Sixteen (plus nine)
It’s taken me a while to compile this list. I was trying to reveal things that people don’t already readily notice about my personality or which they might not ever know if I didn’t tell them. Not entirely sure I succeeded, but here ‘tis:
1. I am a sucker for beauty. Of course my definition of beauty differs somewhat from that of others, but if something or someone falls within my understanding of beauty, you can be assured that I will love it - in some way or another - unabashedly and try to make it - in some way or another - mine. I.must.have. beauty.in.my.life. This gets me into trouble in a number of different respects: the need for a beautiful home hurts my pocketbook, my admiration for physical beauty entangles my heartstrings in people whose inner beauty doesn’t always match their outer, I can be easily and utterly enraptured by beautiful words or music, I am perhaps disproportionately unhappy in unlovely places or when I don’t feel *cringe* pretty. Much of what I do and the manner in which I do it reflects at least in part a constant striving for beauty. Call it superficial, ridiculous, unrealistic… it is what it is.
2. Thanks to an adolescent obsession, I could probably still sing the entire libretto of Phantom of the Opera. All of the parts. Simultaneously. (And yes, badly.)
3. My parents horde in their basement at least 12 VHS tapes full of episodes of the “soap opera” I made with my friends and sisters throughout the majority of my youth in Texas entitled Beautiful Women and Their Problems (BWATP). I cannot begin to describe to you the enormity of horror and hilarity contained on those tapes. Hopefully I will never achieve a high enough degree fame for you to have to see for yourself when the tapes are pirated and put on YouTube.
4. I don’t talk to my best friend from kindergarten through tenth grade, from whom I was basically inseparable for 10 years of my life, any more. I don’t really know why. The only friend I keep in regular touch with from my corps of best friends in elementary/middle/junior high/high school is the one I took the longest to warm up to. She is now my oldest (and among my dearest) friend(s).
5. I’m an over-sharer. I think it has to do with the unfortunate delusion that my feelings, impressions, vision, interpretations, etc. are somehow unique or significant enough to share almost indiscriminately. I think it is a pretty ubiquitous mindset among artists of all kinds, except unlike most artists I haven’t found a medium through which to reliably express these things with the kind of skill that transforms them from individual concerns into representations of shared humanity (AKA art). So instead I often end up gushing utterly inappropriately in the realm of interpersonal relations: drowning friends, family and strangers alike with deluges of frightening candid words whenever I feel strongly about… well, just about anything. Sometimes there are mix CDs involved. As Shannon so aptly put it once, “I am a volcano of insanity! Look what you do to me! I’m going to spew crazy all over you!”
6. I find porn absolutely laughable but even mildly racy books totally turn me on.
7. I own two wedding dresses and have never been married. I think watching Legend too many times in my youth cultivated in me a near-indestructible fixation on “white flowy dresses.” I love them. Pretty much any opportunity I have to wear a costume, something centered around a white flowy dress and the opportunity to frolic around in it (preferably barefoot, on horseback, or whilst making flower crowns in the woods - for real) immediately springs to mind. My inner princess is a little closer to the surface than most people’s.
8. My feet are almost identical to my father’s, aside from being slightly smaller and less hairy, of course. And yes, contrary to my near-obsession with all things beautiful, I love my feet. All size 9, archless, spade-shaped, bordering-on-hideous bit of them.
9. I once held an elaborate ant funeral with my sister and some of my closest friends. We draped a sapling with garish Mardi Gras beads, wore black, buried the ant in a matchbox, and recited random verses from the Bible over it (since none of us attended church or actually knew what the parts of the Bible were). This stands in stark contrast to the fact that one of our My Little Pony toys throughout much of my youth was named Apple Jack Ant Squasher - for obvious reasons.
10. I went to Vatican City with the principle objective of knowing what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel (musty and like sweaty people) because of the scene by the river in Good Will Hunting. Similarly, I went to Dover so I could read Dover Beach into the wind on the white cliffs, made my boyfriend at the time drive all over the Irish countryside in search of a ruin named Tintern Abbey (not even the poem’s namesake, which is in Wales) where I read Wordsworth’s words off my Blackberry to an audience of sheep, went to Venice because I was obsessed with the movie Dangerous Beauty, got my TEFL certificate in Greece in hopes of learning modern Greek which would lead to learning ancient Greek which would lead to being able to read untranslated Homer. I would love to spend a vacation walking all over the Middle East in the footsteps of Alexander the Great because of a book called The Persian Boy. In short, I do things for odd quasi-literary reasons (perhaps not obvious) and am a huge dork (very obvious).
11. Absolutely every experience in my life awakens some sort of connection to a song lyric, poem, or movie quote. I can say with neither pride nor modesty that I am an encyclopedia of quotations.
12. My college professor once tried to dissuade me from being a teacher because she said I was a perfectionist and would drive my kids insane by never accepting less than what I would have produced in their place.
13. The only injury I’ve ever had which necessitated a visit to the hospital occurred in the (literal) nosebleed section of the University of Texas football stadium when I was in fifth grade; I took a nosedive on the steps and busted open the bridge of my nose on the concrete. No, that is not the reason my nose is so odd-looking.
14. I can't stand being bad at things and avoid things that don't come naturally to me. (Skiing and anything involving putting things other than shoes on my feet, principally.) This list used to be TOPPED by math. However, since leaving high school I have discovered that I have a totally dorky love for math. I had way too much fun in statistics, I would make out with Excel if it had a face, and I get an absurd kick out of doing basic algebra and calculus. (I still hate geometry and balancing chemical equations.) That said, I still do almost all mental math on base-10. By the simplest example possible, that means in order to complete the following problem (7+5=?) I do this in my head: How far is 7 from 10? Okay, 3. Now, take 3 away from 5 and you get... 2. Add 3 to 7 to get 10, and then add the remaining 2 from the 5 and you get ... 12. This is why I'm still bad at math.
15. I graduated from the Page Parkes School of Modeling in Houston, Texas. I have a portfolio and everything. I find this fact hideously embarrassing… to the point where I can barely disclose it now. But since we’re being honest…
16. I have believed myself totally in love with a man eight separate times. I can’t say for certain that I have ever actually been in love.
And now, in keeping with the trend of "25s" being much more popular than "16s" I shall add nine more.
17. I. love. salsa. My dad makes an absolutely wicked batch of fresh salsa and I've become rabidly addicted to it. To the point where I could eat nothing but chips, salsa, and guacamole for the rest of my life and be perfectly content.
18. I had a seriously wild phase of my life. People who knew me in college (and for several years after, such as the better part of my time in DC) can attest to this. I don't mean wild like taking all manner of drugs, getting tattoos, or breaking the law - just kind of crazy. Crazy in the fun sense like staying-out-all-night-only-to-hop-the-metro-back-to-work-wearing-last-night's-party-clothes-change-in-the-office-5-minutes-before-my-boss-arrives-and-work-the-whole-day-hung-over-then-drive-four-states-in-one-day-party-hopping-the-next-night, crazy in the overworked sense like work-a-part-time-job-while-taking-six-classes-and-running-six-organizations, and crazy in the flat-out crazy sense which entailed alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) Ice 101, nudity, cameras, strangers, mud, guitars, sheets, trash cans, and various sundries -- no more need be said. Given that I'm relatively put together now, you might never guess.
19. I'd like to learn to speak Italian, Spanish, French (more fluently than my shower discussions; I'm an expert linguist in the shower), Latin, ancient Greek, Russian, and Mandarin. I'd like to learn to play the guitar, violin (well, fiddle, more accurately), piano, mandolin, and harp. I'd like to travel to every country in the world. I'd like to write more than one book, get a doctorate in some subject (probably an obscure literary discipline), have a really exciting job that would require ridiculous amounts of cultural, historical, language, martial arts and weaponry skills/knowledge which I do not possess (like being a spy), own a business, and have a family. That being said, I'd really impress myself if I could go to the gym 6 days this week.
20. I am an insufferable combination of chronic overachiever and procrastinator. It began as a kid when I would write fully illustrated books instead of essays, create replica rainforests out of multiple refrigerator boxes and 10 years' worth of National Geographic magazines, multiple-story gingerbread houses for "how-to" projects, and write plays involving multiple home-made sets -- all within spitting distance of the due date. I've seen consecutive sunrises over the tops of computers while typing term papers. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that...
21. My mother is a ridiculous overachiever, too. She used to throw the most fantastic birthday parties for us as kids. I had an Oscar-themed party where she bought a huge roll of red paper to cover our front sidewalk, cut 5-foot Oscar figures out of the ubiquitous refrigerator boxes, spray-painted them gold, and spotlighted them in the front yard, made my costume, and masterminded an entire night of Oscar-themed games, party favors, and food. And that was just ONE year. There was the 50s murder mystery, the masquerade ball, the toga party, the carosel party, the haunted house Halloween party, the zombie party.... the list goes on and on. Oh, and there was that 10-foot-or-so handmade paper doll wonderland that hung in our playroom. Oh yeah, and the holiday trees. For EVERY holiday. And the fact that she created an art history appreciation program for my elementary school called Moments with the Masters.... Needless to say, my childhood ROCKED.
22. The most relevant lesson I've learned as an adult is, "It's not who you are inside; it's what you do that defines you." Yes, it's from Batman Begins. It's one of those things that you don't properly hear until you need to.
23. I really want a big family. I've always felt like my immediate family was a little isolated from the rest of my family. At one point both my maternal grandmother and my crazy great aunt lived in our house and I've always had an affectionate (if not close or particularly loving) relationship with my dad's side of the family, but none of my extended family has ever felt *essential* to my life. I compensate for this by making my friends family, but I'm still a little jealous of people whose grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. were/are instrumental.
24. Although I can't seem to motivate myself to write an actual book, I'm really glad that I blog and that gmail saves all sent messages. Some of my favorite writing has been off-the-cuff in professions of love, arguments, or just day-to-day humor. A small part of me hopes that - should I be hit by a bus tomorrow - someone would posthumously edit all of my random writing into something lasting. I'm sure everyone who has ever enjoyed writing but has not motivated themselves to write a book has felt the exact same way at one point or another.
25. Most people travel in order to "find themselves," but I traveled for precisely the opposite reason. I know myself pretty well, and despite the fact that I've grown and learned and made some incidental discoveries along the way, I didn't undertake this adventure in order to get in touch with my deep inner self. I went in search of a way to "lose" myself -- not in an escapist sense, but more to find something external to me which I could devote my passion and energy to wholeheartedly. I went in search of something - or someone - to love in a way that makes "me" blissfully, unbegrudgingly secondary to something far greater. Although I've loved a great many things/people with a great deal of love, I still don't feel that I've found my one true love, if such a thing even exists. I'm more than a little afraid to do so, given the degree to which I've invested myself in things that I've loved temporarily or partially. My greatest fear, however, is not that I'll never find the love of my life, but that I'll somehow lose perspective on my manifold blessings and become impatient waiting for it or jaded when I don't, because the desire to find it doesn't arise from a feeling of lacking anything, but rather a desire to experience everything to its fullest extent. When I was on vacation with my mom in Ireland and Scotland, we were the crazies who got off the bus at every stop, ran full tilt through abbeys in the 10 minutes we had to sightsee, flew out of the bus and waded thigh-deep in the ocean because just looking at it simply wouldn't suffice, and read up on the cultural/historical sigificance of everything then tried to outdo each other with knowledge or literary allusion. This is just one small demonstration of how I want nothing in my life to go unexperienced/unappreciated.
1. I am a sucker for beauty. Of course my definition of beauty differs somewhat from that of others, but if something or someone falls within my understanding of beauty, you can be assured that I will love it - in some way or another - unabashedly and try to make it - in some way or another - mine. I.must.have. beauty.in.my.life. This gets me into trouble in a number of different respects: the need for a beautiful home hurts my pocketbook, my admiration for physical beauty entangles my heartstrings in people whose inner beauty doesn’t always match their outer, I can be easily and utterly enraptured by beautiful words or music, I am perhaps disproportionately unhappy in unlovely places or when I don’t feel *cringe* pretty. Much of what I do and the manner in which I do it reflects at least in part a constant striving for beauty. Call it superficial, ridiculous, unrealistic… it is what it is.
2. Thanks to an adolescent obsession, I could probably still sing the entire libretto of Phantom of the Opera. All of the parts. Simultaneously. (And yes, badly.)
3. My parents horde in their basement at least 12 VHS tapes full of episodes of the “soap opera” I made with my friends and sisters throughout the majority of my youth in Texas entitled Beautiful Women and Their Problems (BWATP). I cannot begin to describe to you the enormity of horror and hilarity contained on those tapes. Hopefully I will never achieve a high enough degree fame for you to have to see for yourself when the tapes are pirated and put on YouTube.
4. I don’t talk to my best friend from kindergarten through tenth grade, from whom I was basically inseparable for 10 years of my life, any more. I don’t really know why. The only friend I keep in regular touch with from my corps of best friends in elementary/middle/junior high/high school is the one I took the longest to warm up to. She is now my oldest (and among my dearest) friend(s).
5. I’m an over-sharer. I think it has to do with the unfortunate delusion that my feelings, impressions, vision, interpretations, etc. are somehow unique or significant enough to share almost indiscriminately. I think it is a pretty ubiquitous mindset among artists of all kinds, except unlike most artists I haven’t found a medium through which to reliably express these things with the kind of skill that transforms them from individual concerns into representations of shared humanity (AKA art). So instead I often end up gushing utterly inappropriately in the realm of interpersonal relations: drowning friends, family and strangers alike with deluges of frightening candid words whenever I feel strongly about… well, just about anything. Sometimes there are mix CDs involved. As Shannon so aptly put it once, “I am a volcano of insanity! Look what you do to me! I’m going to spew crazy all over you!”
6. I find porn absolutely laughable but even mildly racy books totally turn me on.
7. I own two wedding dresses and have never been married. I think watching Legend too many times in my youth cultivated in me a near-indestructible fixation on “white flowy dresses.” I love them. Pretty much any opportunity I have to wear a costume, something centered around a white flowy dress and the opportunity to frolic around in it (preferably barefoot, on horseback, or whilst making flower crowns in the woods - for real) immediately springs to mind. My inner princess is a little closer to the surface than most people’s.
8. My feet are almost identical to my father’s, aside from being slightly smaller and less hairy, of course. And yes, contrary to my near-obsession with all things beautiful, I love my feet. All size 9, archless, spade-shaped, bordering-on-hideous bit of them.
9. I once held an elaborate ant funeral with my sister and some of my closest friends. We draped a sapling with garish Mardi Gras beads, wore black, buried the ant in a matchbox, and recited random verses from the Bible over it (since none of us attended church or actually knew what the parts of the Bible were). This stands in stark contrast to the fact that one of our My Little Pony toys throughout much of my youth was named Apple Jack Ant Squasher - for obvious reasons.
10. I went to Vatican City with the principle objective of knowing what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel (musty and like sweaty people) because of the scene by the river in Good Will Hunting. Similarly, I went to Dover so I could read Dover Beach into the wind on the white cliffs, made my boyfriend at the time drive all over the Irish countryside in search of a ruin named Tintern Abbey (not even the poem’s namesake, which is in Wales) where I read Wordsworth’s words off my Blackberry to an audience of sheep, went to Venice because I was obsessed with the movie Dangerous Beauty, got my TEFL certificate in Greece in hopes of learning modern Greek which would lead to learning ancient Greek which would lead to being able to read untranslated Homer. I would love to spend a vacation walking all over the Middle East in the footsteps of Alexander the Great because of a book called The Persian Boy. In short, I do things for odd quasi-literary reasons (perhaps not obvious) and am a huge dork (very obvious).
11. Absolutely every experience in my life awakens some sort of connection to a song lyric, poem, or movie quote. I can say with neither pride nor modesty that I am an encyclopedia of quotations.
12. My college professor once tried to dissuade me from being a teacher because she said I was a perfectionist and would drive my kids insane by never accepting less than what I would have produced in their place.
13. The only injury I’ve ever had which necessitated a visit to the hospital occurred in the (literal) nosebleed section of the University of Texas football stadium when I was in fifth grade; I took a nosedive on the steps and busted open the bridge of my nose on the concrete. No, that is not the reason my nose is so odd-looking.
14. I can't stand being bad at things and avoid things that don't come naturally to me. (Skiing and anything involving putting things other than shoes on my feet, principally.) This list used to be TOPPED by math. However, since leaving high school I have discovered that I have a totally dorky love for math. I had way too much fun in statistics, I would make out with Excel if it had a face, and I get an absurd kick out of doing basic algebra and calculus. (I still hate geometry and balancing chemical equations.) That said, I still do almost all mental math on base-10. By the simplest example possible, that means in order to complete the following problem (7+5=?) I do this in my head: How far is 7 from 10? Okay, 3. Now, take 3 away from 5 and you get... 2. Add 3 to 7 to get 10, and then add the remaining 2 from the 5 and you get ... 12. This is why I'm still bad at math.
15. I graduated from the Page Parkes School of Modeling in Houston, Texas. I have a portfolio and everything. I find this fact hideously embarrassing… to the point where I can barely disclose it now. But since we’re being honest…
16. I have believed myself totally in love with a man eight separate times. I can’t say for certain that I have ever actually been in love.
And now, in keeping with the trend of "25s" being much more popular than "16s" I shall add nine more.
17. I. love. salsa. My dad makes an absolutely wicked batch of fresh salsa and I've become rabidly addicted to it. To the point where I could eat nothing but chips, salsa, and guacamole for the rest of my life and be perfectly content.
18. I had a seriously wild phase of my life. People who knew me in college (and for several years after, such as the better part of my time in DC) can attest to this. I don't mean wild like taking all manner of drugs, getting tattoos, or breaking the law - just kind of crazy. Crazy in the fun sense like staying-out-all-night-only-to-hop-the-metro-back-to-work-wearing-last-night's-party-clothes-change-in-the-office-5-minutes-before-my-boss-arrives-and-work-the-whole-day-hung-over-then-drive-four-states-in-one-day-party-hopping-the-next-night, crazy in the overworked sense like work-a-part-time-job-while-taking-six-classes-and-running-six-organizations, and crazy in the flat-out crazy sense which entailed alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) Ice 101, nudity, cameras, strangers, mud, guitars, sheets, trash cans, and various sundries -- no more need be said. Given that I'm relatively put together now, you might never guess.
19. I'd like to learn to speak Italian, Spanish, French (more fluently than my shower discussions; I'm an expert linguist in the shower), Latin, ancient Greek, Russian, and Mandarin. I'd like to learn to play the guitar, violin (well, fiddle, more accurately), piano, mandolin, and harp. I'd like to travel to every country in the world. I'd like to write more than one book, get a doctorate in some subject (probably an obscure literary discipline), have a really exciting job that would require ridiculous amounts of cultural, historical, language, martial arts and weaponry skills/knowledge which I do not possess (like being a spy), own a business, and have a family. That being said, I'd really impress myself if I could go to the gym 6 days this week.
20. I am an insufferable combination of chronic overachiever and procrastinator. It began as a kid when I would write fully illustrated books instead of essays, create replica rainforests out of multiple refrigerator boxes and 10 years' worth of National Geographic magazines, multiple-story gingerbread houses for "how-to" projects, and write plays involving multiple home-made sets -- all within spitting distance of the due date. I've seen consecutive sunrises over the tops of computers while typing term papers. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that...
21. My mother is a ridiculous overachiever, too. She used to throw the most fantastic birthday parties for us as kids. I had an Oscar-themed party where she bought a huge roll of red paper to cover our front sidewalk, cut 5-foot Oscar figures out of the ubiquitous refrigerator boxes, spray-painted them gold, and spotlighted them in the front yard, made my costume, and masterminded an entire night of Oscar-themed games, party favors, and food. And that was just ONE year. There was the 50s murder mystery, the masquerade ball, the toga party, the carosel party, the haunted house Halloween party, the zombie party.... the list goes on and on. Oh, and there was that 10-foot-or-so handmade paper doll wonderland that hung in our playroom. Oh yeah, and the holiday trees. For EVERY holiday. And the fact that she created an art history appreciation program for my elementary school called Moments with the Masters.... Needless to say, my childhood ROCKED.
22. The most relevant lesson I've learned as an adult is, "It's not who you are inside; it's what you do that defines you." Yes, it's from Batman Begins. It's one of those things that you don't properly hear until you need to.
23. I really want a big family. I've always felt like my immediate family was a little isolated from the rest of my family. At one point both my maternal grandmother and my crazy great aunt lived in our house and I've always had an affectionate (if not close or particularly loving) relationship with my dad's side of the family, but none of my extended family has ever felt *essential* to my life. I compensate for this by making my friends family, but I'm still a little jealous of people whose grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. were/are instrumental.
24. Although I can't seem to motivate myself to write an actual book, I'm really glad that I blog and that gmail saves all sent messages. Some of my favorite writing has been off-the-cuff in professions of love, arguments, or just day-to-day humor. A small part of me hopes that - should I be hit by a bus tomorrow - someone would posthumously edit all of my random writing into something lasting. I'm sure everyone who has ever enjoyed writing but has not motivated themselves to write a book has felt the exact same way at one point or another.
25. Most people travel in order to "find themselves," but I traveled for precisely the opposite reason. I know myself pretty well, and despite the fact that I've grown and learned and made some incidental discoveries along the way, I didn't undertake this adventure in order to get in touch with my deep inner self. I went in search of a way to "lose" myself -- not in an escapist sense, but more to find something external to me which I could devote my passion and energy to wholeheartedly. I went in search of something - or someone - to love in a way that makes "me" blissfully, unbegrudgingly secondary to something far greater. Although I've loved a great many things/people with a great deal of love, I still don't feel that I've found my one true love, if such a thing even exists. I'm more than a little afraid to do so, given the degree to which I've invested myself in things that I've loved temporarily or partially. My greatest fear, however, is not that I'll never find the love of my life, but that I'll somehow lose perspective on my manifold blessings and become impatient waiting for it or jaded when I don't, because the desire to find it doesn't arise from a feeling of lacking anything, but rather a desire to experience everything to its fullest extent. When I was on vacation with my mom in Ireland and Scotland, we were the crazies who got off the bus at every stop, ran full tilt through abbeys in the 10 minutes we had to sightsee, flew out of the bus and waded thigh-deep in the ocean because just looking at it simply wouldn't suffice, and read up on the cultural/historical sigificance of everything then tried to outdo each other with knowledge or literary allusion. This is just one small demonstration of how I want nothing in my life to go unexperienced/unappreciated.