Bunches of Books

I love to read.

LOVE

LOVE

LOVE

So perhaps you can see why this particular art piece that I discovered in the BYU Museum of Art captured my interest.

 This is made entirely of books. Entirely. That's a lot of books.

This is the backside.

And it's so tall! So many books!

Obviously, art pieces have layers of meaning to them... so I was thinking about this particular sculpture. At first, I came up with all of these ideas of the strength and power of literature.

Upon thinking further, I realized that this giant tower of books looked a lot like a garbage block - you know, like the ones you see in Monsters Inc. when Sulley is afraid that Boo got chopped up in the machine. This, combined with the fact that all of the books in this sculpture were old and used, is making a huge statement about the worlds' relationship with books today.

I'm not saying that books are trash and that nobody reads anymore. I just think that our society is moving away from printed words. We read social media all the time. Colleges and even high schools are starting to use online materials for classes. More and more people are using e-books, buying Kindles... people don't even bring actual scriptures to church anymore because they have the scriptures on their phones... and so less people buy printed books. Books are an old idea, ready to be turned into a forgettable trash-lump. How long will it be before the majority of people read via electronic media?

I personally love having an actual book in my hands when I read. A book with pages to turn. A book that I can put on my shelf, that I can see visually alongside the rest of my library. I strongly dislike having to read things online or on a Kindle. Maybe it's just because I'm not accustomed to using these instead of books. But in any case, it just saddens me that books are sort of "dying out". Sad indeed.

Praise

Just a quick post on how much I enjoy succeeding...

Because who doesn't, right?

I took my Cha-Cha test yesterday

And my feedback was very positive

My "cuban action" (that Latin hip movement you get via proper foot turnout) is "coming along nicely"

I, evidently, had some very good footwork

And was very good at following my partner

(The boy IS supposed to lead, after all...
he gets to feel like he's in control for once HAHA)

I just need to spot more when I do turns

And not slide my feet

I think that this is one of my best dance test results ever!

Yay for improvement!

Also, my scene that I did today in my acting class went VERY well

The only critique my teacher gave my partner and I was that she wanted to see us get a bit louder when we were arguing (the scene was set in church, so we had to keep our voices down)

That was all

The rest was praise

Evidently, I have a bit of a comedian in me

I wasn't trying to be funny

But according to my teacher, TA, and classmates, I have the potential to be great with comedic roles

How interesting...

I also finally hit home with making reeeeally good eye-contact moments

Plus I got to eat pudding during the scene

That's the second time I got to eat during a scene in that class

Works for me!

Crepuscular

I added a new word to my vocabulary today: crepuscular.

Meaning: being active during twilight, relating to twilight

So... basically, I am crepuscular. I'm not going to lie... twilight is my favorite time of day. And NO, it is not because of the book series. There is something about the way the world feels at that time of day. It's as if time is standing still for a moment. All the colors start slowly fading away, and I feel that right before they fade is when they look the most vivid. It makes for gorgeous scenery. In a creative writing piece that I did in my junior year of high school, I believe that I described this time of day as "hauntingly beautiful" and I've used that description ever since. It is very haunting. It's the death of another day. The air gets heavy. The colors change quickly and the world seems more calm. It's wonderful. Simply wonderful.

I really enjoyed the Relief Society Conference last night. I went with my Aunt Tammy to watch it at her stake building. They fed us a light dinner and then gave us oreo balls. Not cake balls... oreo balls. Same concept, but with oreos. It made me think of when I had fried oreos at about this time last year. And then we put oreos in the bottom of cupcake tins and put batter on top and baked them. Sounds weird, but they were so good! Try it if you get the chance. I need to make those again. DELICIOUS!

Here's an example. Yum.

In any case, I will never be able to look at Forget-Me-Not's the same way again. They are really pretty flowers, and now they hold even more significance to me. For those who may not be familiar with the conference address, the speaker Dieter Uchtdorf listed 5 different things that women should never forget (corresponding to the five petals of the forget-me-not flower):
1. Forget not to be patient with yourself
2. Don't forget the difference between a foolish sacrifice and a good sacrifice
3. Forget not to be happy now
4. Forget not the "why" of the gospel
5. Forget not that the Lord loves you

I loved his message. To read/watch some highlights of of it, as well as highlights of the other speakers messages, you can go here.

What a beautiful flower. What a wonderful message to attach to it.

Autumn Time!

My favorite season is FINALLY officially here!
I cannot begin to tell you how happy that is making me feel. There's just something about fall time that is... ooooh, I honestly don't know how to describe it! Just the colors, the feel of the air, the smell and look of the sky... and a little something that I don't quite know how to put into words. It just FEELS wonderful. Ya know what I mean??!

I never planned on people reading this blog, but I just now decided that it would at least be a good way for my mom and the rest of my family to keep up with what I do at college. It's super fun for me (I can slowly feel myself becoming addicted to blogging) and it'll be informative for them. So now that I know for sure that there will be other people reading my blog, I need to write for them as well as for me. But this IS a blog, after all... somewhat like an on-line journal that others can read. So it is still going to be primarily for my sake. And I'm loving it already!

And now I'm thinking I can let friends read it too. I just want to share the love!

Today was just a good day.
Nothing more to it.
The moment I woke up, one of the first thoughts that came to mind was that it was the first day of fall. Does that say something about how much I love fall if it's the first thing I think about when I wake up on a Friday morning?
Classes went well.
I got my New Testament test taken care of.
I took the looong way home and walked along the river pathway that runs below the south of campus and then up the western side. The path was finished last semester, and I had never walked down it before.

Gorgeous!

I have a feeling that it will become a favorite spot of mine to sit and think/study/read. Waterfalls and trees and two of my favorite sources of visual/auditory relaxation that nature has to offer me.

Here's a few shots of my new favorite campus location.

It is sure to be even more lovely once fall really sets in!

That building DOES have windows... they just reflect the sky very well...

Like I said... GORGEOUS! I'm so glad I live on a campus where they make it so beautiful for the students! And you can see why I'm excited for fall to really set it. Imagine this pathway laden with hues of red and orange and yellow... I'm practically bursting with anticipation!

Sing Sing Sing!

"Do you remember
The 21st night of September?
Love was changing the mind of pretenders
While chasing the clouds away"
-Earth, Wind, and Fire

Happy 21st day of September... haha, I thought the song was appropriate...

We started working on our first song of the year in the BYU A Cappella Club Choir yesterday - The Longest Time by Billy Joel - and it feels so good to be singing with an organized group again! I love listening to a cappella groups because it is SO amazing to hear the sounds and harmonies that we can make with just our voices! However, I had forgotten just how much fun it is to actually be part of the group that's singing. Listening is fun, sure, but actually singing in an a cappella group is soooooo much more entertaining and intense. I was smiling widely half of the time we were singing, and I had to keep forcing myself to tone the smile down a bit because it's difficult to sing effectively when you have a big, cheeky grin on your face.

I think it would be fun to be in a smaller group though. I don't feel like I am quite "Noteworthy-material" yet (those girls have wicked talent... they're almost like the female version of Vocal Point), but perhaps a less widely-known group would be easier for me to get in to. Maybe someday I'll work up to that level.

BYU a cappella group "NOTEWORTHY" - Aren't they lovely ladies?

Meanwhile, I'll just sing in the club choir. It's better than no singing at all.
The only bad thing about Club Night at BYU is that there are too many clubs that meet at the same time! When I got out of the a cappella club, I went by the Ballroom to discover Club Style working on a hip-hop number to the song "Walk It Out" and then another one to "Party Rock Anthem". It's KILLING me that I can't do both clubs. I love dancing, particularly ballroom and choreographed hip-hop... Oh well, can't have everything... I'll just have to do my own dancing in my apartment! I'm sure my roommates won't mind coming home to find that all the furniture is pushed back and the thermostat is turned way down so I don't bathe the room in sweat ;)

Club Style knows how to break it down!

Maybe I could start an a cappella group here in Cinnamon Tree! There are plenty of people who can harmonize here, and we could have a girl/guy group so that we can have vocal versatility... from super basses to high sopranos. That would be fun. Thinking about it though, it'd be a lot of work and I dunno how much time people would be willing to commit to the group. Maybe I'll ask other peoples' opinions and see who'd be interested.

In any case, I've been listening to every single Vocal Point song that I own today because I've been in that sort of mood. Gotta love music, singing, etc... and now I feel like plunking around on the piano. I kinda wish that the piano in the lounge was in a less conspicuous place because I don't really want people watching/listening to me as I mess around on the piano, so I'm hesitant to just go over there and use it. You never know who's gonna be using the lounge...

Cakeballs and Crunchies

I'm sure that everyone agrees with me when I say that time flies by too quickly. It's the sorry truth. Which is why you make it count while you can.

I went ice skating for the first time in nearly a year, and it was like I had never stepped on the ice before. When you're off the ice for a long time, you have to take time to get used to it again... especially if you were not even that good to begin with. I was getting used to it by the end of the night though.

I've been in the process of preparing to apply for my major, and I've had to create a Grad Plan for all of the future classes I have to take. I was surprised at how well it all mapped out with my classes for my minor and whatnot. I still have a long way to go though, and I have to have an internship for a whole semester after I take all my classes, so I won't be graduating in April 2014 like I hoped. Oh well.

We had a birthday celebration for my friend Devon Stern on Sunday as well. We made dinner and cakeballs and home-made ice cream and blew up balloons, gave him a snuggie, and had a jolly old time. Birthdays now are so different than birthdays when I was younger... pinatas, crafts, I'd almost always have a treasure hunt of some sort... but we can still have so much fun just being together. I love college. I love being this age. It's a good age.

I must be super stressed right now without even realizing it. As I said in the previous post, all my worries and woes settle right into my shoulders and neck. When my teacher tested my tenseness today, she said that it was still as bad as last week. Now, I admit that I got a scant amount of sleep over the weekend, and my grad plan, homework, and that horrible Rivalry Week Football Game didn't help me stay stress-free...

So my teacher made the decision to have us pair up before we went over our lesson on the formation of phonetic consonants and give each other massages.
I wonder if that was specifically for my sake?
The girl I paired up with was just as startled as my teacher at how tense I was. I could feel the knots in my back that she was trying to work out. A friend of mine who used to give me massages called those knots "crunchies". Evidently, I had a fair few of them, and I could tell that my muscles were extremely wound up. The massage felt reeeeally good, even though it hurt a bit. It's a good kind of pain though. The pain that comes with kneading those crunchies into oblivion!

So hopefully I'll find a different way to vent my stress so that my muscles don't take the hit for it. I should take more time out of my day to do the relaxation techniques that my teacher tells me to use. It would be very beneficial to me, I can tell!

Well, time to work on homework. I have an acting scene to work on with a guy from my class tonight at 6:30, so I'll be missing FHE. However, that means that I'll be able to watch the second half of The Sing-Off! It premieres tonight! BYU Vocal Point is in the competition! Those boys are so talented, I hope that they go far. It's really good publicity for the church and what we stand for. Gotta love Vocal Point!!!!!!!

Neck Tension

Right now I am in a class that focuses on voice and diction. According to what I've learned so far this semester, physical tension in your body affects the way you articulate and makes it harder to project and take good breaths for singing or speaking. Thus, we often get to do deep-breathing exercises, meditation, and even yoga in class to work on relaxing our body so our voice will work for us better, and yoga is what we did today.

My teacher had us lie flat on our backs and completely relax our bodies. The teacher went around checking how relaxed we were, and when she got to me, she said, "Oh honey, you are so tense! You need a good massage... all through the neck, and the shoulders too..." That's all she said.

I realized something from this. You see, humans tend to take emotional burdens and carry them as physical burdens. That is why our muscles tense up when we are stressed, frustrated, etc...
I had never realized quite to this extreme how much emotional weight I carry on my shoulders... literally! So that's where all my stress and feelings go! I know that my neck gets stiff sometimes, and I tend to resort to giving myself massages - sometimes in the middle of class - to ease my neck pain. I had never considered how it connected with my emotions though.

It's amazing some of the things I learn in my theatre classes. It's a mixture of creativity and expression and self-discovery, and I love it! My teacher has assigned us to spend 10 minutes each day meditating. I've already started, and it's so interesting how it can rejuvenate you and sharpen your focus.
Goodness, I need to find another outlet for my emotions. I don't like feeling tense, especially now that I seem hyper-aware of it!

A Step Up

I decided that it was high time that I jumped on the blogging train. Journals are wonderful, but I suppose there's something different about a blog... something more creative, something more appealing. Regardless, I will continue to frequently write in my journal, as I have since 5th grade.

I'm new to this. Bear with me. Once I get the basics of blogging down, I plan on making this blog as interesting to look at/read as others I have seen. Like Taylor Ann's blog. What a darling, talented girl! I couldn't tell you what inspiring things I've picked up from her blog. I don't intend on making this blog widely "broadcasted" and intend to write on it more for my own sake than the sake of others... but just in case, I may as well make it worth reading.

Come to think of it, I am rather excited to be starting this. What a new experience!

And who doesn't welcome something new every now and then?!

Let the creative juices flow!