that time i went to china

i had such a terrific time. here are some highlights.

tried new food (enjoyed it not so much.)

 loved the people, especially our guides. seriously wonderful people.

yoyo. guided us by bicycle through the hutong.

oliver. best. guide. ever.

woman at silk factory. she kept calling us, 'my dear friends.'

may. best. style. ever. and yes, i was part of one of those tours with the flag.

thoroughly enjoyed the english translations on signs.

marveled at the architecture.

channeled Mulan at the great wall in honor of chuch.

felt a strange human kinship with the terra cotta warriors; over and over, wanting to know each story, and over and over, remembering they weren't real.

was captivated by the traffic (and grateful to come home alive. right after i took this picture our guide had to get out and stop all oncoming traffic so we could make it down this street.)

was entertained and enriched by the deep and totally different culture.

i hope everyone gets a chance to go to china. knowledge is love.

passion

i've spent the day in jammies, in bed, in contagious quarantine, in and out of aches, in a quiet snowy world where everything is muffled. even i have hardly said a word.

hello.

it's been mostly delightful in spite of the sick because i'm right in between too sick to do a stinkin thing and not sick enough to feel justified lounging in bed all day. that's a nice place to be, if you have to pick a point on the sick spectrum.

today i did things i never do. i read for hours. i researched phd programs. i responded to emails (at least some, the long involved kind.) i made doctor's appointments. i updated my facebook picture. i took notes about an essay i might write if i get the guts. i ate a whole carton of sorbet. IN BED. i paid money for apps like radiolab and this american life, and i slipped into a forgotten dream of writing for the radio.

 all of this--especially the sorbet--led me here, to one frightening towering question:

do i have passion?


i'm tempted to watch pride and prejudice and put the question away for a louder, more arrogant day, but i don't know if i have control over those kinds of things, especially since the day sort of led me here. i think i misunderstand passion, just as i misunderstand creativity, feminine sweetness, genius (of smarts or skill)--my default brain setting is that you're either born with these traits or you're not. and if you're blessed enough to be born into such traits, your will to choose is compromised. you wake up in the morning and you can't do anything but write! you encounter an unpleasant situation and your voice just comes out in honey tones and forgiving smiles! you sit down to the piano and masterpieces ensue!

clearly, it's selfish to think of passion this way because it absolves me from any responsibility to choose it, to create it, to fuel it, to constantly adapt it for survival inside an apathetic-trending world. however, i'd settle for a compromise (heaven, are you listening?) where passion would be demanding enough to determine its object but submissive enough to put the burden of pursuing that object on me. i feel like i know some people for whom this is the case. chuch and brains. kingfish and fish. ben and life. jan and recycling. why not me?

still thinking about lincoln

Gettysburg Address from Adam Gault on Vimeo.

when enough is enough

it's something about my time of life, maybe, but i keep wanting God to reach down and touch my life with a lightening bolt, a shout, a parting of the red sea days with a path to my promised land. have you noticed that when you are listening for something really loud, it's hard to hear something really soft? lazy ears. tonight i heard a song with these words as lyrics:

BE LIKE THE BIRD  

Be like the bird that, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her -- and sings -- knowing she hath wings. 

from Victor Hugo

isn't that lovely? somehow it penetrated and was my whisper, my enough.  

 

so this is christmas

i'm sitting in front of my half-lit christmas tree, which, of course, means i'm overly nostalgic and sentimental. which, of course, means it's time to blog! i don't have much to say tonight. just this: i never thought i'd be here, hesitantly buying a few throwaway christmas ornaments, using a blanket as a tree skirt (where is that dirty ol blanket i used last year?), making transience my tradition. someday someday someday i'll settle. christmas is christmas though. it's really hard to mess it up with the Son of God, love's pure light shining so bright. i'm thinking about why this moment matters to me, and i don't think it needs to mean any more than a celebration of the things that never change and the things that always do.

if these songs come on, i might not change the radio station

remembering i still have my momma's love

(thanks jan for the song)

you're a legend dave

chuch made this little vid. so awesome i had to share it. no idea what he's talking about but i love his accent. and the little gulp at the end.

my word is my bond

and my name is my passport.

recently, i've been trying to do something hard, and i'll give you a hint: it's a kind of letting go. it's hard because i don't want to do it and because my heart muscles are wired to do it and because i am surrounded by small things that weaken my resolve to do it. those small things are so sneaky. they say, hey, i'm not that thing you're trying not to do! don't worry about it! you're strong! you can hang out here with me until your defenses are almost done for, and then i'll send you back to that big thing so it can deliver the penetrating blow.

i haven't been very successful at doing this hard thing, and then i realized why: i'm not committed to not doing the small things. (so many nots! sorry.)

i decided to take things up a notch and tell somebody important (God) that i was absolutely no way going to do those small things anymore, and it totally worked.

isn't that enough to make mortality rad?

(typing this post reminded me of this great TED talk on commitment devices and making choices. check it out.)

i'm all about the causes these days

watch this video, and if you don't like it, at least watch the interviews with kids.

a cause i can get behind

hi people. i posted this video on facebook, and i'm posting it here because it is visually awesome and something i believe in. i think a lot of us have probably felt deep down that girls are the answer or the solution to a lot of our world's problems, and that's because girls grow up to be mothers of the world.

i've explored the site and hope to explore more and find a way to get involved. take five minutes and check it out yourself here.

if you have thoughts, positive or negative, hopeful or cynical, i'd like to hear them.

your life is your masterpiece

i saw the trailer for this movie a while back, and i had a pretty strong feeling it was gonna be good. people, it was good. i don't like to endorse movies or political candidates, so only go see it if your heart tells you it's right. if your heart does tell you that, and you want someone in the seat next to you, give me a ring. i'll see it a thousand more times.

maybe i loved it because of the colors and sounds and because it made me feel like i was in india, which is where i'd like to go if i was tenacious enough.

maybe i loved it because it just continued the message the universe has been shouting at me, which is "your life is your masterpiece. don't be afraid of it. don't run away from it. your choice is your power, and happiness is your choice."

i've been sliding on the surface of time lately, projecting myself into the future to see how different choices might feel in thirty years, and here's what i've come up with. i will love my life no matter what because i have chosen it, have made it, have put my stamp on each minute i stand on. i'm slowly giving up the idea of one right path and exchanging it with the idea of the path i chose and the paths i didn't. to live would be gift enough, but to have that life as my own mortal playground, my own canvas, my own extraordinary experiment of love------------- 

Have courage and clear goals and you will win over life

i just read something stunning. please read it here (on one of the coolest sites i've ever encountered.)

here's one of many favorite parts:

"But in order to be a truly positive person in all circumstances, one has to learn how to distinguish real gold from tinsel. It is hard, because tinsel sometimes glitters so dazzlingly. I confess, my child, that often in my life I was dazzled by glitter. And sometimes it even shone so falsely, that one dropped pure gold from one's hand and reached for, or ran after, false gold."

mercy

i love learning about the connection between our memories and our bodies and our hearts (i mean the mysterious emotional heart, not the physical one.) just the other day, my dear c told me how she simply cannot remember events during a very painful period of her life. and there's the story of the cambodian women who lost their sight because of the emotional trauma of the khmer rouge. as one woman explained, "when I am happy I see better."

right after my mom died, i felt like i couldn't remember her before she was sick, almost like the past had been engulfed in a heavy fog. i wanted to remember the smallest details, the most mundane motherliness, but couldn't.

as an unexpected gift, the fog over my memory seems to be cracking and glimpses surface almost every day.

like how she called the weepies the weeblies, not to be funny but because she really thought that was the band name.

like how she power-walked from the best western hotel to the shakespeare festival, on those golden summer nights when the future still kept itself hidden.

like how she lingered, laughing, in magenta linen, when we ate salmon and uncle ben's wild rice in the backyard.

like how she seemed to be moving doing reading calling cooking all the time, except when she was with us, and then there were fewer places to be.

and how she didn't smell like the pines and dirt i smelled on my bike ride today, but still, it reminded me of her.

it is so much better to have the people we love with us, before our faces and in our arms. that is mercy.

but if and when we must be apart, it is mercy too to briefly forget, and then for the rest of time, be allowed to remember.

okay, fall

anybody else ready for things to start dying?

i've been doing some soul searching

went to sister's house tonight and she played me this song. this song is an old friend; it's been with me at every major crossroad in my life, and it is always as true as the last time. i don't know if there's ever been a song that has so completely expressed my thoughts.



thanks sister.

where i learn about my religion

so i was preparing a little message for family home evening, and since we're having a talent show i thought it'd be real swell to talk about talents. i thought of some scriptures, i thought of some hymns, and then i thought of this:



so great. so true. and that's my message in a nutshell.

i count myself overblessed with too much happy

while i can't help but wish there were a kid or two on that wall who looked a little more like me, i'm one proud aunt. more and more, these wildkidya's are the highlight of my vacations. doesn't the future look bright?

birthdays and brosephs

well today's been basically the best day ever, so who says getting older stinks? i'm lovin it.

i have so much more to say on the subject, but whet your appetite with this gem and this gem that my bro delivered to my inbox.

i'm willing to get older every year if an auto-tuned rap is always part of the deal.

this kinda describes how i feel about voting

this isn't a typical 4th-of-july-eve post, but i think independence day is a pretty good time to take a closer look at how american ideals are holding up. read on, patriots.

“The activity of giving form to things seems to be increasingly the business of a collectivized mind, and from the standpoint of any particular individual, it feels like this forming has already taken place, somewhere else. In picking out your [Build-a-Bear's] features, or the options for your Warrior or Scion, you choose among predetermined alternatives. Each of these alternatives offers itself as good. A judgment of its goodness has already been made by some dimly grasped others, otherwise it wouldn’t be offered as an option in the catalogue. The consumer is disburdened not only of fabrication, but of a basic evaluative activity…The consumer is left with mere decision. Since this decision takes place in a playground-safe field of options, the only concern it elicits is personal preference. The watchword here is easiness as opposed to heedfulness. But because the field of options generated by market forces maps a collective consciousness, the consumer’s vaunted freedom within it might be understood as a tyranny of the majority that he has internalized. The market ideal of Choice by an autonomous Self seems to act as a kind of narcotic that makes the displacing of embodied agency go smoothly, or precludes the development of such agency by providing easier satisfactions. The growing dependence of individuals in fact is accompanied by ever more shrill invocations of freedom in theory, that is, in the ideology of consumerism. Paradoxically, we are narcissistic but not proud enough.”

--Mathew B. Crawford, in Shop Class as Soulcraft

(read quote in context and entire article here)

charmed

i don't know what is up with all the vids lately, but here's another. by far the most charming part of my weekend was being serenaded with cielito lindo. i fell in love with the old man singing, and it's safe to say i might spend a lot of money this summer just to sit in an overloud overcrowded restaurant, watching the large-mouthed man sing to me.

this one sounds nothing like what i heard, but i like it:


and for those of you who speak japanese or like the three amigos:

are we doing all we should?

and i caaan't get you outta my mind

i can't stop thinking about this guy











and these girls (and their dresses)



and this lady.

i. am. hooked. and it's getting bad. rivaling, even, the time i read that one cooking blog so much that i started having dreams about the weekends i spent at the author's ranch. plain old creepy.

p.s. can you place my title? sis? amanda? anybody?

when the big winds come i don't want to blow away

today, because i just spent 20 minutes too long looking at people's holiday weekend vacation pictures on facebook, i am thinking about substance and weight, and why, after only 20 minutes, i feel less than before.

before i go any further (farther?), let's be clear about one thing. the problem isn't facebook or pintrest or twitter or blogs. the problem is that i haven't found a way to come out of these specific internets right side up and sure of who i am. 

i wish it wasn't so tempting to be paper thin, and i don't just mean physically. i mean the rewards for substance can be hard to find, which i guess is the point. if it weren't so tempting, life would be easy, and i would get what i thought i wanted by default.

life wears on me and i start to give in, start to drift, start to fade and lift. then i say a small NO and the word drops like a rock in my pocket, bringing me that much closer to the ground.

i will be me.

and if words aren't your thing, this song describes how i feel about it.

maybe just one more

video blitz

how i'd like to be rememebered

i read this in the obituary for my dad's aunt:

"She will be remembered as an elegant woman of great grace and civility who had a gift of appreciating and lifting others. She leaves a legacy of faith and testimony that will be an overarching influence to continually bless her posterity throughout their lives."

isn't that very nice?  wouldn't you like to leave on that note?

neither here nor there

you know what the awesome thing is? i'm happy. this is especially awesome because life is never what you (i) want it to be, and i'm happy anyway.

have you ever been the kind of happy that you don't know where it comes from? that's how i am, and even though i know where it comes from (God is goodness and goodness is all around), it feels mysterious and miraculous anyway because i don't understand how and when it gets inside me. it's not while i sleep because i wake up grumpy and gruntled (i'm using this word incorrectly in protest because it should not mean what it means) from chronic bad dreams. it's not while i'm in the shower singing 90s songs that weirdly come to mind every morning. it could be (depending on the day) while i'm crushing fruit in my new blender (today, i had a delirious thought that i would come home and cook frozen chicken in my blender. obviously, i really look up to that blender.) but somehow, the happy sneaks in and i laugh out loud while i'm driving to work even though i'm tired and worried about the people i love and wondering about the people who love me.

when mom died, i just didn't think i could be happy during sad. i didn't think the resurrection was for now. i didn't think spring could be my season, but every year i melt a little more and this year i felt downright puddly. it is so nice that i don't get to only be blessed by things i understand.

for most of my life, "happy" has not been one of the first words people have used to describe me. ("you mean that happy child?" "that's no happy child--that's SID!") i've spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out if i could become authentically "sweet" having been born a cynic, and i've concluded that i can't. jello can never be creme brulee (that's for you sis). lizzie can never be jane.


but happy is for all of us. this i believe.

i am so young in front of my life, which, though it is one of the reasons for being happy, reminds me often that i don't know it all or even most of it. i really want you to know that i believe in unhappy as a valid season of life. i'm just grateful for the springs too. i can't see down my path, but looking around me, chances are high that there will be rises and falls. i hope this happy will come with me.

let's hear it for the boy

tonight sis and i watched the new footloose. it was not high on my must-see list, especially since my man zac wasn't playing the leading role, but red box is kind of like zoltar: you take the magic it dishes out.

it exceeded my very low expectations. even better, it reminded me of one of my favoritest scenes from flight of the conchords: brett's angry dance.

that time i was famous

guess what guys? i was on my first podcast. you should check it out here.

a lament

i feel like there must have been a standard operating system with which every human was sent to this earth. (sometimes i make the effort to not end sentences with prepositions, but it sure sounds stupid, don't you think? good riddance to that rule!)

i don't actually know what features would have been included in such an operating system (besides the light of Christ), but i know at least one feature i wish would have been included, and that is the ability to accurately pick up on social cues.

i am ridiculously gullible and i can't tell when people are joking. i think people are laughing at me when they're just laughing, i think people are mad at me when they're feeling nothing at all, and i think people are in love with me when they don't know i exist. i live a lot of my life on my very own page, and i'd like to change that.

that's all.

twittering

i am not a twitterer, and i have no plans of becoming one. you're probably surprised by this, or you should be surprised because i am so hip!

i think i've already mentioned that i keep learning things about myself that i was previously oblivious to. example: someone just told me that i whine about my stomach hurting 1 of every 2 times we're together. here i've been thinking of myself as a tough person and i'm a total lightweight. what a disappointing discovery.

here's another one. i like to think of myself as an early or at least normal-speed adopter of technological trends, but i'm just not. i was the last of my friends to have a cell phone, though the first to have a pager (which probably explains this whole post), and i'll probably be the last human i know to have a smarty phone. i'm half-cheapskate and half-moralist, but i'm sure i'll wear down because it happened with harry potter, and it can happen again.

so (for now) i don't twitter on the internets but i CAN'T STOP twittering in my brain. like, i start making beans for dinner and i think: tweet: "making beans." or, worse, i'm at a chieftans concert in chicago, and i think: tweet: "chieftans concert in chicago." these twitterings clearly don't add anything to the experience--no analysis, no reflection--just twitter at its most shallow "my life must matter because i'm telling you about it." worst of all, every time i translate my boring daily activities into tweets, i have to feel what it feels like to be bored by myself again, which, considered cumulatively, is rough on morale.

i don't think it is fair for a social networking platform that i don't endorse to rewire the inside of my mind. get out twitter! get out!

neither can live while the other survives

sugar addiction or non-twitching eye: which will it be?

if i can't have world peace when i blow out my birthday candles

i'll pretty happily exchange that wish for this one: at least one shining happy memory for every person on this earth. i have a brilliant set of past-lights in my pocket, and they cheer my dreary days. i have so many i can sort them into categories: pick-me-ups, make-me-cries, remind-me-that-i-have-a-hearts, laugh-laugh-laughs, too-dear-to-shares, my-life-is-a-movies, thy-life-is-a-miracles. isn't it nice to have a secret place for your own treasures, that no one can find or take away?

next point. i'm going away on wednesday to hear large writers read largely, and this helps me not feel too small.

the motivation for a post soon to come where i explain for myself as much as for you why i believe what i do

i have been so out of touch lately. i hardly catch the news in snippets over radio as i drive to and from work. i don't know that an op-ed and a blog post in response count as news, but i read them both and found them interesting. i thought you might too.

here's the short version in representative quotes.

op-ed by ian williams (never met him): "A culture that walks in such tidy lockstep has the advantage of homogeneity, and will always look good on paper. It certainly works for my many cousins, whom I love. But some of us who have experienced the Mormon life firsthand would rather choose a messy, colorful America lurching forward without so many confines — every day and twice on Sunday."

blog by james goldberg (friend of mine): "But you seem to think that your world is the real world, and that the real world is something I'm impossibly distanced from...You know the world, I would guess, far better from how it looks on paper than from how it looks up close."

yes, i find this stuff interesting because i belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or Mormon), but I also find it interesting because it raises these questions for me:

• is it possible to fundamentally understand or experience another person's reality?
• what habits, practices, etc. do i have that enhance or limit my ability to understand the people around me?
• how do we talk civilly about things that matter most to us?

poetry

for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

for in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.

for we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

...therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (for we walk by faith, not by sight:) we are confident, i say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

wherefore we labour, that whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.

--from 2 corinthians 5

death is an adoration of God

you know how there are seasons of life where you practice one same thing over and over like a dance routine or a spelling bee list or whistling for the first time?

my long season is practicing letting go. every day all day long round and round. i've told you this before.

lately it's been work. i can't be any everything and that is hard. i can't be perfect most things and that's hard too. so i'm working on drawing lines and getting back Bs and sometimes Fs because that's just the best i can give, and what you probably already know that i'm just learning is that it feels great to fall short when you give your best because you don't have to wonder if you could've done more. i'm giving my best and walking on.

death is an adoration of God, the priest said, because it is the inevitable and proper culmination of a lifetime spent learning to let go, and not just for the sake of sake but for God's sake.

and then--death be not proud--we let go of death too.

whether you're high or low

well, i never posted my 2011 recap, and that just isn't like me. so here goes. last year, i...

• graduated again! phew. never thought that would happen.
• moved out of provo.
• missed provo. 
• went to canada, texas, nyc/dc, and chicago.
• got a job. and business cards.
• lived with sis and fam in sojo.
• missed that too.
• moved to slc.
• bought a car.
• went to the doctor. twice! 

2011 was a pretty grown up year. here's hoping 2012 has more ring pops and twister and sleepovers and friendship bracelets. a little more 8-year-old and a little less 28-year-old.