Month: September 2018

Impressions

This was my last version of my personal bio section on Facebook:

If you ever get the chance, I hope you dance and smile.

I am currently twenty-three years old, and am happier than a door nail in life.  I recently finished studying languages at an amazing liberal arts college, and am using that education to give back to the world.  Each day is an opportunity for me to expand myself, and, therefore, to allow others to do the same.  My greatest inspirations are those moments of love and joy between others, of which I am witness in the world around me.  My known goals in life are to make a difference for others, and to have a blast doing it, all the difficulties and struggles included.  My constant hope and prayer is that everyone be comfortable, happy, and satisfied in life, as we all discover ourselves together to be happy, healthy, holy beings.

I was somewhat appalled at it, and so I wrote something new, which I feel is more appropriate nowadays, but which seems a bit iffy:

I’m not sure what to share here.  Whenever I check this section of my Facebook, I am surprised at how sprite* and joyful I seem.  It isn’t that I’m not a joyful person in life – I’m just not so in-your-face as I seem on these.  Apparently “chill” is a word often associated with me, but it is often combined with something like “free” or “earthy”, along with ‘If you want to know about anything, just ask Hannah – she’s done just about everything.’  I hardly agree with the statement, but I understand why people often have said it – I really like learning and doing new things, and, when I set my mind to it, I seem to make just about anything happen.  It’s rather magical, really, and I feel utterly blessed in life, and as though my struggles are here now to support me and those around me later.

That’s what I have to share for the moment, it seems. 🙂

*I know this isn’t the right word, but it sounded more right than anything else… think of a combination of ‘bright’ and ‘spirited’ as the reason for my using it (more so than the folklore version, anyway).

So, yeah… I guess this is part of why I haven’t written that book about my life yet – I don’t know what to say, and I let that stop me.

Post-a-day 2018

Stromae to Mosaert

After writing about Stromae the other night, I looked up to see if he had any tour dates in the US anytime soon.  Unfortunately, he does not.  However, I discovered that lots of his efforts have gone into his clothing brand lately, and that the brand is spectacular.  All of the clothes are unisex and super cool, are fair-trade, are made in Europe, have an emphasis on sustainable/organic fibers and eco-friendly sewing tactics (to waste as little cloth as possible), and are in limited numbers.  (The last part means that only a certain number, say 25, for example, are made of any one item.  So, for a t-shirt, there would be 4 XS, 6 S, 6 M, 5 L, and 4 XL made, and that’s it.  Once they are sold out, there are no more of that particular t-shirt made again.)  They also include a chart on the cost of production for many items, detailing how much money it actually costs to produce that specific item, thereby explaining why an item is being sold for its specific price.

Check it out.  Here’s the page all about their being an awesomely responsible company, from which you can click to the shopping area to see the awesome clothes, and here’s the page for the company as a whole, which is more than just a clothing brand – check out their About page found on that one.

I just wish I lived a life where it would be practical and affordable for me to get the cardigan 7, which is a sweater I loved when I first saw it in one of Stromae’s interviews (actually, the one I linked here the other night!).  The sweater was cool in and of itself, but it was made even cooler by the fact that Stromae himself actually wore it.  Alas, I do not live such a life (and am instead barely getting by financially as a crazy person doing full-time grad school and part-time-ish work), so the cardigans will go to those who do live such lives. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

 

Stromae (and my solo gelato dance party)

Last night, waiting for my dinner to finish baking, I was dancing in the kitchen while snacking on some pre-dinner gelato (because when else is gelato so satisfying?), jamming out to a Stromae (pronounced like “maestro” split in half, the second half said first) song, when I suddenly recalled how spectacular his music really is.  I haven’t listened to almost any music lately, and so haven’t listened to any of his either.  When I taught high school French, I listened to and discussed his music all the time with students.  They had to find a new francophone song every month that they liked, and each student and each class went in all different directions.  But, without fail, a single Stromae song would come up once in a class, and then his entire repertoire would show up the following months from different students in that class.  They regularly requested his music, whenever we played music during work time in class.

We listened to a lot of French language music, and the kids knew I loved lots of it.  But they also knew that I liked Stromae for more than just his voice, and, at some point, they decided that I really loved him and his music.  I remember one specific incident of Stromae coming up in casual chat during class, and a student said, “Oh, we know, Miss —: you would totally date Stromae if you had the chance.”  I’m almost certain that I verbally agreed immediately, and we all laughed.    It was great.  (So many things those kids never knew about me and my life, but they always remembered anything they ever heard about dating or marriage.)  😛

If you don’t know Stromae’s music, check it out.  You can start with this English interview he did, which is great.  He still sings in French, and even dances a bit (he’s a spectacular dancer, by the way, as can be seen in his music videos), but the discussion is all in English.  I find the themes of his music to be powerful, though regularly dangerous and tough, even scary – but, to me, they are real and honest.  What’s more, they make for a great dance party any day, because the musicality is tops (especially so if you don’t understand the lyrics).  When I first heard of him, it was from a German kid when I’d first arrived in France for school.  He mentioned that the only French song Germans knew was this “Alors, on danse” song that I wasn’t too sure I’d ever even heard, but definitely had heard of.  That was the only line I understood when I first listened to Stromae’s music (“And so, we dance”), but it didn’t matter – I still loved it all.  Now, I just love it even more, because I understand the words.

(“Dodo” is one that gets stuck in my head most often these days.  It’s a prime example of what I mean by a tough song – a difficult theme combined with beautiful music.  I recommend you watch the video first, and then look up the lyrics.)

Post-a-day 2018

Sing away the sickness

It feels as though an absence of music in my life is a sign of an absence of delight.

When there is so much happening, that I do not take the time for music – either listening or playing – it usually results that I am stressed and haggard and, quite likely, too, sick.

No surprise that I haven’t had any music lately, and I haven’t played guitar or ukulele in a while…., and no surprise that I’ve been stuck with an icky cold for over a week and a half…, because I’ve been so stressed and strained with various topics in my life, I haven’t taken the time to take care of myself.

I haven’t taken the time to have music, one of the deepest joys of my heart.

Perhaps, if I had music for myself every day, I might never get sick… there’s likely some study about that anyway, where music makes the body healthier (not to mention improved brain function on the whole).

Well, I’ve been doing what I consider to be a very good job, as of late, feeding myself and preparing food for myself…. now to add music in there every day.

I wonder if I can really do it… can I see myself as really being worth that effort and time?? (I’m still only halfway there with the good food preparation mentality…)

But I think it is a good time to give it a go, so I’ll go for it… music every day… for myself…, because I not only need but deserve it.

Okay.

…Crazy how this scares me somehow…

Post-a-day 2018

My oldest brother, the eldest nerd of us

Another of my most beloved memories is the time my eldest brother and I went through the top ten logical fallacies together.  He’s a total skeptic – not just in life in general, but he actually identifies as “a skeptic” – and we’re both total nerds, so, out of some conversation one day came the discussion of what a logical fallacy was.  Utterly intrigued at how he explained them, I wanted to know more than just an example or two.  And so, we printed out a list of the top ten most common logical fallacies people use in arguments, each with a brief description with the name of it, and he and I went through the list, one by one.

I would read the name of the fallacy and the brief description, and then I would see if I could come up with another way of saying it and with an example.  He would help me whenever I was unsure or stuck in my understanding.  It was a fun activity for the two of us, he getting to be the teacher of something he loved and I getting to learn something I found fascinating, and both of us getting to bond further with the other, not just in spending time with one another, but also getting to be nerdy together.

What I find most silly about this was that, as I recall, this was around my brother’s second or third year in college.  That’s silly, you see, because that made me 12 or 13 years old.  What 13-year-old do you know who references logical fallacies in the middle of discussions, kindly informing the user of the fallacy that his or her point was, due to the use of the fallacy, invalid?  Indeed, I don’t know any children at all who do that, and I teach high school.  However, I believe that also was right around the time that I started reading a book on quantum physics (because I found what I had learned about it in a documentary to be fascinating, and so I’d bought one of the most popular books by one of the speakers in the documentary [whose name and book title I’d had to memorize carefully when I saw them at the end of the film, because the Internet wasn’t quite a thing yet then, let alone IMDb]).

So, to this day, I still love nerding out with my brother (though it happens with more family members than just with him, he’s the point of this brief trip down Memory Lane). I’m preparing to go visit him in just a few weeks, and I’m looking forward especially just to sitting around and hanging out with him, because the enthusiasm and excitement that arises in our conversations is always spectacular.  Nonsense shared is never just a nonsense with us – something nerdy and smart inevitably arises from the stupidest and silliest of comments, making the nonsense oddly sensible and, usually, quite comical in the utter dorki-/nerdiness of it.

Post-a-day 2018

Snuggles

One of my favorite feelings is what ensues whenever I wrap myself up in towels – one for my hair and a big one for my body – after a warm shower in a cool room, and I collapse sideways onto the bed.

After a while spent snuggling in my towel in the bed, the towel in my hair comes apart, my hair falling, flowing, rolling out of it onto the bed in spurts as I roll onto my back.

And I just rest there for a while, in a place of bliss, nowhere to go and nothing to do but dry slowly from the shower and relax.

And that’s what I do.

Post-a-day 2018

Today’s list

Oktoberfest…

semi-unplanned friend visit…

Mid-Autumn Festival…

car accident…

Earthdance….

… with origami and Braille, both taught by a blind man with a blind man’s wristwatch…

stopping for toilet paper…

and a house gathering…

all with a rain storm pouring over us off and on…

How was this only one day?

Post-a-day 2018

Words worth more than gold

After a discussion over the phone with a college student calling to ask for my monetary donation to the study abroad scholarships at her school, – which I exchanged for encouragement to the girl and for sharing with her various specialties related to where she would be studying abroad this coming spring semester (for which she continuously thanked me delightedly, and which she declared was a million times better for her life than a monetary donation to the fund would have been, anyway) – I wrote a sort of poem.

You see, she recommended I write it, because what I was sharing with her, she said, sounded like poetry.

So, find in the following photo the first draft of the poem we discussed today, which I said I would write for my weblog tonight, and which I tapped out on a typewriter(!!!) this afternoon.

Post-a-day 2018