It whips ma HAIR back n' forth

I think culture's done a good job of dealing with the psychological damage that natural disaster movies have done. My mind goes to The Day After Tomorrow and Twister, but feel free to let your noodle wander where it may.

So when, in reality, the sky begins to darken at midday and the wind whips debris in panicked cirles and rain pounds its fists on the window panes... you want to get dramatic. In the movies, people hush commands to loved ones and action skyrockets. I've gotta admit, it takes a little bit of self restraint for me to keep my adrenaline from taking me places. At heart, I'm just a little kid. For the most part, I don't see any of that from anyone else. When disaster brushes by, people keep calm and take a precaution or two. I'm glad I'm the only one who's been ruined.

We had a tornado warning and some torrential rain the other day. People in the student center were put in the banquet rooms and classes were moved to the stairwells. I can't lie even a little bit -- when I went around the dorm and asked girls to go to first floor, I felt a little epic inside.

The wind's been crazy ever since. It whips my hair back n' forth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymKLymvwD2U

Danielle loves John Wayne

Stop crushing on OLD, DEAD PEOPLE!!!! -Kayla Johnson

PS- At Anne's prompting, Danielle, Anne, and myself went to Walmart and got legiiiiit sweatpants for 5 bucks. They're soft and they have pockets and they have stretchy ankle bottoms and they're soft on the inside and they're boys extra large. Woooo!

Get ready, 7:50 club. We're wearin' our sweats and white v-necks. Kick it.

It's a disease

I have a love/hate relationship with Mark Twain. He is an antagonistic genius and I am simultaneously in awe of his pen and distanced by his manipulation. It's almost as though I'm a baby bird in Mark Twain seminar. I open my little beak and food is regurgitated into my throat so fast that I have just a second to enjoy it before- UGUCKACK! I choke. And still the food comes.

I finished all of my reading for the class yesterday. Not only is that on time... it's early. Release the doves and saddle up the horses, I was ready to live happily ever after! A smile plastered on my face, I decided that I would use my breath of fresh air to check my e-mail. There was one message in bold, sitting heavy as it waited to be opened. Inside was a list of five additional sources to read for our next class. Shoot.

Welp, as the discussion leader, I've got another 40-some pages to swallow. It's no wonder I've got Twain on the brain.

(2 hours later: Let me give you a little taste of the odd place I've found myself today. All of the articles about Mark Twain's graphic 1601 are decently colorful. Here is an excerpt from my readings.

"Nearly every visual artist... has been drawn to the erotic and the pornographic. So have literary artists throughout human history. Sometimes the urge has been to stimulate the genitals; sometimes the urge has been to stimulate the mind. Since the mind and the genitals are part of one organism, why distinguish between masturbatory dreams and aesthetic ones? Surely there is also an aesthetic of masturbation that our society is too sex-negative to explore." Thank you, Erica Jong, scholar and sexual optimist.")

Watch your butt.

So I was ambushed yesterday by some girls in my unit who said, and I quote, "YOU GOTTA WATCH YOUR BUTT -- YOU'RE ON THE LIST!"

The Hodson guys are playing nerf gun assassin. You get a name of someone to assassinate, the first time you hit them they're wounded. The second time they're dead. Then you have to try and kill the person they were trying to kill. You work your way down the line until you're the last one standing.

Some of my girls decided our unit was going to play our own version of the game. Instead of shooting each other with nerf guns ("Like idiots," they said), we're going to slap each other's backsides. So last night I picked a name and I'm on a mission. If I didn't know the girl well before, I'll know her now.

Point being, when all's said and done, I might just have the best unit on campus. And even though they llama call at me from a distance and pin me to the floor and tickle me... they're now all slinking through campus: shifty-eyed, paranoid, and industriously watching their butts.

ah!

I can't believe I didn't call Shelty today!

discovery

I've discovered that if my blog post has a picture, people comment on it.

So I'm going to keep it short and sweet: I slept, canoed, and communed with God during Hall Day Away. Kayla, Mike, Ben (cool kid/possible genius), and I played cards. I've been tearing through "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by Don Miller. Legit book. Parts of it are my life's philosophy. So I googled the book title and I'm adding the first photo that made me smile. I'm calling California friends tomorrow. LOOK OUT.

Chewing

In Huck Finn, the reddest of necks gnaw on "chaws" of tobacco. This morning, I was chewing on a chaw of scripture.

"No longer be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

Don't be conformed. Got it. Be transformed. Okay. BY renewing your mind... I feel like renewing implies a continual process... I don't think I had ever thought of that. It's like... pretend I'm red. The color red. And I want to be transformed into orange. So I do my devotions and put a drop of metaphorical yellow into myself. I don't know. I feel like if I want to be wholly transformed, I'll keep up that process. My humanity continually grows and branches and produces actions that make me more and more red -- so how can I not continue the process of squeezing that little dye bottle?

The metaphor isn't poetic, but that was my brain fetus this morning. I was not transformed into a creature of God when I accepted Christ. I was rather transformed into God's creature. The difference is that I had the ability to BECOME a creature of God. I allowed God to open my little soul's lid so He could pour down some of His goodness. I had something to accept and something to ask for when I received salvation. I haven't been renewing my mind. But I'd considered myself transformed. I'd never thought of this verse that way.

you had to be there. so i'll explain.

"ICE CREAM MESSAGE!" -ashley harris

mike kept throwing chex mix at people and saying "chex message." ashley got fed up and pretended to throw her push pop at him and yelled this statement

"Guys, I'm sorry if you really thought we were going to swim in the President's hot tub. But I have good news - the romance is still alive." -noelle hagen

our pre-covenant e-mail said to bring a bathing suit to covenant. well, i don't have one here in indiana. i stopped bringing one after two years of swimlessness. AND i figured she was being facetious. emily larson, however, wore one to covenant and proceeded to get pretty dannng miffed. noelle told us that relationships can get stagnant if you don't mix things up. good thing she's keeping the romance alive on staff.

me: "HOUSE!!!"

kayla: "AHHHH!"

it's been at least two weeks. kayla plays the same song every time i'm in her car. it sounded SO familiar and i couldn't think where i'd heard it. i thought it was a movie, but i refused to guess because i wanted to get it right the first time. today, kayla turned up the song and in the middle of her saying, "Alriiiight - what's it from?" it CAME TO ME. I immediately shouted "HOUSE" and she almost swerved off the road and wet her pants. Sweet victory.

"like summa camp in costal states"

This is why IWU is fun (Primary sources -- from last night):

The diversity coordinators wanted to put together an event called "Love Blindly," so they put on a black light party in South hall. People highlighted and signed each others shirts and drank glowy energy drinks and played glow in the dark ping pong. And since "no dancing" is still in the handbook, people came up with some pretty ridiculous choreographed stuff. I saw a conga line, a circle of macarina dancers, and even a group pumping up "Father Abraham." I loved the self-control hahaha. I'm not a party person, but it was great to see.

Ping pong is kind of a big thing in North and South hall. I rarely played ever before this year, but now I play once or twice a week -- usually when I'm on duty and hang around the lobby anyway. I beat Matt 4-3 (games). Mwahahaaa. We played around the world. I played Danielle and Sarah. Sarah and Jill are Kayla's friends from North Carolina. They drove 12 hours to visit! They'd never been. Sarah is super competitive and her energy is so channelled. I feel like if her body expressed what was inside of her, she would be CRAZY. And Jill has the funniest, dryest sense of humor ever.

At 12:30, we drove to Kokomo to Dirty Dan's Donuts, which opens at 1 am. Legit donuts. Then we drove back. I was in bed until like 3. Anne's just getting out of the shower. It's been a slow start, but I'm going to go lock myself in the library until it closes. Then tomorrow, I'll do another 5 or 6 hours. Then I should be caught up and ready to go for Monday. Question mark.

Sidenote about life: Everything's up in the air. Name an aspect of life. It's up. But as any good juggler knows, I've just gotta wait for something to come down -- then the comfort of a pattern begins.

Peace, love, and coldplay.

question

would you be disappointed in me if i dropped education?

this is how i feel

this is how i'd like to feel

Anne's rubber cement

has been out and about for a while. She's been working on projects all night. The life of an art major: intentional, focused, sometimes-forced creativity. You have to turn yourself into a machine. An impressive, colorful, visionary machine.

I'm praying about my major. I've learned something extremely important -- you can teach LIFE lessons extemporaneously, but in order to be a great teacher, you've got to plan, plan, plan, plan. One of the reasons I've not wanted to go into art or writing is because it forces my creativity into a focus. I've realized that this is not only the same... but also takes a lot more study of theory, a lot more metacognitive thinking, and so many more hoops to jump through. I know all the right things to say and a lot of the right ways to go about things, but... do I want to be a teacher? I'm not panicking about this or anything, but I'm being very intentional about reflecting.

I'm going to have clean laundry tonight. Oh happy day.

as we do homework in noelle's apartment

A couple quotes

Bethany: "... can fish drown?"

Emily: "............... what kind of question is that?"

Danielle: "Feel this thing on my stomach."

Bethany: "UGH! Sick! What IS that??"

Danielle: "It's like this thing that pokes out sometimes."

Bethany: "That sounds like a hernia --"

Danielle: "OH! Is THAT my hernia??"

Danielle: "Wanna see somethin' else?"

Kayla: "NO!"

Danielle: "See this big scar?"

Bethany: "... yeah..."

Danielle: "That wasn't there when I was born. My mom's kinda worried about it. THAT'S what I thought my hernia was."

A reflection

Anne has up-chucked 7 times today and counting. She's been a trooper about it. A droopy-eyed, dehydrated trooper. ... make that 8 times.

let me just tell you 7 things

Last night I made cookies, sat in the silence of the lobby in front of the fire and read until... sometime after 3 am. All I know is that I had a couple of vivid dreams and SNORK -- woke up with a jerk. It was 4:45 in the morning and the fire was still on and I was still sitting up with the computer in my lap. Thing one: Mark Twain, you're exhausting.

The 7:50 club, as usual, was a saving grace. All of our faces have a range of scrunched up, raisin-y, drunken smiles. It's early. Thing two: Friends are an instant pick-me-up.

I got to eat dinner with Kayla today above the Globe. Just like old times. We talked about how our relationship has shifted since we're not roommates anymore. We ate pizza and waved at people. Thing three: Change isn't just a shift, but a chance for growth.

Kyle Kunzmann ran up to Anne and I today because he got a facebook request from Unattractive Llama. Frame photos --> floor photos --> ransom notes --> wall photos --> door photos --> mailbox photos --> e-mail photos --> facebook photos. Thing four: Llama appearance venues are running low.

Kayla, Anne, and I went to McConn and all studied in our favorite places. Homework curled up by the fireplace is a two-sided coin. The side with Abraham Lincoln's face on it is that the fire is warm and the chair is comfortable. I can prop a book on my lap and highlight away. The side with the building on it is that the warm, comfy fire makes me fall asleep. In a public place. Where lots of people can see me. Thing five: Having an opportunity to get work done the slow way is calming.

It's fall and the leaves are changing and the fires are bonning. I got to wear gloves tonight. Our room smells like sweet spiced pumpkin. Thing six: It's a new season and I love it.

Emily Larson's unit is going through a tough time. God is allowing them to be snapped broken like a vanilla wafer, and they're crumbling. One of the girls' dad passed away suddenly this morning, other girls are physically afflicted, others are struggling with guilt and shame, and Emily herself has been spiritually attacked, even in her dreams. Today Kayla, Danielle, and I held Emily and then made a snap decision: it was time to run away. We threw on whatever shoes were closest, opened the window, hopped out, and ran to the soccer fields. No residents, no homework -- just the stars. We laid down on the dugout and watched the stars. We sang to God, prayed, said bits of verses, talked, and gave everything to God. Then the biggest, longest, brightest shooting star any of us have ever seen flew across the sky. Thing seven: God is here. We are broken little bits who have found wholeness in Him. He told us tonight.