Looking for a job? Pray about it.
Trying to decide which school to go to? Pray about it.
Gallbladder problems? Make sure to pray about it.

I haven’t been religious since I went to college, and it’s been a huge source of contention between my mom and I. Somehow, my newly appointed Bishop father either respects my choices or doesn’t seem to mind that much, but my mom is in a kind of denial that ebbs and flows like the shores of Galilea.

One second she’ll be laughing at some anti-religious joke Scott or I tell and the next she’ll be yelling about not going to church on Easter Sunday.

But this praying thing has suddenly become consistent and worrisome. Prayer is such an integral part of religion, and, thus, an integral part of agnosticism. In that, I don’t do it. It seems like telling me to pray as though it’s a natural, continual thing I do is a regression of sorts. Some sort of disturbing optimism on her part that I don’t want to encourage.

Then again, I usually just say “I will” and leave it at that.

(I wonder if I could teach Mark and Gandolfini (my dearly beloved guinea pigs) how to pray…)

It all started with Moby Dick. That book is awesome. I love the first chapters that describe Ishmael’s new romance with Queequeg, cuddling with tattoos in hotel rooms on their first night together. And it only goes up from there. Yes, it’s a slow, tedious climb, but it’s one of those books that you can only really appreciate after you’ve read it the first time. Struggle through those long chapters describing the leviathan’s blow hole and the white of Moby Dick’s skin and you’ll finally realize just how invested and wrapped up in the prose you’ve gotten. Everything around you starts to beg to be described in the detail Melville devotes of the the whale.

Because it’s one of those books that you have more fun thinking about than actually reading, it makes sense that the aftermath of Moby Dick is obsession-inducing.

First, there’s this guy. Matt Kish has devoted the last two years to creating a drawing for every page of Melville’s novel. He uses found paper (which is cool) to explore all sorts of themes from the novel that may get lost in a less thorough analysis. My favorite pieces he does are tribal style ink drawings of The Whale by itself. Like this one:

Check out his blog and the book that he’s releasing soon.

Moby Dick led me to The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare, which I thought would be more about whales and whale behavior but was mostly about the history of whaling in the U.S. and U.K. At first I was disappointed that the book was so violent, rather than the peaceful, slow whale world I envision. But it turns out the history of whaling is really interesting and really relevant.

Take Sarah Vowell’s new history of Hawaiin colonization, Unfamiliar Fishes. Whaling is what led many American sailors to Hawaii as a nice stop-over point to get plate lunch and hookers. Which, along with white missionaries, contributed a whole lot to Polynesian culture as we know it.

Plus, I found out about scrimshaw. To keep sailors entertained, they would distribute whale teeth and some other bones to engrave.

I know, I know. Those teeth belong in the whale’s mouth. It’s really disgusting that humans, with their superior technology, were preying on giant sea cows. But look how cool those are!

Also, some of the most beautiful paintings of the 17th/18th century are horrible displays of whaling bloodshed.

I can’t figure out what it is about whaling that is so interesting and appealing (visually) to me. Perhaps it is the mixture of something so regal and beautiful (the whale itself) with the crude, presumptuous, arrogant sailors and their harpoons. Maybe it’s the same reason I love horror films so much. The things I find most repellent are the things that I want to figure out, conquer.

Here are some things I like lately:

Remember how I said I didn’t really like babies? I love this baby! She’s a hot mess with a squidgy face who loves alcohol and … what look to be beans? She seems like a real party.

I watched all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire slayer in a few short months. After watching the last episode I immediately requested the comics at the library. I haven’t been this obsessed since X-files. Evil Willow, where have you been my whole life?? Well, you were always on the WB/UPN, channels even my 12-year-old self mistakenly disregarded. My bad.

I’ve been trying to get better at drawing lately. I have a pretty good sense of space, if I do say so myself, it’s just a matter of practice and finding some ounce of creativity I might have. I doubt anything is going to come of it, but I’ve really been into this guy’s art. Matt Phalon works on children’s books and I think his style is simple and expressive.

Scott and I went to DC a few weeks ago and saw cherry blossoms, political mumbo-jumbo, and Spike from Top Chef. It quickly became one of my favorite cities. So clean and young with a nice sense of bright-eyed optimism.

I finally got accepted into a school and am going to be getting my PhD in American Studies from the University of Utah. Currently planning my schedule out and trying to decide to take an experimental literature course or a course on 19th century British portrayal of animals. I’m very excited. In the meantime…

I’m still walking dogs.

And since everyone knows the plot I want to focus on the religious details in the novel that I found really fascinating. Yes, Jane Eyre is primarily a romance with underpinnings of the importance of independence in a relationship, but underneath it all is a strong religious undertone. And it seemed to me to be a slightly anti-religious undertone. Not that Jane is anti-spirituality, but one of the consequences of being an independent woman is finding your own way within organized religion, too. She’s interested in what is right and moral, she’s even interested in securing her place in Heaven, but she never wants to achieve that through following a certain mode of Christianity. Her salvation is never dependent on rituals and rules she must follow. Instead, she cuts her own path that she then rigidly obeys.

This theme is first introduced in the boarding school segments. Because of their instructor’s unwieldy adherence to Christian rules and rituals, the girls are essentially starved and humiliated. Religion offers a strict guideline that the headmaster cannot deviate from, despite it being, clearly, the wrong approach. Jane never abandons proprietary religious rules completely, but she does examine them from her own perspective and deems whether they are appropriate for her specific situation. I loved this in the scenes with St. John (who is THE WORST! I hate that guy!) when she struggles to hold her own in arguments with such a persuasive guy. Ultimately, she sticks to her guns. Stick to your guns, not to your religion. That’s the most interesting theme of this book, I think.

Take, for example, my initial hesitation with a very obvious war motif that runs throughout the novel. Tony – the character I was most interested in, and the character I was most disappointed in – is a historian specializing in military studies. She’s also the first woman in the story to encounter the evil Zenia, a manipulative, cunning, beautiful woman who manages to ruin the three main characters’ lives. Instantly, war becomes an overpowering metaphor for the way women treat each other. In other words: men have violent war, and women have the backbiting, gossipy fighting they’ve constantly been relegated to in literature. But, by the end of the novel, that metaphor became much more complex. By the end you’re not sure if Zenia is a fallen comrade or a fallen enemy, but Tony shows a certain respect towards her rival that I find fascinating. Is the war between Zenia and the other women? Is it between women and men? Is it between Zenia and men? I don’t think the novel necessarily clarifies this point, and I appreciated that ambiguity.

I was also interested by the feminist slant that the Roz character tends to follow, while still remaining trapped in her patriarchal ideals. A main theme of the book is that there is an outmoded way of looking at and enacting male/female relationships that a certain generation (WWII war babies) is stuck in, despite the feminist movements of the 70s. Roz, a rich, successful business woman, is still obsessed with taking care of her husband, viewing him as a vulnerable, broken bird despite the fact that he is constantly cheating on her. Many people have interpreted the book as being an indictment against men (something that is not helped by the very poor characterization of the men by Atwood), but I think they are as much victims of a certain prevailing attitude as the women. They have a license to act obscenely. Zenia represents the dark side of this mothering culture, taking advantage of all the horrible things society has to offer.

Anyway, it’s not the best book I’ve ever read, but it was a better beach read than The Girl Who Played with Fire, which was kind of a disaster. What Stieg Larsson represents as didactic and boring, Atwood renders complicated, even though both novels deal with many of the same themes.

But I have had a couple years of grad school in film studies, and this novel felt very cinematic to me. Almost like a Terrence Malick film, in which everything washes over you as though in a dream. Characters and settings are all important and plot devices get lost in the wind. Nature takes over and moves people aside, drowning them under layers of lake water. Days of Heaven works with some of the same themes, the locusts playing the same role as the flood.

What I loved about this book was how much it wandered without being tangential. I don’t know how I got such a pleasant, sleepy feeling while I read when there is a lake full of waterlogged bodies and a caretaker that might leave at any moment. Robinson has a way with prose that seems very Southern and meandering, but by not placing the novel in the South (it takes place in Idaho) there is a sense of danger and immediacy.

What immediately jumped out at me – and seems to have jumped out at every other literature critic – is the strong, self-sufficient female characters that manage to form unconventional but somewhat satisfying bonds with each other. Taking tropes of classic American literature (“My name is Ruth” v. “Call me Ishmael”) and then reformatting them to fit feminine identity without making them “Female,” Robinson creates a novel that is as strong a myth as any in the Canon.

(I’m not sure how that last part fits in with Sundance…but there you have it. My analogies just keep getting better and better.)

And so it starts. Yesterday I went to pick up programs for Scott and I. All we wanted was a tangible way to scroll through the films we’re going to see as “members of the press” but the volunteer at the Salt Lake office gave me such a stink about it. I get how they’re trying to be “green” and everything, but I know when I get to Park City there are going to be programs strewn about on every surface imaginable. They always print 12 billion programs and then give Salt Lake 120.

Then there’s the ice on the sidewalks, the bus drivers that don’t know their way around town, the press screenings at odd hours that always conflict with each other, and the lack of decent food. Then again, there’s free tea and bagels, a really really helpful and nice press staff, and ample opportunity to see all of the films you need to. So it’s very stupid to complain. I get that. It’s just so easy to complain when it’s 12 degrees below and you’re hungry.

Now it’s off to Park City to finally get a program.

6. Hike in Moab.
7. Organize a photo walk or two. (Part of this goal will be getting new batteries for my camera, I guess)
8. Submit an article to a children’s magazine.
9. Spend some time making art that I don’t have to follow from a pattern.
10. Make this house some curtains.
11. Learn to knit.
12. Take Scott camping up at my parents’ cabin.
13. Visit the animal sanctuary  in Kanab.
14.  Create an herb garden.
15. Read 100 books.

]]> http://theoreticalcosmology.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/new-years-resolutions/feed/ 5 Whitney 976634_f520 50133 vintage_knitting_ad http://theoreticalcosmology.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/some-shout-outs/ http://theoreticalcosmology.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/some-shout-outs/#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:21:22 +0000 Whitney http://theoreticalcosmology.wordpress.com/?p=142 ]]> I recently went through my blogroll and deleted the blogs I read just because I hate that person and want to feel better than them. You know the types. The people you barely know anymore but still bother to keep up with, examining their photos for blemishes and mocking their blotchy newborns. I decided that this is probably a sentiment I could do without. And now it turns out that I hardly have any blogs to check up on.

Some, but not enough, of my friends have blogs, most with blogs do not post often enough for my liking (my liking would be twice a day, so I don’t expect everyone to comply, but you should at least post once a week, right? Keep me entertained!) and others with blogs only post about their business. And as much as I like your business, throw in some personal shit once in a while. (Lady Danburry does a great job with combining the personal with the professional. Thanks, Lady!)

Does anyone who reads this blog read strangers’ blogs? I’m not really expecting an answer in the affirmative here since I haven’t done any promotion for this blog and my stats reflect that. How do you find those blogs? Why do you find them interesting? I tend to scan through a few film blogs (Film Experience and Final Girl are a couple of my favorites), but for the most part I stick to friends. And I just don’t have that many interesting friends.

Oddly enough I really like reading the blogs of my friends that have kids. It’s such a foreign experience for me since those friends with kids have always moved away (I don’t blame them, Utah isn’t a great place for child rearing, I’m sure) and I never ever ever ever plan to have one of my own. Samantha‘s blog is fascinating to me, and so is Natasha‘s, because one kid is one thing, and two kids seems to be quite another. The shit those women have to deal with when they enter that Mother world baffles me! They also seem to be a lot more candid than my other blogging friends…I don’t know if it’s because they’re constantly being pooped on, barfed on, etc. so there’s just no more dignity left, or if they just want a more honest recording of their daily trials. Either way, it’s pretty cool.

Heather Conover‘s blog is a good mix of informative and personal and funny. I also love Heather Adair‘s crafting blog when she actually posts on it – which is rare, and that’s stupid, since I keep checking it every day and wasting my precious time. Aaron/Brian/Gavin/Dusty/etc. have Killer Buds, but I really miss when they all had separate blogs they also maintained with simpler formats and more gossip…ok, hardly any gossip, but I gobbled up whatever I could.

I used to have family members that blogged, but the only ones left that do it consistently are Stephanie and my sister Madison (I won’t even bother with her link because it’s private, which is another thing I think is stupid). Stephanie always has great pictures of my favorite cousin-once-removed and Madison always has good dirt on the boys she thinks are cute (could that be the reason for the privacy??).

So if you have a blog you should leave me a comment, you should add me to your private little lives. I’ll rarely comment on your blog, but you should know I’m probably checking it 5, 6, 27 times a day. Don’t disappoint me.

a) I don’t really remember high school. My best friend Heather and I will be walking down the street and bump into someone she knows from school and who I have never seen before. But Heather and I both went to Timpanogos. I hated high school and I’m sure some of my gaps in memory were self-induced, but it’s strange how little I remember about even the good times, whereas elementary seems crystal clear.

b) I didn’t know anything in high school. That being said, I was a know-it-all. I think I pretended to know a lot about punk music, the 1960s and the vietnam war, and literature, but when I really consider what I did in my spare time, I realize that I barely knew anything about anything except whining about boys.

So at first I told him that it was probably pop punk music. I spent a lot of money on CDs and I usually knew about bands long before they became popular. But wait, that was the side I projected. The “cool” “punk” kid that wore those plaid pants and put patches on her backpack. In reality, I was kind of an obsessive geek. So I delved deeper and quickly came to the conclusion that the thing I knew the most about in high school was The X-Files.

If this magazine didn't just give you a huge hard-on, don't even bother with the rest of this post.

Remember when Krycek lost his arm?!?!

Badge numbers, witty Mulder lines, side plots involving Skinner and Krychek, every episode where Mulder and Scully touch, these facts are still very easy for me to retrieve. And of course they should be, since I spent most of the summer before my freshman year reading fan fiction, printing out scripts, and writing my own script (about a magician that causes your greatest fears to kill you!). My locker was covered in printed out photos from fan sites. Anytime a magazine featured Gillian Anderson or David Duchovny in any way I would either buy the magazine or someone familiar with my obsession would cut out the article for me. I was there first showing, opening day of the film, waiting in line, wearing my “I want to believe” t-shirt. And, most embarrassingly – and a fact I have revealed to few before now – when we first got the internet I would tie up the phone line for hours, staying up late into the night, RPGing in X-Files AOL chat rooms.

Scott and I went out to lunch the other day with Brian, Greg, Aaron, Heather, and Luke and for the first time I realized how comfortable I am with that group of friends. I’ve always been willing to talk about storm troopers or cross stitch with them, but this time I busted out the X-files trivia. And it was awesome! Luke remembered “Triangle”: the episode that came out right after the movie in which Mulder and Scully finally kiss (because in the movie they were about to, but then Scully was stung by a bee carrying the Black Cancer. And even in “Triangle” they don’t really kiss, because Mulder is stuck in a time warp in the Bermuda Triangle and meets a jitterbugging gal that looks exactly like Scully, but it’s not really her. Sort of a let down, really).

Walking in Memphis is my favorite song.

In a few weeks I’m headed down to New Mexico to present at the pop culture conference. And you better believe I’m taking the four hour side trip to Roswell. I’m going to go to a cafe where they serve sweet potato pie, I’m going to the UFO museums, and I’m going to live out one of my long-time Phile fantasies. And so is Scott.

Oh, Lucius Hartwell, you stole my heart, big Texas teeth and all.

Next stop: Berlin.