So, a music director I know says he collects memories from every show he's conducted. Before he conducts one of the shows, he mentally picks out what to remember, and then he decides to remember them.
If I could remember things from my first semester of my junior year--they would be these:
"Congratulations! You have been selected to serve as a Junior Marshal for the 2007-2008 academic year. Please pardon the informality of e-mail but quick notification and response is important."
"Congratulations, Claire!" And then I was a Blue Masque senator.
eurydice. And by that I mean, not feeling like a total failure as the President of Alpha Psi Omega.
(I just typed--and erased, because it was wrong-- "Vice-President;" wishful thinking, Freudian slip, etc. I am, in fact, the President--unless Aaron was serious. If so, bless you, my son.)
Tim and Scrubs, CM and everything (especially The Mikado), Zach and Cinderella, and all of the other freshmen I've met and bonded with. Love, Archie.
Erin, sewing pants, and the victory of millinery.
Unreliable, unattainable crushes.
The occasional call for help to Nikolas Dewight Kear.
Maxwell "Scoops" Silverhammer and the most daring, dangerous thing I've done this semester....this side of that one party in Hurley.
Coffee with dear, sweet girls.
Studying for the midterm for the Vis Styles--panicking--redoing my decor handbook--but it was with the best of company.
"Your work is easily on the graduate level."
"With Cat-Like Tread!"
"After four years of college, I am finally.... a Pussycat Doll!" --Sonny
(I'm really going to miss his rapier wit. Take today in Vis Styles. Our professor was talking about modern buildings and asked if anyone had been by the PSFS Building in Philadelphia. Sonny said "yes, I walked by it," and Dave said, "You just walked by one of the first international style skyscrapers ever built." Sonny replied, "Wow, I should have pooped in the toilet." Crass... priceless... and just so Sonny.)
These are just some of the things I will try to remember... and follow... follow...
Showing posts with label shameless biography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shameless biography. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
The Story of My Life; Or, Why I am Not a Nihilist
No fledgling blog is complete without an initial biography.
So here it is.
My name is Claire. Claire is one of those eighties, yuppie, French names, on a couple of daytime soaps... it's not a bad name, on the whole, even if I am neither yuppie nor French nor on daytime television.
I was born and raised in a land of writers and revolutionaries and preachers and good old boys--the Southeast of the United States of America. Now, despite a whole lot of things I dislike about the state of the Union, I ultimately like the United States because we're a country that consists almost totally of vagrants and outcasts. No wonder so many nations have such a love/hate relationship with the U.S.--we took all these people they were trying to get rid of, and in one sense that's great, right? Now they don't have to deal with their tired or their poor or their huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But then you take the tired and the poor and you turn them into a superpower and give them positions in government. You just have to despise that, particularly if everyone with positions of authority in your government is energetic and rich.
(I like the U.S. for another reason, too... but it probably deserves its own post.)
Back to me. I was homeschooled. This means many things.
One is that I get relatively defensive when someone makes disparaging comments about homeschooling on a grand scale. I realize that homeschooling is not always the most beneficial choice, and it's not always feasible. However, I don't diss the public school system or private schools and say that they are "detrimental to society at large," as a guy I know once told me, speaking of homeschooling.
I make it a point to never attack other school systems, for one thing, because the teachers in those schools tend to take it very, very personally. Similarly, when I sense that my school system is being attacked, I take it very, very personally--my chosen mode of education is insulted, I am insulted as both student and teacher, and my mother is insulted, because she taught me and made the initial decisions. I mean, as palpable hits go, that's incredibly below-the-belt.
The other is that I learned what I wanted to learn and challenged myself. What this means is that I wasn't always challenged. So there are deficits in my education. (Do I care? Honestly, no, not really. Everyone's learning has blind spots, and if I discover that I want or need to learn something to survive, I will learn it, no problem.) It also means that I read a lot of Dostoevsky and other authors and became a fairly well-rounded individual.
Another big, important circumstance in my life is that I was raised in a conservative, nondenominational brand of Christian home.
This clearly had an impact on me, both good and bad. My parents are great, growing up was fine, I went to church and youth group and did it all, etc.
But then I became An Adult and realized that I had to start to define my beliefs and myself on my own spiritual journey, not merely hangin' around watching my dad read Brother Lawrence. The light bulb came on when my dad told me I could be politically more liberal than he and my mom are.
"Really? You're giving me permission not to vote Republican? Can I go to church and still do that?"
This was a big step. I registered as unaffiliated, and I can't vote in the primaries, but other than that, I am very happy. People on both sides lobby hard for my vote, and I have to think hard about issues before I make decisions.
I want to reiterate that I didn't ever neglect the Christian faith. I just had the Christian faith that was always taught to me, with occasional emotional experiences unique to me. And it was good. But now, I have the Christian faith that I fought for, myself, and have thought about a lot.* And it is better. It may be less orthodox than my former familial beliefs. It may be more orthodox. It is better, for me, because it is mine.
*(By the way, Razhumikin Razzmatazz may very well betray my dependency on Dr. Peter Kreeft, C.S. Lewis, Blaise Pascal and G.K. Chesterton, who also thought/think about their faith a lot. It may also betray my dependency on others, like Harold Pinter, Kurt Vonnegut, Sartre, the majority of France, and my psychology professor who thought/think about their faith a lot and were/are athiests or skeptics.) (In fact, I'm going to step out on a limb and say that this blog WILL betray my dependence on both.)
So here it is.
My name is Claire. Claire is one of those eighties, yuppie, French names, on a couple of daytime soaps... it's not a bad name, on the whole, even if I am neither yuppie nor French nor on daytime television.
I was born and raised in a land of writers and revolutionaries and preachers and good old boys--the Southeast of the United States of America. Now, despite a whole lot of things I dislike about the state of the Union, I ultimately like the United States because we're a country that consists almost totally of vagrants and outcasts. No wonder so many nations have such a love/hate relationship with the U.S.--we took all these people they were trying to get rid of, and in one sense that's great, right? Now they don't have to deal with their tired or their poor or their huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But then you take the tired and the poor and you turn them into a superpower and give them positions in government. You just have to despise that, particularly if everyone with positions of authority in your government is energetic and rich.
(I like the U.S. for another reason, too... but it probably deserves its own post.)
Back to me. I was homeschooled. This means many things.
One is that I get relatively defensive when someone makes disparaging comments about homeschooling on a grand scale. I realize that homeschooling is not always the most beneficial choice, and it's not always feasible. However, I don't diss the public school system or private schools and say that they are "detrimental to society at large," as a guy I know once told me, speaking of homeschooling.
I make it a point to never attack other school systems, for one thing, because the teachers in those schools tend to take it very, very personally. Similarly, when I sense that my school system is being attacked, I take it very, very personally--my chosen mode of education is insulted, I am insulted as both student and teacher, and my mother is insulted, because she taught me and made the initial decisions. I mean, as palpable hits go, that's incredibly below-the-belt.
The other is that I learned what I wanted to learn and challenged myself. What this means is that I wasn't always challenged. So there are deficits in my education. (Do I care? Honestly, no, not really. Everyone's learning has blind spots, and if I discover that I want or need to learn something to survive, I will learn it, no problem.) It also means that I read a lot of Dostoevsky and other authors and became a fairly well-rounded individual.
Another big, important circumstance in my life is that I was raised in a conservative, nondenominational brand of Christian home.
This clearly had an impact on me, both good and bad. My parents are great, growing up was fine, I went to church and youth group and did it all, etc.
But then I became An Adult and realized that I had to start to define my beliefs and myself on my own spiritual journey, not merely hangin' around watching my dad read Brother Lawrence. The light bulb came on when my dad told me I could be politically more liberal than he and my mom are.
"Really? You're giving me permission not to vote Republican? Can I go to church and still do that?"
This was a big step. I registered as unaffiliated, and I can't vote in the primaries, but other than that, I am very happy. People on both sides lobby hard for my vote, and I have to think hard about issues before I make decisions.
I want to reiterate that I didn't ever neglect the Christian faith. I just had the Christian faith that was always taught to me, with occasional emotional experiences unique to me. And it was good. But now, I have the Christian faith that I fought for, myself, and have thought about a lot.* And it is better. It may be less orthodox than my former familial beliefs. It may be more orthodox. It is better, for me, because it is mine.
*(By the way, Razhumikin Razzmatazz may very well betray my dependency on Dr. Peter Kreeft, C.S. Lewis, Blaise Pascal and G.K. Chesterton, who also thought/think about their faith a lot. It may also betray my dependency on others, like Harold Pinter, Kurt Vonnegut, Sartre, the majority of France, and my psychology professor who thought/think about their faith a lot and were/are athiests or skeptics.) (In fact, I'm going to step out on a limb and say that this blog WILL betray my dependence on both.)
So, Claire, why this blog?
Fact: I am a veteran, inveterate blogger. I started long ago--an idealistic, moody, sardonic teenager with a penchant for Victor Hugo and theatre. Since that initial blog--which has some truly funny posts, but ended in a slow, maudlin manner characteristic of bad independent movies--I've started several.
There was my Myspace blog for my Myspace friends.
There was my Xanga for my Xanga friends.
There was my Livejournal for my lj friends.
I quickly got tired of it. Writing three blogs for three different audiences slowly zapped my creative energy as I attempted to tailor my posts to the different brackets. And deep down I knew that this was no way to blog--it was becoming a set of inside jokes. And before I knew it, I was hooked--I depended on these various and sundry sites to network with people I didn't want to lose. And the various and sundry sites became less and less about the content of the writing and more and more about news, which of course made personal contact with others less and less necessary.
Well, now I'm being deliciously daring. I am forcing myself out of the loop. I am forcing myself to write letters, to make telephone calls, to show up at the front doors of near-strangers.
And, I hope, I will eventually return to online publications I feel okay about sharing with the world. I hope these New Posts will be less moody, even a little less sardonic, but still original and quirky. I want them to be accessible and fun.
So, that is the reason for this latest incarnation.
As for the title, it comes from Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of my favorite authors. I don't know--I guess I just admire cranky old Russians with intimidating beards. I didn't know this for a long time, because it's completely lost in translation, but the names of many of the characters are derived from common Russian words. Razhumikin is one of those characters. His name is derived from a word meaning "reason" or "intelligence." I am not the most brilliant person on earth, but reason and logic matter to me. As I get further and further away from my high school years, which were trademarked by a sense of melancholy (it's the Hugo, I'm telling you...) and become more and more phlegmatic, I spend an increasing amount of time evaluating whether or not things make sense anymore.
(By the way, I do not know how to pronounce Razhumikin, so don't ask me.)
(By the way, I almost named this blog "Not-so-grand-Inquisitor," which was inspired by The Brothers Karamazov, but I didn't want to leave the wrong impression. Not only have I never led an inquisition, but I'm also not antagonistic towards Christianity, by any means.)
The "razzmatazz" part of the title is just sort of a balderdash word that goes with Razhumikin.
There was my Myspace blog for my Myspace friends.
There was my Xanga for my Xanga friends.
There was my Livejournal for my lj friends.
I quickly got tired of it. Writing three blogs for three different audiences slowly zapped my creative energy as I attempted to tailor my posts to the different brackets. And deep down I knew that this was no way to blog--it was becoming a set of inside jokes. And before I knew it, I was hooked--I depended on these various and sundry sites to network with people I didn't want to lose. And the various and sundry sites became less and less about the content of the writing and more and more about news, which of course made personal contact with others less and less necessary.
Well, now I'm being deliciously daring. I am forcing myself out of the loop. I am forcing myself to write letters, to make telephone calls, to show up at the front doors of near-strangers.
And, I hope, I will eventually return to online publications I feel okay about sharing with the world. I hope these New Posts will be less moody, even a little less sardonic, but still original and quirky. I want them to be accessible and fun.
So, that is the reason for this latest incarnation.
As for the title, it comes from Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of my favorite authors. I don't know--I guess I just admire cranky old Russians with intimidating beards. I didn't know this for a long time, because it's completely lost in translation, but the names of many of the characters are derived from common Russian words. Razhumikin is one of those characters. His name is derived from a word meaning "reason" or "intelligence." I am not the most brilliant person on earth, but reason and logic matter to me. As I get further and further away from my high school years, which were trademarked by a sense of melancholy (it's the Hugo, I'm telling you...) and become more and more phlegmatic, I spend an increasing amount of time evaluating whether or not things make sense anymore.
(By the way, I do not know how to pronounce Razhumikin, so don't ask me.)
(By the way, I almost named this blog "Not-so-grand-Inquisitor," which was inspired by The Brothers Karamazov, but I didn't want to leave the wrong impression. Not only have I never led an inquisition, but I'm also not antagonistic towards Christianity, by any means.)
The "razzmatazz" part of the title is just sort of a balderdash word that goes with Razhumikin.
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