This week I would like to step back from the limelight and allow the spotlight to be directed towards a writer who I recently came across while burning some calories on my friend the elliptical.  I get extremely bored while on the elliptical, but I loath running outside and can hardly sustain a run longer that 10 minuets and 32 seconds, so I cut my loses and take my workouts to an enclosed, sweaty environment with other health conscious folks.

Where is this story going, you wonder?  Don’t worry, Ill get there.  So, I needed to pass the time while riding the elliptical.  My current distractions usually consist of other sweater and sometimes intense exercise companions to counting the tiles on the ceiling (but this one has proven dangerous).  So, I decided to bring along some reading material.  As you all know, if you are following my blog at all, that I am in the midst of reading Harry Potter.  Now, as much as I love Harry, he is not elliptical reading material.  I went to the next best thing, the New Yorker.  The New Yorker is perfect because it is light, bends easily, and includes various topics that sustain my short attention span.

I was flipping through the New Yorker this past week, which ticked off the time better than I thought, when I came across an article that was titled, Where I Live.  The title was not an instant eye catcher, but I noticed the article was only one page long so I decided to have a go.

The beginning paragraphs were mostly descriptive and could have lead to numerous story developments.  However, this story went from talking about her apartment to her love for cats.  I do not want to give too much away, because I think this author’s style of writing works well because of her subtle surprising details.

I will let you know though, that all of you cat lovers out there will definitely find this glued to your fridge upon finishing.

I have attached the link below for you.  I hope you enjoy!!

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/03/21/110321sh_shouts_ozols

A consequence of interweaving oneself with the world is the realization of how differently everyone perceives reality. The thought processes behind any particular work follow a specific pathway or logic that is simply intuitive to that person, and may be intuitive to that person alone. I often wonder at how others make sense of daily realities, how others ruminate, what other people’s thoughts even structurally look like. Are they as convoluted as mine? (Surely.) Do those that specialize in the same field have a different methodology than those in others? My attempt at looking in on the inarticulacy of something so common as a ‘thought’ is below, although I can only say this is true for my own experiences. (How would you describe a ‘thought’ in your own terms?)

For me, the unconstruction of my thought has always presented me with the challenge of projecting an idea. I have concluded, later to be re-concluded, that this stream of consciousness is not circular or linear like that of the stream, but spherical. Approaching and re-approaching the infinite points in space of questioning, understanding, ideas at various dynamic axes. The thought presents itself with an extreme clarity at the time but becomes impossible to revisit with any accuracy of what was before. The dynamic relatives constantly presenting themselves to me put my mind into a liquid state (very much like a stream) as well as a spherical state (very much un-like a stream). I have concluded my mind is in likeness with Europa. A large amount of water surrounded by a substantial shell of broken ice.

My roommate came in and she asked me, “Did you see the moon tonight?”  No, I had not, but it was, apparently, huge.

Sadly I personally missed this perigee moon as they call it, which occurs when the moon orbits at its closest point to the earth.  The last time this occurred was 18 years ago in 1993.  1993?!  I was barely four then!  After hearing about the super moon now I really wish I had seen it.  If it’s such a rare occurrence, then, man, I missed out…

Thinking about it, however, that is what photography is for, no?  So I proceeded to browse pictures on CNN that showed how the perigee looked all around the world, from our very own national capital in DC to places like Jakarta and the Philippines.  And looking at this, I thought to myself (note: this will sound cheesy, please beware), how amazing nature is.  Thinking about it, isn’t the world around us one of the best forms of art?  Oftentimes, people will ask– sometimes even condescendingly– “What is art?”  In the contemporary art world where so many different works are all considered to be “art”, when indeed it looks like an elephant painted a canvas with its tail, or as if a child had slapped together different planks and called it a sculpture, so many criticize the “easiness of art”.

But what is art, then?  It’s not what is found merely in museums or to be sold in galleries.  It’s what we find to be amazing, beautiful.  The things that we find so fascinating.  And more often than not, this falls under the realm of nature.  I can’t count the number of times I have looked up at the sky and thought it was so beautiful, that it warranted its own frame and space in a gallery.  And seeing how even the moon, which exists in our sky and is visible everyday, can in an instant “change” to captivate us and capture our attention, it goes to show how truly nature is a constantly changing art form.

Sigh.  But the great thing about nature is that most things repeat itself (though some things take more than a hundred years or so to occur).  Which means that hopefully I’ll be able to catch the super moon next time!

Jane Austen’s novels have been captivating readers for two centuries now (Sense and Sensibility was first published in 1811), and I, like so many before me, am an unabashed Jane Austen addict. So, you can only imagine my excitement when I heard the English department was offering a course on Jane Austen this semester. Of course I signed up, and on an average day, the Jane Austen class is fairly typical, though still extremely enjoyable, but yesterday, the entire class got to attend the English Country Dance lesson we had been promised on the first day of class.

If you’ve ever read one of Austen’s novels, the importance of balls and dance is obvious.  Many of the most important social interactions and connections of her stories either take place or begin at a dance, and a character’s dancing expertise has a tendency to correlate with some aspect of his/her personality.  For example, Mr. Collins’ foolishness in Pride and Prejudice is emphasized by his terrible dancing at the Netherfield Ball, and Mr. Knightley’s chivalry is exhibited at a dance. While reading one of her novels, the reader can sense that dancing was supposed to be second-nature to the people of the time and that to dance poorly was a sign of bad breeding or poor manners.

In several movie adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, English country dancing is depicted, and the actors always make it look so elegant and easy. This misconception is quickly combated, however, by just a few minutes of dance instruction. As a whole, my classmates and I managed to bumble our way through the dances we were taught, and even made it look like we knew what we were doing a time or two, but the truth of the matter is that though learning the dances was incredibly fun, they are nowhere near as easy as they appear in movies. The basic moves are fairly simple, but putting them all together and remembering which part you are supposed to play in a particular dance gets confusing very quickly.

Learning the basics of the dances that Jane Austen’s characters engage in so frequently gave me a new respect for this apparently simple social activity and since my own attempt at dancing was so atrocious, made me feel a little less judgmental of Mr. Collins’ poor dancing in Pride and Prejudice.

Welcome back fellow bloggers and friends!  A few weeks ago I blogged about my childhood secret, which included a Mr. Harry Potter and the fact that I grew up without him.  It was a huge shock for my readers and some may not be fully recovered.  The last time I wrote about this secret I told you all that it was my goal to finish the series by the time I graduate at the end of April.  I am writing today to fill you in on my progression through the fantastical, comical and imaginary seven books.

I have completed the first three books and I am nearing the end of the fourth.  Scanning the amount of homework I have over the next couple days, I imagine I will finish the fourth book by sometime this evening.  I am so happy there are seven books because I enjoy finishing one and moving straight on to the next.  I believe I will finish the last book and like many other Harry Potter readers will be left with a sense of void at finally coming to the end.  Or perhaps the ending is so satisfying that your Harry Potter journey is fulfilled.  Maybe finishing Harry Potter is like going on a long vacation and then finally pulling up into your driveway with a large smile on your face because you are both home and also you know that you just came back from something that was out of this world.

So I guess I should tell you all how I am enjoying Harry thus far.  I fancy him, very much so.  I get nervous when he has to overcome wizards who want to kill him and I feel his joy and excitement when he amazingly catches the snitch.  I enjoy meeting all of the quirky characters and watching them develop over the course of the books.  J. K. Rowling has a truly amazing imagination.

All of this talk about Harry makes me want to stop typing and start reading!  I will let you know when I finish all of the books.

Have a great Wednesday!

Clouds are innocuous things to look upon, omnipresent, mundane, worth barely a mention. The sky is there every day and night. Weather often serves as a filler in conversations, a last resort. And yet, many seem to have a propensity for sunsets and sunrises and dramatic summer cumulonimbuses. Never mind cliche. “Let’s enjoy nature,” people say, and head out to the yard or the lake to watch the sunset. There is allure, clearly, but what?

Some time ago, when I had been maintaining a personal blog, I discovered a little link-share page. It was called Skywatch Friday, and the concept was very simple. Every Friday, you blogged. You posted a picture of sky. You added your link to the Skywatch page, and your thumbnail was displayed for all to see. Here’s the sky in Sweden, the sky in Melbourne, the sky in Iowa. For three years, I browsed others’, posted my own.

Inane? Perhaps. But what you learned was how to see.

One needs be neither a meteorologist nor an astronomer to  find interest in studying the sky.

A great number of posts contained the classic something-silhouetted-against-a-sunset shot, or the picture-of-buildings-with-a-sliver-of-sky-in-the-back kind of deal, perhaps. Some displayed particularly striking and unusual atmospheric conditions. One can take a picture for the sake of taking one to post (it boosts my traffic!), or because it seems aesthetically pleasing, or because there is a rare phenomenon that musn’t be missed. These are simple. Click, done. But then there are the ones that physically, literally, do not show anything of particular interest. Yet they manage to be more than aesthetically pleasing- meaningful, thought-provoking.

Interpretation is the viewer’s task.

I’ve recently just read Annie Dillard’s Seeing, an essay on just that. Bah, you think. Everyone sees. We’re not blind. The truth is objective. It is out there. Is that really the case? In a way, but not quite. We see, she seems to say, what we expect to see. We do not see what we do are not searching for. Those well-versed in their particular areas of knowledge will always see more, know more about their own area than outsiders do.

The point is that I just don’t know what the lover knows; I just can’t see the artificial obvious that those in the know construct. The herpetologist asks the native, “Are there snakes in that ravine?” “Nosir.” And the herpetologist comes home with yessir, three bags full.

Although, what we see is certainly not set in stone. One only has to look. Possess the desire to know, to see, and it will happen. I am not suggesting the sky is full of rich, life-fulfilling truths, necessarily, only that it is a good place to begin. We give such simple things not a second glance, not a second thought. Can it not be that we are missing something?