The Echo of the Void

In the desert
I saw a creature,
naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter – bitter", he answered,
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

--Stephen Crane


I am a bit jet-lagged and I have pictures to post and stories to tell about meeting up with very old and very close friends on the east coast this past week. But I can't find the USB cord to hook up the camera and I don't really even feel much like it anyhow right now.

I've spent a bit of time getting stuck on machines lately. Today it was waiting a few extra hours in Phoenix waiting for a plane to get all fixed up nice to take us back to Salt Lake. I thought a lot. I sat next to a 5-year-old flying alone, a bold and friendly girl named Meghan (she spelled it for me) who had plastic animals to play with. She never let me finish the last five pages of Bryson's epilogue on the Sydney Olympics from In a Sunburned Country.

Basically, I am confused and I am frustrated and I feel like I have let opportunities slip past me. I'm fumbling. I'm grasping for a quarter of a triple-dozen things at once because I want them all. I have nothing to complain about. I am blessed and lucky and fortunate beyond what I deserve. And yet I am frantically, moodily dowsing for SOMETHING, some sure sign, some tickling sensation that keeps me winking at the clouds and sunlight as if to say, "Ah, yes, yes, I get what You're saying....just a little to the left then, eh?" Instead, I'm moping belligerently in a stuffy airport and giving my parents a guilt trip for daring to hint that perhaps I should.....settle down? ....find a career? ....pay my part of the family cell phone bill?

I'm disgusted with my selfishness and for being an ungrateful daughter. I'm hurt and a bit pained that I can't just stick to a dream and grab it since I seem to be all opportunity and availability right now. To my friends back east, I envy you all your quaint but established apartments, your back patios and your babies. It was such an honor to visit and I am thrilled to the crux of my core that we still get along just like kindred spirit bosom buddies ought to. I truly am the luckiest to have knocked elbows long enough with you that passing time no longer affects the heartstrings that bind us, if you will. James Best asked me outside of Tiffanys in Manhattan if I was going to die soon, because I seem to be running around paying last respects all over the country. Trev interrogated me rather charmingly and paternally about what my immediate/long-term plans for the future are. Troy thinks I'm running away from my responsibilities. KP thinks I'll be popping out the first of twelve children by February. Well, I tell you all, I'm as directionless as a hookless compass or a Liahona somebody kicked over mistaking it for voodoo. I recall the image a friend of mine once shared about a boy who caught a bee in a jar and froze it--but didn't kill it--he just waited until it was good and drugged and sufficiently chilled. Then he tied a piece of thread around the bee's body, being careful not to snap him in two. As the bee thawed, he flew again, round and round on the thin thread that kept him bound to the young man who looked pleased as Hawaiian punch that he had a bee on a leash. I've forgotten my point.

But Jen, to you especially I want to thank for the short isolated car rides of conversation and advice. I miss you again already and it was such a pleasure to run around with you and your family for a week. I confess I kept turning my head on the plane whenever I heard a real little kid call out for a cracker. (They were never as cute as yours. Always more hair though, hahaha--don't fire me!)

Top 13 Most Influential Computer Games I Played Before I Turned 13

I'm sick of thinking about decisions and choices and figuring myself out. Instead, here is a list of the top 13 games that changed my life as a child and continue to affect my personality and integrity at 25 years. Please keep in mind this list is organized CHRONOLOGICALLY and not in order of most influential to least or vice/versa. I've also taken the liberty of excluding such games as The Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Space Invaders because of course I played those. Everybody did. For most of us it was a school requirement. Also, the number of computer games I played as a kid is ridiculously immeasurable. But these select games rise above the other hundreds of arcade, RPG, text-adventure, combat, strategy, board game, and adventure games I spent my days playing from the old Mac in my dad's office on rainy afternoons. And most evenings. And some mornings.

1. Lode Runner
This is the first computer game I ever played at home. Basically, you are armed with a jackhammer and you go around busting holes in the brick for robbers to fall into so you can grab their gold (making you a robber robber). The brick is creepy because it regenerates after about five seconds. The robbers can usually pull themselves out of the hole the first time, but if you set two holes next to each other and the robber climbs out of one hole just to fall into the next hole, the brick will regenerate onto the fallen robber and smash him dead. Unfortunately, once a robber is killed, he will reincarnate and fall from the sky anywhere on the screen. This can be used to your advantage or not. You can run, climb, fall, and swing across wires. To reach the next level you have to touch the ceiling of the screen, which won't be available to you until all the gold is retrieved. I remember beating my dad's high score on a Sunday afternoon when I was seven. My whole life changed. My dad never played Lode Runner again.

2. Zork
I was a huge fan of the text adventure game genre. I had about thirty-five games, each with their own folders of saved games. I had a stack of printer paper I kept underneath the desk that I charted maps on and wrote magical words from my various weathered, worn, tattered, shiny, and vellum scrolls. I almost put Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as one of my top influential games, but Zork I'm afraid wins over just because I had to play Hitchhiker at my neighbor's house, but I played Zork daily at home and was eaten repeatedly by grues because my lantern ran out of oil. I never finished Zork and sometimes attempt it online in order to procrastinate figuring out my life. Has anyone ever figured out how to beat this game? At least Hitchhiker had a hint system when you got stuck (HELP: 1. drink alcohol 2. pick up tea and no tea 3. place tea and no tea in potted soil with babel fish still in ear 4. take towel from Ford Prefect)

3.Transylvania
Transylvania was the new age in text adventures--screen shots! I could actually see the vampire before it sucked my blood! It somehow wasn't as scary to run into an angry penguin horde on Transylvania as it was to run into a monkey grinder on Zork when I didn't have a cartoony image to ease my nerves. Although, I do remember a bloody dagger and a noose that I would have rather pictured in my head than seen awkwardly pixelated in black and white. I remember the game would beep when an enemy popped up without warning, usually when I was trying to pick up the bread without dropping the cheese because my inventory was too full.

4. Carmen Sandiego
Not only did I watch the television program daily ("Do it, Rockapella"), but I was a pro at European Carmen S.D. As long as I had an atlas and a couple encyclopedias to guide me, I dropped all kinds of anvils on Carmen's henchmen. I was no gumshoe. Actually, this game usually got pretty boring. But I guess I know my European geography somewhat better than I would have otherwise.

5. King's Quest I
Oh King Graham. You dolt. I hated this dude sometimes. I always accidentally walked him off narrow stairways or into lakes and he'd give this horrible tinny "aaaaaaaaah" that sounded like Minnie Mouse being sucked up a vacuum cleaner. Then the fated pop-up box appeared suggesting I save more often and would I like to Restore, Restart, or Quit? I loved this game because it was a text adventure with more adventure and way less text. But the typing commands were still ridiculous: "take the damn troll's money" I AM SORRY. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND "damn", "troll's", "money". YOU DO NOT NEED TO INCLUDE ARTICLE "the". CAN YOU REPEAT YOUR REQUEST, KING GRAHAM? "make love to troll" I AM SORRY. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO TO THE TROLL? "kiss troll" THE TROLL LOOKS CONFUSED. "kick troll" VIOLENCE NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING. "throw rock at troll" *ping!* KING GRAHAM'S SHOT IS DEAD ON. THE TROLL FALLS TRIUMPHANTLY DOWN THE HILL TO A WATERY GRAVE. YOU EARN 15 ADVENTURE POINTS. Sierra Games in general aren't really my cup of tea compared to LucasArts games, but I have to admit that King's Quest was a forerunner of adventure gaming to come and I owe much to my mother who typed in my requests when I was too little to know how to do it on my own. (Footnote: I also played Kings Quest V in me later years. Better graphics made King Graham's red hat look even stupider.)

6. Dark Castle
It doesn't matter what gaming console you're using or what game you are playing on said console--the only way to kill bats is with rocks and it's pretty damned hard. I hate bats. But I loved Dark Castle and spent hours not catching the ropes and running hard into enemies and never actually completing whatever the purpose of the game was. But I always remembered to play the game on Halloween and Christmas because in the opening foyer of the game, a Christmas tree or a Jack-O-Lantern would magically appear. I never knew computer games were real enough to follow calendars and celebrate holidays. That in itself made Dark Castle one of the most influential games of my time.

7. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Finally, LucasArts games came into my life at the young age of....seven? Eight? In any case, I loved not having to worry about what to type because this new game format let me point and click on objects and I only had to decide whether I wanted to look at it, pick it up, talk to it, push or pull it, fight with it, etc. You could still die a lot in this game, mostly from fighting Nazis. I finally saw the movie and figured out how to use the red cordon to smash a hole into the library in Venice and after that I quickly beat the game. Again, pixelation can be a terrifying thing and the only thing worse about seeing the Nazi choose poorly and turn old to dessicated in seconds is seeing it happen in 16-bit color with tinny arcade-style music in the background. *shivers*

8. Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Suedo
I actually don't remember exactly where this one is placed chronologically. I just remember spending hours searching the caves and being introduced to my first Monty Python's Flying Circus allusions. This was a weird game, a bit of a forerunner of Myst I think people might say. A lot of exploring and finding different puzzles that sometimes open new parts of cave. This game was also built in HyperCard if I remember correctly, so HyperCard needed to be installed properly to have it work right. This is one of those games I still dream about sometimes and wonder if I could beat all the puzzles now, with my new adult brain.

9. Loom
And finally! A new LucasArts game! Loom changed the way I lived my life. You are Bobbin Threadbare and you are on a search for your mother. So you go around to all the different elders and creatures of the forest saying, "I am Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?" And his mother ends up being a duck. Or something. I just remember getting freaked out by some of the graphics and thinking for the first time that computer games can really be beautiful, even in 16-bit color.
This game was cool because you learned different spells on your magical flute and could make tornadoes and sing people to sleep and all kinds of things. Link's ocarina is a direct plagiarism of Bobbin Threadbare's flute. There's so much of this game I've forgotten. I would give a finger off my left hand to be able to play this game again. Heck, I would give a finger off my left hand just to meet somebody who also happened to play this game and just talk to them about it for a while. I don't why people grew up playing such sucky games as Dr. Mario and Final Fantasy when games like Loom lurked for us all in the shadows, secretive and seductive and mind-altering.

10. The Secret of Monkey Island
And here it is, folks. The number one most influential game on my life. This game defines who I am today and my little sister and I have had long and serious discussions about how playing and loving this game is requisite for anybody either of us considers marriage-worthy. BOTH of us have actually prolonged rocky relationships just because the guys had had some experience with Guybrush Threepwood and his desire to become a pirate. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies have nothing on this game and I swear they even plagiarized the game some when they were writing what good parts of the scripts there are. I spent an entire Primary Program rehearsal at the local stake center writing down ideas from behind a pew on how to get out of the cannibals' hut. I have music tracks from the game on my iPod and I actually listen to them.
I am not ashamed of my obsession with this game. I rejoice that I know the one way to actually kill Guybrush in the game is to drown him and the only way to kill ghosts is to spray them with root beer. I used to fantasize about being Guybrush's love interest, Governor Elaine Marley ("When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice") and I still laugh at all the strange and various uses for a limitless supply of breath mints and the almost ridiculous lack of uses for a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. Actually, I used to have a crush on Otis as well, and my sister and I would laugh and laugh when we found out you could free a rat in the prison cell next to Otis first and Otis would be so upset you went through all the trouble of carrying grog (which eats through metal mugs so you go through three or four by the time you get from the pub to the prison) and then let out a RAT before him. I swear it's funny and totally worth it.
The first Monkey Island is also cool because it has a lot of random close-ups of the characters, little cut scenes that show off just how good LucasArts had come with graphics since Indy and the Last Crusade. The best is the close up of the Navigator's head Guybrush carries around with him to get through the labyrinths of Hell to LeChuck's evil ghost ship (the portal to Hell is a giant monkey head in the middle of the jungle). Seriously. And for the people out there who only played the 3rd and 4th Monkey Island that have come out in the past decade or so, shame on you. Those are equivalent to the new Star Wars compared to the original Star Wars. In other words, they are incomparable. In other words, the new ones suck big time. In other words, I can't let go of this game. This is the meaning in my life. This is my inspiration.

11. Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge
And huzzah! There's a great sequel! This time, Guybrush is officially a pirate and he even got himself some fancy clothes and some facial hair. The Guybrush from the first game was very naive and innocent. People told him he looked like a flooring inspector. This bearded Guybrush is still pretty naive, but he's deluded himself into thinking he's pretty tough and worldly. He's sarcastic and selfish and impossibly gullible. He carries everything from spit-soaked maps to very large dogs in his pockets and is still after Elaine Marley who is impossible to find. The end scene of the game shows the evil arch nemesis LeChuck as Guybrush's bully older brother and the whole game appears to be the figment of a little boy's imagination at a creepy carnival (reminiscent of St. Elsewhere's conclusion that Howie Mandel and the rest of the doctors were merely a figment of an autistic boy's imagination with his snow globe).

12. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Though not quite as fantastic as Monkey Island, Indy and the Fate of Atlantis is another game that changed my life and made me a better person. It's the same format as the Monkey Island games except this one is actually really cool because at one point you can decide one of three paths and actually play three different games, a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure story. There's nothing like an old computer graphic Harrison Ford whipping Nazis and digging up artifacts. In fact, this game could have made a good movie....what with the fancy Atlantis sewer systems and the making of orichallum that would give you the power to become a god (which of course the evil Nazi scientists greedily abuse and thereby reach their predictable demise). There's a sassy redhead that Indy has a delightful love/hate relationship with, too. Very sexy. This game taught me how to siphon gas with a hose, too, so that's also influential.

13. Myst
And then LucasArts stopped making great adventure games (Grim Fandango and The Dig are fun, I admit, but they are a dying breed and can't compare to the old classics), so I think it was Sierra that tried bringing the genre back with Myst and then Riven or Raven or some other game that was really only worth playing if you cheated with the three hundred page manual and hint guide that came with the game. The graphics were great for the day....it didn't even matter if you were lost because the scenery was so pretty. I remember just staring at butterflies flying around for an hour because I had no idea where the hell to get this certain code to get to the top of the redwood tree. Myst doesn't have the tongue-in-cheek humor of the LucasArts games I love, but it was interesting and challenging and I even read all the journals in the library and managed to have a crush on the thinner of the two evil brothers who left video messages all over the island. Did I ever beat Myst? I'm pretty sure I did. Dang. Did I? What happened in the end? Maybe we still have a cd of it downstairs somewhere. But I'd probably need ClassicMac to boot it up. Can't I download that somewhere? And whatever happened to great computer games? And ShareWare? What sort of horrible age are my children going to grow up in without these experiences?

Well, if you weren't sure how nerdy I am before reading this ridiculously long post, now you know. Top 13 games I played before I was 13. The end.

Japan

Okay, I want to write an entry about AP English test-grading sometime soon, as well as my run-in with Stubb and his family and putting up a tent in his living room at 2 a.m. with him and his wife (I'm supposed to keep that on the D.L.). But first I thought I'd churn out this post while it was on the front of my mind.

I'm going to Japan. I know I said I wasn't, but I am. I'm leaving July 28th and will be living in Kyoto for a year. I'm supposedly living in the southernmost part of Kyoto in a place called Kizugawa, named after this river. I've been thinking a lot about this. And I think it's a bit late for me to be pulling the plug on the commitment I sort of made by sending in my health documents. *cough* I still worry about all the things I worried about before. I'm sure I'll have second thoughts when I arrive. But this is life. I know if I stayed here I would only dream about Kyoto from the cubicle of wherever I could find a job. A year isn't forever.

And my justifications about love and marriage come down to this: a roundtrip ticket to Japan costs MUCH much less than any engagement ring. If there's a dude out there that simply cannot live without me and realizes he's been a cad, a bounder, a twit to not say it to me earlier, there's no reason he can't come to Japan and find me. It's not like I'm on another planet.....just the other side of this one. .............hmmm. It will be a good kind of lonely over there, I think. I know I will love the middle school kids. I know I will love late-night summer festivals and karaoke. I will love eating raw eggs again and hyaku yen sushi. I already miss my family and friends. I already know when I come home most of my single friends will be married and most of my married friends will have more kids. My heart aches a little when I think about this. I worry about being left behind....I've always worried about being left behind. But I also feel this is something I should do....I should fill out grad school applications from a red bench in a zen garden. I think I will probably steer clear from most of my former missionary areas, but I definitely will meet up with old companions. In fact, Sisters Morishige, Takahashi, and Nakai all live in Kansai so I'm basically in their territory.

And maybe I'll come visit my family over New Years. I'm sure flights out of Japan are cheaper then because most people are trying to COME for New Years. But it would be excruciatingly hard to not see my family for another full year again. I cain't do it.

I'll post a bit more on this page as developments come. I feel a bit somber talking about it now, thinking of the goodbyes I have to say and feeling the inevitable loneliness that comes from heading into unknown territory where nobody knows your name. But there isn't anything really for me here right now. Or if there is, maybe it'll wait for me. A year is a year is a year, after all.

雨降って地固まる

I hate and love crossroads. I've been told by the people closest to me that I can't let go of anything or anybody. When I was a kid, I used to have nightmares about vacant fields and empty parking lots at dusk. Sunsets made me anxious. I had a recurring dream of being in a huge crowd of kids and backpacks in front of my elementary school waiting to be picked up by my mom, and then the people would slowly dissipate and I'd realize I was the only one left, the sun going down, nobody coming after all.

I've been told I don't act my age, but I don't really care. I feel like being belligerent. When I was on the trail last week, I didn't pull my own weight with the staff. One night we made a staff fire and a student fire. I opted to sit with the teenage boys because I was pissed at the staff as much as they were. It's stupid to have two fires anyway. I want to vandalize something. I want to carve my name in bricks and throw them into abandoned house windows except I know I'd regret leaving my imprints in places possibly filled with ghosts who would recognize my handwriting and haunt me the rest of my life.

So I don't know what my problem is. There's still plenty to be grateful for, despite my own disgust at myself and what I do to people. I used to have these nightmares about punching my little sister repeatedly, not being able to stop. I've dreamed of having roommate fights with broken glass bottles as an undergraduate. I dreamed another time that I had to pull porcupine quills from a good friend's stomach to save his life and tore the hell out of his flesh in the process. I've been accused of holding people's heads underwater, of stabbing, abandoning, hiding. A mission companion told me I was hopelessly selfish and impossible to live with.

I'm just writing to say I get it. Consider this my proclamation that I get this about myself. I am aware. Let me have this pity party and give me a moment to gather my inventory and wrap my bread and cheese once more into my red and white handkerchief tied to a stick, and I'll move along as soon as day breaks. But give me this one evening to sit and dwell and be pissed off at the complexities of day-to-day life and my inability to attract and keep any good thing that will last longer than a fortnight. Women are supposed to be these great nest makers and care-givers and despite the common misconceptions people make, I am no different. I am just your run-of-the-mill Aunt Bea, June Cleaver, Mrs. Brady. But I also don't give heed to the sleeping beauty syndrome of lying around with lips puckered until some guy comes around to give me life. I'm outta here.

what Mormons do before marriage

kissing rugby, originally uploaded by emgillz.

Well, I joined the show choir Latter-Day Voices for a boy who I never hooked up with, but Bro. Salmond and the gang renewed, edified, brightened and changed my life all the same. I'm finally home from a ruthless seven days of performances at seminaries and stake centers from 5:45 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. A few of us joked around about wondering what zones and districts we belonged to because we hadn't felt so physically and spiritually tired and cut off from the world since serving missions. Or eaten so much food at church members' houses.

We stayed each night with a different host family with different choir members. I honestly haven't had as much fun in months. Kissing rugby in the Smithfield seminary was Bro. Salmond's idea and my favorite parts of this picture are the facial expressions and LeAnn's open mouth from The Chair. I think I look sort of fat in this picture, but I'm posting it anyway.

I'm trying to get a job in Logan--it's a marketing position.....I'd be writing creative human interest stories about fishermen and field biologists who use these rugged computers you can chuck into rivers and throw against cliff walls and let bears eat and still check your email afterward. I WANT THIS JOB. But I haven't been called for an interview yet, so...............???? I'd love to stay in Logan. My roommates whom I adore from this year are moving into a house which I just found out is the EXACT house I moved into the fall of 2003. What are the odds, really? And they need another roommate.

And I don't think I'm going to Japan anymore. I want to see my little brother turn 16. I don't want to miss that kind of stuff anymore. I'll go to Japan with Nicole, Ali, and Yessica next summer. Before going back to school. And I'm going to restring my banjo. And I'm coming to Pennsylvania in June to see Aunt Lori and Jen Russell Parkins. That's the update. Nothing too literary about this post........I suppose I always feel like making mass contacts before heading out on the trail just because deep down I feel like I might not come back each time. Like getting on a plane, getting on the suburban that takes me into the wilderness is exciting and foreboding--anything can happen. So here's my shout-out to the internet, hey. I'm off to air out the old wool blanket, duct tape up my tarp, sharpen the machete, and head to bed.

Oh, and I won that round of kissing rugby. As if you wondered otherwise.

supplementary video

When I was in jr. high, I spent all my awkward days listening to and obsessing over the Beatles. strawberry fields takes me to those days of Tweety Bird sneakers and puff-paint cat shirts. I must travel backwards in time in order to figure out what I want in four months. I still don't know what to do. But I am newly reminded that I never could decide between John and Paul. I know that George is the most admirable, but I admit I follow the power figures. John or Paul, John or Paul, John or Paul.......John would go to Japan, for sure. Meet Yoko's parents. Or moon Yoko's parents. And Paul.....Paul would just make crappy sap music (except I do love C Moon), looking wistfully into campfires.
This isn't helping.

decision-making time draws near............

I have decided I am no longer mature or capable enough to manage the affairs of my own existence. I am considering outsourcing my life goal planning to people I admire most in life. As I was coming to this conclusion, I stepped out of the celestial room in the Logan temple and ran smack dab into Rexburg's very own Bro. Samuelsauce who I'm still not sure why he was in Logan at the temple at the same time I was. Coincidence? Probably. Even when he was my school schedule guidance counselor/advisor he was never really good at telling me what to do. He did command me to email him, which I shall do directly. Tomorrow.

A positive note: I've been recruited and paid off to try out a different survival camp program this summer, this one in Lehi. I'm going back on the trail, folks, and this time I'll be making fire out of sagebrush instead of yucca which means I won't have to rush to Arizona during the Apocalypse. Huzzah, huzzah.

How 2 Make (and Containerize) PB

Okay, here's a gem. This is in response to my good friend Jacob who posted the Sesame Street how-to-make-orange-crayons clip. I admit, the crayon clip is prime. But so is the peanut butter making. What this particular clip lacks are the little girls in the kitchen spreading peanut butter on bread and licking the knife. I swear she licks the knife. I started licking knives because of this Sesame Street episode. This clip doesn't have that.

But, it does have a sincerely creepy and mind-expanding song-and-dance routine afterward--something that definitely did not show up on Sesame Street the way I remember it--with a tiny Asian girl (the peanut???) who dances on microwaves and kitchen fixtures while all her giant multi-ethnic friends try to eat her. I've never seen this. This is new. This is toe-tappingly bold and sinister. Also, for future final Jeopardy! trivia: the man who wrote the peanut butter song is also apparently the man who wrote the Three's Company theme song. A fine man. "You'll see that life is a frolic and laughter is calling for you....." I love you, John Ritter. John Ritter didn't write the song, that's something different. And this is where I stop.

Angst and Trepidation

Oh, my life! I just want to graduate. But what to do after that? And how will I ever reclaim my dreams of becoming an astronaut and/or animal farmer with a wimpy MA in Literature and Writing from a university with less than reputable ratings? And what of marriage with children? Where does that exist, and does skipping off to Japan equate snubbing my nose at future prospects? OR, if I DO go, maybe there will just happen to be, say, an attractive Mormon Irish lad who gets sent to the same rural neck of the Orient as I do, and things'll just fall into place in an Adam-and-Eve like way. In a post-apocalyptic, we're-the-last-people-on-earth-so-let's-replenish-the-nation kind of way.

Then again, I'll only be 26 when I enter whatever other grad program I'm likely to apply for in 2008. 26-year-old Mormon women getting married is not unheard of, and I have no qualms getting hitched with a kid four or five years younger than me. So really..... And everyone says I look eighteen. I'm still fringing on girlhood. If I wrote an autobiography, it would still be categorized as Bildungsroman.

And what alternatives do I have? I'm not moving to Provo and wearing slinky knee-length skirts made of burgundy pleather. I refuse to stoop to the level of baking brownies for the neighboring apartment of boys and waiting in lip gloss and eye shadow for them to return the plate and suggest dinner and a movie. I'm not desperate yet. I recall that scene from Willow when the lecherous bearded man suggests "WANNA BREED?" to Val Kilmer dressed as a woman. I'm not a lecherous bearded man. It might work for me. But only if I found someone as attractive and exasperatingly charming as Madmartigan to approach. Until then, I just want to graduate.

More men should have long beautiful braided tresses and carry swords.

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..........