The Joy of Bob Ross

People never believe me that Bob Ross used to show footage of his pet squirrel sometimes on his show. This isn't the same squirrel...apparently it belongs to a bird lady who also works for public television. But I still consider it proof, so thanks to the great people out there uploading the fragments that make up my life.

In other news, I'd really like to graduate. And the new Zelda game is AWESOME. My little brother and I have played it all through the holidays. He chastised me and threatened to quit watching because I kept picking up this fat puppy and walking around the screen with it because the dog and the way Link held him was so cute. I'm addicted. Go out and get it. All of you.

Goonizu wa Goodo Inafu (Shindi Ro-Pa)

Okay, so I've received a complaint that I haven't updated this in a while. So here we go.

I'm going to Japan. Are any of you going to talk me out of this? I'm graduating in the spring and I'm not tied to anything or anyone and..........and I could do anything! So unless someone has a better idea or wants me to fulfill some secret adventurous wish he or she cannot do for him or herself now, I will be that tool to complete that mission. The only criteria is it needs to get me out of Utah and it needs to help me make money.

In the meantime, I'm applying to teach English in Japan and I feel fine. Jittery, but fine. Does anyone know how I could just go live in Scotland? Couldn't I sell bread somewhere or something? What does one do after graduation? I enjoy where I'm at: I enjoy my punk students who attend class just to raise their hands and reply to my "Don't tell me 'hot', SHOW me 'hot'" with "This class is hotter than two rats screwing in a wool sock." I enjoy reading Margaret Atwood. I enjoy sharing crowded offices with computers old enough to run green n' black versions of The Oregon Trail and Number Munchers, and I enjoy riding my bike with the milk-crate-basket across campus with snow-clodded leaves dropping on my head. These things complete my soul. For now.

But the north-westerly winds are a-blowing and I need some type of prophetic call-to-arms or traysure map or archetypal geezer to give me a pouch of vials and a magic amulet to defeat a specific purpose that I do not have to decide for myself. Nobody likes crazy forks in the road where all paths look just as inviting as the rest. I feel like....a lot of bad metaphors: I feel like a choose-your-own-adventure book with just random words in the middle of blank pages; I feel like I'm in the stupid maze of this incredibly nerdy text adventure game called Zork I used to play when I was twelve; I feel like the alto note in one of those weird hymns that have no resolution at the end. They're rare, but they exist. And it's always the alto part that adds the dissonance with somebody...keeps it awkward and pending. Will it resolve up? Down? Ever? This is my state of mind, and this is my lame posting. Take it for what it's worth. I am Clear Moon Full Night and I have spoken.

Let's Silent Librarying

This video is a little ridiculous, but has its moments (Old Man Bites Tenderly). Ridiculous. Maybe I go to Tokyo again in December.......maybe.

Family Photo Shoot

bikers, originally uploaded by emgillz.

Well, I admit I'm nervous to dish out my family to the raw openness and mystery of the internet.......but it appears to be the thing to do for whatever old friends who look at this to remember what I look like. It's been gratifying to see pictures of old missionaries and friends' new babies, etc. So I thought I'd show off (for you Jen, since you asked) myself, Amanda, and Will just before our Lake Tahoe bike ride with Mom, while Dad tried to gamble back the money it cost us to go in the first place.

Will's pretty darned tall now, and Amanda's a hottie, but I pretty much could still pass for a sister on a special P-Day what with the bike helmet and ratty hair.

Now that school is back underway and I have freshman/sophomore research papers to read, new Japanese characters to learn and then forget, and my Margaret-Atwood/Ian-McEwan seminar to mull over, our three days in Tahoe seem like a really really good and rare dream I wish I could revisit instead of the semi-boring semi-horrifying regular dreams I float around in at night (depending on the moon and the tides? a friend once suggested).

Well, for those who haven't been for a while, Tahoe is still the strange blend of trail mix, martini, and old fashioned soda fountains. There were restaurants with dishes like Tofu Palace and Vegan Peanutbutter-and-Chocolate Pie for my sister (and tempura for me), and all the old favorites for chicken nuggets and fries for my brother.

We did all the things people should do in a place like Tahoe: I bought a book called Women Who Charmed the West filled with pictures of various popular prostitutes and Annie Oakley, we took a tour of Vikingsholm by an old woman who had played there as a child before the eccentric old rich lady who used to plant wildflowers on the mansion's sod roofs passed away and the park rangers took it over, we shivered on the beach and barely got our feet wet, and I taught my family to press your face very, very close to Ponderosa trees, like going in for a kiss, and putting your nose in between the thick slabs of bark where the sap smells like strawberry ice cream and butterscotch. And if you do that once, that's all you can smell when you ride a bike through a forest of them.

I'm back.

Well, er, it's been awhile. I've come back from my wilderness therapying a changed woman. I suppose I could have dropped stories here and there instead of trying to explain the summer in one quick entry like this, but I guess I don't really need to explain myself to anybody anyway.

But I would like to say that I am a new appreciator of the Arizona deserts...it's hard not to feel like a hoity-toity camper now...I have strong urges to brag about drinking leeches from cowtank water and climbing up steep cliffsides with a fifty-pound pack made from a wool blanket and pack string only to run right into a cactus at crotch level because the moon wasn't out to show it clearly. I never knew I had it in me to survive, um, survival camping.

But however cool bragging makes me think I am, that's not what I really want to relay here... I guess I just want to say before school starts and my mind reverts back to books and email and store-bought bread, that you can learn a lot about people when you're all huddled under the same ragged tarp in a monsoon hail storm (the same day as a 115 degree afternoon). I realized I don't usually see people as people often enough....they're so easy to turn into tools or obstacles--to borrow the Arbinger philosophy, I see them as objects instead of people. But after seeing these brave children face their fears and learn to whittle spoons and flake their own arrowheads and turn a frustrating, disappointing situation into a beautiful one, I think I'm coming to realize that you don't have to go to the Arizona deserts eating nothing but rice and lentils to witness or experience this kind of courage and change.

So I guess that's all I want to say right now, in an effort to restart this blog and re-enter society. I had the opportunity to speak at my grandpa's funeral today and it just confirmed an aching desire to see people as they are because aside from all the distractions and shiny objects and selfish desires that suck away at my time, it's people that are worth living for and being with and I'd like to notice more often the equivalent sacrifices and bravery in the people of my suburban life that I've always overlooked because it lacks the dramatic backdrop of mountain lions and heat stroke. And it'll be nice to live chigger-free for a while, too.

"life is a state of mind"...or..."The Gnab Gib"

I wish I had the programming skills to set this entry off ala Rocky and Bullwinkle--the bit where everybody is falling and the narrator talks us into watching the next episode by giving us a variety of opposing possible endings...alas, I lack the computer know-how and I carry a weak sack of puns these days, nevertheless, my opponents of today's episode include film director Hal Ashby vs. Lunar Society's spaceman poet, Erasmus Darwin (Charles' grandpappy). Which man is more worthy of extensive research is what I'm asking myself now--is it more ethically enlightening to search out the hippie Utahn who gave us films with Woody Guthrie hitchhiking, Peter Sellers walking on water, and 20-year-old-boy-dating septuagenarians, or would it be more English-major-appropriate to focus on a romance poet who rubbed shoulders with Ben Franklin and wrote about supernovas and evolution and venus flytraps?

Truth: I don't really care. I used to care. But I've become disillusioned to the subtle workings of academic departments--I recall the last few days of my undergrad life when a favorite male teacher approached me and confided that if I ever didn't know the answer to a student's question, to confidently make one up. I laughed then, but in retrospect, I don't think he was referring to questions about grammar, format, or famous people's biographical facts.

Bob Pyle (who votes for Ashby) came to my campus last month and a few of us ate lunch with him. I eagerly recognized his book Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide as something I had cited in an 8th grade research paper. I definitely remember copying images from his book for my sasquatch presentation. Pyle's written a lot of nature books (and one coloring book) and he told us half his work is getting his editors to agree with him that his book ideas are good (uh, not all of his books are cryptozoological, by the way).

My point follows that I am sick of acamedic faculty/student paradoxes. Since I was a kid, I've loved religious and literary paradoxes, and the inner truths they vacillate around give me hope and make me wonder. But the paradoxes of academia just irritate me. "Be creative, fresh and new," they say, "and don't be afraid to stand out on a limb." Professors write books about not knowing what the thesis of a work is until after its been completely researched and written out. Have faith! Take risks! they tell each other. But to the grad students they advise to stay traditional, stick with just your mind and archival research, know what your question is before you begin. Oh, and you also need to get a committee of professors with incredibly oppositional opinions to stand behind your paper without surrending the whole thing into their quick, sharp little fingers. This, of course, helps me graduate on time, but in shackles and blinders.

What one wise bearded prof. compliments and encourages, the next balding prof. with glasses points out as weak or impossible. I've been told to can it, to begin it immediately, to sleep on it, and to merely tweak it. "It" being about as vague as "it" sounds. Anyway. Things really aren't so bad. Here's some Darwin (my backup thesis?)--I don't know why I'm complaining...just being in a major where I could even suggest researching hippies or scientistpoets is a real dish:


Roll on, ye Stars! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach; —
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
— Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.


Finally, some good music I've listened to recently:
(kudos to my friend Beau for a few introductions)

Dry the Rain--Beta Band
need your lovin like the sunshine--Beck
misery is a butterfly--Blonde Redhead
the king of carrot flowers--neutral milk hotel
mambo sun--T. Rex
the River--Springsteen
la primavera--mana chao
the blues are still blue--belle & sebastian
katmandu--cat stevens (an old favorite, coming back)

Beginning with a carnie pic....

I've been home from Japan for about six months now, and I guess it feels like I never went at all but somehow learned Japanese in my sleep. I haven't had a chance to share much with anybody other than the family, so I'm going make this first posting a small scene from my experiences away from you all, and we'll see who reads it. Here's a shot from the superbly eerie abandoned carnival on the western coast of Japan, near Kanazawa.

Breaking into private property, abandoned or not, isn't exactly white-handbook-approved, but the haunted aura of still-soggy towels hiding under dim locker room benches, Japanese switch grass growing up into the rusting remains of the Tilt-O-Whirl, and being able to push each other on the rides with cobwebs in our hair justified any rule-bending.

Elders Moriyama and Petermama had already taken a few runthroughs of the Haunted Mansion, so they led us on a tour with a gimped-out flashlight. Black fabric hung down in long rips, so we'd have to pull them aside like curtains only to come face-to-face with a dirty plastic mad scientist face or the like. The very worst was the last room--a dead woman mummy lying contorted on this long yellow mattress.....her face was the typical scary ghost lady face, with wispy white hairs reminiscent of Indy's Last Crusade scene when the jerk Nazi drank from not-the-carpenter's cup. But since it was midday, and the building partly torn down as it was, the mattress lay mostly in the shadows except for a long angle of dusty light peeking in across her fake skeleton arm. It was gross, is all...it would have been laughably scary in black lights with cheap Halloween soundtracks, but the thing was a thousand times scarier in the noon daylight, with nobody but seven or eight missionaries shuffling their feet around, not talking.

Anyway--the Kaga Onsen. Highly recommended for those planning to visit Western Honshu and thereabouts. Check out the empty swimming pool in the back, too. You'll walk through the empty arcade, sidestepping the joysticks littering the ground, and through the locker rooms and out into one of those really nice swimming areas with the pools shaped like shamrocks or money signs or whatever, with big islands jutting up out of them and connecting bridges. You'll probably still be able to see where we dumped buckets of abandoned golf balls to watch them bounce down the recline and into the murky tadpole-infested puddles at the deep end.

I'll add info about my life-of-now later...it wore me out to walk through that carnival a second time. I'll see what I can do to post some less irresponsible and わんぱくmission pics, too, just so you all don't get the wrong idea..........