A Quick Found-Word Poem

Throwback: The Ship Meme

As many of you may know, I journal as a hobby. My journal is many things to me - a diary, a scrapbook, a sketchbook, a travel journal, a photo album, an experiment, a place to take notes and write fiction, etc. But overall it's the essence of my very soul. And as such, it holds a lot of memories.

I've been journaling for over a year now, and I'm currently on volume five. Today I was flipping through volume one in search of blogspiration and looked at what I put in on this day last year. And what I was writing about this time of 2015 was an ask meme that was going around on tumblr, wherein someone would ask you about your "ship"/"OTP" (if you don't know what that means, ask Dr. Google) and you would answer who in the pair would do what.

A side effect of being popular on tumblr and joking about being married to your best friend, however, is that people start to ship you. (Albeit jokingly - I think.) And so some little shit asked Sarah to answer these OTP questions about her and me.

Into the Labyrinth

Last week one of my classes was cancelled so I went to the nearby reservoir. Since California is in a severe drought, it's lower than it used to be when I first discovered it as a teen, but due to recent rains it's not completely empty. It's a peaceful, lovely place to walk around. And... as pictured above, it has a labyrinth.

Here's something about me not everyone knows. I fucking love labyrinths. I doodle them all the time (7-circuit classical style, not Chartres style). I love the myth of Ariadne and the labyrinth of Crete. The movie "Labyrinth" is my favourite movie of all time. And whenever I see a labyrinth of any kind, I have to walk it. I just have to. It's like a compulsion. Something about walking all the circuits to get to the centre just gives me such joy, I can't really explain it.

I'm Here, I'm Queer, and God Is It Lonely

I want to fall in love so bad.

It's illogical, of course. Yes, there's that cute security guard in the library at school that I sometimes consider smiling at, but I don't really have a lot of dating options right now, not with a big move looming on the horizon. And San Jose has a significantly lower number of wlw than nearby San Francisco or Santa Cruz (probably because this city is filling up with tech bros and all the queer lady-identified folks like me are leaving).

It's completely impractical of me to want to date someone. But it doesn't stop me from wanting it.

Happy Anniversary to ME!

No, it's not a romantic anniversary. It's not the anniversary of this blog. (I haven't even had this half a year, yet!) Today is much more special to me. Today is the anniversary of the day I got hired on the spot, exactly one year ago, as a tour guide at Sarah Winchester's "beautiful but bizarre" 160-room Victorian Mansion! Look at that beautiful old thing - I get to work there! All the time!

Visions of New York Past

One of the fun parts about studying history is when I stumble upon what people in the past thought the future would bring. When it's not horrifyingly racist, it can be quite funny. For instance, one prediction from 1901 decided that horses would be extinct by the 1940s.

And sometimes, such as in the case of this one, they're actually pretty spot on:

This example from the early 1900s predicted that by 1999, New York City would be dominated by skyscrapers, served by a network of bridges, and have flying machines in the sky above it.

And, well... they were correct!

-Nym-

My Fave Fictional Portrayals of New York City

 New York City seems to get all the attention in American popular culture. Most successful sitcoms in recent memory - "Friends", "Seinfeld", "Sex and the City" - take place there. Both Marvel and DC's top superheroes live there, or in fictional versions of it. (You're not fooling anyone with "Metropolis", Superman.) Billy Joel has built half his career singing about how much he loves the place. And who could forget that scene from "Enchanted" when Giselle climbs out of a manhole in the middle of Times Square?

The rule seems to be that if a series or movie proposal does not require another setting, it should be set in New York. If you can't possibly get the show/book/series to happen in New York, have at least one main character be from New York, and continually harp on about how much better New York is than wherever the setting takes place. (Like The Baby-Sitter's Club does with Stacey!)

There is a reason for this: the skyline is just so darn recognizable. In addition, New York City is the most populous metropolitan area in the United States (and the 4th most populous in the world), possibly justifying the frequency with which events of great significance occur there in fiction. Further justification for this is New York's diversity. Very close to every single ethnic, racial and religious group is is represented to some degree or another on the streets of the five boroughs, and nearly every language spoken on Planet Earth can be heard there. Although most US cities are cosmopolitan to one degree or another, New York is particularly noticeable due to the larger population, thus making the diversity more obvious. Further helping matters is the fact that New York is a major hub for business, finance, politics, culture, etc., which makes it that much easier to set stories of all sorts there. At the very least, New York is where a great many writers live, or come from.

Though I know these portrayals aren't really ever that realistic, that doesn't stop me from enjoying them! And I do have my own favourites...

My Own Hero's Journey

Journey: noun jour·ney \ˈjər-nē\

plural journeys

1 :  an act or instance of traveling from one place to another ; trip

2 chiefly dialect :  a day's travel

3 :  something suggesting travel or passage from one place to another <the journey from youth to maturity> <a journey through time> 

 According to Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey story - a timeless myth that appears in cultures the world over - can be more or less described as follows: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to restore boons on his fellow man."

(I would argue that that last step is optional - many journey stories are less about "restoring boons" and more about self-discovery.)

Fears

I had a nightmare last night.

Well, it wasn't necessarily a nightmare. There were no monsters chasing me, I didn't wake up screaming or in a cold sweat or anything. It was more just... unsettling. And not even when I first woke up, either. I woke up normally. It was only when I was telling my sister about it that I realised just how unsettling it was.

In the dream, I had been kidnapped by a very conservative Christian couple and forced to live in their house. I couldn't leave the house, I had to dress in long dresses and skirts and follow their rules. I think they even re-named me. That wasn't the scary part. The scary part was that their regime brainwashed me. The kidnapping wasn't the dangerous part - the letting me live in their home and feeding me and using some sick form of "love" to twist me into their perfect daughter was the dangerous part. They made me feel like I belonged there, made me forget who I was, how I am the very antithesis of everything they stood for.

To the point where when the police rescued me, I refused to go. I felt safe and secure with my kidnappers, they convinced me I had everything I'd ever need. I did not remember who I was before they had "saved" me.

Even writing it out now, I'm sickened at how easily I gave in to that. I'm horrified that the promise of security allowed me to settle for that and forget who I am.

That's not what I want. I don't want to stagnate just because it's the "safer" option.

I've been trying all day to make sense of this dream because it has nothing to do with anything I've been thinking about lately. In fact, I feel just the opposite lately. With the end of my final semester rapidly approaching, it actually feels more like time is going too fast. Like the world is speeding all around me and I'm fighting just to keep up. Like I'm on a train racing up a hill and I know the train is going to drop but I can't yet see what I'm dropping into on the other side of the hill - will it be a smooth ramp down or a steep drop off a cliff?

Granted I'd actually like some measure of security. But if there's no risk in something whatsoever, then what makes it worth doing, you know?

And though I tell myself this, do I really believe it? Sometimes part of me still feels like maybe I should just stagnate, fall into a monotonous routine for the rest of my life, never ever take a risk again. My anxiety is terrible, the idea of taking a risk and having it fall through terrifies me. That part of me keeps dragging me down, telling me not to move, not to even graduate. "You've been in school for twenty years straight," it coos at me, "it's all you've ever known. How on earth will you function without the structure school gives your life? You won't. You'll fail."

(This is the same part of me that sometimes tells me it'd be best to drop out of school so I don't fail.)

Obviously I'm afraid of failure. I know that. I'm afraid of risk.

But that damn dream is showing me I'm also afraid of a no risk lifestyle robbing me of who I am. Because underneath all my anxiety, I do feel I really am a ~*~free spirit~*~

The question thus becomes, how on earth do I find a balance before I move? Or do I just have to ride out the train ride to the top and accept the drop?

-Nym-