this, except not which I would play, but which I would be. (Really, I think these things.)
And I feel that in my heart of hearts I really am (or want to be) Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing. These are my reasons:
1) Beatrice is scathing and witty, but she usually uses her wit all in good fun.
2) I love these lines here:
DON PEDRO: Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best
becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in
a merry hour.
BEATRICE: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there
was a star danced, and under that was I born.
3) Gets the best confession of love possibly ever, which follows.
BENEDICK: I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is
not that strange?
4) Is played by Emma Thompson in the movie, and secretly (or openly) I have always wanted to be Emma Thompson.
5) She's loyal to her friends ("Kill Claudio!")
6) She can laugh at herself when her friends play a joke on her (especially if it means she gets Benedick in the end.

I'll be honest, the only ones I've actually been thinking about are 2 and 3, but I kind of like the others as well.
However, upon further consideration, I see that despite my best efforts, what I probably am in reality is Polonius.

You have to have a completely pointless post every once in awhile, right? :)

Your Worries Will Pass

Rather than post about what I wrote about in my journal last night (oh no when I go home I have to actually make decisions about my life and be a real person and crap this is no good aaaahhhhh!), I'm going to post some of the lyrics to a song I just heard and loved. You should all start listening to Brett Dennen. He is awesome. And uses lovely big words.

"Darlin' Do Not Fear" by Brett Dennen

When I arrived in my old set of clothes
I was half a world away from my home
and I was hunted by the wolves
and I was heckled by the crows
Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know

'Cause it won't last
worries'll pass
all your troubles they don't stand a chance
and sometimes it takes more than a lifetime to know
Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know

Your confidences fall as your faith etched in stone
neither could comfort you from the wild unknown
so bury your burning hatred like a hatchet in the snow
Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know

If you have a broken heart or a battered soul
find something to hold onto until they go
to help you through the hard nights
like a flask filled with hope
Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know

'Cause it won't last
your worries'll pass
all your troubles they don't stand a chance
and it always hurts the worst when it's the ones we love the most
Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know

sometimes your path is marked in the sky
sometimes it falls too thin in between the lines
sometimes all you can do is say no
Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know

I said when I arrived in my old set of clothes
I was half a world away from my home
and I was hunted by the wolves
and I was heckled by the crows
Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know
I said Darlin' do not fear what you don't really know

There's A Light

Today we went to King's College at Cambridge, and I know that I'll be posting about that on my other blog, so if you want details, just wait.
In the meantime, thoughts.
I always think it's so interesting to go to other churches, especially church services. And I always seem to hear certain responses, ones which I'm sure I've said before. (For the record, I didn't hear much of it today, so no worries.) It seems that people love talking about how dark cathedrals are, how you "can't feel the spirit" when you walk in them, etc. They talk about how impersonal the service is, how useless it must be to do things by rote. (I think I'm exaggerating to a certain extent, but you understand the general idea.)
I have to disagree. I love cathedrals. I walk into a cathedral and I don't see darkness (which may have something to do with a civ class I took a few years back - we watched a video). I see something that is a architectural wonder, but which is also a very real manifestation of the devotion of a group of people who sincerely loved their God. They believed that they were doing something that would direct people's thoughts to God, didn't they? And they didn't make those big stone walls so that people could worship in darkness; they made high ceilings and huge windows that were places of light. (I'm sure that there are all kinds of documents about subjugation of peasants and crap like that, but I also think there was acertain measure of devotion in the equation. There would have to be to build a place like the King's College cathedral (chapel?).
Point the second: Evensong is a beautiful thing. One minute you are sitting there looking at stone walls and colored windows filtering in cold evening light, and the next the entire space is filled with the warmth of the most pure, sweet sound - the sounds of masses and vespers that have been written to the glory of God for hundreds of years and still sound fresh and new and sincere.
Their manner of worship may be unfamiliar to us, but I felt the spirit through their songs of praise.

My Secret Identity - a followup post

So that was an incredible response to the last post. Nice work everyone!
I would like to add one more thought. I was on the coach to Cambridge today thinking about things still, and I thought, "Wasn't there a fictional character who hated people who were fake? Who was that?"
And then I remembered.

Holden Caulfield. From Catcher in the Rye.

I am Holden Caulfield.

"Nobody understands it. And guys don't either."

Disclaimer: This is going to sound like a self-pity post. I promise it isn't. I am happy and content. But I'm mulling over some long-time frustrations that are flaring and I want to write and post them. If you're going to read it as a pity post, don't bother reading. Just go to my London blog and wait for the review of the Jack the Ripper tour to go up.
There are certain subjects that I hate talking about with certain groups of people. Dating is one of those subjects.
First, it may help to explain that a good 65% of the people here are in relationships, and lots of the rest of them are in between them or having something on deck. Very few (at least from my perspective) seem to understand what it is to have had no prospects for months and no honest-to-goodness action for (true confessions - crap) literally years. Their dating frustrations all have to do with actual dating, not the lack thereof. So I'm understandably out of my element when this kind of thing comes up.
The conversations always start out innocently enough, but inevitably they end up awkward for me, because really, I just don't date that much. The experience I have to look back on - at least the experience that doesn't sound completely bogus to someone else - is extremely limited and old, and I thoroughly hate it when numbers come up because in some groups everyone has dated more than I have. This automatically makes everything I have to say sound simple and naive, which it may be, but what else can I say? (I would like to mention the fact that I do have experience with guys, it just doesn't do well on the numbers scales. You know. Maybe.) And not all of my experience is a result of inability to date either - some of it has to do with timing and attitude, like the way happenings in my church and apartment life left me completely emotionally bereft of all ability to deal with anything more than what was already on my plate during my junior year, or like the way I struggled to really incorporate myself into the Belmont ward until later in the year because I was hating my academic life at the beginning of my senior year, or like the way I periodically just get so sick of things that seem so good and then go nowhere that I just don't even bother caring because that means you don't have to be disappointed when it doesn't happen (result being nothing happens anyway, of course).
I also get frustrated when people start talking about how to play the game - things like, "Get in their window" and "Just be approachable." I really try to do both of these things, but I don't think that the people who say these things understand how my socializing mechanism works. I'm not really an in-your-face kind of person, for starters. I'm very insecure about my relationships to people sometimes (although I don't show it in all circumstances, certainly.) I'm as likely to avoid a guy I like as I am to seek him out, because I don't want to freak him out if he isn't into me. Also, I think that I am a frustratingly unapproachable person about certain things, either because I'm very outspoken about my opinions or because I close off completely without meaning to.
Tonight someone was talking about social cues like touch and turning your body certain ways and all of this trash which is probably completely legitimate, because which feels so contrived to me that I just can't do it. Curse my annoyance with flirtation, I hate things that are fake, and some of the things that seem to be essential for playing the game are just too fake for me to manage. (I think I'm superaware of that insincerity the way that pregnant women are superaware of smells. Although I'm not sure what that makes me in the world of dating women. I'll get back to you.) I hate things like acting needy and being artificially nice. And although everyone says they want good conversation, that rarely turns into a relationship unless you know how to add some of these other elements in. And I really, really don't.
Also, according to several theories that I listened to with interest tonight, I must be either 1) a man or 2) an anomaly among women when it comes to dating, because I don't fit the profiles. The way I work is apparently opposite from everyone else, at least in BYU society. How am I supposed to manage anything when apparently I'm swimming upstream with a determined and unapproachable look on my face while everyone else is swimming down together? (And this doesn't even touch some of the crazy things I use to lose interest in a guy and take away the possibility of rejection. 'Oh, he's a lousy writer. He's out.' What?)
Anyway. I actually enjoy these kinds of conversations, but I don't know whether to be grateful or offended when I'm the only one who doesn't get the "how many people have you kissed?" question, because I don't really want to talk about it . . . but I don't really want it to be that obvious that I'm so different from them. Or at least that I think I am.
Um . . . there is no good way to get off. Sorry.

All I trust becomes my own . . .

So I've been thinking about how this trip is different from the last one, and one of the biggest differences is in me. I know I said I felt like a know-it-ll, but the funny thing is that it seems to be working in my favor. I'm here with a lot of people who 1)know who I am and 2)trust me and have confidence in my judgment and knowledge of everything here. And something about their confidence in me ups my confidence in me. And not only do I have the confidence to lead them through the city and give them decisive answers to their questions about classes, I also have the confidence to talk to anyone, practice my British accent around them (it's getting better) crack jokes that I wouldn't normally around people I don't know well . . . the works. And since I get questions from people all day every day, I feel fine about telling them things, so the know-it-allness isn't even feeling as awkward now. I'm settling into my role here and I like the me that is coming out of this experience - and I've only been here for a few days. Who knew?