San Francisco -Days 0 and 1

As I may have mentioned, I am taking a trip to SAN FRANCISCO as part of a summer course.  What kind of course, you ask?  Well, technically it's in the Women's Studies department, but really it's gay (Ah, you say, That makes sense now.) and movies.  We get to attend the Frameline Film Festival and write critiques of the films, as well as film our own documentay.  My group's assigned topic is activist filmmakers, which we kind of morphed into film festivals as sites of social change.

We are staying in a condo owned by a fantastic Australian man and his partner.  In the back there is a lovely bamboo garden that is going to be a refuge for many of us during the hectic coming weeks.  I had a picture, but my computer is being weird and won't let me show you. 

That first night after we unpacked, half the class went out with the professors for sushi.  Have you ever had sushi with a professor?  It's intereresting.  Especially when they drink sake.  It was only sometime that night that I realized I was actually IN FREAKING SAN FRANCISCO, and it made me a little loopy.  I'm still a little loopy.

Because today I got to see the HRC building that used to be Harvey Milk's camera shop, and the Harvey Milk Memorial Elementary school (seriously, everything's named after that guy here.  He's like L.E. Phillips is in Eau Claire.)  And THE Pride Flag (which I don't think is as big as the, what, 20x30 one we have in EC?  But it was actually flying, so who could tell), and I wandered through the Haight (which I learned is not spelled "Hate," which makes a lot more sense, since it's where all the peace and love hippies hang out).

But if you go to San Francisco, and you're queer, the Castro Theater is the gay mecca.  Harvey Milk appears on the screen, and the whole place bursts into cheers and applause - because everyon knows who he is, everyone worships him, and they're not afraid to show it.

It's not like a janky old movie theater.  Think of a fancy opera house - like the Ordway in Minneapolis, though I was put more in mind of the Semperoper in Dresden.  I was seated on the end of our group, next to a nice stranger who explained the references in the old Frameline trailers that they always play on opening night, and I told him about us being a student group from Wisconsin. 

This year the opening movie was "Vito," a documentary about the life of activist Vito Russo.  If you don't know about him, you should, and a good way to learn about him is through that documentary.  First the guy spent ten years writing a book on Hollywood portrayal of gay characters while running an activist group, and then in the eighties he got big into AIDS activism - even before he himself was diagnosed with AIDS.  Around that point in the film, you could hear the entire theater sniffling.  I was literally handing out tissues left and right - one to my classmate and one to the nice stranger next to me.  Seriously, they say Minnesota nice, but we're also reserved - we don't talk to strangers in the theater.

I love this city.  I thought going to college and befriending other gays was a mind-blowing moment for me, but coming here, and seeing the gay everywhere - it's changing my worldview.  But since I am a cynical bitch (and proud!) I realize I cannot live on a gay island for the rest of my life.  And it makes me think of what kind of narrative I want to create.  The worlds where sexual orientation doesn't matter and everyone is effectively bisexual - those are nice fantasy and commentary, but that's not what we aspire to.  Gays and straights are always going to be different, the way men and women are always going to be different.  But that doesn't mean we can't get along.  What we need is more peaceful crossover between the gay and straight worlds.

Looking at the odd little shorts I've jotted down since I started this course and have had queer theory coming out of my ears, I realize that is something of a recurring theme:  a gay jock rooming with a straight nerd, a sibling too young to understand what her brother means when he says he's gay, a straight-identified girl whose attempts to find her lesbian friend a date cause her to question her own sexuality.  Crossover.  Communication.  And with increased presence and visibility, I believe that we can show straight people they have no reason to fear us, and gay people they have no reason to fear straights.

But I do love this city.  I have decided, with the help of one of my professors who has lived just about everywhere, that I would much rather go to Monterey than New York.  I have a plan for my life!  I know what I'm going to do when I graduate!  And I'm no longer panicking!  San Francisco has done wonderful things for me.

I Want to Do Something Stupid...

A friend of mine wrote a poem that stuck in my brain.

I want to do something stupid
While I can still blame it on being young -

I want to go to New York to study literary translation.  I'm not good with strange places and strange people, I grew up in the suburban Midwest and went to school in a medium-sized town - I don't think I can handle New York.  I have been assured by my professors - as well as the program director at NY - that I will not be able to make a living with literary translation.  Not to mention that it is a dual program in Translation AND Creative Writing - and while last semester I proved to myself that I can handle a Creative Writing class, it's still not my favorite thing to contend with.

Really, I should just forget about that program as impractical in every way, and just go to Kent State, like my professor advised.  (I told her I wanted to get out of Wisconsin - believe it or not, there is a translation school in Milwaukee - and she gave me Ohio.  Well, perhaps I should have been more general.)  The program there is technical translation, legal and medical and computer, all sorts of things that people actually pay translators for, and while it's certainly not the best field, I will likely do as well as can be expected.

But that's the safe option.  I've always taken the safe option, and frankly, I'm sick of it.  Not many people know this, but I almost applied for UAA - the University of Alaska, Anchorage.  If I'd done that, I'd probably be looking at Applied Linguistics and native language preservation by now.  And I'd probably know how to dogsled.  It was a pleasant dream my junior year, but when I actually started applying, I thought of so many logistical and practical barriers, that in the end I never even applied.  I went to safe, 90-minutes away, whitewashed, Midwestern Eau Claire.  And I met so many wonderful people here, and have enjoyed myself immensely and grown so much, and I have pushed my boudaries, really.  But Eau Claire is not Alaska.

I almost went to Graz, Austria, for my semester abroad, instead of Marburg, Germany.  But no one else was going to Graz; besides, the Austrian dialect is so thick it's hardly even German.  There, it is a complete immersion experience, and you take classes with native speakers in the native language.  Marburg, on the other hand, gives you German-for-foreigners with other foreigners.  Safe.

That was a mistake.

Long story short I was bored out of my mind and depressed for about six months straight.  That's what comes of taking the safe option.

Granted, I haven't even applied, much less gotten in.  The New York program is very competitive, and I'm going up against people who are already professional translators and want to expand their horizons a bit.  There is, however, another translation school with a good reputation in Monterey, California.  Monterey, from what I can gather, is the Eau Claire of California - there's nothing to do, and you're only there if you're a student or retired.  Monterey is the compromise option.  Monterey is the Eau Claire between the U of M and Alaska (though it is a bit closer to Alaska than the U).  So I can safely go there without feeling like a coward.  And I think in typing this I just convinced myself to go there after all.

But I'm going to at least try for New York.  I have to.  If I don't get in and end up at Monterey, that's fine, but if I never even try...well, that's just pathetic.  And if I do get in, and end up going there, and it ends up being a horrible mistake, at least I made an interesting mistake instead of a boring one.

Filler Post

My reader has been clamoring for a new post.  Yes, I only have one reader.  I can see how many times my posts have been viewed.  I'm thinking about starting a new blog.  One that has more of a theme, i.e. ranting about books/movies/TV shows and generally being a pretentious hipster.

Am I still a hipster if I admit I am one?  Because I do like some things just because they are obscure.  Granted, you need a critical mass of fandom for it to be fun, but things that everyone likes just aren't the same.  So yeah, I'm a tea-drinking, Mumford and Sons (they're actually on the radio) Frank Turner listening, Galen Beckett reading (I liked him better when he was publishing under Mark Anthony, though I get why he went to a pseudonym), German speaking hipster.

That wasn't what I was going to post about.

Well, it was, I think.  One of the things.  Summer is a time of idleness and reflection, a time of setting goals you never achieve, but at least you have enough time to do them if you wanted to.  Usually.

This summer I am taking two summer classes.  One is an online class about language development and its for my minor.  The other is an upper-level queer theory class that involves two weeks in San Francisco and making a documentary film.  And lots and lots of angry readings about the heteropatriarchy.

(My reader knows this already, but since it's on the internet I feel like I have to make this coherent to the general public.)

This summer I am also living off-campus, on my own (i.e. not under adult supervision, because I am an adult, or so I've been told). 

This summer I need to start seriously looking in to grad school applications.  It's not just a distant dream to get me through a depressed phase - it's my actual future that I hold in my own hands, and I'm terrified I might drop it.

This summer I hope to start an etsy shop and sell crocheted My Little Ponies (no, seriously, those things go for $20-$40, and you know what?  Yarn is cheap) in lieu of getting a real job.

See, my original goal for this summer was to get a real job and my driver's license.  Then San Francisco happened, and I put growing up on hold.

So maybe this post is about growing up, and how it's not happening, only it is happening.  I'm not reaching milestones, but I'm learning more about myself - not changing, but becoming more who I am (coughhipstercough yeah, what of it?it's true).  I'm a hipster.  I'm a brony (that's for another post).  I'm queer not a lesbian, and I don't give a damn about dismantling the heteropatriarchy, I'm going to change the world in my own small way by writing books.  If I ever finish the damn things.  At least I'm writing again.

I stopped writing.  And then I started again.  And then I stopped.  It's like when I used to get depressed (used to?) - so depressed that I felt like I would never be happy again.  I went through so many cycles, eventually I realized that I would always feel happy again.  And I would always feel sad again.  And maybe that was the first step in my growing up and leaving behind the adolescent woes, because once I stopped fearing my depression it had less power over me.  Until extenuating circumstances, but even that passed.

I'm going to stop before this gets any more rambly.

So, my dear reader, I hope this was enough to break the monotony of your North Dakota wasteland for a little while, and I will be sure to keep you posted on my future activities in the blogosphere.

Mourn The Living, For They Are The Walking Dead

Claire Frick died today.

You probably don't know who she is.  I never even knew her, even.  I vaguely knew her brother from German class* in  high school, but that's about it.

Cancer's a funny thing.  It's a go-to illness for TV shows that want to add drama (Desperate Housewives, Buffy, probably a bunch I don't watch), so that you would think we would almost be desensitized to it, but it is fact in fiction that so many people get cancer that everyone knows someone who has had it.  There are cancer memoirs and Relay for Life, and people born in July like me always feel awkward when talking about our horoscope.  There is even Seth Rogan's cancer comedy, "50/50," which was an okay movie even though the main character was supposed to be some kind of everyman and thus had no personality, and the movie did a poor job of communicating how ill he was and therefore there was no real sense that he could possibly die.  Though I seem to be the only one of my friends unmoved by that movie.

Why should the death of a stranger affect me more than that of a fictional character?  Neither exist in my life as more than stories.  Yet if I read Claire's story right (the pictures alone will do that), she was not that insipid smiling sick child that the movies are so fond of (The Day After Tomorrow comes to mind).  She had her art, and she had her family, and she was determined to live life even while she was sick, and eventually dying.  I'm sure she had her pissed off and depressed moments that didn't make it into the article, but she got over it.  She was a real person, both in a literal sense and in a storied sense - her story becomes real to the audience, who can then imagine themselves in her place, paradoxically, more easily than with the everyman.

What would I do if I was diagnosed with a fatal cancer?

I would probably write about it.  And make myself some cool hats.

Death's a funny thing. People react in so many different ways.  I do a literary analysis of it.  And compulsively listen to Frank Turner's "Long Live The Queen"  (You'll live to dance another day/You'll just have to dance for the two of us.  Fuck, that song's even about cancer too, isn't it?).

We don't think about death.  Which is funny because in my Psychology of Religion class, I learned that there are some theories (Terror Management Theory) that claim that all human actions are motivated by the awareness of our own death. 
We are going to die ->
Luckily, there is an afterlife ->
Except someone else has a different view of said afterlife, creating a paradox - they can't both be right ->  so, in order to assert our view as the "right" one, we kill everyone else who believes differently.

Or:

We are going to die ->
We create babies or art or contribute to society in some way so that some influence of ourselves remains after we die, as a sort of spiritual immortality.

But short of going out and killing people, how do we live with mortality salience (awareness of our own death)?  It's better than dying.  But then what's the point of living if you know it's going to kill you?  Is art really enough?

I think it's time to move on to "One Foot Before The Other."  Not that it helps.  Except it does.

We're here right now and I guess that has to be enough.

I've taken up rock climbing, and usually can't make it to the top.  It's more than the fact that I feel like my wrists are about to give out; I don't have the mental discipline, the sheer willpower to keep myself going.  I made it to the top today (not for the first time, though that would have made it more dramatic).  Just a few feet from the top, and I almost gave up because it was too hard.  But harder than fighting cancer?  She pushed herself through that.  I can push myself through this.

Cheesy, I know, but that's what I got.

---

*You have to understand that German is not like other subjects.  Maybe it is just the fact that we were the same group of 20 people for four years (and I went to a big school, so that didn't happen anywhere else), but there was a pretty strong group bond - almost like a family.  So when I say her brother was in my German class, I mean that I wasn't exactly friends with him, but he was more than just some random kid who went to my same school.

Time

Time is a funny thing.  It is elastic, like a rubber band, so the same length of it can feel very long or very short.  Seconds can grind slow as hours if you are giving a presentation in front of a class, but you can sit down to talk with a friend you have not seen in far too long, and find the hours flying by like seconds.

So whether this was a long year or a short year, I cannot say.  A year ago today I was on a airplane to Germany, somehow convinced I was going to have the time of my life, despite the frightful doubts in my head that I was in completely the wrong place.  Empty lonely hours stretched long in the Scheissburg, but back at school my life was carried away by a whirlwind until I finally took it back by force.  Then stood staring, wondering what to do with it.

One year ago today I took to the air and I still cannot say if I have landed safely. 

There was a lot this year.  I hit the low point of my life, and pray to whatever gods may be that I never go there again.  I have discovered I am not who I thought I was, and though I no longer have the adolescent urgency to figure it out, I am looking down a lifelong road through self-discovery.

This was a year of redefining - redefining of relationships, goals, desires.  And though I don't feel like I have any more answers than when I started, what I have is, I think, enough to carry me through 2012.

These were my goals for 2011:

1.  To no longer be afraid of things that won't kill me.
2.  To stop making things my problems that aren't.

I think I did okay on those.  Certainly not going to leave them behind, but I think I need some new ones for 2012.

1.  Take control of my own life.
2.  Make new friends and take care of the ones I have.
3.  Show someone a story (a real one, one that matters).  Shouldn't be a problem if no one bugs me about it.
4.  Actually learn to play something on the guitar.
5.  Redefine my relationship with my body.

If you know me and don't know what #5 means, don't ask.  I'll tell you in my own time.

(Why do I post things I don't want to talk about?  I guess I feel more comfortable writing than talking sometimes.  It makes me uncomfortable to talk about the things I blog about, which is why I blog about them instead of talking - like they are still being expressed, more than in a private diary, but I don't have to say anything, and I don't get immediate responses.  Things I need to say but can't.  I forget sometimes that real people I know read this.  Like it doesn't exist in the spoken reality.  Ah well.)

Epiphany

I just realized something today.

Yes, Marburg was the worst experience of my life.  I spent nine months clinically depressed.  I failed so many times to establish relationships that I came scarily close to giving up on anything.

But if I had never gone, I never would have been introduced to the anime Princess Tutu.

In fact, I would probably not have rekindled my love of anime at all.  Thanks to my one friend in that country, anime became a lifeline.

Was it worth nine months of depression?  Probably no.  But is it a damn good show?  Yes.  I can finally say that something good came out of that experience.

Note:  This is not a show for people who do not already have a healthy respect for anime.  The first six episodes seem silly and girly and fluffy and weird.  But if you can watch every episode from beginning to end without shedding a tear, you have no soul.

The Calm After The Storm

FFF.

Fuckin' Folk Fair.

What is Folk Fair?  For those of you who don't know, it is a large culture fair that takes over one of the academic buildings on campus.  Every cultural organization (and then some) gets a room or a table to put up an informational display about their country.  And sell food.  Seriously, people only really come for the food.

This year was particularly exciting because FFF fell on Halloween weekend, which is really weird timing, and also because none of us had ever planned a FFF before.  Nor did any of us live off campus and have a nice private kitchen and a grown-up refrigerator.  Fridge stuffed full of butter.  The worst part is that we grossly overestimated how much we needed.  We would have been more than okay with half the amount.  Fuckin' butter.

It's for cheesecake.  German cheesecake, that I should be allowed near because I ended up destroying two when taking them out of the pans and making one that did not get cooked all the way through (which really wasn't my fault, but I still had a hand in making it).  It is an absolute bitch to make, but after the first bite, you suddenly remember why we go through all this trouble every year for that damn cheesecake, because it is so freakin' good.

And it's over.  One more year done.  I swear I will never do it again, at the same time knowing that I will in fact get suckered into it.  But at least I have another ten months to relax and not think about it.  I can focus on distributing the gear to the fencing team, which shouldn't be too hard except that one girl is MIA and I'm starting to get a little worried.  Then I have to get the team to a tournament, which would be a lot easier if I knew how many were going, but they have not responded to at least a dozen emails.  Like herding canaries.

I have an exam on Monday, and an exam on Tuesday, and a research paper I should probably get started on, I still have no idea what I'm going to do for NaNoWriMo, and I'm likely going to catch my roommate's cold tomorrow.  Yeah.  Now that FFF is done, I can totally relax.  At least I don't have to bake anything.

Well, I'm Still Alive

Life has just been rushing by so fast, I hardly have time to sit down and catch my breath.  Classes have started up, and I just dropped a class for the first time.  Yay!  Semantics and Pragmatics is exactly as dry and pointless as it sounds.  So now I can concentrate on "Why the hell am I taking Racquetball?"  and "Why the hell am I reading these pretentious artsy plays?"

There's a temporary lull, just before all the orgs start up.  Since I dropped English, I might do German Club after all (might, mind you).  But since I'm coaching fencing, and technically have some sort of officer position in Outloud (the LGBTQA oh screw political correctness, the gay group on campus), I really don't want to stretch myself too thin like I did last fall. 

Fortunately, drama has so far been kept at a minimum.  There is a minor issue with a Jesus-freak who is in and out of the closet like a jack-in-the-box, but he is not my problem, and I will not let him become my problem.  I have two resolutions for this year.  One is to not make things my problem that aren't, because it doesn't help and just stresses me out.  The other is to stop being afraid of things that won't kill me, namely (I finally thought of name, aren't I special) page fright.

I haven't been writing a lot lately.  I don't know why.  I don't really feel inspired.  To keep in shape, I've been writing a page a day of whatever comes into my head (and no, you can't see any, yes that means you).  Perhaps if I feel daring I might post some of the better samples.  Some of them seem to be connected, leading to intriguing possibilities.  I'll probably have something ready to go for NaNoWriMo in November.  It's like my normal mood swings (not my 8-month depressive stint) where I know I'll swing back eventually. Sooner or later another story will come.

Was it all a dream?

I just spent five months in Germany.

In a few short hours, my family is going to come pick me up, we're going to do some touristing and meet up with relatives, and then it's back home for the summer.  Three long lazy months later, back to college.  Good old normal college life, with friends and fun classes and things happening.

The past semester is a blur.  I feel like I just got here, and just started figuring things out and feeling comfortable with the language and meeting people and just getting myself organized.  It feels like only a week or so ago that our jetlagged group was dragged down to the city center to register.  We were all so confused and tired and had so much paperwork thron at us, while starting our class of people who all already knew each other.  Not to mention buying food, cooking food, buying cooking implements, laundry detergent, etc., etc. 

And now it's over.  Just like that.  Like a dream.  A break from reality that does not quite make sense, but you simply accept it.  That seems to go on forever until suddenly it is over.  And once it is over, it is relegated to some dusy corner of memory with all the other odd but useless bits.  Because none of it ever actually happened. 

I could wake up in my bed at home and find that the whole past year never happened, that I need to get ready for fall semester of sophomore year, and that there is still time to do things differently.  How, I am not sure.  Switch my program, make it a full year in Austria.  Spend less time with certain people.  Or maybe more time - maybe if I had been more careful, none of it would have happened (I have not posted anything here about the shitstorm of last semester.  Just think Rent without the AIDS.  Well, metaphorical AIDS.  And no musical numbers either.)

Only time doesn't work like that.  In the words of Die Aertzte "Du hast nur dies eine Leben/Wenn's vorbei ist, ist's vorbei."  You just have this one life, and when it's passed, then it is past.  Memories stack up on each other, and there is no way to go back and change them. Everything is forever.

Yes, I did have sort of a mental crisis here.  A few of them actually.

But I got better.

That's another funny thing.  I got better just as I am about to leave, even though I don't know why.  Probably just positive attitude change from the prospect of seeing my family again.  After all, this place and time caused me so many problems, it's not like it would turn around and fix any for me, would it?

It is a dream because I don't feel any different upon waking.  Real life changes you.  Dreams don't. 

Getting a bit wishy-washy here, so I'll post again when I figure out what I'm actually trying to say.

The Beginning of the End

I have just spent the last five months studying in Germany.  And there you go, gushing about how jealous you are, and how it was the time of my life, and did I do a ton of travelling, and my German must be so much better now.  No. 

This semester has been the worst five months of my life, but I am through bitching about it.  I am not allowed to think about wasted time.  I am going to make this into a positive experience. Somehow.

Things I learned in Germany:

1.  German is not cool when everyone speaks it.
2.  Only Americans think German is cool.
3.  I still do not like being a tourist.
4.  It is no easier making friends abroad than at home.
5.  I have not left high school behind me as thoroughly as I thought.
6.  It sucks when people die.
7.  Stuffed animals are necessary for psychological well-being.
8.  I need people. 
9.  Written translation work is fun.  Speaking is not.
10.  I have serious psychological issues that will one day need to be dealt with.
11.  Grown-ups are useless.
12.  I like trains.
13.  Cooking is only fun if there is someone to eat with.
14.  I do not like small towns.
15.  I cannot go five months without peanut butter; In fact, I can't go one month.
16. The point of travel is not where you go, but who you're with.
17.  If you leave your cabinet unlocked, expect your bread to be stolen.
18.  The internet is full of things - like the first three seasons of Digimon on youtube. 
19.  Being a foreigner sucks.
20.  I still like anime.
21.  Expecting one event to solve all your problems is a bad idea.
22.  When deciding where to spend a significant portion of one's life, go by more criteria than just what looks pretty.

Deconstructions

I predict that within 10 years, Hollywood will have made a movie about Osama bin Laden's death.  It makes a great story, after all.  Those rugged, underdog, freedom-loving Americans taking down that evil warlord.

And now for something (almost) completely different.

We know the formulas.  We know what to expect from your typical action movie, romantic comedy, superhero movie, or fairy tale.  That is why "historical" based movies (as well as movies that come from books, or in fact any other source material) suffer so badly.  They have to be shoehorned into the mold, often distorted beyond recognition.

However, there has been a recent trend among moviemakers and novel writers of deconstructing the familiar motifs.  With varying degrees of success.  Superhero stories with a sympathetic villain, for instance.  Or fractured fairy tales.  These deconstructions fall into three types.

1)  Satirical deconstruction, in which the story is written using the formula in order to make fun of itself.  Slapstick comedy.

2)  Brutal Deconstruction, in which the story is shown to have a darker, often gorier side.  Keyword, ick.

3)  Practical Deconstruction, in which the story is played straight, but tries to act more realistic.  Focus on characters.

And if you don't want to take my word for it, I have a long list of examples.

The main culprits for the formula/deconstruction trap are variants of the Hero's Journey - namely, Superheroes, Fairy Tales, and fantasy literature.  For instance, a satirical deconstruction of the superhero genre would be...well take your pick.  I have not seen "Kick-Ass," but from the trailers I believe it one of these.  What I am familiar with is the film "Mystery Men."  A ragtag group of heroes with some awkward superpowers defeat a not very memorable villain.  Played for laughs.

A brutal deconstruction, on the other hand, is Watchmen, both the film and the graphic novel. No superpowers, just the silly costumes and crime-fighting.  The characters are set along a scale of pathetic idealist to villain who kind of has a point.

The closest thing to a practical deconstruction that I am familiar with is "The Incredibles."  Yes, it follows the typical superhero pattern, but it has a few deconstructive elements.  It might almost be considered a family drama. 

Now for Fairy Tales.  You know what I'm going to say.  Yep.  Shrek (Note that "Fairy Tale" in this sense is more of the Disneyfied version, rather than actual folk legends).  In fact, Shrek was created by a disgruntled former Disney employee and is essentially a declaration of war on the entire Disney franchise.  Need I say more?

A brutal deconstruction is, without a doubt, Gregory Maguire.  Author of Wicked.  No, not the musical - that got re-Disneyfied until it wasn't sure what it was supposed to be anymore and sucked.  Good music, though. 

A practical deconstruction is harder to pin down.  I have not seen "Enchanted," so cannot offer any opinion on that.  Perhaps "Ever After."  She marries the prince after talking and having an actual relationship with him, and becomes a princess to actually take care of the people in the kingdom.

And of course my passion, fantasy.  You may have gathered by now that as much as I love this genre, I love to hate it as well. 

Terry Pratchett is definitely the iconic satirical deconstructor.  I have only read one of his books, so I don't have much to say about it, but there isn't really that much to say.

Brutal deconstructions of fantasy have been gaining in popularity.  Terry Goodkind was the first one I have been aware of.  Before he went all crazy anti-socialist and still thought he was writing a fantasy epic.  Very...detailed battle scenes.  Other writers such as Mercedes Lackey sometimes attempt to do this, and heap misfortune and trauma upon their characters, but somehow at the end, all the important people get to ride away on their pretty white horse with seemingly no lasting psychological harm.  This is a case of Failed Deconstruction.

My very favorite books ever - The Last Rune series, by Mark Anthony - is a practical deconstruction of fantasy.  In fact, it is hardly a deconstruction at all.  The story is played completely straight, with the ordinary protagonist from the Real World becoming the prophecized Hero who has to save the Pseudo-Medieval European Fantasyland from a Dark Lord.  The reasons that this series is not cliche garbage are many and subtle, so I will only mention one:  Anthony treats his characters like real people.  All of them.  He also (okay, two) strikes a very delicate balance between "Good always wins," and "The world sucks."

What did any of this have to do with bin Laden? 

The key to a practical deconstruction is making the story realistic, which also has the effect of making the story complex.  But complex stories don't make money.  When we go see a movie for an afternoon's entertainment, we want to be entertained.  We don't want to think.  That is why formulas are so useful.  The audience already knows what is going to happen and can enjoy the movie without any major worries. 

Bin Laden's death changes nothing, and I don't have to know anything about politics to be certain of that.  Al-Qaeda is not going to fall apart like the army of orcs at the end of Lord of the Rings.  But America is so locked into our ideals/formulas/tropes/narratives that we fail to realize that.  Real life is a messy and boring deconstruction of fiction that nobody wants to read.

On Sickness and On Health

Call me crazy, but when one has the leisure to do nothing, plenty of soup, tea, and instant noodles, and internet or television access, being sick can actually be a rather pleasant experience.  Soothing, in fact.  If you are pushing yourself beyond your limits, sooner or later your body will step in and say:  Enough is enough.  You need to take a break.  And it will impose idleness on you through a complete lack of will to do anything productive.

I find it quite unfair that in our society, taking a day off because of stress is frowned upon, unless there is a tangible emergency or if one is physically ill.  After all, if one can be physically ill for a few days, but get better after lots of rest and fluids, why can't one be mentally ill for a few days and take a few days off to get over that?  I suppose it comes down to American (or perhaps not exclusively American) cynicism - if you claim to be depressed, you mght be faking, but if you claim to have a cold, I can see the snot coming out of your nose.  Also, it's contagious, and you are not wanted in your workplace or school.

Honestly, if not for the fact that I was sick, spending a day eating instant noodles and watching old cartoons would make me bored out of my mind.  I would also feel guilty about doing that instead of something productive like reading the book for my class, or writing one of the papers, or planning what I'm going to do next semester/the rest of my life.

When you come right down to it, sickness is justified misery, and I find the worst part of misery is the guilt.  People in my situations simply are not allowed to be miserable.

On a last note, being sick makes you appreciate being healthy and being able to function.  This earthly flesh is in fact a delicate instrument, and one needs to take care of it.  It could so easily go wrong.  But it hasn't.  This is probably the easiest problem to solve in anyone's life.  You know what to do, and it works every time. 

Appreciate the simple problems in life.

Love

Everything there is to say about love has already been said.  However, I have not said everything I have to say.

Love is that feeling you get when someone looks at you, merely looks at you and recognizes you, and you feel like you're going to throw up or burst into tears or simply explode, because how dare they give you the hope of an actual relationship.  How dare you actually even think of one.  You would be lucky enough to become mere passing acquaintances - any deeper of a relationship, and you would likely discover that this person is not nearly so wonderful as you imagine them to be, or worse, they would discover that you are nothing special after all.

Some people believe that we are all half-people searching for our other half so that we can become whole.  I don't buy that.  The place in my heart that hurts is not a lack, not a hole, not some kind of void that needs to be filled.  It is a promise, no, less than a promise.  It is a potential.  A possibility.  That even though I am a whole person now, I might still be able to join with another person and make my life even more wonderful than it is now.  I don't need another person in order to live a happy and fulfilling life. 

That doesn't mean it never hurts.  Considering I equate love with nausea, it most definitely hurts.  And I'm sick of this awkward dance of trying to spend more time with a person while not letting them know what effect their presence has on you.  I'm apparently good at hiding my feelings.  It makes me wonder:  It seems like we're never on the receiving end.  But what if we are and we just don't know?  And how would you react if you found out someone you hardly knew felt nauseous around you?

Sometimes I wish that we were birds who had an inborn mating dance.  It would be so much simpler instead of trying to comply to unspoken rules learned from the media and the behavior of acquaintances.  For instance, it is not socially acceptable to ask someone the second time you meet them:  "Are you gay?  I think I might have a crush on you, but I'd like to be certain first.  And if you want to be just friends, that's fine too, mostly I'd just like to know."  Or:  "You're really pretty.  And I'd probably be killed in your country for saying that."  Or:  "I know you're gay and single, and I don't know much else about you, but let's go out and see what happens, because you look like you might be interesting."

Oh yes, I have extra risk when professing my love.  If you are straight, you have a 90% the other person will at least consider going out with you.  If you aren't, there's also a good chance that your object of affection will be squicked out at worst, accepting but emotionally unable to reciprocate at best.  Plus you have to go through the extra step of finding out if a person might potentially not be straight, instead of simply being able to see a gender.

Essentially, this post boils down to:  Why are there so many interesting straight girls?  Why is it so hard to tell straight girls from gay ones?  Why does society and the media try to tell you that a lover is a necessity in life?  Why do I want to be in love?  And why does being in love have to be so uncomfortable?

Right now I have the excuse that I'm only here temporarily to keep myself from investing my emotions too deeply, but once I get home it will be only my fear holding me back.

A Senseless, Tragic Accident

http://www.startribune.com/local/south/118025164.html

I knew that kid.

And now he's dead.

I found out over a Facebook message, of all things.  His mother must have sent out a message to all of his Facebook friends, a brief, generic message telling that he died in a car crash.  A freaking car crash.  In fiction, a car crash is a euphemism for "killed by plot."  You forget that since it is used as a generic cause of death, that it really does happen a lot to people.  Sometimes people you know. 

I'm sure there's a plot in here somewhere, though.  I met him in high school.  In a film club that a mutual friend had started, and even though I had no particular interest in film, he needed a certain number of people to keep the club going, I liked the people there, and I had no better way to spend a Friday afternoon.

I think we first started talking when I was reading Stephan King's Dark Tower series.  (Of course everything comes down to books in my life.) He thought they were the best thing ever.  I thought they were good, but kind of a mindscrew.  I gave him a copy of King's Insomnia for his seventeenth birthday. 

And my senior year of high school, his junior year, I was not so dense as to miss the fact that he sort of indirectly asked me to prom.  But I was dumb enough to accept.  I brought my best female friend along, because it wasn't like a date or anything, I didn't like him that way...and I think I forgot to make that quite clear.  But hey, prom is an important plot point in any high school drama, and I was intrigued by the image of doing something so normal as going to plot with a boy (and a girl).  I wore a dress that night for the first time in about 12 years.  And even though I had probably one of the sweetest, most gentlemanly prom-boys (not a date) ever, I realized that night that I would never be able to like him as he (might have) liked me.  He was a nice boy, but he was still a boy, with a boy's sense of humor and a boy's taste in literature, and we didn't really have much in common anyway.  Nothing about him even struck me as particularly interesting, though admittedly I was wary of getting too close to him.  But his friends seemed to like him, and when I say he was nice, I'm not just searching for a generic, positive adjective; he really was one of those people that really tried to be polite and never really acted like a jerk.

So then I graduated, and we went on with our respective lives.  I thought of him only occasionally, mostly as a stepping-stone in my coming out story.  There was a squirmy feeling of unresolved issues, that I never really told him I didn't like him back, because I was not quite sure that he really liked me as such.  And going along with that, that I never came out with him.  That I more or less went to prom with him under false pretenses.  I felt that I had used him.  But such is life, and you move on until the pain is nearly forgotten, and you never see these people again, except perhaps at a reunion, or by mystical accident.

But not even that will happen.  I'll never be able to explain any of this to him.  That brings me no relief.  The only relieved feelings I have that I might feel guilty about are because I am in Germany and don't have to feel obligated to go to the funeral, to mingle with his relatives, and his friends who I vaguely knew in high school.  People who feel a greater absence for his loss than I do. 

It's strange.  When someone close to you dies, you go through the grieving process, that's perfectly understandable.  But when someone dies who wasn't particularly close to you but you knew beyond merely a face and a name, you don't know how you're supposed to feel.  Or you feel guilty because you aren't sad enough.  There's just shock, and the guilty relief at surviving this round, but you're still shaken by how close it was.  And of course life/death doesn't work like that, but emotions don't know that.

Plot:  A lesbian goes to prom with a boy who dies two years later.  What a stupid story.  I've put up with my Author's inanity thus far, but he really has a lot to answer for now.