I'm doing the post-a-week challenge!

Hey everyone!  I'm doing the post-a-week challenge!  I would do the post-a-day challenge but I don't think I'd be able to keep it during the semester, so I'm at least going to try for weekly.  So help me out; I look forward to your comments, opinions, and ideas!

Someone Who Deserves More Credit

Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace was a contemporary of Darwin and a collecter of exotic specimens. A few years after Darwin's famous voyage Wallace made an expedition to Malaysia and spent several years there. Unlike Darwin who'd had a top notch education, was from a successful family, and was employed as the Beagle's naturalist and so was paid, roomed, and fed, and well off after he returned to England, Wallace was a self-made man who was funding his own adventures in Malaysia from the sale of the specimens he sent back. Before that Wallace had been in South America for several years, collecting live specimens and preserving others, but on the voyage back to England his ship had caught fire and everyone had been forced to abandon ship, leaving the ship and most of the specimens (Wallace had possessed the presence of mind to save a few sketches) to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic. However his agent had sold the specimens he had managed to ship back to England and with this money and despite this misfortune he had determined to travel to Malaysia. In Malaysia he had lived a tough life, sleeping in a hut on stilts in the humid heat of the jungle, listening to the rumblings of distant tigers in the night. He went out every day collecting insects, and became fascinated with the many flashy butterflies of the area. In the process he developed the theory of evolution /independently of Darwin./ He sent many letters back to England, publishing in minor journals, hoping to gain opinions on his radical ideas. And they were radical, so radical that Darwin had not yet published the ideas he'd been sitting on for some time. Wallace also sent a paper he wrote on evolution to his friend Darwin for academic criticism. Darwin finally published, and though Wallace had independently come to the same ideas and published earlier Darwin was showered with praise and immortalized as the father of the theory of evolution. Still, Wallace never begrudged his friend the fame. For starting over when his ride home from South America went down in flames, for braving the jungles of Malaysia, for publishing without thinking of social consequences, and for his willingness to take a back seat to his friend Darwin I think Alfred Russel Wallace deserves more credit.

To Dream, Perchance To Sleep

Ever feel tired but not sleepy?  How about--immeasurably more vexing--sleepy but not tired?  This is what makes me an insomniac, because I'm pretty certain that I fall into that [vast and ill-defined] category.  Hmmm, categories...  I am led to believe (from sources such as Stephen King novels) that most insomnia is actually just the sufferer's inability to get to sleep and sleep well.  The Mayo Clinic says that insomnia is that and waking in the night and not feeling rested in the morning.  Um, bingo.  I think it's some sort of disconnect between my brain and my body (perhaps my autosomal and somatic nervous circuits) that leads to my autosomal systems gearing down (heart rate, breathing, smooth muscle...) while my brain is a barely contained maelstrom of discordant thoughts, tumbling over each other to escape my head into the tangible world.  I try to write stuff down, get it out, and hope it will be gone, but it is summarily replaced with a new stream of consciousness.  That miscommunication seems the most likely culprit.

Songs in the Key of Dreams

Sorry I haven't been writing lately, but I have been having a rough time of it.  School is wicked and it's Yule season and everything's crazy and such.  Hopefully I will be writing more, as that usually is cathartic for me anyway.

So I've been listening to a lot of Christmas carols and seasonal music.  Yes, I listen to Christmas music, even the sacred stuff.  Well, I grew up with it, and since it's harder to unlearn something than to learn it I listen to a lot of Christmas music.  Besides, music can have different meaning for me; my whole family is all about the music.  I was thinking about this yesterday, about how I grew up with music all around me and as such an important part of every day, whether it be singing, listening, or playing.  I was at my dad's house the other day and though I've noticed the radio in every room before it really occurred to me the reason for a radio (sometimes multiple, and often portable so you'll never be without sound wherever you go in the apartment) in every room.  Yesterday my housemates and I were singing Christmas music in the car and I knew more of the words than anyone else.

What I'm trying to get at is music is just that to me: music.  Yeah, I take issue with the words sometimes (I almost erased all my music with a reference to "God," "Lord," or "Jesus" yesterday because I was so fed up with it), but music is about the music to me, not the lyrics.  And going back to the whole "I grew up with it" thing, a lot of the melodies really resonate with me.  Many Christmas carols are quite beautiful, and if you actually listen to the lyrics they often sound like a hasty translation (which they probably are) and they sound very hurried and artificial, like someone needed to fill space.  Short story: the lyrics suck.  Not all the time (I love "Angels We Have Heard on High) but often they feel forced (first line of "Three Kings");  in the end it's really all about the melody.  And the best melodies (in my opinion) are in a minor key.

As young as 3 I felt the magic of minor (bc I told my mom I liked "Carol of the Bells" because it sounds "sad").  Are you ever listening to something and you get a chill down your spine as all the hair on your arms stand up?  Does music ever make your heart ache and sing along, like you're pining for a perfect home you knew once but not for many years?  It feels like being in love but far away, like seeing your little cottage on the shore while in the surf in a little skiff and the tide is hurrying you out to sea.  I can only compare it to how I feel, and my dreams usually have a faery-tale theme, full of castles and queens and knights and ladies and chivalry and honor and adventures.  And princesses, obviously.  "Gawain and the Green Knight" kind of stuff.

It's not just Christmas music that feels like magic.  It's mostly stuff in minor keys, but pretty much anything Celtic does it for me.  I can see the trees, dappled with emerald sunlight, the colors dark under the canopy, the surety of faeries in the sparkling air.  I listen to music for the chance to hear magic from songs in the key of dreams.

Hubris, aka We Humans Really Do Give Ourselves Too Much Credit

I worry that my faith is changing, and that my main ideas are just becoming a diatribe against religions in general and Christianity in particular.  I really don't know why I hate them so much; this must be what they feel.  So actually, and sort of ironically, I pretty much know exactly where they are coming from.  But I cling to the fact that I came to my faith of my own volition; I wasn't born into it or raised in its presence, and I started forming my ideas when I was still quite young and didn't have this mysterious animosity toward Christians.

I remember when I was four or five and in kindergarten, I had this friend, Erica, who was a Christian.  Nothing special; most of my friends were probably Christians in the sense that their parents had said "you are Christian."♦  Even then I realized the sanctity of the earth and nature, and I did not relish the idea of humans as the masters of the world.  One day (or over the course of a few days) we had a discussion involving the Christian god♥, my Mother earth (reminiscent of Native American religions), and the creation of the earth and humankind.  I was still willing to "play nice" with Christians at that point, as she was willing to with me; also important to note is that I had not defined myself as anything other than Christian at that point, although I did not see myself as one of that religion and did not follow its tenets (church, prayer, etc).  Erica and I eventually decided that my Mother had made the earth, including the land, the oceans, and all the animals and plants, and that her god had made the humans.  I would have to say I got the better deal.  My personal feelings aside, I find it interesting that we would compromise so, and I am extremely curious as to how we would deal with it now.  Perhaps that is the mindset that I seek to return to.

I don't want to hate people just because of what they believe; that in itself is sort of against my ideas.  I don't want to have a double standard and think myself and my faith above criticism.  But that is the direction that I find myself moving in; I think that conservative Christians are so idiotic for believing such ridiculous fairytales as the bible, but I believe things that could be described as "fanciful" and "ludicrous."

The key for me is to be humble; nothing and no one is above the scrutiny of the living, and so I should be used to being tossed aside like so much ridiculous trash.  As long as I can think they're morons; but then I am in danger of falling into that trap of the double standard… I do hate the double standard, and Christians (and really most recognized religions, especially the monotheistic ones) are shameless perpetrators of this hubris.♣

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♦ I also remember asking my mother, and my friends asking their mothers, "What are we?"  As in, what religion are we?  This in itself is utter folly, because any faith or religion must be reached by yourself, in my opinion.  Religion is totally your own, so children having religion is ridiculous.

♥ You will never see me call the Judeo-Christian deity "God" because I am insulted by the inference that he is the only god.  Being a polytheist of a sort I recognize the existence of many divine forces, though I may not recognize their sovereignty.  Hence my use of "JCgod."

♣ Hubris is commonly used to describe a mortal who thinks he is equal to a god, but I propose that it also describes religions/faiths and followers of religions/faiths that consider themselves above other religions/faiths, or, more importantly, consider themselves above scrutiny.  No thing in the universe is above scrutiny.

Smile or Die: The Real Secret

Hey Look, It's Thanksgiving

I like thanksgiving.  I like hanging out with family, I like the time off from school, I like the food...  Yeah, it's pretty cool.  Well, except for the whole "giving thanks" thing.  If you haven't noticed, I get pretty hung up on the whole "higher power" thing, and the idea of thanking this invisible pink unicorn for stuff when really we all deserve the credit just burns me.  But this is not a rant (notice how it's not under "rants") and I want it to be positive.  So here goes...

I would like to thank my mother.  For basically everything.  You really want a list?  Okay, here's a list: she feeds me, she clothes me, she gives me a place to sleep, she sends me to school, she buys me random presents, she bakes yummy stuff for me and my roommates, she gives me hugs, I can call her in the middle of the school day to bitch about some random classmate that bugs me, I can call her in the middle of the night if I wake up in a panic, she tries to understand all of my oddities, she listens to me when I go off on rants, she listens to me when I talk about science even though her eyes glaze over a bit, she trusts me enough to talk to me about how she's feeling, she trusts me enough to leave me the house when she's traveling the world, she respects that my world revolves around horses and dogs even though hers doesn't, she doesn't yell at me when I come home covered in mud, she would kiss my boo-boos if I needed it, she lets me tell her if her outfit is heinous, she tells me if my outfit is heinous, I could call her fifty times a day and she'd only screen my calls if she knew I was panicking and digging myself in deeper, she would know if I was panicking and digging myself in deeper, she does most anything to see me smile, she puts up with my high-strung terrier because she knows I love him, she only nags me about getting a summer job occasionally, she'll eat lunch at Panera bread three days in a row because I want to, she'll drive me endlessly back and forth from the stables, she lets me borrow her socks, she raises and eyebrow at chocolate cream pie that I snuck into the grocery cart but doesn't take it out, I can send her my unfinished essay and she'll read it and give me pointers over the phone, she gets me tshirts with owls on them whenever she sees them, she doesn't freak out when I curse (usually), she helps me run around in a panic to get everything ready for a ceremony, she puts up with my perfectionism, she calls me on my perfectionism, she helps me organize things when I'm  freaking out about schoolwork at midnight, she doesn't pretend I was a perfect child... let's see; what else?  Oh: she loves me unconditionally and she will always love me and I'm pretty sure she has loved me forever despite the fact that she only learned of my existence twenty-odd years ago (it has to do with the multiverse).

I would like to thank my grandparents; all of them, but one set in particular.  The list is basically the same, though the specifics are different, but you get the gist.  Most of all, I would like to thank my grandparents for being my second parents.  They have given me a foundation to stand on, and I know that I can always come back and they'll be waiting with open arms.  And they love me.  Not "they love me, too" because "too" implies that it follows something, and their love does not follow; it deserves its own continent.  They each deserve their own continent.  Grandmasia and Grampalia.

I would like to thank my cousin.  He is like my brother, and we've had our differences but we've never been closer than we are now.  I want to thank him for his success; I am so proud of him and all he's accomplished, and how he's turned out to be a really great person despite all the adversity in his life.  I want to thank him for being cool with the fact that I'm crazy, and being okay with me thinking he' s crazy too.  I mean, everyone's crazy, but we're special.

The rest of the thanks are pretty general; there were just some outstanding ones.  You know how it is.  I would like to thank everyone I've known for making me who I am today.  I'm still here so it can't be all bad...  I would like to thank everyone in my family for everything they are.  I would like to thank all of my classmates for everything they are (yes all of them).  I would like to thank the academy.  I would like to thank all of my teachers, especially some really great kindergarten and high school teachers.

So there you have it; not a complete list but I don't think I'd actually be able to put the real list down in time for thanksgiving in ten years.  This guy sorta sums it up pretty well.  So that's my challenge to you: this thanksgiving, seek out the real people in your life and let them know that they have the credit.  And enjoy the time you have with the people you love; that's the most important thing in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving! ~argent wolfwing