What if...

So, I'll be going back to New York in three and a half days. And, as always, I really don't want to go. I didn't want to go two years ago when I first left. I didn't want to go last year. I certainly didn't want to go after either winter break (exchange mild 60 degree California weather for sleet and slush and subzero temperatures? I don't think so.)

Part of the reason is I'm lazy. Another part is I'm scared. Another part, the part I hope is the biggest, is heartbroken to be leaving behind my family, my friends, my town, and the home that I love so much. Although I've spent two years studying in New York, I haven't yet found my place in the mess of it all, and the feeling of being lost (spiritually and emotionally, as well as often physically) in a city that size is not something I want to relive.

I keep wondering: what if I did take a semester off? A year off? What would I do with myself? What would I change? I tell myself that it wouldn't matter if I took some time off - I skipped most of fifth grade, so I'd really be getting back lost time, not losing more time. When I come back, I'll be older, wiser, more mature, and better-adjusted to the adult world. I can take time to develop my other skills, to read, to write, to study. I can take time to just be, a concept that gets thrown around a lot by the hippies who shop at The Store but doesn't get a lot of practice by yours truly. I can figure out who I am.

Of course, this is all bullshit. I have no guarantee that I'll ever come back at all. I could easily settle into a lazy life at home, and I'll never again find the courage to move away. I'll work a boring job in a boring place with other people like me - bright, exciting people who have simply chosen a quiet life at home rather than reach for the stars. I could find a nice guy worth marrying, settle down with him, and raise a family.

This is the first time in my life I've thought that raising a family might not be a bad job after all.

Will I chicken out and stay at home? Probably not.
Do I feel like chickening out at this moment? Definitely.

What will happen tomorrow? I'm not sure.

Eight minutes

There is so little August left, and I appear to have lost my motivation to do these things.

I also have eight minutes to post, despite the fact that I got home over an hour ago...

I've been distractedly jumping between exploring my new phone and exploring my new cookbook all day.

The plushie now has two legs.

Melody and I went hiking today.

My dorm this year has hardwood floors - good for tap dancing.

Awkward quote of the day:
"One year ago today, your mother told me she wanted to break up. I think we're still friends, but I've decided that I'm going to start dating again."
- my dad.

The best part of this is that my parents knew they were breaking up for about a month before they decided it was necessary to tell me. I called my house one day last fall, and asked to speak to Dad. My mom's answer was, "Oh, didn't I tell you? ..."

Great, adults. Just great.

Wow, lots of angst. He's spending the night tonight for some reason. They're downstairs fighting right now.

Short post today.

Melody is very funny. I am really going to miss her when I go back to New York.

And I really don't understand Taming of the Shrew.

Inception (again)

I've just returned from my second viewing of Inception. I'm in the mood to start gushing over it again, but I don't think I want to do that. So let's talk about something else.

It is a little odd to think that I'll be going back to New York in less than a week. On the day I returned home for the summer, I spent my time as I usually spend it at home: visiting my old high school, driving my sister and my friends around, listening to a lot of Arcade Fire and singing a lot of strange songs in public places. Which is basically what I do now, except everything is different.

The people are the same, mostly. We do the same things. We listen to the same songs. We attend Dollar Scoop Night at the local Baskin Robbins religiously.

But - and I hope this is true for my friends as well - this summer has changed my life in impossible ways. Tiny events hold great significance; single scenes replay again and again, becoming clearer with each repetition. When I return to school in six days, these changes will have grown to define me.

At the beginning of this summer, I had never been to a comics convention. I had also never seen Yosemite. I had never read manga, watched anime, played the accordion, or crocheted. I had never met Polly. Invasion, the glorious train-wreck of a play that we closed last week, was nothing more than the seed of an idea. I had never stolen a stop sign. I had never had any sort of religious experience. I had never walked at midnight along a metal bridge suspended over a canal thirty feet above the ground.

It is as though this summer has been a bizarre dream, a dream which has planted the idea in my head that life is beautiful. Or that art is worthwhile. Or something.

It sounds so trite to build up the revelations of this summer only to clumsily define them as "life is beautiful" or "art is worthwhile." Like, duh.

But I think I'll be going back to New York an entirely new person. I'm ready to go back new.

Plushie prototype progress:
One leg, one half-leg.
Designed more effective foot.
No progress on the hair problem.

Bonus:
Acquired a new wig today.

Yarn Factory

I've been trying not to think about how much money I've donated to JoAnn this summer - between the Who scarf (still extremely unfinished), the sewing machine (an adorable mini-machine I've named Grell), and the fabric for the play (lime green and chocolate brown), I have enough craft supplies to last me a very long time.

So naturally, when they were having a gigantic yarn sale, I went back and spent still more money I got some teeny tiny double point knitting needles and a ton of very soft yarn for my secret plushie project. I can't tell the details of this secret plushie project, but it involves knitting adorable plushies and selling them at small-town cons for a tidy markup.

HuHuHu CORRUPT.

I'm actually very excited about this project - merch is expensive, and although I have little to no business or crafting background (hmm) I'm trying to create an adorable plushie that uses minimal materials (see: small) and knitting time (see: college student) but looks good, and can thus be sold for a reasonably low price while still keeping the crafter in food (see also: broke).

Or, given my personal record with things like follow-through, the secret plushie project involves knitting myself an adorable plushie. I have a foot and half of a pant leg so far on prototype plushie. I'll call him P.


Epilogue:
I have a secret desire to quit drama school and become a craft enchantress. With a craft factory in my living room. And cats.

This is a big development, because my usual "What if I quit drama school?" fantasies tend to involve handsome young husbands, children, and a California teaching credential. Not that this is a bad thing, but... I'm spending too much money on drama school to become a mother anytime soon. And my life isn't big on the handsome young husband thing. I can count the straight boys I'm on speaking terms with on one hand.

Oops

I completely missed yesterday for some reason. Not sure how that happened.

News of yesterday:
My phone is indestructible. It can apparently withstand being run over by my car.
Two of my best friends, Beth and Lexie, are leaving for their first year of college today. Best of luck to them!
I always thought that it took three weeks to build a habit. Apparently not, or I wouldn't have forgotten to post yesterday.

Crisis

If Episode 25 of Death Note helped me sort of realize why we do art and made me believe in theater and art again, then...

TVTropes made me sort of realize that art is pointless.

Backing up:
It's surprising that I made it this long without visiting TVTropes. It's just the sort of website that, had I discovered it at a different time, I would have worshiped. From my limited knowledge of the beast, it is a website that is dedicated to naming and cataloging each and every trope that appears in every single book, film, television series, manga, comic, game, etc. It is an excellent resource, and because it grew from the very stuff it was made to analyze, TVTropes is also quite clever in the realm of inappropriate pop culture references. (Example: the "Holy Hand Grenade" trope is used to describe any occurrence of a force of good committing horrific and violent mayhem. Hilarious.)

I was warned upon first visiting the site - TVTropes can be EXTREMELY overwhelming. My first visit was a mere 30 minutes (laughably low), and I still emerged shaking and questioning the nature of art and fandom (See: above. See also: this blog post.) When I arrived, I casually navigated to the Death Note page (being my fandom of choice at this moment, I thought, why not?) and by the time I left, each and every delightful plot device and fascinating character had been broken down into a series of unintelligible labels that they shared with countless other series, films, and games (countless = hundreds). The Abandoned Warehouse is meaningless, all character complexity has been reduced into "Alternate Character Interpretation", the note itself is an "Article of Death", and nearly all of the most exciting narrative moments have been weighed, measured, and found lacking:

Actually I Am Him
Adrenaline Time
Alone With the Psycho
And I Must Scream

This is all before we reach the Bs.

Battle Butler: (Watari)

Most of my friends know that when I decide to like something, I tend to go overboard. Every waking moment is spent thinking about it, if I am not otherwise completely engaged. This is how I end up saying things like "equivalent exchange" at work. See: both of my Gollum cardboard cutouts, my L t-shirt, my Harry Potter bed sheets. (I know, I know. Merch does not a hardcore fangirl make. But it helps.) See also: the stash of fanfictions behind my bookshelf. Some of them written by me. My nickname in middle school was Gollum Girl. It is all too easy - and all too fun - to

But lately, I don't think I want the nerd to outmatch the nerd. I don't want obsessive love for the item in question (LOTR, Doctor Who, Death Note) to eventually overshadow and nullify the beauty of the thing itself. I don't want to fall more in love with the L of countless fanfictions than with the simple, elegant, very, very limited actions of the original. I don't want the most profound images to be rendered meaningless by a six-hour marathon of shoddy AMVs.

In my drama classes, I've always thought of myself as a really good audience member, but not as a good artist. I love to watch the work of my classmates, but I have difficulty isolating the smaller components that make it what it is.

Once we dissect a thing until its particles are all tiny enough to be generalized, cataloged, and labeled, we begin to lose the ability to appreciate it for its beautiful, divine, mysterious self. I think that's what I'm saying today.

Problems I have with this post:
Am I advocating a mistrust of progress?
Am I contradicting my previous post about how awesome fanart is?
Is all art eventually going to be troped and sorted before anyone can experience it?