Gloom!

I love life so much. Sometimes, I find it hard to think it could get any better...
and then I stumble across something like this card game.




Yes, my friends, this looks-like-a-card-game-Edward-Gorey-would-create-play-and-love, really does exist! Better yet, you win by having the most morbidly tragic life! Best yet, I own it!

Found: Charles Addams sketches

I come home from school ready to unpack,
but complications have made it so I am just unpacking/cleaning now.
Fumbling and stumbling around my room I came across a sheet or two of sketches I once found stuck in a Charles Addams book when I used to work in the library. It looks like some child (I'm hoping who is gifted with a dark sense of humor) sketched his/her favorite characters and accidentally left them in the book.
Sad for them.
Happy-joy days for me!
The sketches are so marvelous/precious that I cut them out and pasted them to my journal.
I am just hoping that this marvelous stranger-person knows about Edward Gorey. Maybe it should be my life's quest to find out...

All of this reminds me: scheduled to debut on Broadway next spring is an Addams Family musical. I think I'm going to have a hernia I'm so excited!

I'm pretending to study for a test...

Today as I was walking through the heart of the of the campus, I heard a train whistle (not uncommon for the city of Sherman) and smiled, because I absolutely adore trains. But then, it only got better, because I heard another train which harmonized simultaneously with the first. I can't tell you how much I loved that...

Not too long ago, a hailstorm blew through this city. It pelted my car and caused the jaunty fissure in my windshield to climb down my windshield even further. The crack now comes down to eye level, and when the sun hits my windshield, a rainbow of colors sprout around the crack and play with my left eye. I get the most unusual sensation when it hits my eye.

If I have learned anything this semester, it is that you can basically relate anything back to The Lunar Society of the 18th century. Your first born? --Yes it can be related to the society. The fungus that is growing on your coffee cup that you didn't wash out? --It can be related!

Also, on a slightly my-soul-died-yesterday note: I decided not to double major, and thus made my double English major my minor. Oh my bleeding soul! On a brighter note, I will have so much more liberty to dabble in all sorts of other classes outside the realm of English and Communications...

This point in time.

I could listen to "Sister Winter" by Sufjan Stevens anytime of the year, really.
Especially when I am researching the pertinence of dramatic landscapes and nature to Gothic literature.
(Which I started right after my sister cut off quite a bit of my hair this afternoon. She cut it off in the backyard for the effect of the warm sun (and a escape from cleaning up all the cut hair). I must say, the wind did provide a dramatic effect as I watched all my chopped hair blow down to the ground in dark clumps).
Fortunately/unfortunately, my research for the Gothic-literature paper has been practically halted, because I was a bit over-eager to sign up for everything and anything extra-curricular this semester.
Naturally, one of those thiiinnngs was the school play (Peer Gynt).
Of which, I have two comments (you decide which is the positive and which is the negative comment):
1) I get/have to climb on scaffolding throughout the whole play.
2) I get/have to wear a poncho throughout the whole play.

I've had this blog-tag open for way too long - partly proof that I have so much to say and yet nothing at all. I need to be more introspective in general.
I hate taking my thoughts out on inanimate objects.

My Birthday(s)

I'm not really cynical at all...except when it comes to my birthday.
It was my birthday the other day.
I love to make big deals out of other people's birthdays, but I don't with mine (yes, I am hypocritical, shut up). I really don't.
In fact, I think I take morbid pleasure out of hiding the fact that its my birthday. I don't mention it or bring it up. That's so awkward anyway - "oh speaking of nothing remotely related, it's my birthday." And so, I'm certainly not going to tell them on my birthday that it's my birthday (catching them on the day they forgot is terribly embarrassing and cruel). And like hell I'm going to bring it up days in days prior. When I do, I feel like I'm panhandling people out of birthday blessings and presents. And because of a lover's quarrel with facebook, I refuse to have my birthday posted. I'm not one to shy away from the spotlight, but the birthday spotlight makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable - - crooked-smile, feeling-you-get-when-you-just-realized-your-fly-is-unzipped-in-a-room-full-of-people-and-you-just-want-to-get-out-of-there-to-fix-the-problem kind of uncomfortable.
Its a day just like any other. Being a week before the grandeur of Christmas, and during the finals-detox week, its easy for my birthday to slip the memory. My birthday goes by quietly and I like it.
This is not a pity party post.
My birthday is not a chance for a cruel game to see who and who doesn't remember to give me a shout out. Saying "happy birthday" is not a requirement to be my friend.
Like I said, I think I take a morbid fancy to keeping my birthday quiet. I like walking around approaching it as a typical day, the whir and the buzz of everyone around me carrying out their typical day, but always in the back of my mind I think "It's my birthday." It creates an odd little twist to the day.
I think part of the reason I really loathe making any kind of deal out of my birthday is that past birthdays have been nothing worth getting out the embossing gun and scrapbooking about. Grandpa's funeral. Stomach flu. Final projects/tests/papers. And birthday parties. Gaaaaah, birthday parties. I love me some birthday parties......if I'm an attendee. Hosting one is basically writing your own death warrant. I adore small parties of close friends laughing and carrying on. But who, then, gets classified as a close friend? And if its an intimate party, does everyone actually get along with everyone else? And if we don't try to fool ourselves, no one acts older than five; we still pout and hold grudges when we don't get invited. I love parties, and I'd love to have one, but my bubbly optimism runs dry right before I can get the invitations out.
I can't tell if this came across as a pathetically depressing post. My birthdays never do depress me. I can do *anything I want* in the name of my birthday, including nothing at all. This liberation is priceless.

Something I have to share.

Something I wrote in my journal a couple days ago that I want to share. It is long, but I really want to share it. This post is the exception to my mostly-frivolous musings.

I remember her words so perfectly.
Under the silent, silver, sparkling stars her silent frame shook. The tears falling down her soft face was visible proof that deep within her aged body was a heart wrenched and aching from fear and pain.
And oh how it makes me cry to recall her words, remember her honest eyes and shaking limbs. It had been one week from the day, not 15 feet away from the place she rests her head under the moon and calls home.

She was taken and she was raped.

This precious child of God who loves to tell others all about the prophet Isaiah. This precious woman who's prayers are humbly heartfelt. This precious human being who could make a whole crowd laugh at her funny antics and jokes.

She was taken and she was raped.

How it must hurt for her to recall and to retell us this story.
But most of all, of all the pain, none caused her more grief than what her lover must think when he would come back and find out.
Oh how it makes me cry to remember her say, "What scared me the most - even more than the men raping me - was what he would think when he found out another man touched me. I was so afraid he wouldn't love me anymore. That's what I was most worried about. That he wouldn't love me no more."
But he came back.
He found her.

He loved her no less than ever before.

I'm sure he cradled her in his arms, wrapping his warm love around her wounded heart. I'm sure he spoke to her soul with kindness in his eyes and empathy in his voice. I'm sure he found her no less beautiful than when he had left her to go to work.
I can not understand this particular torment of rape that haunts her sleep. I hope to God I never do. But deep in her sad story I find myself. Sometimes I feel that my body, heart, soul and mind have been taken and molested by sin. While I have the free will to resist (unlike my dear friend), I am left broken and grief-filled. Sin is horrifying, tormenting and destructive. And when I come to my Lover - when I come to Jesus - my biggest fear is that he will not love me. How could he? Sin hurts and scares me, but not in comparison to how I'm frightened to come to my Savior touched by another.
But like a lover who's love knows no limits, he cradles me in his arms. He stills my aching heart and lifts up my head. His forgiveness is freely given as he picks up the pieces of my fractured soul. He asks nothing of me, but to come to him and lay my burdens at his feet. What was I frightened of? He wants me only to trust that he can speak to my heart with compassion, mercy and love. Together we triumph.
I will not forget my friend or her story which so touches my own. After it all, her and her lover triumphed over all the pain. Their love grew and she remains constantly blessing others with her testimony and truth of the gospel. If I could only bless others in a fraction of the ways she has blessed me...