Well, whatever, about the Mountain Affair thing and all the offenses it caused. I had so much fun tonight. I have never enjoyed playing music in public like I did in the packed-out chapel, and while I could have used some money, I actually did gain something more worthwhile than a win - a good performance experience. Not my best technically, but man, I had a good time, and I've never been able to truly say that before.
Most of it was due to the atmosphere before the show and backstage. When all the contestants were downstairs in the choir room waiting to come up, people were singing oldies, cracking jokes, and joining in with "Heart and Soul" on the piano.
I looked around me and thought how great it was to be with these folk who were performing for any number of reasons, competing against each other but not seeming to care about that fact. It's been a long time since I've had that.
The other thing is that I have a deep fear of performing. It's always deadly serious, which is a problem for me, because I tend to laugh at almost everything. I have a senior recital coming up in three weeks and while that thought paralyzed me a few days ago, I'm feeling pretty good about it now. It's not going to be the same - the chapel won't be one-tenth as full as tonight - but I can get excited about it.
Oh! Something else exciting, also geeky, but hey, that's me. I found a book forum online with all sorts of folk who are widely read. They can help you find books you've forgotten the title of, or talk each other's head off about favorite authors, or whatever. You have to sign up (free) and then check out the community forums and booksleuth, but man, to a book addict it's a great place to hang out. I really don't have time for this.
Found a test/game/quiz whatever thingie. I almost lost, got in just under the wire.
Also, yesterday I had a traumatic experience with one of my teachers. "They" bluntly told me things I didn't want to hear about myself, about the way I've gone about my education these past years, in an effort to help me mend my ways for this last stretch, and I tried to explain how I wasn't as guilty as they were saying, and I got really upset, and I left and cried a few angry and self-pitying tears behind a building in the sun.
Then God poked my brain with his finger again and I remembered that just the day before I had been talking with someone about our human need to have other people point out our faults to us (because we don't see them clearly ourselves), and how I wanted to be in relationships where Christians were willing to do that for each other. And here I had one such relationship. Talk about humiliation. I felt about four years old, and knew that that was exactly what I should feel like. I tried to talk myself out of being quite crushed by that knowledge by saying that my goals and the teacher's goals have never been and never will be the same, but that didn't do much good, because the particular fault in me "they" had smacked me with is really something that'll screw me over in whatever is important to me, not only this specific academic setting.
The thing is, I know that this teacher has tried to tell me this before, but I never would listen when "they" tried to do it encouragingly. It took plain bluntness at a vulnerable moment before I'd listen. And now I have to change. Argh!
Night before last I dreamed that I was chasing Eb with a watergun through the Galleria in Birmingham - a huge mall - and I caught up with him when he was in line to buy a corndog and I kicked him to the ground and soaked him with my rapid squirt-fire, thereby eliminating him from the Assassins game. This was the second dream I had about Eb and Assassins, and got so much fun out dreaming about it, even though I only had one real chance of actually killing him that I lost through a few seconds' misjudgement as to which side of Sanderson he was going to come out behind. Eb, you run fast and hide well. Congrats. I hope you win.
I found out last night before I went to bed that someone squealed and he knew I was contracted on him, so all the fun went out of it for me, but I got shot myself today anyway, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I'm just proud to have lasted this long. Eb, I don't hope you win enough to tell you who shot me.
Last night I dreamed that I was Dolly Parton.
I was a hairstylist and was trying to attract a new clientele with the punk rock crowd, so I was putting all this wax into this blond guy's dreads, trying to make them stand just so, and then I realized I needed to quit talking like a Southern bimbo (even though I was a Southern bimbo) if I wanted him to feel comfortable so I started throwing divers profanities and crude colloquialisms into my sentences and he ended up liking his hair so much he told me he'd bring in all his friends.
It was a horrifying dream. I wish all of you would be cursed with it, so you too would know what it is like to have Dolly Parton's body and personality and like it while you're asleep. This is totally Emily's Fault, for having me over to her house to watch Steel Magnolias. I told you it was a nice movie, haha.
My favorite recent dream involved President Nielson coming over to my house. He had a large fixture on the top of his head that looked like a yard-long mascara brush, and it had all this black gunk on it. For some reason this seemed rational enough; but I was very nervous about him wearing it inside my apartment, because I was afraid it was going to get on my furniture. I kept telling him to be careful but he started goofing off and then stood up and booty danced and the mascara got all over my ceiling, which made me furious, because I knew that I'd have to pay the school a fine for the damage to my apartment and while Prez Nielson may have money to deal with something like that, I sure don't, and I thought it pretty darn inconsiderate of him to do that to me.
(I forgive you, Dr. Nielson. I'm sure you would pay for it if you actually got mascara all over my apartment.)
Man, I have no idea where that one came from.
This morning, at about 6-something a.m., I will become twenty-four years old as Americans count life.
One thing I will always remember this year for is my discovery of depersonalization. That quote from Ogden Nash, over there to the right, has haunted me since I found it at age thirteen because the full poem hints at something that I have experienced and fear greatly. I never could find anyone who knew what the hell I was talking about (strong word completely intentional here) when I tried to explain it to them, until this year. Someone knew. They gave it a name for me, and told me where to find out more about it. Here.
I don't want to weird anyone out with this stuff; I will say that this article presents people that are affected more constantly with the phenomenon than I am. With me, it's more like an asthma attack, every now and then - sometimes I see it coming, sometimes it hits out of the blue. But the relief I had in finding out that other people actually have been through what I'm talking about is the greatest gift I've gotten in a long time - enough to get me over my irrational fear that people are going to mock me about it if I make it public, because if there's anyone who reads this who also thought they were the only one, I want to let them know that they're not.
I've had a good year. God has given me things that I'm not sure how to handle yet, but am extremely grateful for. Great roommates that, unintentionally, have helped me to see my inner grossness; the book of Joel that has made me think about my parents' problems in a new way, even though hoping is scarier than dull hopelessness; time and love to spend on people that I can't even relate to anymore because their God is no longer the same as mine; and amazingly beautiful things to see, natural and man-made both.
Spring break started with a bang and ended with a fizz. Last Friday night I drove down to Atlanta with Asha Garretson, Rebekah Meador, and Stephane Stewart - the resulting conversation with this unlikely group of four people (which shall likely never be grouped together again) was good. Went to a rehearsal. Went to a reception. Had nice chicken and some champagne (not a bad way to start break.) Anyway, Mark and Beth Bogardus Higgins are married, and it was nice.
That night I went to see Camille Saint-Saens' "Organ" Symphony played by the Atlanta Symphony. I honestly pity everyone in the world who is not completely swept off their feet by this amazing work. I have loved it ever since I can remember - my dad put speakers into our ceilings even when we were really poor, and I would listen enraptured. Hearing it live for the first time made me cry in public for the duration of the piece. I was bowled over.
So back to Chattanooga for a week of cleaning and stripping floors with Rod Jackson, alternating with hours of working on my SIP (that's where the Wolterstorff comes in), not a very restful break, but it was nice and fizzy at the end 'cause I went and stayed with Emily and we drank nice things and watched nice movies.
The word "nice" used to mean "loose." Hmmmm.
Am entirely happy because of a beautiful new word coined by the mother of a friend. Not only because it is fitting, like unto apples of gold in settings of silver, but it also reminds me that filthy rags is all my "craptice" ever amounts to anyway.
So hooray! It really doesn't matter. We live, we laugh, we love, we doubt, we wrong, we fail, but it is okay, because we're not the point anymore - at least not from our perspective. That place of honor has been someone else's the whole time, and I am free, free, free when I remember that! Oh God, it's good to know that!
He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.
Wow, three exclamation marks in one entry. I ought to be ashamed - but no, not for this. There are times when I just can't help grinning foolishly over being loved. I've got the face of a complete idiot on right now, and even the midnight hours of inadequate studying ahead can't touch where it's coming from.