The Philosophy of Restoration

A number of things today have me thinking about the restoration architecture and archaeology. In my Intro to Archaeology class we watched a movie about the restoration of the Parthenon. And I just went to a lecture at school by Mary Beard about the restoration of Pompeii.

My first introduction to the idea of restoration was at Pinhey's last summer. The house at Pinhey's was restored by the Canadian architect Julian Smith (who also restored the Vimy Memorial) in the 1990s. This is the part of the tour where I would discuss the philosophies of restoration. At Pinhey's, a lot of the house was left as it was found. This way, you can see the deterioration over time. The deterioration is part of the story. It's a story of a the gradual decline of the wealthiest family in March Township. Parts of the house needed to be restored in order to perserve the structural value and to allow it to be used as a regulation public place. But the philosophy of Julian Smith, as with most modern restoration architects, was to make it very obvious which parts were new material and which were original. You do this by not matching paints exactly or by not finishing the wood. So you get an idea of what it would have looked like, but you are changing the original material. This works very well at Pinhey's, since the family didn't do any major restorations while they were living there, due to their decline of wealth. At Billings it's a different case. The family renovated and modernized the house themselves while living there, which drastically changed the original structure of the house. Because of this, the outside of the Billings Estate National Historic Site looks old, but the inside looks fairly new, with white washed walls and such. Personally, I prefer the authenticity of Pinhey's, because when you walk in the front door you're essentially seeing what they saw 150 years ago.

The movie we watched in class this morning was a documentary about the ongoing restoration of the Parthenon. It was very interesting. Essentially, in order to keep the Parthenon standing at all, it was in need of a major restoration. But they've had alot of problems with it. You see, the Athenians didn't build the Parthenon to be straight. They built it to look straight. This means that all of the lines are slightly curved, creating the optical illusion of perfection, though it is actually imperfect. They didn't care about how was but how it looked. Which says a lot about the Athenians. This, however, leads to another problem. Each column is made in several marble pieces. But they are all different, by fractions and millimeters. That means each "piece" of the Parthenon only fits in one spot. They have to be very precise when creating the supporting pieces in order to get it just right. They've been at it for 30 years. It took the Athenians 7 years (under Pericles, during the Athenian Empire) to make the Parthenon. And, aren't we supposed to be more advanced than them? Apparently not. As the documentary says, not only did they have a complex system of measurement but they also had tools created in their mastery of mettalurgy that we can't replicate today.

This afternoon, Mary Beard was telling us about the Allied bombing of Pompeii in 1943. It destroyed many parts of the ruins of Pompeii, and as a result a lot of Pompeii isn't an original but a restoration. Beard said that as a society, we turn a blind eye to the restoration of major sites like Pompeii and Hadrian's Wall. Because we want to. We want to believe that this is our "unmediated contact" with the Roman World. That we're seeing what they saw. When really, a lot of the restorations, such as that of Pompeii and those done at Knossos by Arthur Evans, are more of a product of what we imagine the ancient world to be. It says as much about our society as it does about theirs, maybe more.

"As our vision of the ancient world changes, so does what we choose to find at Pompeii." - Mary Beard.

Mythology Mondays: The curse of the Tantalids

I've noticed that some of my favourite blogs have theme days. I thought I would join in the trend! I love alliteration and clearly the only thing I know something about that starts with an m is.. Mythology!

A while back I posted that I was falling behind on my mythological conaissance and wanted to post more about it. Obviously, that didn't happen. But now it will! And I have.. 43 more minutes to write about a myth while it's still Monday!

I have always been interested in the family line of Tantalus, Pelops and Atreus and it's successive curses. This is the line of Agamemnon and Orestes. I wrote an essay in second year about Aeschylus' Agamemnon and the curse of the house of Atreus.

I think I'll start with Tantalus and move my way down through the line on subsequent Mondays, so you can all get out your copies of Aeschylus' Oresteia and know the whole background story.

From Tantalus, we get the word tantalize.

Tantalus is the son of Zeus and one of his many nymphs. Zeus invites him to dinner one night, on Olympus. Tantalus, always ambitious, steals nectar and ambrosia from the Gods and takes it back down to Earth to give to other mortals. This is a major faux pas in the Olympian circle. See, ambrosia is a secret of the Gods. And mortals aren't supposed to know secrets.

Zeus is pissed at his son. Tantalus decides it would be a good idea to sacrafice his own son Pelops to the Gods, à la Abraham and Isaac. Except Tantalus cuts Pelops into tiny pieces and boils him. He then serves this as a gourmet dish to the Gods, to appease them. Also, because he wanted to prove he was smarter than them, and trick them into eating a human. Except the Gods, being all omniscient and such, knew what was going on. All but poor Demeter who accidentally took a bite of the boy's shoulder. Zeus brings Pelops back to life, and they have to give him an ivory shoulder to replace the one eaten by Demeter.

Tantalus is sent to Tartarus, the place in Hades specially reserved for the worst evildoers. Here he is cursed with unquenchable hunger and thirst. He stood in a pool of water under a fruit tree for eternity. When he reached for a fruit, the branches would move just out of his reach. When he bent to drink, the water receded.

Poor Tantalus to taste the water tries,
But from his lips the faithless water flies:
Then thinks the bending tree he can command,
The tree starts backwards, and eludes his hand.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 4

tan⋅ta⋅lize
–verb (used with object), -lized, -liz⋅ing.
to torment with, or as if with, the sight of something desired but out of reach; tease by arousing expectations that are repeatedly disappointed.

For the next several generations, Tantalus' descendants from Pelops onwards are cursed to always reach for their desires and be disappointed. Tune in next week for Pelops!

Old soul songs

I was at my favourite local band's EP release concert on Friday night. Captain Firebutton is Kaitlyn's brother Cody's band. I've known Cody since I was two, and so I've seen pretty much every band he's ever been in. Finally, about two years ago, he joined an awesome one. I'm one of their biggest fans and I've been to almost every show.

One of their new songs is called Old World, and I loved it right away. Why?

The word "Babylon."

I have this love for what I call old soul songs* - songs that reference history at all, but especially in reference to love as old as time.

Soloman falls on his face in love with me.
He grows as old as the sea, deep where the fishes are.
He lives in the yard.
He keeps himself hard.
He keeps himself homeless and heartless and hard.
He sleeps under stairs along with the heirs of nothing,
And nothing means no one who cares.
But I love him dear,
And I love him dear,
And I've loved him hundreds of thousands of years.
Stay.

That song, courtesy of my Faebala, is Stay by Belly. It's beautiful. It is the quintessential old soul song. It makes my bones feel.

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
He ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed
And history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once
You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Beneath the stars came fallin' on our heads
But they're just old light, they're just old light
Your hair was long when we first met

One of my favourite songs of all time, Samson by Regina Spektor. Regina Spektor is a master of the old soul songs. All of her songs a rife with historical references, especially my favourite kind - greek mythology (she has a song called Oedipus!).

Take stock in a master plan
Place bets on an empty hand
Empire has a leg to stand
Holy roman style
A poison from a holy grail
Blind faith doesn't make a sale
Landmines on a righteous trail
March rank and file

Holy Roman, by the Get Up Kids. One of my favourite Get Up Kids songs.

Remember how it all began
The apple and the fall of man
The price we paid
So the people say
Down a path of shame it lead us
Dared to bite the hand that fed us
The fairy tale
The moral end
The wheel of fortune
Never turns again

Thick as Thieves by Natalie Merchant is probably one of my favourite songs by her, but Ophelia is another great example.

I met you before the fall of Rome
And I begged you to let me take you home
You were wrong, I was right
You said goodbye, I said goodnight
It's all been done

And to sum it up, It's All Been Done by the Barenaked Ladies. There are a hundred more I could quote, but I think you've got the point. I have no idea why I feel this way. It could be my love for history. It could be that at heart I'm a hopeless romantic who believes in the notion of the Origin of Love and that we have soulmates, stretching past through time. Maybe it's just that all of these songs are beautiful.


Soon, I'll tell you about my similar love for Leaving Songs.

*Yes, that's a reference to Bright Eyes

Who says you can't go home?

For the past week and a half, my parents have been in Hilton Head, North Carolina with my grandparents. I've been staying at my parents house to take care of la minou - my kitten. She's not really a kitten. She's actually 17, and very senile. She can't hear much anymore, she'll stand in the middle of the hallway and miaoul loudly.... I have no idea what she wants. And then she gets lost. She goes somewhere to sleep (the basement, my old room, a closet) and then since she can't hear me when I call, I won't be able to find her for the whole day. It's very worrying. She's very old.

I've really enjoyed my time at my parent's place (soon to be my place again, for the summer). I love having the car (though I'm running out of gas money fast). But above all, I love living alone. I love being able to walk around without clothes. Or being able to sing to myself loudly.

It gets a little lonely, though. Without my kitten I think I'd go insane. I love living with my roommates too, don't get me wrong. And I'm excited for our last drunken/exam (yes, those two things go together) month together. But I can't be naked, and that's key.

I think that my parents house will always be home, the place I leave behind as I explore the world. It'll be a while until I find another place to truly call home, I think.

That being said, I spent an hour this morning cleaning up the house because my parents will be home before I get back from class today. Note to self: a whole chick pea salad is too much for one person and it really should be thrown out/finished within a couple of days of making it.

Omelette fail

I'm a new convert to the ways of eggs. Mostly because of my severe lack of protein in my diet (since I generally don't like meat... except fried chicken) but also because about two years ago I discovered that eggs weren't just those runny things I dragged toast through when I was little. They were actually good, in scrambled form and omelette form! Since this wonderful discovery (I actually remember when it was - I went out for breakfast with Kristen the day before I left for Ireland and ordered an egg wrap thing) I have been an egg keener. I almost always order omelettes for breakfast out. I make myself scrambled eggs for dinner.

I have only made two attempts at making my own omelettes. The last was under Kristen's supervision last Saturday morning - they turned out surprisingly well. Tonight I decided I'd try again.

Needless to say, I failed at the most important part of omelette making - the part where you flip it over. You'd think since I'm a master at making crepes, this would be easy. But alas.

So, I let the thing cook in shambles and topped it with lots of cheese... and pretended that I had intended to make scrambled eggs, not an omelette.

Sometimes I'm straight...

Saturday's a good day for shameless vanity. As you probably know, I love my hair. Some of you may even know that the first thing that I'm attracted to on a guy is good hair.

But did you know I have a theory about my hair?

I am a curly haired person. I have a curly haired person's personality. I have embraced it, and me and the curls have come to an agreement... in which I agree to spend lots of money on them, and they agree to curl in some degree of style so that I don't have permanent bad hair days.

When I was in high school, my friend Lindz used to call my straightened hair (on the few occasions I had three hours to kill to get it that way) news anchor hair. I couldn't agree more. I always had an overwhelming desire to wear pastels when my hair was straight. See, you can tell my hair isn't supposed to be straight. I don't have a straight person's hair cut. My hair is really thick and has a lot more volume than the average actually straight hair.

All of this being said, about three or four times a year I straighten my hair. Out of boredom or curiosity or sometimes for a special occasion (even if the special occasion is that I want an excuse not to shower the next day and still have good hair.)

Last night, Kaitlyn came over before we went out to her brother's band's concert (WHICH WAS AWESOME!) and I told her to bring her straightener so she could do my hair. As you can see in the pictures I posted on that post, Kaitlyn's hair is naturally even curlier than mine. But she's been straightening her hair for years. So she has a heavy duty straightener and even my stubborn hair was no match for it.

I took a picture to commemorate the rare occasion of my having straight hair. I like it, but not as much as my curls. Also, I'm bored because Kristen and Taylor are making me wait around to go book shopping.

it's time

I can hear ticking clocks running rampant in me
chiming in an apogee waiting for the synergy
of her and me, waiting on the light
and I never say goodnight, never say that I'm always right

~Wait - Something Corporate

It's weird to think that the seemingly mundane sound of a clock ticking is foreign to me. But the truth is that I don't even really know how to tell time on a clock face. When I was ten, I got a digital watch for my birthday and I never looked back. No one has a watch anymore, everyone checks the time on their cell phone or iPods. We're moving away from the steady click of time. The sundial was invented by the Egyptians as early as 1500 BCE. However, time wasn't standardized until after the invention of the railroad, when more precise times were required. Just over a hundred years since then, we've forgotten clocks.

Today, I have time ticking around my neck. The steady rhythm, counting out the moments of the present, sending them reeling into the past. Sending me reeling towards my future. You could see it as a noose, tying me to measurable time. But today, with the sun shining and the air full of spring, I choose to see it as a heartbeat, ticking the words of my future one by one.

Time goes by from year to year
And no one asks why I am standing here
But I have my answer as I look to the sky
This is the time of no reply.

~Time of No Reply - Nick Drake

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

The first tentative decision has been reached. I have decided (I think) to do my graduate degree at Newcastle University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England. I will be getting an MA in Greek and Roman Archaeology. The program lets me do Heritage/Collections Management along with more traditional archaeological methods courses. I'll also be going to both Rome and Athens during the year. Newcastle-upon-Tyne (one of two English Newcastle's, the other is Newcastle-under-Lyme) is pretty close to Hadrian's Wall, so apparently we'll be studying Roman archaeology there too.

Newcastle itself is a smaller city in the North East, about 2.5 hours from Edinburgh and 5 hours from London. It's surrounded by beautiful English countryside, it's said. It's a shipping town, but because of the university has a student population too. Newcastle University is apparently a "Russell Group" school, which is England's equivalent to Ivy League. Which sounds pretty awesome to me. I guess I always figured if I was doing a classic's degree anywhere but Oxford or Cambridge I was a step down from the best anyway. Apparently not so!

I was conflicted, trying to decide between Newcastle, Edinburgh and Leicester. I wrote a pro/con list last night with the help of Kristen, Chris and Taylor. We decided the only real reason I wanted to go to the University of Edinburgh was because I loved the city, not the program. And I decided on my own that the only reason I wanted to go to Leicester was because it was so close to London. But, in the end, I think I'll really like Newcastle. After all, I hated Dublin and adored Galway - so maybe I'm a small to medium sized town person.

But as Chris said last night- no matter where I end up it's going to be amazing. I'm going to be in England, doing my master's. Doing a respected master's program in a field I actually love (as opposed to my Bachelor of Journalism which I've hated since day one).

This isn't the final decision. I'm not ready to press any buttons or make it official. But I think this is it. And I'm really excited. I called Fae to tell her - she needed to be the first person I told, officially. England.. England is ours. It was our dream. And someday, maybe we'll be there together. But this is just the beginning.

If I could wish for anything in my life I hope that it never stops being full of firsts.

Legendary.

My sister sent me this link to cheer me up after my exam yesterday. I just got around to watching it and I knew I had to share. Enjoy!

The sound of heaven shaking...

I had a hard time getting out of bed this morning - not because it's so early, but because it was raining. I love lying in bed when it's raining outside. Not in a "I don't want to go out" way, but in a listening to the soothing rhythm of the rain drops and remembering way.

When I lived in Ireland, it rained almost everyday. I used to lie in bed far too late in the mornings, listening to the rain against the huge window over my bed. I was only there four months, and I only had one suitcase. Ireland didn't always feel like home. But it did when it rained. I love rain. Those days rainy days you're always saving for.

And it was raining cats and dogs out side of her window
And she knew they were destined to become
Sacred road kill on the way
And she was listening to the sound of heavens shaking
Thinking about puddles, puddles and mistakes...

Grad school, pt. V

Today I got old fashioned mail - a nice big acceptance package from the University of Leicester for an MA in Classical Mediterranean. They were the only school left that I hadn't heard from, and possibly my first choice. So, that makes five schools and six programs. Leicester is about 45 minutes from London, and the program is sort of an interesting interdisciplinary type program complete with a study tour of the Mediterranean in second semester.

So now I really have to decide between all these places. I foresee a giant pro con list in the future. It's hard to believe that this is all happening.

Historically funny

As you probably know, I love cheesy history jokes. I was looking through some old files today, because once again I'm hugely procrastinating an essay. And I found my summative from Gr. 11 Ancient Civilizations, about the First Crusade. And I have to say, it's still hilarious. We had to make a newspaper about an event in history. My favourite part was the ads. I thought I'd share a couple. I hope they make you laugh too!

my summer of amazing luck

I really loved A Complicated Kindness, and Miriam Toews is one of Kristen's favourite authors. So, the other day when I was trying to decide which book to read next, Kristen suggested My Summer of Amazing Luck. I wasn't sure I was in the mood for it (I had already spent over half an hour looking at all of Taylor's, Kristen's and my books and hadn't been into anything) but Kristen suggested I read the first page and see. I started reading standing up, and by the end of the page I was in bed, ready to start the book.

I really enjoyed it, possibly more than A Complicated Kindness. I think A Complicated Kindness had more great one liners, but My Summer of Amazing Luck has a far better plot. This book is basically a litany of tragic lives, somehow presented in a good light. The narrator moves into a housing project, and most of the books ends up being the sad life stories of everyone who lives there. But it's not what you expect, because it's not so much tragic as inspirational. The characters in the book are great. I guess the book's sort of about the shitty things that happen in life, but that there's still happiness and hope, in small things. It's about being poor and being a mother and being in and out of love and knowing full well that all men are useless.

"Do what makes you happy because there is no sure thing. Just because you can pick out four-leaf clovers doesn't mean you'll get lucky."

"The first part of the song is so beautiful because the second part is so sad. We can't have one without the other. It doesn't turn out like we thought. But still it's a beautiful song."

It was a really great book - Miriam Toews has such a different, engaging style of writing.

Two decades

Today is my friend Kaitlyn's birthday. Kaitlyn and I have known each other since we were two years old. We always use her birthday to measure the years of our friendship, and we always count in decades.

This year, it's officially been two decades. Kaitlyn is like a sister to me, we know exactly how to piss each other off and how to make each other laugh.

Happy Birthday, Kiwi. Love, Head.

Here comes the sun...

Winter depresses me. I am not a winter person, and never will be. I hardly ever get to enjoy all of the activities that make winter worthwhile (which in my mind is just skiing) and mostly I just suffer through the miserable cold and grey skies.

By February every year I start to get very depressed by it all. I actually get upset and angry that it's still so cold and snowy. By March, I'm ready to pick up and leave Canada forever. That's why, the day that it finally smells and feels like spring, I'm ecstatic. And summer, well that's even better.

Today is that day. Today is a day where I walked as slow as possible so I could stay outside longer, where I decided to walk to the grocery store instead of busing. Today is a day that only the Beatles can truly capture.

Here comes the sun, little darling. Here comes the sun. And I say, it's all right....

Grad school, pt. IV

Today I got a very strange e-mail. It was from one of the Professors at the University of London: King's College saying that he was recommending that the school make me a conditional offer. This, he said, was based on the fact that he had been interested in what I wrote on my statement of interest in regards to my proposed field of research. He then went on to talk about heroic bone transfer (what I had talked about) for a few paragraphs, and to suggest the classes I should take should I decide to do my Master's there. It was an e-mail specifically to me, about me....

Essentially, it's an offer from the University of London. Which, to be honest, wasn't one of my top choices because it's so expensive. But it made it seem like they were personally interested in me and my research. This could very likely be a tactic to get me to accept and pay them a lot of money.. but it's a tactic that certainly works.

I only have a couple of weeks to decide which school to choose.... I hate making decisions, but making THIS decision is way better than trying to decide what to do next year if I didn't get in anywhere.

Pickled Peckers

So, when Fae and I were googling that famous Peter Piper tongue twister, we discovered this:
This? Not big enough to be a tongue twister. Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peckers! Hahaha. Enjoy.

Beware the Ides of March!

The Ides of March - holiday of backstabbers!

"Confronted by a ring of drawn daggers, he drew the top of his gown over his face, and at the same time ungirded the lower part, letting it falls to his feet so that he would die with both legs decently covered. Twenty-three dagger thrusts went home as he stood there. Caesar did not utter a sound after Casca's blow had drawn a groan from him; though some say that when he saw Marcus Brutus about to deliver the second blow, he reproached him in Greek with: 'You, too, my child?'" - Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar 82.

One of the most famous stories in history. Julius Caesar, tyrant or saviour of Rome, depending on how you look at it, is struck down in the Roman Senate. Although, the real Senate House (Curia) was under construction at the time, with one of Caesar's beautification projects. So he wasn't struck down in the official Senate building. The best part of the story, though, is the famous line "Et tu, Brute?" from Shakespeare. Caesar is willing to die without complaint, but the one blow he can't take is that Brutus, who he thought of as a son, has betrayed him.

I'll act on my love like Pontius Pilate
I'll give you my love like I was Brutus
I'll radiate love like Three Mile Island
I'll prove you my love like I was Judas
-ThouShaltNot

That red-headed girl.

For the first 20 years of my life, I HATED my hair. It was the bane of my (and my mom's) existence. I would have given anything for straight hair. For hair that wasn't so thick. For something other than what I had - which was, in chronological order: a Beatle's bowl cut, a boy hair cut, the "lion head" fro, a perma-ponytail, kool aid hair, bright purple hair, dead burgundy hair.

But now... I love my hair. It's my favourite thing about me. It's certainly the thing I spend the most money on. Now, when I straighten my hair it just doesn't look like me. I do it about once every three or four months for the shock value - but I feel like a different person. I feel like my hair really reflects my personality.

I've been going to the same hairdresser for over 6 years. She's a genius. I trust her completely, and I know she'd never let me leave with bad hair. She' so busy that I have to make my appointments over three months in advance, but that just means I have to be organized.


It's worth every cent.

Coming and Going

"I think if we ever wrote a book about us - it would be called Coming and Going. Because that's what our memories are always full of." - Fae

Running to meet her at the Dublin airport - my iPod and headphones hit the floor with a crash and everyone around us winces. But all I can think of is how long the summer's been and how everything makes so much more sense when she's here.

Sitting in a train station in Pennsylvania, we're sharing a headset and listening to Konstantine on repeat. It's not hard to dream, you'll always be my Konstantine. The song is nine minutes. How many times could we listen to it before we had to part ways again, for another half a year?

Got lost in the Pittsburgh airport, by the time I find her I'm almost crying. But she's there, and it's almost her birthday. One weekend isn't long enough, but it'll have to do.

Bleary-eyed, it's just after 5am and we're at the Ottawa Airport. It's too cold, too early. And too soon.

It's 2am and we're driving around Pittsburgh. We've been through the Fort Pitt tunnel three times. We feel infinite. We don't want the night to end, because when we wake up the next day it'll all be over again.

Sometimes people ask me how you can be best friends with someone you only see twice a year. All I can say is, when it comes to Fae, my other half, how can I not?

Amin mela lle, vanima Faebala.

Handle with Care

There are a few reasons not to read more than one Jodi Picoult book in a row.
1) They're a little predictable, especially when you remember the last one you read very clearly.
2) A lot of the characters are the same (in some cases, actually the same, but in most just remarkably similar)
3) They're emotional roller coasters and too much can upset you.

I'm mostly dealing with the latter right now. Handle with Care just came out on Tuesday, and I just finished it like ten minutes ago. It was good. Sort of a combination of different parts from My Sister's Keeper, the Tenth Circle and the Pact.

It's about a little girl with a disease that makes her bones really weak and she breaks them all the time. Her mother ends up filing a wrongful birth lawsuit against her ob/gyn (also her best friend...) to get enough money to pay for the things her daughter will need later in life. But it sort of just ruins all the good parts of the life they already had - the parts that money can't fix.

When The Tenth Circle came out a couple of years ago, I read it right away too. It's the only Jodi Picoult book I have ever not liked. Why? Probably because the issue she focused on in this one was one I actually knew something about - cutting.

I was - am - a cutter. It's a little like being an alcoholic I think. You're still an alcoholic if you don't drink. You're still a cutter if you don't cut, because you still think about it all the time. You still think you need it, despite having overcome it, mostly. It's taken me a long time to be able to talk about it - and indeed this is the first time I've talked about it in such a public place. But it's a really important issue, I think, and a really big part of who I am today. I have at least three friends who have cut and I have read so many articles about how it's a growing "trend" among teenagers today.

In The Tenth Circle, I just kept thinking that Picoult didn't get it. She didn't get why people cut, what it was like... any of it. And I thought it was so superficial. To the point where I wondered if that's how people who knew about the issues in her other books felt. Do domestic violence victims dislike Picture Perfect? Do victims of school violence hate Nineteen Minutes? Do people who have been molested think that Perfect Match has it wrong?

With Handle with Care, I've started to believe that isn't true. Because in this book, Picoult got it right. She missed the mark by a mile in Tenth Circle, but her description of cutting in Handle with Care was so true that it made my skin crawl, filled my eyes with tears.

"They weren't on my wrists, don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly why I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain, period. I could feel everything building up inside of me like steam heat, and I was just turning a valve. It made me think of my mother, when she made pie crusts. She'd prick little holes aal over the place. So it can breathe, she said."

"People always want to know what it feels like, so I'll tell you: there's a sting when you first slice, and then yor heart speeds up when you see blood, because you know you've done something you shouldn't have, and yet you've gotten away with it..... You literally make yourself sick, becase you promised yourself last time would be the last time, and once again you've let yourself down. So you hide the evidence of your weakness under layers of clothes long enogh to cover the cts, even if it's summertime and no one is wearing jeans or sleeves."

Though the rest of the book was good, for me this sub plot was the best part. It redeemed Jodi Picoult in my eyes. For though I had remained a devout reader after Tenth Circle, everytime I thought of that book it made me mad. Now I'm considering that Picoult did her research just as well as the rest of her books - but that Trixie in Tenth Circle really did cut for a different reason than me or my friends. It doesn't make me like the book anymore, but it gets rid of the hatred.

I know this is a depressing post, but I don't intend it that way. It's a problem that millions of people face, and I'm lucky because it was never too serious and I had a really great support system to help me through it. If only it could be that way for everyone. If only it wasn't such a dangeorus "fad" now.

So, there you go. A piece of me, tightly entwined with a piece of the book.

Second Glance

Last weekend I finished reading Second Glance by Jodi Picoult. It had been a long time since I read a Picoult book, but I've read almost all of her book over the last four years.

There isn't much to say about the book itself. It was good, as most of her books are (except The Tenth Circle). I really enjoy reading them because while they're easy to read and dramatic, they're still very well written for "chick lit." I have a hard time classifying them as chick lit, because to me chick lit's always been like Shopaholic or Devil Wears Prada sort of books. Picoult is more of a... Chick Fic? Haha. I don't know.

When I'm right in the middle of a semester, I can't read really complicated books because I have too much homework and other shit going on, so I often end up reading Picoult or Nora Roberts or something similarly entertaining. The only problem with Jodi Picoult books is that I get very involved in them, and if I have sometihng else going on it can be difficult to stop reading.

Second Glance itself is about ghosts and ghost hunting. Until this year, I had never really thought about ghosts and whether or not I believed in them. When I started working at Pinhey's, I had people asking me all the time about ghost stories from the house. I even have a couple of my own stories, though they're better as stories than as proof. When I worked at Billings in October, we did ghost hunting. All of this, and books like Second Glance, have made me start thinking about whether I believe in ghosts or not. But I'm still completely undecided and I find that I can believe in them, in the right situation, but that they don't necessarily scare me. I think the reason I can't decide is because I have no definite opinion of what happens when you die - Heaven, reincarnation, whatever. And I think I'd need to decide what I think about that before I can decide whether some people stick around or not.

The book wasn't really quoteworthy but it was definitely a good read!

Grad school, pt. III

Today I got an acceptance to two programs at the University of Edinburgh, MSc in Classical Art and Archaeology and MSc in Mediterranean Archaeology.

I adore Edinburgh. Lain and I went to visit for the weekend when we were in Ireland. It's such a gorgeous city. And the University of Edinburgh is one of Europe's oldest and most prestigious universities.

This is a photo I took when we visited the University (notice the wonder that is my wide angle lens).

Now I have three different universities and four different programs to decide between. And I have to decide soon. I can see myself being happy at any of the three places, but I know for a fact that I love Edinburgh - and the city I'm about to move to is really important for me.

Chapter One

I've been thinking a lot about stories and beginnings.

You know how movies and books always open on that moment where a person's life changes? On that fateful situation that leads them to love or loss or whatever is going to be interesting enough to write 300 pages about?

I've been waiting almost 22 years for the first chapter of my story. Everything that's happened so far has just been background.

Sometimes I think I'm just dreaming to hope for that defining moment. But I have to believe that there's going to be something more to my life.

I don't know when my story's going to begin, but I hope it's soon. I don't know how the story is going to unfold, but I really hope it's some variation on happily ever after.

My sister is about 9ft tall....

My sister, Laura, has been stilting for over two years. She's super buff and can do some pretty amazing things on her stilts. She recently got arm stilts too, but I haven't seen them yet. Every summer they perform a show at Fringe and other various occasions. I love watching her. I also love when people ask me about what my sister does and I tell them she stilts. How many people can say that?

When I move to the UK in September, Laura will be moving to NYC to train with an acrobatic group there. I really admire Laura for finding something she really loves and not being afraid to follow it.

Photo by Michael Montgomery

Fancy!

This is awesome. Courtesy of Lindz.