I Heart Mormonism.

That's right. We're gonna do it. We're gonna blog about religion on a Sunday night. Bring it on!

Really though, this isn't going to be that big a deal of a post. It seems that every so often I just get these awesome moments of "Hey! Being Mormon is awesome!" and I thought it might be informative/interesting/satisfyingly self-indulgent to blog about some. As a quick disclaimer: my goal is not to preach to you. I just thought I'd write about Mormonism because it's a part of me - and what's more, a part I consider to be interesting and multi-faceted and cultivated and important.

So without further ado: A Brief Overview of Why I Like Mormonism Today (or, 3 Reasons I Dig the Church (or, 2 "Spiritual" Reasons to Disguise the Fact that 1 is Blogging)).

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1. New For the Strength of Youth pamphlets. For those of you who don't know what that is, For the Strength of Youth is basically a field guide to living the standards of the gospel for teenagers. And you know what? I'm a fan of the new one. Greatest hits include:

Learning to work begins in the home. Help your family by willingly participating in the work necessary to maintain a home. Learn early to handle your money wisely and live within your means. (Work and Self-Reliance). I like this one for two reasons. One, it comes from the Work and Self-Reliance section, which is new. I like that they put it in there, because I think it's a really important concept and a good idea to teach it to teenagers. But also because I like that the church can be a source of counsel and improvement on a spiritual level as well as on a practical level. It's all well and good to develop within yourself the desire to work hard, but at the end of the day, that means cleaning your room too, buddy. (That is definitely something I can work on.)

Treat others with respect, not as objects. (Sexual Purity) The feminist in me was like "Yeah! Woohoo! Down with objectification!" But then I also realized how important this is on a universally human level. Love people and use things; not vice versa. People are important and unique and deserve our respect no matter what they look like, act like, or fundamentally believe.

Often the most meaningful service is expressed through simple, everyday acts of kindness. (Service) I like this because it's simple and to the point. Be a decent human being to other human beings. I don't know about you, but I'm a fan. It means something to be kind.

2. Mormon Bloggers. They are utterly hysterical and make me feel less alone in my world of democratic-in-Utah alienation. Some great ones include:

My Religious Blog (Hilarious anecdotes and observations about what it's like to be in the church. I couldn't find a direct link to my favorite, but it's about "raptoring" people during sacrament meeting and made me laugh so hard I cried.)

The Mormon Child Bride (My latest discovery - I love this woman. She strikes for me a brilliant, lovely balance between the concepts of feminism and spirituality. It just reminds me that I don't have to choose between my political and religious convictions - they can coexist. Also, she makes me feel like less of an outlier. I can be president of Gender Issues in Developing Nations, AND of the Laurel class).

Seriously So Blessed (Discontinued, sadly, but still so great. It's a parody of any Mormon Mommy Blog you've ever read. If you're a part of Utah Mormon culture, you will get this. Like, totally.)

3. Sister Missionary Farewells. Now don't get me wrong: I've been to fabulous farewells by men and women. But my favorite two in recent memory (excluding those of my relatives, because let's face it, cousin trumps non-cousin any day) have been by sister missionaries. Mormon women are not automatically expected to go on a mission the way many Mormon men are, and so I really think it does take a special kind of woman to have the guts and selflessness to decide to go on a mission. Being a missionary is really hard. Being a sister presents its own kind of challenges. But if anyone can do it, it's the two women whose farewells I mentioned. One made me laugh and the other made me cry. These two women just impress me so so so much, and I couldn't think of better role models, in the church or out of it, for me to look up to.

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So there you have it. I heart Mormonism. If you have any questions about it, I am going to stand on a soapbox (but only for a second! and only a very short soap box!) and tell you to ask me. Preferably in person. Because for one thing, I'll either know the answer, or know how to find it. And for another, I really don't think anything on the internet can do the hot-button issue of religion of any kind justice. A blog post, a facebook war - at the end of the day, if we're going to begin to understand each other, we should sit down and look each other in the face and talk. Openly and lovingly and compassionately and without judgement.

So again, ask me. We can have a long discussion at Starbucks over the coffee-free beverage of your choice.

(...that was a joke. See? Religious humor.)

Also, full disclosure: One of the main reasons I wrote this post is because I desperately want this.

For those of you too lazy to click on links, it's a new sci-fi anthology blending Mormon culture and science fiction. To make you understand my love, I'll be closing with the site's description of one of the stories.

"Two Mormon missionaries continue to pound the pavement after a zombie apocalypse."

The story is called "Baptisms for the Dead" (C. Douglas Birkhead). Yes, really.

Please buy it for me.

BackWords

We had to write a story backwards for English. I initially wrote about a debate tournament, but about halfway through there was this weird shift that I didn't like at all. So I split it into two stories. The debate one I don't like at all, really, but I handed it into English because hey, it fulfilled the assignment. This is the other part: the one I like much more. I handed into Wire. And so, without further ado...

Words

In the beginning, there were no words. Then slowly, groggily, the world woke up again, filling the universe with noise. Everyone was very determined to say things.

As time wore on, men discovered just how much better it was to ride a horse than drive a car. Around the country, each book went out of print as authors selfishly sucked it back into her own mind. Women, tired of being objectified, put on longer and longer skirts. Days became lengthier. Life spans became shorter. Not even words remained the same, except to say that they were still words.

The world grew into a simpler place.

A man came down from the sky and talked to people. They mostly liked him, but apparently not that much, because they put him in a tomb, and an angel rolled a stone over the cover. A few days later they must have felt bad, because they let him out and carried him to a hill where they raised him up for all to see and cheer for. Then slowly, they healed him. He walked backwards through the streets, and with ever step his load became lighter and easier to bear. They sucked up the spittle and undid the lashes and all the blood went back into his veins, where it belonged. They did it because as he shrunk into a child, smooth and innocent, they began to love him more and more.

His mother’s life was uneventful: a life of enough to eat, and freedom from pain. Eventually the baby disappeared, and the carpenter, and everyone grew less and less concerned about her holiness and virtue as time wore off. It just didn’t seem like that big a deal anymore. She lived in a small, happy village with her family, and died young.

The cherubim had been waiting patiently for thousands of years, and welcomed two young bodies back into the garden. Everybody cheered. To please them, Eve spat the apple whole again. And with the Great Spit complete, it was decided that the world was perfect and beautiful again, so there was no need for a garden. So God opened his Great Whale God-mouth and inhaled, the fields and the judges and the stars. There was no need for any of them anymore.

Then for a moment, there was a Word. Word, Word, Word – existing in the empty, acting as the all. And so in the end was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

But God had swallowed up the ocean, and the darkness, and the light, and so He swallowed up the Word too.

And away it went.

Cockroach Physics Project

I totally thought I was brave enough and "scientific" to do this, but holy dasfklajeic, I am terrified.

This was a terrible, terrible idea. If I don't get an A in physics I will set them free in Henrikson's desk.

edit/update: THEY FLY! THEY FREAKING FLY!

Poetry Obsession

The other day in creative writing we watched this brilliant film called Poetry in Motion. It was about spoken word poetry. I hate spoken word poetry. I think it's silly, and hollow, and horrifically self-centered.

But you know what?

Now I love it.

I suppose I've just been exposed to vast amounts of truly horrendous spoken word. But watching some of this, I couldn't help but fall the tiniest bit in love. When I grow old, I intend to be like the poets I saw in this video. I will wear a turban, and my eyes will be huge, and instead of a queen sized bed I will fill my tiny city apartment with stacks and stacks of books. And I will write silly morbid funeral ballads about stoners. Except I won't do any of that, I'll do the Emma equivalent, and then the opposite. And there will probably be singing.

One poet in the video was Ted Berrigan. We watched him read the following:

Whitman in Black

For my sins I live in the city of New York
Whitman's city lived in in Melville's senses, urban inferno
Where love can stay for only a minute
Then has to go, to get some work done
Here the detective and the small-time criminal are one
& tho the cases get solved the machine continues to run
Big Town will wear you down
But it's only here you can turn around 360 degrees
And everything is clear from here at the center
To every point along the circle of horizon
Here you can see for miles & miles & miles
Be born again daily, die nightly for a change of style
Hear clearly here; see with affection; bleakly cultivate compassion
Whitman's walk unchanged after its fashion

Sigh. I loved this. Did you love it? If not, I take no issue with saying that something is clearly very wrong with you. In some ways I supposed I'm just beyond thrilled to be moving to New York. But I also like the balance here - there's a delicate chord being struck that involves humor, reverence, love and loathing all at once. And he references Whitman. I mean, come on.

I went home and searched for this poem for a while, and accidentally fell down a Google rabbit-hole into Ted Berrgian land. And there, I found:

Hall of Mirrors

We miss something now

as we think about it

Let's see: eat, sleep & dream, read

A good book, by Robert Stone

Be alone

Knew of it first

in New York City. Couldn't find it

in Ann Arbor, though

I like it here

Had to go back to New York

Found it on the Upper West Side

there

I can't live with you

But you live

here in my heart

You keep me alive and alert

aware of something missing

going on

I woke up today just in time

to introduce a poet

then to hear him read his rhymes

so unlike mine & not bad

as I'd thought another time

no breakfast, so no feeling fine.

Then I couldn't find the party, afterwards

then I did

then I talked with you.

Now it's back

& a good thing for us

It's letting us be wise, that's why

it's being left up in the air

You can see it, there

as you look, in your eyes

Now it's yours & now it's yours & mine.

We'll have another look, another time.

...

Whoa.

I've read so much Ted Berrigan. It makes me happy. I love finding new poets. Loving a poet is an immersive experience. Sometimes, you just find the kind of person who can pull you down into their own little ocean so deep you want to drown. All the colors, and the strange creatures, and the gentle rhythm to rock you back and forth. It's like another world.

(In other news, sometimes I get "caught" in themes in my own writing. Things will crop up in ever piece I write for a month. Eyes was a big one for a while there. Lately it's been drowning. Just listen to the word - drown. There is no sound more fitting to describe that water water everywhere-ness of drowning. I tell you this so you aren't thrown off or concerned by my macabre watery metaphors.)

Alright. One more poem before I'm done. After all, good things come in threes.

Sonnet 34

Time flies by like a great whale
And I find my hand grows stale at the throttle
Of my many faceted and fake appearance
Who bucks and spouts by detour under the sheets
Hollow portals of solid appearance
Movies are poems, a holy bible, the great mother to us
People go by in the fragrant day
Accelerate softly my blood
But blood is still blood and tall as a mountain blood
Behind me green rubber grows, feet walk
In wet water, and dusty heads grow wide
Padré, Father, or fat old man, as you will,
I am afraid to succeed, afraid to fail,
Tell me now, again, who I am

Posts from the Middle of the Night

When something's really weighing on my mind, be it important or utterly trivial, I can't sleep. I try warm water, music, changing positions, melatonin, yoga - and none of it seems to ever work. Occasionally I drink NyQuil straight from the bottle, but only when I'm obscenely ill (or judgement impaired).

Inevitably I end up online, which does exactly nothing productive. But lately, I've taken to writing in my notebook (I don't call it a journal, because I am notoriously bad at journaling) in the middle of the night, and somehow, that sets my mind at rest enough for me to go to sleep.

Although, I suppose that even more recently I've become that girl who blogs in the middle of the night, and somehow, this feels like a step backwards.

Anyway, this midnight notebooking has lead to my waking up to some pretty hilarious entries. Many of them are a strange balance of intensely personal self-revelations and zany, misspelled comments about ducks.

Last week, I opened my notebook to find two full pages of three-circled venn diagrams, diagramming the most bizarre and random of things. One was composed only of emoticons. Scrawled at the bottom of the first page was a desperate Why won't you take me seriously? This sort of question then seemed to answer itself on the next page, where, written in large block letters to the side of a particularly angst-ridden diagram, was the declaration: I AM IN A STATE OF VENN.

And that's a metaphor for livin.

Also, here's a poem. I wrote it and stuff. It's quite short, as I'm experimenting with "blitz poetry". I'm sure there's a real, fancy literary term for it, but basically I'm trying out writing very very short poems. Maybe because of how much I loved Slaughterhouse Five, which made me wand to write in clumps, where each clump is "a brief, urgent message". It's not fantastic, but I do think all made up words deserve to be publicized.

want

no, she told herself,

no more propriety.

hell take high society,

from now on -

only books and bends

and open ends

of dream matter and desirestuff.

only mine.

Epic Spar Battle Royale (or, how to say goodbye)

I said my first goodbye yesterday.

We had a debate tournament (my third debate weekend in a row, yeesh) in Richfield this weekend. We had 10 people compete, and took home first in Congress, second in Open LD, and first in SpAr. But results were mixed. For example, I got killed in impromptu, which was not fun at all, because I'd thought I'd really been on a roll. It worries me, because what am I going to do when I get to State and have the same judges? Turns out, central/southern Utah judges don't want to hear the same stories as Northern Utah judges. No Miss Representation or AP English stories. Time to adjust the register and find some new ones.

That said, it was still a really, really fun trip. I played endless Bang and finished the novel I didn't finish on time for AP English (and loved it) and wore stupid hipster glasses in honor of my beloved debate camp PF coach, who was never seen without.

One thing that caught me off guard though, was that, as I mentioned, I had to say my first goodbye at this tournament.

This tournament marks our last "normal" tourney of the year - all that's left is Region, and State. The number of events you can sign up for at these meets is limited, so I've been planning to go in Public Forum as my debate event and Impromptu as my IE. That said, when I participated in spar at this tournament, it was my last time ever.

I realized this about halfway through the day, and pushed the thought to the back of my mind because that's what we have to do when sad and startling things take us by surprise. I joked about it a bit, but at the same time, it nagged at me for the rest of the day.

The Final Round itself was nothing spectacular. The resolution was about prohibiting guns in public places, and I went neg. I talked about abuse victims, and safeguards, and Constitutional rights. The girl I debated was a lot like me, which was weird. Clash was heated but respectable. I talked fast.

But upon finishing that, the Final Round, the last spar round of my entire life, I had to sit in the hallway by myself for a while and just cry. My hipster glasses fogged up. I was so deeply sad - and I don't even like spar.

Debate has quite simply been a really good thing for me, and while I'm so excited to move on to adulthood and New York City and Columbia, it's sad to see it come to an end.

This is the first of many goodbyes, and a good, gentle one to start with. It's still tough, though, to realize that soon, for the first but certainly not last time, I'll be saying goodbye to the only life I have ever known.

It's hard to leave something good for something better.

It's exciting to be in the final pages of this chapter of my life. But with that excitement I'm learning also comes a fair amount of heartache and trepidation. It sucks to say goodbye. I can believe all good things come to an end, but the inevitability of it doesn't make things any easier.

The truth of the matter is that very soon, my life will change drastically. I can't wait. But at the same time, how do I say goodbye to living down the hall from my other family members, and coming home to be greeted by Mal and Henry V, and the climate my hairstyling technique has adapted to, and seeing my friends whenever I choose, and driving down Highland Drive every morning in the dark, and sitting at the same gray tables I've sat at for years?

It sucks to say goodbye. It's wonderful to say hello. I don't want to go. I want to go more than I've ever wanted. I'm scared. I'm excited. I'm happysad about the whole thing. It's just that, until now, I didn't realize I would be sad at all.

In Tongan, there are two words for goodbye. If you are leaving, you say, "nofo a." If you are staying and someone else is leaving, the word is "'alu a." I've always loved that there are two goodbyes. Staying pain is very different from going pain. And staying joy is very different from going joy. It's fitting that we get to say different sorts of goodbyes in our lives.

And so: goodbye, spar. You were the first event I ever competed in debate. We've had some good times. You're the event that let me say things like "guns belong at school" and "I was raised by chimpanzees", not because I necessarily believe it, but because I had to learn how to make an argument I couldn't believe. Somehow, through all the bizarre arguments and infuriating cross ex's and eye rolling, I think I learned how to understand other people better.

I took first place in Varsity Spar at Richfield, though. Guess I'm going out with a bang.

Nofo a.

7 Reasons to Let Go

As I mentioned yesterday, some of my art/writing did well in the Scholastic Art and Writing competition. I thought I'd share a bit of that here.

The following was my "Flash Fiction" submission. I'd write about it, but I like the idea that you get to read it raw. I'll write about it tomorrow.

7 Reasons to Let Go

1. Early in the morning the children shuffle outside, heads low, windbreakers zipped up to the chin. They stand in three great lines that wind through the parking lot: a three headed snake, a Ceberus, a hydra. The lines ripple and dance like wind on water. The principle rings a bell that echoes close in their ears, bouncing off the soft gray sky. “We remember,” she chants. The children stare at their shoes and wonder what they are supposed to remember. Most of them don’t understand.

The silence is broken as a blue windbreaker takes off across the lot. A streak of electric color sandwiched between asphalt ground, asphalt sky. It takes two teachers to bring him back. When they find him around the corner, he is sitting in the middle of the street, one arm folded around a large stray dog, speaking to the animal in a low voice: the sort of voice Noah used to charm the beasts aboard his ark.

We are being punished. God sent the flood; now fire.

2. I couldn’t give a date to Pearl Harbor. I couldn’t tell you when they dropped the bomb, and I have never lived in fear of another one blazing out of the sky. You see, we were not that afraid generation. Our fear came after.

3. “Sensory memory corresponds approximately to the initial 200-500 milliseconds after an item is perceived. The ability to look at an item, and remember what it looked like with just a second of observation, or memorization, is an example of sensory memory.”

This is why you close your eyes and still see the scene in front of you burned onto the inside of your eyelids. It’s an optical illusion, this kind of memory.

4. It would not be until years later, in the middle of the night, that I would realize it was an attack. Built the buildings too tall, I had thought until then.

5. A rock comes flying through the storefront window. How dare you? it screams through its mouth full of teeth. How dare you hang at half mast grief that is not your own? A woman cries; another ushers her daughter along, forgetting the child has grown too old to hold her hand.

A man stands still, one hand still pulling open the refrigerator door. His breath materializes on the glass before his face as he lets out all the cold. They already took him! The rock continues screaming. And for you to take the pain that is mine and make it yours is unbearable, unrighteous-

The man finally unfreezes; the door slips shut. The cart is left in the middle of the aisle. It drifts like an uncaptained ship, rolls down the gentle slope of a market on a hill.

His mother died eighteen years ago. March 13^th, the sort of day when nothing happened. He’s glad they don’t put out a flag each year for her. He doesn’t think he’d make it through the day.

6. How are we supposed to “get over” this?

7. Ten years and she still wakes gasping, haunted by dreams of documented, ten-second journeys. The air is too heavy. It presses, presses, till her skin threatens to rupture. She shakes and wails and stifles the dark root of a scream lying hollow at the base of her throat. He strokes her hair, rocks her back and forth. He grips her by the back of the neck and shakes her. Thank God, is all she can say. Her eyes close. Thank God, thank God, he died with the wind on his face.