Insert ‘Canon in D’ Here

Yes, that day was here.

So I graduated yesterday from Discipleship Training School in the University of the Nations. I had a focus in writing, as well as participating in the video and dance tracks. It has been an eventful, and insightful seven months, and I am surely ready to move on to the next thing in life.

I couldn’t help but think about all our individual lives together as our names got called out to walk across the “stage.” How they all intertwined, perpetuated, and just existed. We all, in these seven months, had built a story together. But still, in between the lines of that story there were all the stories that we ourselves experienced alone. And still then, we have all imagined, and created stories with our art that we are sharing with the world.

I couldn’t help but think of all the things every person had gone through in the last seven months as they walked across that stage. Some heartbreak, death, and depression. Some joy, peace, and elation. But all of us have come out better in the end to my knowledge, and we can only continue these individual stories.

I couldn’t help but think of what we have been through together, lectures, improv, and boxes. Flights, foods, and cultures. We have discovered these things together, and had a group reaction, but within that reaction were the individual thoughts that made it.

Such a complicated web we weave of existence in a community like ours. I was trying to think of a metaphor, using a tapestry and how all the colors and threads come together to make a completed piece, but I found my mind coming to either loose, frayed, or incomplete ends. I realized that that is how we all connect to the outside world.

Because our stories are not complete  yet. They cannot finish this tapestry. There are too many things that are still happening, and things that could have been that are not, and things that need filled in by outside people existing now.

I realize now that this is going to be a giant tapestry. . . probably of the whole world and human history. But that is just the thing.

The world is not complete without every action. Everything that we think, or choose, or stumble upon in life is part of that.

In the grand scheme of things, then, does it matter if one thread is off, or missing, or frayed? Yes because then the whole thing is thrown-off and likely to fall apart in places. It is not perfect.

But then, is it even possible for a thread to go wrong? You decide.

Miss Mykell

100

Today is my 100th blog post.

I also, unknowingly, made up a challenge yesterday to force myself to think of words as more valuable than I previously had. I also wanted to learn about the power of words. So I told myself I could only use 100 spoken words today. They say the average sentence length is 17 words long. That means I only spoke five sentences today.

I found out many things during the course of my day. For one, this challenge makes you rude. Somehow you don’t think of all the times during the day you say thank you and sorry. I found myself early in the day constructing my sentences carefully and made every word intentional.

I have also discovered that not speaking with people around you who can speak is anti-relational. It made me wonder if you were to tell our whole school to do it together one day if it would make it either extremely anti-relational, or let us bond more. Something to ponder.

I was also considering the goal of this exercise. Was it to find the importance of verbal communication and words? Was it to  intentionally make my words have more meaning because they were rare? Or was it to have an excuse to not talk, but making sure you had emergency leeway in case of an important topic?

I was also keeping a list of all the words that I did say. It would be interesting to have our whole school group do it, then have them outline what they used the few word resource they had, and figured out what was most important to them that day from what they actually talked about or participated in a social conversation. What would be the most used words?

Maybe you could tell a lot about a person this way. I personally found myself asking people things a lot. Asking for their help, and also saying thank you a lot. Danke (Thank you in German) is the word I used the most today with a tally of four.

I also only used two people’s names. Which, now that I look back on it, were quite unecessarily used. So why did I impulsively say them? They felt really special that I used a whole word to say their name though. Actually everything I said was nit picked and awed at, and people were begging me to use my words on them.

That or trying to trick me into it.

I know now that I will have to reformat the experiment in order for it to be more oriented towards the actual goal; to learn the power of a word.

Night lovelies,

Miss Mykell

An album of human heartbeats

Tonight I watched a livestream of a deep, bubbly, accented singer/songwriter (Imogen Heap) and found some curious thoughts out of my ether (yes, I have my own personal ether).

She has this idea to have her fans help her write these songs, but she does it using wordclouds. She has listeners put in words they want in the song into a little box and click submit. The most common words end up the biggest in this visual show of words.

It was a beautiful thing to take part in the creation of something so melodic, so delicate, so full of sugar (well, teaspoons full of sugar).  But there she was, creating for people, from people, in one place in the world with no one else but her, and everyone else peeping in.

Why, before the creation of the internet, did we ever find satisfaction with just consuming the creativity of others without response or contribution? Or perhaps what I should be asking is why is it so satisfying to collaborate when we create? Why do we want to help and aid in such endeavors?

We are a generation of purple letters, of EEE’s and living up to enveloping expectations of those letters put together to make ethereal and eviscerating emotion. Sometimes life is really like the flips of a teaspoon.

Her last request: A listener generated call for a cello section recorded and sent to her to use for the song.

I hope that happens a lot.

Perhaps I will learn to play the cello tonight just for the occasion.

Miss Mykell

Obituaries

Oh yeah, and here ended up being our final route for the two weeks. We left with 150 Euro (for a team of fourteen) and ended up making it through the two weeks somehow.

Oh, Germany.

This morning I opened my eyes to snowflake flurries balancing delicately on thin wisps of frigid air. I was so thankful that there was that separation between me and these drops of untouched beauty called glass, and walls…

Me there, in my cocoon of blankets and pillows sheltered from the stale cold outside I planned my day out before preceding to get out of bed throw on some stretchy clothes grab my i-pod and an apple and head down to the peaceful and quiet ballet room (formerly known to DTS students as the dining hall, but in all actuality, I think this was what it should have been meant for) and just zoned out from the world for the next 90 or so minutes.

I now sit here, fully back to normal human standards at my laptop in my room in the castle thinking is this what keeps me holding on to sanity? These early morning romps into my own land and time and space, there all by myself?

Now, sanity, I know, is a thing to be desired by most people, and may not even be attainable by me, but I try sometimes. I just wonder, and have had many conversations with people about this lately, what it is that keeps our heads on straight in life?

Or, maybe, it is not about finding things to keep your head on straight for your whole life, but finding small things that we, being slaves of time, can use to help us retain a naturally functioning level. Maybe we just need to feel like the world can just flow around us, or with us at the moment, in some moments, and that will be enough to get us through the harsh realities of this world.

Maybe we have to face them instead of run away.

But that just brings me full swing back into my first question. . .

 

Oh hey, look, it’s stopped snowing. . . maybe I go for a walk.

Miss Mykell

 

I may be a giant…

Okay I will finally admit it.

(I am human.)

So in being (human) I  have been wanting things that I have been struggling with to be finished already. I want to just take huge steps and have this process be over with. I think most people want to get through things as quickly as possible.

But I must remember that giant steps are hardly good for anyone.

If you think about the world as a sphere (which, conveniently it is) and you’re trying to run on it like a yoga ball (size proportion only) it becomes an entangling metaphor.

First of all you the bigger the steps you take, the faster the ball moves and the harder it is to balance. Because giant steps only make the world spin faster.

Second of all what human could possibly want the world to spin faster than it already is? That would be my least favorite tshing, the world is already confusing enough and normal human stuff makes my head spin already.

I vote we all take appropriately spaced steps with our problems, because it is a process.

And because the world is moving at a constant rate anyway so what human would think they can change that without some wicked high powered explosives?

Miss Mykell

Nothing becomes

So, it’s the last day of lecture and I have some reflections for my fellow students:

We all live in many different kinds of worlds. Not that we all live on different planets, but the world which we all experience is totally unique and different from anyone else. Of all the mindsets that you could see the world through, I personally think that of an artist, a person who creates, is the least boring. For we don’t see things how they are, we see things how we are.

We, as artists, see the world as something that can always be manipulated and changed. We see the sky as our canvas and the trees as our paintbrushes. We see the world in pictures and film, we can concentrate intensely well and get so enveloped in what we are doing that is the only thing happening in our minds. We hear a soundtrack in our heads for our lives and dream of new ways for our bodies to eviscerate emotion. We can lose ourselves in our creation, or what we are creating for. But the most important thing is that we do, in fact, create.

My favorite thing about living with, and being around creative people is there is always something where there was once nothing. When I was the editor of my high school newspaper I would always set down the proof pile of stories that had been produced for each publication on my desk and just admire it. Admire it in all it’s glory and beauty for what it was. Because we had made something together that had never existed before and would never be reproduced exactly how it was at that point in time. The collaborative creativity of many makes my heart race with exhilaration.

So just like the newspaper staff would pull from the ether a stack of stories, in three months we as an art school have made our own work come to life. The purpose of us  creating is to make new things to for people to analyze and absorb as well as react to. A couple saturdays ago, when there was one of the improv competitions, I had no idea that the story of a glitter throwing marriage counseling Spider-man with a light-saber fighting for the justice of the story of Adam and Eve could be thought up. Yet there it was, a random story, albeit a satisfying and utterly hilarious one, suddenly was imagined up and shared, and we all loved it.

We have also procured an entirely different set of things like memories, stories to tell, and a community to live in. Somehow we have managed to bring all of our mess together and make create something lasting and lovely that we can carry with us to the next step of this process that we call MotA. We have produced so much art collectively. Just tonight is a testimony to that, all the photos that are up on the walls around you, and the music that you can hear playing from downstairs are all things that didn’t exist three months ago.

-Mykell

Cozy and Bright

Oh wow, am I really writing a blog about Christmas?

Yes, yes I am.

So there is this room at the castle called the dining room. But it is not your typical dining room. If it was empty and didn’t have the tables in it I would almost think it was a dance studio with the nutmeg colored wood flooring, and graceful white curtains around classic paned windows. The light at any time of the day in that room splashes color onto the walls and objects that happen to be in it.

This room happens to be quite cozy and perfect to procure feelings of Christmas time, especially with the newly chopped tree sitting delicately in the corner. And even though the tree is not decorated, and there are still rows of chairs from lectures and meetings I can’t help but notice the snow falling softly against the glass, whispering sweet promises of warmth if I stay inside. I can’t help but have this feeling of hope that the Christmas season supposedly brings to every heart that takes part. I can’t help but imagine the Christmas ball that is going to take place later tonight in all of our formal attire as one last hoorah together before we all leave for outreach.

This is the first time I have felt this way around Christmas, even though I am not doing my usual Christmas activities. Even though I have not spent the last two months making a gingerbread house into the wee hours of the night. Even though I am not in the states and there is not the over-commercialization and materialization of this holiday there is this thing that I have never felt, and I can’t place the emotion, but I know it is lovely.

And that is all I have wanted for Christmas in a long time.

 

Here and There

Sometimes things change.

Sometimes places change.

Sometimes ideas change.

Sometimes peoples ideas about places and things change.  Which an interesting phenomenon that everyone takes part in at least once in their life. For me this has happened multiple times, the one to the most recent effect is my current living arrangements.

I am living in an apartment with about 13 other girls in a small German town, a 20 minute walk away from my school, and until this week, I hated it. It is not because I dislike my roomates, because they are all lovely, and it is way more comfortable and less spider-filled (actually I have not seen one spider in my apartment sicne I have been here) The problem is not only because everything is cramped and there is no personal space, which I can deal with just fine as proven by living in a cabin with other girls at camp this summer, but it is impossible to have any time alone at all.

Which for me is a huge problem.

Now this alone time problem can be easily remedied by taking a walk through town, or in the woods on the way to school in the mornings or evenings, that is, if you can take walks. It had become increasingly difficult to find time to just be somewhere by myself because I have injured my knee and cannot take long walks for it is increasingly annoying to walk places on crutches. Getting rides to school, although very helpful because I cannot walk to it, doesn’t help with this either.

So I have a few options. I can go outside to the cold muddy soccer field and chill for a little bit before I freeze my fingers off. I can have a few minutes after everyone leaves in the morning to walk to school. That has been a saving grace. Or I can find the few short moments in my secret reading cave downstairs until the music track takes it over, or they have a meeting there.

But the best solution has been I can stay home from mini-outreach to go to the doctors office for my knee and conveniently find that with everyone gone I get the whole apartment to myself for an entire week.

This was my saving grace. I was going insane from having people everywhere all the time and no room to just be my introverted self and dance and draw and read and watch movies without having to speak to anyone.

Thank you God, you knew exactly what the best thing for me would be.

So this room and apartment that I have tried to stay out of as much as possible these weeks since my arrival has changed for me. It has morphed in my mind into something totally different than what I had been perceiving it as before. It is, as of these last few moments of freedom, my playground that I can do with as I wish. Where it was before something that I only went to when I had to because of curfew, not it is a place I literally did not leave for three days. I am sure that I didn’t even have to talk with anyone for two of those days.

Glorious. And much needed.

So now, at the end of this week that has transformed this place in my mind I have gotten quite a bit done in the art, writing, movie department and may be ready to integrate back into normal YWAM society.

OH. And just in time, there is my first roomate at the door.

Mykell

(P.S. I now, since going to the doctor and getting this situation all figured out, only have to wear a big brace thing for twelve weeks. Not fun, but better than the alternatives.)

Life; experienced

It doesn’t matter if you get up at 5:45.

(Woah, did I just say that)

(yes)

I am one to totally enjoy being able to sleep in until exactly 9 am every morning (which recently never happens) but time, it seems is irrelevant. I mean, besides the positioning of the sun in relativity to the location you are on earth, whether it is light or dark makes a little bit of a difference. But to the human consciousness, it makes no difference what time it is, but at what point on the timeline of your life it is.

Is it only the time of the day that changes though? Or are there things that change in our lives that cannot be turned back, and why do these things occur? Of course, time makes a huge difference in the physical chemicals of our bodies, but why does it make a difference in the state of our mind, and how do we put ourselves into these situations? If, in fact, a situation is something you can even get y ourself into without this weird relationship between time and space.

I feel that a situation is totally dependent on both, now that I think about it. You cannot possible have a situation without a previous change of space (not just location, but the places all things are in the universe) and/or time period of you life, no matter how small the increments you may have to divide it into.

So I find myself in this “situation.”  In a foreign country at a Bible, missions, and art school, with a whole bunch of passionate people on fire to reduce world suck. Sitting on a bench in the entryway of a 20th century German castle too early in the morning for anyones good (but then again, why does it matter? My body is arguing with itself about this point at the moment) typing away on a hunk of metal and wires who’s conception began way after my own.

A situation that I am not sure how to handle yet.

I am fasting from food until my birthday (five days) starting this morning, and I am hoping for some revelation, or just some distraction from the things that have been taking over my mind recently. So while I throw myself another factor in the situation I might try to figure out what I need to be doing with my time while I am in this space, and what the do with my space while I have this time.

Crazy how these things are interchangeable.

~Miss Mykell

Here I Am

Oh how the city calls out to my heart!

I spent a day in Dresden (pop. 500,000, not too big, but enough for me) last weekend, and it was fantastic! I had never been in a European city that was not as tourist focused before! It made me realize how much of the world I am missing in my brief existence. Me, Christer, and Christi walked all over the city in awe of the buildings and people we saw.

Dresden was one of those cities that was devastated by WW2, and was just beginning to be back to its former self this decade after all the old churches, theatre houses and even the palace was bombed out. We went through a photo timeline thing inside a beautiful church there (it was all in German, so we had no idea what to call it) and they had photos lined up showing the town from arial view in different years throughout the 20th century.

It was fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. Some things transcend human culture, and time, and space. Those are the things, I feel, that matter most in the world.  The things that all humans can understand, no matter of their language, background, or beliefs. Heartbreak, suffering, and love are some of those things.

Everyone knows what pain is, everyone can be brought together, or forced apart by it, but everyone knows it. We are talking a lot about injustices in the world this week in YWAM during lectures,  and I am just wondering how we are going to breach all of the barriers that the world has made for us. How are we going to be effective in places we know nothing about?

We just have to play to the things that everyone can understand and comprehend. Me, Christi, and Christer couldn’t read a word of the German exhibit in the church about WW2, but we got the message. We got it very clearly.

Art is beautiful and meaningful to all cultures. That is why I am here.

~Miss Mykell

The way we flow: Part 1

There is a post here at camp. A post that is on the top of a huge hill and is smack in the middle of camp. Until recently this post remained vacant, but now it is acting as a coat rack. Yes, a child had left their coat on it last week, and it has since then not been recovered.

I know for a fact that I am not the only person that is taking note of this. I have daily conversations about how all the staff thinks it is a small child just standing there awkwardly alone and then when they get close enough they realize that it is actually a pole. They then carry on their way until the incident occurs again in their mind as they walk back up or down the hill.

I think it is a secret contest to see how long we can get away with leaving it there. Haha, just kidding.

There was this thing that happened to Google last May. Google designed an actual Pac-man game on thier home page. It was an amazing blip in time in the internet world, or at least my world.

So entertaining.

But the thing is it cost the United States 120 million dollars in productivity for the day.

Crazy how one internet site if used for just 32 seconds more than usual by each person can make such a huge impact. It makes me want to calculate how much time is spent interrupting the staffs brain flow thinking about the coat pole. And this makes me wonder about how much time we actually do have as humans, and how much cognitive surplus there is out there in the world just waiting to be harnessed and used.

To be continued…

~Miss Myké

Vanish

And now your gone.

Funny how you can be somewhere, and then. . . you’re just not. Time and space can always be separate, but they are bound together by more than just their nature.

It’s almost as if they rely on each other, but then they are transcendent of each other as well.

Define Me

How, or would the more appropriate word be why, does the world define things? Let’s take the very basic definition of the word define and break it down then expand upon that, shall we?

Define:

–verb (used with object)

1. to state or set forth the meaning of (a word, phrase, etc)

2. to explain or identify the nature or essential qualities of; describe

3. to fix or lay down definitely; specify distinctly

4. to determine or fix the boundaries or extent of.

5. to make clear the outline or form of

–verb (used without object)

6. to set forth the meaning of a word, phrase, etc.

Okay so inferring from the fact that all the definitions (taken from dictionary.com) of this word are a verb, I need to reconstruct my original question because a verb implies that something is alive and has the capacity to alter things, and make decisions. Then it will be:

Why do humans define things?

Obviously it is more than just words we define, its people, objects, categories, colors, shapes, sizes, attitudes. . . ourselves. So why is there this nature in ourselves to have a clear meaning of everything around us, in lingustical and comprehensional terms?

Of course the former is easy to answer, without humans using verbal definitions with concrete meaning behind them there is no basis for language or communication of any kind. One must know that the other is Human or at least know enough about themselves and categorization to be able to tell the difference between another human and a plant.

Even now your brain is defining and organizing what I am typing in this browser to create an image, per sé, of what I am trying to convey to you. So obviously we must define the world around us in such a manner to be able to interact and function within a group of people, and maybe even within ourselves.

It is the second and third definitions make things a little bit more complicated, but the world around us a little bit more concrete. To understand the nature or essential qualities of something employs our knowledge of how to operate the first definition plus be able to put all the abstract data together into one thought.

So instead of someone asking you to tell them what a strawberry sitting on the counter is (because they have no knowledge of this blessed fruit somehow) you wouldn’t help them understand by telling them it is a delectable red juicy fruit that looks like a heart with seeds, it doesn’t make any noise while growing or off the vine and it ripens about a certain time of year and doesn’t get bigger than your fist (and if it does please tell me, because I want one!) and so on and so forth. No, I am sure that they can gather most of this information by themselves with their own sensory organs, you would probably just tell them it is a strawberry. But this sort of defining is putting a bunch of information into one generally understood word for that language.

Somehow, some of us, cough, me, cough, sometimes get wrapped up in defining things with words and sentences, which is good, but we must get beyond that someday. So moving on to other definitions and not letting ourselves get wrapped up in words. . .

It’s the abstract and crazy we divulge into now. The not uniform and untrue is what confuses and belittles people, communities, tribes, nations, the world the most. Defining these things, and the things that matter (people, God, love, etc) gets tricky because we have to have something that tells us what the other is, but it is not always looked at the same from every definer’s point of view.

In fact some people’s point of view on certain topics weighs more heavily in groups of people, or society. These people are called “experts” in their field. Experts, though, still have their own personal filter that they use to look at the world and define it.

If I said define. . . yourself, everyone would have a different answer. Obviously because we are all different, but not only would the things be different, they would be different types of things we are defining ourselves by.

Some would define themselves by their job, their family, what they have done, what they have not done, what color their skin is (?) there are billions of things to define yourself by.

Let’s say we were all defining one person, say, God. And phew, look at all the definitions that we already have out there for that. There are some definitions that say he/she/it (object God) does not, some are adamant that (object God) does. Then there are just as many in each of those categories to describe and back up that conclusion.

What a world of definitions we are.

Well, in fact, I don’t think we can define these things. Ourselves, me, you, God, Love, the world, communities are undefinable.

You cannot take something so big, so incomprehensible and divide it into too many little pieces to try to fit it into all these preconceived ideas we already have in place for all these words we are using to define that object, thing, or idea. Yes, definitions are nice, and get some degree of the point across, but there is never a way that we can convey all of it to each other.

There is a disconnect at this level.

(This was not what I started to write about at all. . . yet here we are. . . haha)

Wouldn’t it be a grand thing not to have this disconnect?

I once heard a saying that you could define yourself by:

“not who you are, but whose you are.”

What an interesting thought. And I discredit it.

Why would one define themselves by what they belonged to?

Unless, just maybe, the thing that you defined yourself by was an absolute.

For you can be owned by many things in life. Some seemingly good, some seemingly bad. Drugs, Ideas, knowledge, Sex, Another person, Your computer, Money… anything really.  But one would have to use something so complete, so infallible to define themself with to make this statement true because being owned by anything other than something that infinite would be a disservice to yourself.

We live in a world that screams at you to define me, define you, define everything, but sometimes you just can’t. Depending on how you carefully craft it.

-Miss Mykell

The Huge Picture

I was thinking about how nothing we do really makes sense. I mean, some things might seem to further the world, or keep us sane, but, in the grand scheme of things, nothing we do really makes that much of a difference.

Of course you could, at this point, argue with me, and say “haven’t you ever heard of the butterfly effect!?” Of course I have, but this is not the point I am making, I was merely stating that I was thinking this the other day. Now I wish to comment on my conclusion.

In a recent epiphany I have equated the things we do to an assembly line industry, or company. You have workers who all have odd small jobs that might not make sense to them. Most of these workers don’t know many of the other jobs, or just exactly why they have to do their jobs, but they do it,if for nothing else but compensation.

But there is always this guy at the top, the guy who runs the company. He sits up in his office, or oversees from his catwalk above. This guy is the guy who knows everything. He knows each and every one of the jobs that are being done, and exactly why they are being done when the final product comes out correctly. To him everything that is confusing to all the workers who seem to sometimes have meaningless jobs is crystal clear. He knows it all, and has people do certain things so it will come out correctly.

I am now going to equate this to the world. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make sense, and I don’t exactly know why we do anything that we do, really. But there must be someone out there somewhere that sees everything with clarity and puts people places so things will turn out right.

For now, I am trusting in that fact.

~Miss Mykell

The difference between then and now

A girl hops in a car already stuffed with friends from her new major. She laughs at the silly inside jokes that have already been made and sings along, not afraid to show this side of herself around these strange, but interesting people. They drive off into some unknown location, well, at least somewhere that is ,small, not even caring that only one of them needs to be there. She, and the rest of her comrades are just along for the ride and the company.

The same girl then exits the car twenty songs, one Mountain Dew,  seventeen deep thought moments, and two hours later to head into the SUB of the college she attends only to be greeted by some long-lost (thankfully) high school buddies.

The greetings are cordial, but strained and forced as she hovers over the table they reside for a couple minutes, then casually, but reluctantly sits down. They converse, quite cautiously and they all try to keep this constant level of witty banter about their new life after high school. Submitting what most would call foul words in intermittently to appear much more mature than when they all last laid eyes on each other.

Such is how the conversation continues until her head pounds from concentrating too much on what they are actually saying instead of what they are trying to come off as saying.

That is the difference between then and now.

And such is life.

~Miss Myké

And, for those of you who know what this is about…. Dammit, I have become too attached.

Blink

Your life can change in only a moment.

This a statement I have come to know all to well in my life, but I always seem to be ill prepared for such occasions, no matter how consistent or occurring it happens to be.

I now must ask how can I be more prepared, more ready for these things to happen, so that they do not seem like such a blow?

Maybe I cannot.

For now, I shall wait for my next one.

~Miss Myké

Reinstatement

I have come to embrace a very different, and very awesome game of cards.

The name of the game is Mao, and Mao is the name of the game.

Not much else I can really tell you…

Except I will comment on how I love to watch the way that the Mao master keeps order of their deck whilst mid-play.

Some Mao masters love to keep their decks in perfect order, because of course it makes the game-play that much swifter, and less confusing (and in Mao, confusing is an issue sometimes).

Some don’t care how the discard deck looks, or the draw pile… they let them run all over the place and let the decks themselves choose where they are to flow upon the playing surface.

Some of the High Chancellors just really like to shuffle the decks impeccably, so it can not possible produce a run of any suit at any time during play.

If  you have never been a Mao Master yourself, let me just put this piece of information in front of  you. Its a very very hard job. Keep track of your own play, everyone else’s, and the inanimate (sometimes) pile of cards in the middle of the table. Whew.

And now my friends we venture on in our journey of this game, for Mao is like life, we learn as we go on.

~Elle Violet

Time suck

Ah, Christmas. Right?

The holiday season is the best time for reuniting with those people you have not seen in forever, and the people you love, and the people you see all the time and still love, and… well… your relatives. You know, the people of whom are your own flesh and blood, who have the most in common with you (arguable, much).

There is good food, great games, and what a lot of people in this commercialized America seem to think is important presents!

Presents are good. I mean they make you actually think about people that you are buying them for for at least as much time as it takes you to buy or make them. So you go to the store, sometimes racking your brain to pick out the perfect present for the person in mind (sometimes you know them well enough this is a cinch though).

You find that one perfect thing, that you think they are going to go “Wow, this person really knows me well enough to buy this Rubiks cube.” or “This person cares about me enough to find me this great CD that I wanted that is virtually impossible to get.” You hope with all your being that they think these sorts of things about your gift to them, and you take it home, delicately remove the price tag (we can’t let them know how much you actually spent on them… this could be a good or bad thing, depending) and place it in a perfect sized box.

Then you take this perfect present, placed inside this perfect sized box, and wrap it perfectly, with the perfect color of bow and cute name tag that tells who it is to, and definitely tells who it is from. You are finished with this gift, so you place it under the perfectly sparkling Christmas tree and await its opening day.

Upon Christmas morning, every child, who has awoken way earlier than their normal schedule, and therefore are much to cranky, much to early looks forward to opening all these glittery presents that are supposedly perfect. And all the adults are curious as to what are in their own presents (oh don’t tell me your not!).

Then the unwrapping ceremony begins. For some families it is an all out brawl as everyone opens all their presents all at once. Others ceremoniously take turns, making sure that each opens a present before they get to open two, making sure to take their time and appreciate each present, announcing who it is to and from and taking at least three pictures of each person holding it up (mine happens to be this kind).

When it is all said and done, that perfect present that you got for each person, and wrapped so perfectly is lying on the floor, wrapping spread out around everyone (no matter which method your family uses, unless they are weird and clean as they go).

We did all this work, for at least one whole month out of our year for this, this interesting ritual. It seems life sometimes works this way.

You spend so much time doing something, pouring your whole heart and soul into it, making sure you are doing it right, perfecting your art, or paper, or work, or sport, or college application, and sometimes all that becomes of it is some silly thing that you never wanted in the first place surrounded by a whole bunch of garbage. You are grateful for the thing you do have, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes it feels as if all this preparation should have amounted to more. More of something. More satisfaction, more money, more friends, more scholarships, more weight lost, more, more, more…. something. You feel as if it isn’t really exactly what you wanted, and feel like if you would have just expressed more what you wanted, it might have come  a little bit more true.

Because no matter what present you buy people, unless they asked for it directly, no matter how perfect you seem to think it is for them, the outcome will most likely leave both of you feeling a little hollow inside. Yes they are appreciative, but what are they going to do with yet another Rubik’s Cube, really?

How is it we get it in our minds that this something is really going to make everything perfect, especially since the outcome is yet so different than that of which we have in our minds? How do we fall into this illusion?

I mean really how many times does a kid grow up to be exactly as he or she dreamed?

~Miss Myké

99 Red Balloons, Minus About 89

Today, my fellow internet users, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of the internet itself. 

Yes, it has been 40 years since the first two letters (the first word supposed to be sent across the gap was “login” the L and O were sent successfully, the GIN didn’t make it before the system crashed) was sent over 400, from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute miles across the first connection that we now call the internet. What a difference it makes in the world. Going from virtually just a dream that imaginative nerds had in the late 1960s to a tool that is now considered a legal right in Finland. 

Today there was also a contest put on by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to use our newfound connections of the internet to find and pinpoint the exact locations of 10 giant weather balloons places around the nation. The winner was to receive $40,000 USD. 

Individuals were encouraged to find teams to compete with, I chose my very own Nerdfighteria, of course. They were donating all their money to charity, so an obvious choice. A neat infrastructure and social plan had already been in place for years of this team, and they had something already built… a tight knit, but geographically spread community. Yes, we were destined to win.

These balloons (I have typed this word into my browser way  too many times today) were a cause of flurry and focus in the internet communities today. The mark of 10 AM (EST) sent internet users from around the country out into the communities to search for the balloons, and thus started a race of skills, determinations, luck, adventure of unknown places, communication, networking, and using all technological resources possible. 

The most threatening enemy team? Students formed from the prestigious university called MIT. Yes they were trained for this sort of thing, but we, we were different, we were just good on our own.

After searching my own community at 8 AM (MST)  tuning in to the live broadcast by John Green, I found a hacker team of me and about 5 other people to link up with. And our mission began. 

We ended up building proxies, to throw off MIT’s lead finder, which was an interactive map on their team page. 

We. were. good.

At the end of the day, Nerdfighteria got all ten locations found and submitted them to DARPA.

We waited and crossed our fingers, but alas we were beaten by only a couple of minutes by MIT. 

I still consider our day to be a huge success! Not only did I get to serve on the top team of hackers in Nerdfighteria, but we as a whole Nerdfighter community did do awesome!

DFTBA

~Miss Myké

An old trick, a new beginning

I love the feel of freshly crushed chalk between my fingers, the rough leather of a beam beneath my feet, and the smooth but uneven breathes that escape my mouth as I prep for a tumbling pass. Yes, I have once again undertaken getting back in shape to do my favorite favorite favorite sport, gymnastics. 

I have missed my leos lying all over my floor dearly, and I have missed the physical exertion, as well as free flying ecstasy of doing a back layout through uncertain midair. 

Oh and the colors that represent the movements! How beautiful they come back to me and flourish inside my head. I even missed pulling a cutting leo off aore flesh and muscles at the end of the day and relaxing into loose pajama pants after an after-workout rinse….

Ahhh it feels so good.

I love the way it feels.

I find it funny that I am trying to pull a Haley Graham once agian, even though I know how truely hard it is now.

Hard but rewarding.

~Miss Myké

NaNoWriMo

Ah…. the first day of the last November of 2009. What a great day. I can smell the caffeine injecting coffee brewing my my kitchen… wait I don’t have a kitchen, nor do I like coffee. Dang, I could almost really smell it there for a nanosecond (no pun intended).

I have decided this year to participate in the annual National Novel Writing Month challenge, which is to write a 50,000 word novel in once month (just 10,000 words above the official qualification of a novel)

I am really, really excited. 

But really tired of writing today… with already over 3000 words I am almost to my day two goal on day one. So what do I do when I am tired of writing? That is correct, I write a blog!

I am such a nerd.

Oh well. 

Just a quick note to tell you guys out there what I am doing, and why most of my blogs might take a weird turn in the next month, or actually be excerpts themselves.

Well back I go, into the world of my story.

~Miss Myké

My Current Word Count= 3122 

That time in between

Alone time.

Yes, some of your may run and scream now.

Are you back? No? 

Well the rest of us will continue without you and await your return later. 

This idea of being alone, by yourself, in solitary doesn’t sound like a bad one to me anyway. I do now understand why the concept makes some people squirm, if not all of us humans sometimes. I have been more alone in the last week than I have ever been in my life. I shipped off to another country, in a big city, surrounded by tons of people, nevertheless all by myself.

Not that I am complaining, I love this time to refresh my thoughts, but I can’t help but think why is it that we all need this time? 

I think it is to reflect without outside interference. We all need to learn to define ourselves by who we really are, and I am the worst at mixing myself with other people. I am. 

So we are alone, and its refreshing, or nauseating, enlightening, or depressing, whichever you prefer. But in the end we really are alone, given the fact that we are all equally alone without the connection to see that we are not.

Maybe I don’t make sense.

But on my English holiday I have learned so much about myself.

Including that I really, really, really like walking places and wish people would do it more often where I come from.

~Miss Myké

This is called…

…a flight delay.

And it definitely sucks. But at least there are only about five of  use waiting for the same flight.

That point in time

Its at that point in time that you realize

that even though your closet light burnt out

its going to be okay,

and even though you can’t take that extra weight off

it will be just fine.

Even though you keep biting your cheek on the inside

you will heal…. well…. eventually.

Even though you miss a face, a friend, a lover today

there is always that chance to reunite over time (be it in “other” places).

Even though you are crying tears on your pillow tonight;

even though your heart aches and your mind is hollow;

even though its almost as if there is no love left in the world;

those tears can turn to tears of joy in the morning,

your heart and mind can be complete and filled soon,

and the world can be a little bit brighter, if you create or look for it.

It’s at which point in time you realize this

and you have finally realized

just that.

 

~Miss Myké

Picture Time, so say cheese? Please?

Okay, let’s talk about something I have found out I am obsessed with(for very good reason) Pictures.

Oh yes, the 2-D fantasticness.

So yes, I am obsessed, and I figured this out since that is the only thing I pretty much think about 24/7 now. Well except for like sleeping, but that is its own problem in itself.

I really really love photography, and all that it does for humanity. It records events, shows history, advertises, recounts memories, presents, and communicates emotions, thoughts, feelings, ideas, and can even show a little bit of the human soul. There are things you can do with photography to create and communicate loveliness that you cannot do with words.

The only thing is, that most times you can get a better than reality presentation of what you are capturing if you use the right techniques and have an eye for it. But I just wish that you could capture what your eyes really see. There are some amazing things out there that just don’t quite feel or look the same on a digital picture as they do with real life atoms and quarks and cells and stuff.

Wouldn’t that be neat, shouldn’t we make some sort of instrument that could capture such images? Maybe we can make an instrument that captures photographs for blind people, or in 3-D. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Wow the endless opportunities of the imagination (and photoshop for that matter) and the limited oppertunites of reality. 

Or are there limited opportunities? 

DFTBA

~Miss Myké

(P.S. I know all the pictures are of one person (cough me cough) but I like to ask before I put anyone else on the internet, and really no one is up at this hour…. sigh)

Compulsive Materialism

Let’s talk about stores. Right now.

Stores are like huge shops, where you can get everything. People gather in their transportation of choice outside of these gigantic buildings, arranging themselves into neatly stacked rows all in order and making sure to secure it. They clamber into the enclosed spaces through holes in the structurally sound walls, and gasp as they see the sheer bounty of all of the stuff that they can purchase for monetary sacrifice.

In fact, the items that are there are in such plenty that anyone can have virtually anything they can think of, or see. Heck, I wouldn’t doubt the stores would sell customers the cardboards cutouts used to hold the items for a good enough price….

Anyway there are all sorts of these kinds of places. Places that sell just things to cover our beautiful God created flesh, things to eat, things to just drink, things to give to children to break and destroy, things that sparkle on your ears and wrists and fingers, things that you read, things that you really don’t need but are fun anyway, things that drive you to more places like this, things to listen to, things to watch, there are even places like this that come together and collectively share one big roof. These are like the marketplaces of stores and they are called Malls…

These stores, even though they all have the same function, they compete against each other. They put videos on television screens that you bought in a store that tell you to come where their stuff is so that you can buy that instead of someone else’s stuff. They make huge posters and get people to dress up in crazy outfits and wave around signs, just to get you to walk through their wall holes. They spend the money that they have been given for their stuff to get stuff to make their store more appealing or enticing. 

In short, stores are either the best or the worst thing that has ever happend to the human race. 

The only thing I wonder is if it is good for us in such large quantities, or if this just causes more confusion and unhappiness than before we had the choice.

~Miss Myké

Its a big, big house… with lots and lots of space

So, I find it difficult for me to admit, but I live in a big house.

Yes, I hate it too.

Because you know, you have that thing where everyone thinks the girl who lives in a huge house is rich, and snotty. Well most people are really really surprised when they drive up my driveway, and that is a good thing to know… but still I don’t want to be pinned as someone that lives in a big house.

I know, I know, there are people out there in third world countries that don’t even have homes… and right here in the United States for that matter. 

But that is just my point, what is the point?

I mean, you do have a whole ton more space than about 99% of the humans on this planet all to yourself. And, of course, you can train for the next winter marathon right in the comfort of your own home. And there always is the fact that if you love to paint, you can paint huge everlasting murals on the walls of your house and have a full art gallery for you and the other members of your family to enjoy. 

I personally don’t want to run a marathon, need more space than other people that have smaller homes, or paint THAT much (I am having trouble finishing my room alone…) And besides living in a huge house makes the members so separated from each other.

Besides, parties suck when you have a big house, especially when its a small group of people, more space breaks people apart. 

I mean, that the more room you have for people to be liberated, the more they are going to take  the most advantage of it. 

You would think this would actually solve many argument problems…. it really doesn’t. After the incident, you just go hide off in the little corner of the house and feel alone. More alone than ever. 

Space just sucks sometimes. 

I really hate it when something has the adverse effect that was intended.

~Miss Myké

(Also big kitchens are the worst…. I don’t like to have walked a marathon just to cook me up some supper!)

Happy is a small thing

If you have never realized, there is a teeny tiny, itty bitty small little smiley in the upper right hand corner of this blog. Of course I did not put this in here. It was programed in with my HTML theme. 

But it looks at me every time I open this page. And it makes me giggle inside. 

Isn’t that weird? That such small things can lift our spirits unbelievably so. Then really, how important is happiness to us?

It’s even included in the United States Constitution (well the pursuit of happiness…)! Such a crazy little thing can really dominate our lives. We can spend hours, nights, days, weeks, months, years just thinking about happiness. 

“What makes me happy?”

“What should make me happy?”

“What would make me happy if it happened?”

“Happy Birthday!” (Or insert holiday of liking there)

It’s a small emotion. Just one of many. But that is the one that many seek after. 

It would save a depressed person’s life… or it could take it… the idea of being happy. Of course pretty much everything is centered around happiness these days, especially in the media.

Like, if we buy this product, or do this, we will be happy. Content?

Or is it that God really wants us to be content, not happy? Where is happy in the bible? Like maybe, since happy is an emotion, a little  bit of our lives, it should not be what we center ourselves around? 

Do we use the words happy and content interchangeably? Could we? Should we?

Only you make me happy…

~Miss Myké

The Key to Stone

Burying something can have a tremendous effect on something. Especially when you have held that thing in your hands for so long. 

I mean, sometimes we may have set it aside, or forgotten about it for a little while, but other times it was the main point of our fascination. It was our light and joy, and a part of us would be missing if we had not found it in the first place. Right?

But stone, that is hard to break into. Its heavy to hold. Its strenuous to lift. And not pleasant to plant in. Yet here we stand, successfully growing a beautiful flower out of the hardest rock.

We may have wanted to give up at times, we may have been frustrated that stone does not take water well, but in the end, it has been well worth it.

And still I bury it in the ground. Not as a farewell to all our hard work, but as a way of handing its well being over to nature to play with. To make grow, or die of its own accord. Yet I think the world is a bit of a brighter place with it there flourishing instead of rotting. 

May we go on to flourish and bloom where we have been planted. Even through rough beginnings, and hard endings, may we flower to the best that is offered to us. Because making the world a more beautiful place is always refreshing and worthwhile.

Miss Myké