In which Twilight ruins more lives.

So when I was at Borders today, I discovered that Twilight appears to have hijacked the love of my life, namely young adult fiction. Because there were 123098123098 new young adult series and they were all about VAMPIRES. And worst of all to meet my gaze was this monstrosity, the sight of which triggered my gag reflex and made me want to vomit all over the mothers of five who were traipsing around the bookstore with their small children in tow ACTUALLY WANTING TO BUY WUTHERING HEIGHTS JUST BECAUSE IT HAS NOW BEEN ENDORSED BY BELLA AND EDWARD.

Hey guess what?

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR. NEITHER IS READING TWILIGHT, YOU CREEPY SEX-STARVED MORMON WOMEN. Yeah, I just said that. Sorry. But hey you know what else? EDWARD CULLEN IS NOT A REAL PERSON, AND IF HE WERE A REAL PERSON, HE WOULD BE A SERIAL RAPIST.

Thus, in order to rid myself of the terror of thinking that everyone now thinks that romance = abusive creepy paranoid sparkly stalker + hot vampire sex (? wtf) and/or the EVEN MORE DISTURBING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS of Wuthering Heights, which, spoilers, are NOT romantic but rather encompass physical, emotional, and sexual abuse (mm except for Catherine and Hareton...so cute <3)...I can't remember where that sentence was going. But so anyway. So I went and found my favorite romantic lines about healthy romantic relationships from books that are neither Twilight nor Wuthering Heights (which novel, by the way, I adore, except for all the parts with Heathcliff, who is terrible and who I hate hate hate. I am just saying.), and this reassured me that humanity can actually potentially maybe have meaningful relationships, in spite of this most terrible portrait of humanity/my local bookstore.

"Please remember me," said Dorothea, repressing a rising sob.
"Why should you say that?" said Will, with irritation. "As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else."

-Middlemarch. Aww.

This whole poem is just the greatest thing, but especially this part:

They were talking about fishing,
then one changed the subject,
and, I swear, they began talking about you.

heart/Billy Collins.

Also, from my absolute most favorite book of all time:

She said, "Who am I, that you should love me?"
"You are My Queen," said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth.
"Do you believe me?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered.
"Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"I love you."
And she believed him.

-The Queen of Attolia.
GREATEST CHILDREN'S BOOK EVERY WRITTEN HOLY CRAAAAAAPPP.

And, of course, where would we be without the estimable Jane Austen? Answer: nowhere. Or weeping softly somewhere in the darkness, alone and sad and unable to convey our emotions with words. Sad. Day.

"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening, or never."

-PERSUASION, which by the way is the greatest Jane Austen novel mmhmm you know it's true.

And also, if you want something more epic than friggin sparkly vampires in your epic romance, then you should be made aware of my favorite thing ever written by Tolkien, which is the story of Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, BECAUSE IT IS SO GREAT.

Also favorite Shakespeare sonnet of my life thus far:

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Yes it is a good one. Plus, it brings us this lovely scene from my favorite Jane Austen film adaptation (even if the Persuasion adaptation is actually better...), because anything Emma Thompson touches = wonderful. Why would you need brooding emo vampires/Heathcliff when you can have brooding emo Sense and Sensibility? Yes it is better this way yes.

OH THE HUMANITY. Okay now go listen to this song because it's actually cute except for the groovy fan video but hey whatevs aww the end. And now that's pretty much all I got, so I'll go back to reading this lovely book and try to forget that Twilight ever happened.

Famblyfamblyfamblyfamblyfambly.

My family is playing a game where you put cards with words on them down on top of each other in order from largest to smallest, like universe --> Asia --> China --> cemetery. Let me tell you something. This game is lame. Because everything has to be logical. This is what I put down:

Hollywood --> Springtime
Pear tree --> Rainstorm
Alleyway --> Doorway --> Galaxy --> Nun

This is more fun when the card game becomes a fantasy story. Like say you're in this magical fantasy realm and you're sitting on a hill under a pear tree and it's only raining on you. I can see this in my head. Or say you're in an alternate universe and Hollywood is like its own galaxy and it's only springtime in Hollywood and everywhere else it's all dark and drab and everyone is fighting all the time to try to get into Hollywood where it's pretty but they can't because there are big tall gates and only some people can get in sometimes. The end. Do you even know how much more fun that makes this game? But one Shaneus would have none of it, and thus was I ridiculed. Sigh. Life is hard. Probably I am crazy. Does this make sense to anyone else but me? Probably not.


To conclude with a lovely poem by Pablo Neruda:

Twenty Love Poems: #20

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example "The night is shattered with stars,
twinkling blue, in the distance."

The night wind spins in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.

She loved me, and at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.

What difference that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered, full of stars, and she is not with me.

That's all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is not at peace with having lost her.

As if to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her.
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, of then, now are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, it's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched for the wind that would touch her ear.

Another's. She will be another's. As before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite space.

I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace with having lost her.

Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,
and these the last verses I write for her.

Christmas. Meh.

little tree

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

-ee cummings

The Beautiful Changes

One wading a fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of
You
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that
Says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding,
to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to
wonder.

-Richard Wilbur


Also, lyrics of the song I'm listening to right now:

The world is alive now, in and outside our home
You run through the forest, settle before the sun
Darling, I can barely remember you beside me
You should come back home, back on your own now

And even in the light, when the woman of the woods came by
To give to you the word of the old man
In the morning tide when the sparrow and the seagull fly
And Jonathan and Evelyn get tired

Lie to me if you will at the top of Beringer Hill
Tell me anything you want, any old lie will do
Call me back to you.

Two poems today.

Poem #1

I am grateful, violins, for this day
of four chords. Pure
is the sound of the sky,
the blue voice of the air.

-Pablo Neruda

Poem #2

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who is kind of awesome.

After another finals week...

= Yet another late night at the library, = another list of fabulous children's book titles, many of which are very odd:
Chicken Trek
A Kick to the Head
When I Crossed No-Bob
Pigs Ahoy!
Five Alien Elves
Six Haunted Hairdos
Seven Spiders Spinning
I've Painted Everything!
Insects are my Life
The Cereal Box

Also, a list of things I feel one could only overhear at BYU:
"Augh, I don't even want to pee, I'm wearing so many layers. Just wait til you have garments."
"So then we were engaged for like, a week, and then I, like, broke it off, but like I still wanted him around, and he kept calling home and hyperventilating because I couldn't make up my mind, and his family like hates me now, but I just don't love him."
"Dude, did you get any action last night." "Yeah, dude." "Bro, I hope you gave her something to remember you by." "Yeah, dude." (-Two freshmen boys sitting across from me at the library) (= not something you would only overhear at BYU, but it issomething that is made much funnier by the fact that two freshmen boys were having this conversation right across from me.)

Learned maxim of the week: Alas, it again proves true that it is not finals week unless I procrastinate my final paper, stay up until two finishing an essay that I could have finished a week ago, and cram all day for a test that I really should only have studied two hours maximum for.

PEACE OUT, my darlings, and a happy the last day of finals to all.

Boo ya.

This is what I wrote as a part of my women's lit final, which is due tomorrow morning at eight o'clock:

A further women’s issue that modern women’s literature especially needs to explore is the issue of female objectification by men as well as male objectification by women. Today’s pop culture especially tends towards objectifying women, from advertisements to tabloids to movies. Furthermore, current fads such as the Twilight and Gossip Girl series depict objectified men, adding to a culture where the sexes view each other merely as objects to be used. Meaningful, important women’s literature of today often addresses the problem of failing to see members of the opposite sex as real individuals, such as Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “Sexy,” in which a woman objectifies herself in an attempt to find meaningful connections, but realizes that objectification can never be the basis of a real relationship. Lahiri’s story demonstrates that stories and novels by women exploring the devastating social, psychological, and emotional consequences of objectification are crucial topics to discuss for female empowerment into the coming decades. By emphasizing both that neither women nor men should allow themselves to be objectified, nor should they buy into the idea that objectification is in some way “sexy,” as Lahiri says, or at all desirable, women’s literature empowers both sexes. Furthermore, exemplary and important woman’s literature presents alternatives to objectification, like Marilynne Robinson’s Home, which realistically portrays both men and women and explores meaningful relationships between the two, founded not on objectification but on real understanding.

I feel empowered.

Poem of the Day

This morning, I woke up at nine, looked at the time on my phone, told myself, "If you roll over, you will go back to sleep and not wake up until twelve and feel so so upset with yourself," then promptly rolled over and feel asleep. I woke up at twelve with my phone still clutched in my hand and started having a panic attack about all the things I needed to do today, but I was still secretly pleased that I slept in because I had this cool dream that was a mixture of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Power Rangers, Star Wars, and Diana Wynn Jones. There were these evil vampires in it called The Postmen who could come out in daylight, and I kept trying to pummel them to pieces, but it never worked. Violent, but an engaging dream.

Reading this poem while listening to Mozart's Symphony Number 25 in G minor makes it even more amusing to me.

Tension

“Never use the word suddenly just to
create tension.”
—Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias
outside in the garden,
and suddenly I was in the study
looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,
you planted the last petunia in the flat,
and I suddenly closed the dictionary
now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

A moment later, we found ourselves
standing suddenly in the kitchen
where you suddenly opened a can of cat food
and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.

I observed a window of leafy activity
and, beyond that, a bird perched on the edge
of the stone birdbath
when suddenly you announced you were leaving

to pick up a few things at the market
and I stunned you by impulsively
pointing out that we were getting low on butter
and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.

Who could tell what the next moment would hold?
Another drip from the faucet?
Another little spasm of the second hand?
Would the painting of a bowl of pears continue

to hang on the wall from that nail?
Would the heavy anthologies remain on their shelves?
Would the stove hold its position?
Suddenly, it was anyone’s guess.

The sun rose ever higher.
The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map
when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch
where I closed my eyes and without any warning

began to picture the Andes, of all places,
and a path that led over the mountain to another country
with strange customs and eye-catching hats
suddenly fringed with little colorful, dangling balls.

-Billy Collins

Poem of the Day

Today, I got up on time, and so I did not have psychotic dreams
about rapists and kidnappings like I have had the past few days
where I have slept in until 12 or 1.  Yay, reading days, you have no point.

Walking to church in so much slush = more difficult than walking to church
in the snow.  Today I went to temple prep which engaged persons are supposed
to go to, but there was only one engaged couple and like five prospective
missionaries, and everyone else was just
there because they didn't want to go to Sunday School
because spoilars, it is boring.

List of things I saw yesterday:
a bird outside my window in the pine tree
a pretty picture of a lighthouse
a girl totally biff it right outside the HBLL.  She slid in the snow
and landed on her knees and faceplanted.  Bummer.

List of things I heard yesterday:
a conversation in the library about what the abbreviation "FEC"
in a text meant.  The conclusion reached: "Future Eternal Companion.'
inhuman sounds issuing from a study room on the fifth floor.
The culprits: freshmen watching a movie.
a song about the Berlin Wall

Pablo Neruda writes lovely love poems, but so does ee cummings,
who I love with my whole entire soul.  Also, this poem briefly mentions snow,
which I hope we will start getting instead of this gross grey slushy stuff.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
by ee cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Poem of the Day

The Effort
By Billy Collins

Would anyone care to join me
in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
"What is the poet trying to say?"

as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
inarticulate wretches that they were,
biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.

Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell
and the rest could only try and fail
but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class
here at Springfield High will succeed

with the help of these study questions
in saying what the poor poet could not,
and we will get all this done before
that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.

Tonight, however, I am the one trying
to say what it is this absence means,
the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs.
The image of this vase of cut flowers,

not from our garden, is no help.
And the same goes for the single plate,
the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses its face
against these new windows--the drizzle and the
morning frost.

So I will leave it up to Mrs. Parker,
who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
and her students—a few with their hands up,
others slouching with their caps on backwards—

to figure out what it is I am trying to say
about this place where I find myself
and to do it before the noon bell rings
and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed.

Poem of the Day

It's a long one, but reading it while listening to Hootie and the Blowfish is lightening my day. Is that even a legit verb? Making my day better, I guess. Rather pleasant, and such.

Ode to an Artichoke
By Pablo Neruda
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The tender-hearted
artichoke
got dressed as a warrior,
erect, built
a little cupola,
stood
impermeable
under
its scales,
around it
the crazy vegetables
bristled,
grew
astonishing tendrils,
cattails, bulbs,
in the subsoil
slept the carrot
with its red whiskers,
the grapevine
dried the runners
through which it carries the wine,
the cabbage
devoted itself
to trying on skirts,
oregano
to perfuming the world,
and the gentle
artichoke
stood there in the garden,
dressed as a warrior,
burnished
like a pomegranate,
proud,
and one day
along with the others
in large willow
baskets, it traveled
to the market
to realize its dream:
the army.
Amid the rows
never was it so military
as at the fair,
men
among the vegetables
with their white shirts
were
marshals
of the artichokes,
the tight ranks,
the voices of command,
and the detonation
of a falling crate,
but
then
comes
Maria
with her basket,
picks an artichoke,
isn't afraid of it,
examines it, holds it
to the light as if it were an egg,
buys it,
mixes it up
in her bag
with a pair of shoes,
with a head of cabbage and a
bottle of vinegar
until
entering the kitchen
she submerges it in a pot.
Thus ends
in peace
the career
of the armored vegetable
which is called artichoke,
then
scale by scale
we undress
its delight
and we eat
the peaceful flesh
of its green heart.

It's cool how you can be paradoxically anti-war and empowering women and exploring the importance of everyday life in a poem about an artichoke, which is a tasty food that I now feel like eating, with melted butter and lemon juice. Mm.

Also, while typing this, Hootie and the Blowfish ended, and "Before He Cheats" came up on my ipod. There's another piece of poetry for you to explore, if you will.

Read previous sentence: sarcastically.

Poem of the Day.

Carry

I want to carry you
and for you to carry me
the way voices are said to carry over water.

Just this morning on the shore,
I could hear two people talking quietly
in a rowboat on the far side of the lake.

They were talking about fishing,
then one changed the subject,
and, I swear, they began talking about you.

-Billy Collins.

Some Lists.

#1: More Rockin' Library Titles, Many of Which Would Make For Some Nice Band Names of Multiple Genres.
Parrot in the Oven
Leroy and the Cavemen
Girlhearts
Jason's Women
The Stalker
Cowboy on Ice
A Boy No More
The Muffin Child
The Solid Gold Kid
The Girl of His Dreams
Patti's Pet Gorilla
Bizzy Bones and Uncle Ezra
Chameleon Was a Spy
Suza and the Bride Doll

My favorite: Caroline and Her Kettle Named Maud
Title Find of the Week (But Not in the Children's Section) By One Jon Smith: Pop-Porn.
Nice title, bros.

#2: Some Songs That I Had Stuck in My Head, But With the Wrong Lyrics, Which Took Me Forever to Realize
"Bring a corpse, Jeannette, Isabella."
"Traitors and pirates now fight him in vain."

#3: Things I Ate for Dinner Last Week
Wednesday: Andes Mints + Value fries from Wendy's.
Thursday: Lasagna. Yum.
Friday: Dinner at Osaka's, where they have an entire MEAL of GYOZA. HOLY COW. Though it is too bad Yamato doesn't have the same thing, since their gyoza is five thousand times better, I think because they cook it in different oil that doesn't taste quite as burny, but still. It was scrumptious.
Saturday: Moar lasagna.
Sunday: Lentil soup + raw vegan ice cream + a salad of strawberries, greens, sprouts, cauliflower, and Cafe Rio dressing. I've never known how desperately much I like cauliflower. It tastes just like broccoli, but without the Satanic texture.
Also: It started on Sunday because I can't remember what I ate on the other days. Something.

#4: Some Notable Dreams of This Week
Two nights ago: I was an extra on the set of the new Twilight movie. People kept dying on set because everyone hated Twilight so much so they kept sabotaging the set, which looked like the pit underneath the Tower of Isengard. An actress stood on a mountain and gave an epic speech about how Twilight would overcome all things. An old man was sad.
Like a week ago: I was a vampire, which just meant that during the day my face was just a skeleton, which I tried to cover up with a scarf in a department store so people wouldn't know I was a vampire. It kept getting harder to breathe and I kept trying to figure out why, and then I thought, oh, it is because vampires don't have to breathe, so I kept trying to stop myself from breathing, but I couldn't. In retrospect, this is probably a good thing.
Also like a week ago: Miranda and I went to a concert. She was seated by one of the Beatles, who was not a Beatle but looked like a member of Kiss. Then I spent the concert trying to name the Beatles and figure out which one he was, but I could not, because my Beatles knowledge = nothing.

#5: Some Marvelous Things My Swahili Teacher, Who Is Wonderful, Has Said in Class
"No hurry in Africa. Just very relaxing."
"That fish will run away from me on the bus."
"What happens with my cats here?"
"You go to the Rift Valley Area, where the weather is so friendly."
"I know I dream about those scary things myself. They come after me in the night."
"I always remember sometime when I dream."
"You know...is good."
By the way, my Swahili teacher can say 120398123098123098 times more things in English than I can say in Swahili, since all I can say is:
"Jambo"
"Amina" (=amen)
And also the last for months of the year: Septemba, Oktoba, Novemba, Desemba.

IN CONCLUSION, I am going to bed now.