this is me at work

Okay, so it's actually Buffy at work. But what Willow said still applies.

Bored now.

I get nervous and I start babbling. And he starts babbling. And it's a babblefest.

Weave a story around this mixed proverb: "Silence is a great healer."

I don't feel like weaving a story around that mixed proverb but I do feel like writing about silence and communication. Who said these creative writing prompts are written in stone, anyway? They're not the boss of me. I'm the boss of me!

When people stop talking, they start communicating. Language can interfere with communication because language limits. As soon as you say something, you've eliminated every other possibility of what you might be talking about. We also use language to separate ourselves from other people. - Joss Whedon, 2008

Oh, Joss. You're so amazingly right about so many, many things.

I actually watched one of my favourite episodes, Hush, this past weekend and was reminded of its genius. Even with only about seventeen minutes of dialogue in the entire episode, it manages to speak volumes about communication. And at one point, Buffy suggests killing The Gentlemen by staking them but really ... well, you know what it looks like. The episode is worth it for the great .gif, alone.

In this episode, words get in everybody's way. Buffy and Riley (aka. The Character For Whom I Have Nothing But Irrational Hatred) talk but they don't communicate and can't manage to have their first kiss because they keep babbling. Anya has no idea what she means to Xander and Xander is either incapable or unwilling to articulate his feelings for her. We meet Tara, who clearly has things to say but is too shy and timid to say them. These are the things we're told in the beginning of the episode (where the dialogue is) but by the end, Buffy & Riley shut the hell up and start communicating (and kissing ... blech!), Xander demonstrates just how he feels about Anya when he pummels Spike for what he thought was his sinking his teeth into her,  Willow & Tara get a glimpse of just how powerful each other is when they touch their soon-to-be-lesbian-lover hands for the first time and move a friggin' soda machine with their minds (Bad. Ass!) and Tara tells Willow just what a powerful woman she is. It's only when the creepy-as-fuck Gentlemen come to town and steal everyone's ability to speak that they all truly start communicating with each other.

In regular ol' in-person conversation, I have a tendency to get all fucking jumbled up. It's not at all uncommon for me to ask several times, "does that make sense?" and it's rare that someone responds with, "yes, that makes complete sense." I'm much better at writing than I am speaking because I have much more control over what I am and am not putting out into the world. When I write, I can read and re-read and edit and I can make sure everything is cleaned up and put into a nice, tidy message that says just what I want it to say. In person, I can't do that. The minute I say something, it's out there and even if it may have sounded in my head like exactly what I wanted to say, it may not be perceived as such. Like The God of Geeks said, as soon as I say something, I've eliminated every other possibility of what I might be talking about. So, when it comes to face-to-face conversations, I'm almost always trying to make absolutely sure what I *am* talking about is crystal clear. Surely, you can see where I'm going with this ... often, the harder I try, the less clear I and the less sense I make.

Words are necessary, sure. In Hush, Riley needed them to operate the voice-activated elevator that took him down into The Initiative (and fuck you, Joss, for giving me a glimmer of hope that he would be killed off so early on in the season). In order to prevent Xander from wailing on him, Spike needed to say, "I bloody well did not suck the blood of your vengeance demon girlfriend, you sod!" but couldn't. And when Buffy needed to tell Riley to destroy the box that would release the voices of everyone in Sunnydale, she was unable to speak and had to show him and hope he understood what she was trying to say (which he didn't, at first). When he finally does understand what she wants him to do, he destroys the box, voices are restored, and Buffy screams her pretty little slayer head off, killing The Gentlemen. The episode ends with Riley & Buffy sitting across from each other, their demon slaying secrets now exposed.

Riley: Well, I guess we need to talk.
Buffy: I guess we do.

There are a few seconds of awkward and uncomfortable silence and ... scene.

I value words a great deal. But I'm also a firm believer that actions speak louder than words. You can tell me something until you're blue in the face but if your actions say otherwise, I'm going to belief those actions long before I believe those words. Because the way you act / don't act and the way you treat people / don't treat people ... it tells them all they really need to know. No need for "what's he thinking?" or "what's she really trying to say?" or "what the hell does he mean when he says that?" What the person is doing *is* what he / she is saying.

We need words and we need to be able to use them in a way that lets other people in on what's going on in our heads and the bits and pieces in there we want to share with others. But sometimes those words aren't nearly as useful as just shutting the hell up and trusting that once we stop trying to talk everything into making sense, things *will* start making sense.

finally, a chance to use the Buffy cookie dough analogy!

My father asked me once what I think are the best choices I've made for myself so far in life. It didn't take me a minute to answer him: 1. going to St. Bonaventure, 2. moving to Chicago, 3. my trip to Portland / Seattle.

Until this past weekend, I hadn't been back to Bonaventure since the day my parents and I packed up my little Ford Escort and their cars and moved me back to Penn Yan. I've always wanted to go back but not for an alumni function or anything, just...for me.

I haven't kept in touch with my college friends much until finding them all on Facebook. Even now, it's a Facebook type of friendship where we have a little interaction on there and that's it. But there are very few things about my four years there that I look back on with anything less than supreme fondness.

For a girl whose family has always meant the world to her, moving to school was a bitch for me. In a lot of ways, it was harder than moving 12 hours away and here to Chicago. Like a lot of people headed off to college, it was the first time I lived away from my family and my closest friends. My friend Catie and I had breakfast the morning before we were headed off and I remember standing at our cars afterward, hugging and crying and my telling her she was the one I really didn't want to leave.

It was the first time I lived up close and personal with complete strangers. I met people and we had a blast and we went to classes (for the most part) and we grew into the people most of us probably thought we'd never become. I remember little things about my time at school; the time we got into trouble for drinking in our dorm room the first night of our sophomore year, the time we took booze and my friend wore my green bathrobe to class for St. Patrick's Day, the time we almost started a fire in the lounge, the first time we got high with the Hot R.A. But when I think about the years spent there collectively, I remember the person I felt I was when I got there and the person I knew I was the morning I left. And I'm still amazed.

Our visit last weekend affected me more than I had prepared myself for and I think it's because it was really time for me to go back. Until recently, I've felt like someone completely other than who I know myself to be and I was ready for a reminder of just how far I've come since I hugged my parents and they told me they're just a phone call and two hours away.

For me, college really was the beginning of figuring out who I am. It was the first time I realized I could truly make it on my own (as much as one is on their own when their parents are helping pay for school and helping pay for me to live while there). For maybe the first time, I felt like someone other than a daughter and a sister and a niece. After changing majors three times, it was the first time I realized all I really want to do is read and write good stuff. The first time I considered myself to be a feminist. The first time I really had to study and work hard in order to meet my own standards. I don't know at what moment but at some point in those four years, I knew I was going to eventually move away from New York.

A lot of people put a lot of stock into a college degree but I've got to say that I couldn't care less that I walked away with a piece of paper telling me I have a B.A. in English. I walked away from college having learned just what possibility means. And I walked away having started to truly grow up and into the person I hope to be. The one I'd like to be. The one I will be, really.



After having taken the last of my photos this past weekend, I laid back on the grass next to the "E" on the beautiful central New York afternoon it was and thought about my time there. And my time since then. And the time I haven't yet experienced. I wasn't then but as I write this (and having just mentioned it and its everlasting relevance in conversation), I'm reminded of one of my favourite Buffy moments.

"...I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I'm going to turn out to be. I make it through this and the next thing and the next thing and maybe one day I turn around and realize I'm ready. I'm cookies. And then, you know, if I want someone to eat me...or enjoy warm, delicious cookie-me, then that's fine. That'll be then. When I'm done."

fear: big overture, little show

In an attempt to drown out and ignore what I can of my work environment, I've been watching Buffy. Well, minimizing the screen and listening, really. One of my all-time favourite episodes is in one of my all-time least favourite seasons.

In Fear, Itself, it's Halloween in Sunnydale and the scoobies are headed to a frat party horror house, where they find themselves facing their own fears. Willow's afraid she'll be unsuccessful stepping up her magic abilities. Xander, the only member without superpowers (Buffy - slayer, Willow - witch, Oz - werewolf, Anya - former vengeance demon), fears he doesn't fit in with the rest of the gang now that they're all in college and he isn't. Oz, who keeps himself caged three nights out of the month, is afraid of going all wolfy and hurting his friends. Buffy, after having slept with a college guy who wasn't looking for a relationship but just to get into her pants, has growing fears about serious relationships and letting people into her life. And Anya...well, Anya is seriously afraid of bunnies. 'Cause c'mon, they got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses!

At the frat house, a fear demon is inadvertently released and in different ways, their fears manifest and scare the bejeesus out of them. When the demon finally rises, he winds up being only a few inches tall. After he tries for a minute to be creepy and scary, Buffy laughs, squashes him with her shoe, and they all go home and eat candy.

Forty-some minutes of Whedon-witty entertainment and one simple little message: fear, itself is actually really small. You spot it, you squash it, you go home and eat candy.

At one point in the episode, my least favourite character tells Buffy he thinks she seems like the kind of person who makes things hard on herself. Yeah. Um. Hi. Right here. When it comes to squashing fear in its tracks, my natural response is usually easier said than done.

But that's a piss poor attitude. It doesn't have to be the case and it often shouldn't be as difficult as I make it. Some of the best things that have ever happened to me weren't things I had planned. They're things that just happened. And if I don't allow for change, I don't allow for the possibility of...well, any and everything. I think it certainly takes work to overcome certain fears but the things I seem to be afraid of these days aren't really of that variety.

I fear change. And it's been sucking the life out of me because even though I've felt it before and I'll feel it again, it's never quite been to this degree. I think maybe I've let some things get so out of control that I've been overcompensating when trying to get back to a comfortable balance. But the simple truth is that the things I have no control over...I can't make them how I need them to be. Because how I need them to be is really just how I want them to be. I can fight and scream and take it out on people at work or my family or most often, myself, and I can watch that accomplish absolutely nothing. Or I can focus on the things I can control and simply accept and deal with the things I can't.

Hell, I left everything and everyone I know and love, moved to Chicago with $62 to my name, and feel pretty satisfied with and proud about that decision. That's not someone who fears change. That's someone who can't fucking wait for it.

I'm going to reintroduce her.

a goal

My piano teacher updated her website to include recordings from past recitals and I'd completely forgotten that I once played one of my favorite Buffy pieces.

My version: Remembering Jenny
Professional version: here

Sacrifice, from the last episode of Season Five, is another beautiful piece and also one of my favorites.

I certainly have some relearning to do before I get back to the level of being able to play the arrangement I have but at some point this year, it will be one of my recital pieces.

McCain, is this one of your...wait, how many houses do you have again?

This was my favorite photo from last night's longest masturbatory session ever, known as the RNC.

I thought it was delightfully reminscint of the great California high school of the 90s and was hoping for Brenda & Dylan to walk out holding hands or for Buffy to slay some serious evil beasties before Prom.

As usual, the Republicans disappointed me.