Monday, March 31, 2008

I miss the Girls!!!


So I have been thinking all weekend about Rand, objectivism, egoism, altruism, religion, and other pretty deep topics, yet, when I woke this morning I just had a terrible sense of how much I miss Lorelai and Rory!!! I know, a post on collectivism verses the individual will soon be coming, but for now, let me just say that I miss the girls of Gilmore.

I became slightly addicted to GG when I came down with one of the most horrific illnesses of my life in New York City. I was unable to walk or sit up and I had to get a cab, lay in the back, and ask them to take me to the ER as I was dying. The cabbie barely batted an eyelash and sped with alacrity to the NYU emergency facilities. If he would have offered to help me into the actual building we might be married by now. So, in recovery, my roommate Becky introduced me to GG. This was 2004 and Gilmore Girls had just started it's forth season. I watched season 1 straight through in about 2.5 days. I credit it with my continued desire to live. Ever since then I have been an addict. Yes, hello, my name is D'Arcy and I am addicted to Gilmore Girls and Hagen-Daz Chocolate Peanut Butter ice-cream.

Gilmore Girls taught me about the Sex Pistols, Bill Moyers and the Power of Myth (how else would you want to spend spring break?), the Pixies, Norman Mailer, Elsa Clench, Merlin Perkins, and whether I want a "Nick & Nora" or a "Sid & Nancy" type of love.

Man, there is just an empty void that I can't shake every Tuesday night at 7 pm

Now, can I get to the really crazy part. I actually had a notebook that I would write down particularly funny phrases that I wanted to remember. I KNOW!!! It's insanely weird and wrong, but just read on, I promise you'll laugh.


HERE IT IS---SOME OF THE FUNNIEST LINES FROM THE WORLD OF GILMORE:


"While He is being sexy--he's also being grammatically correct." --Rory

"I know I've always dreamed that a boy would give me a really confusing Czechoslovakian novel." --Lane

"I guess this goes on the 'Boy Was I Wrong List' right below gauchos, but above the Flashdance phase." --Lorelai

"I'm afraid once your heart is involved it all comes out in moron." --Lorelai

"Stop her!"
"How?!"
"Show her a picture of Nick Nolte's mug shot!"

"Bob Hope is laughing in heaven, but I'm not." --Rory

"Let me check my spinster calendar..." --Lorelai

"I'm smiling because you're crazy and that's what you do to crazy people to keep them calm." --Rory

Logan: You're special, Rory.
Rory: Like "stop eating the paste" kind of special?

"Because Rory, when I read my autobiography I don't want to be bored!" --Paris

"There is no use for lava lamps unless you are on drugs." --Emily Gilmore

"You once told me you loved 'Saved by the Bell', what can be more humiliating than that?" --Lorelai


And Finally---Hep Alien's Finest Moment:

Zach: Yeah. Dave, you're a Christian. So what? That's cool.
Brian: It's nothing to hide.
Zach: Christians can still rock.
Dave: They can?
Lane: Yeah, yeah, Dave. Christians can still rock, don't hide it.
Zach: Marshall Stacks don't know Christians from atheists.
Dave: Gosh, I just wasn't sure if you guys would be accepting of my devoutness.
Brian: Dave, it's a part of you, and we think you're cool, so it's cool.
Dave: Great. Thanks, guys.
Zach: But no way are we playing Creed, man.
Dave: Oh, no, of course not.
Zach: Or Amy Grant. That's where we draw the line.

Monday, March 24, 2008

No More Scare Tactics

I went to my new ward for the first time yesterday. I had so many hopes that it might be a place for more discussion and talking and more open than the ward I have been. Was it ridiculous of me to have these feelings?

I'm trying to justify my experience in some way....maybe I came on an off day or maybe it was more my attitude (most likely). But there were ten girls and two boys in the GD class and the girls all went off on how it is harder to do our callings because we are single and if we get the chance to have a date we are going to take that and not do our responsibility. Um, wow! Can I please use that excuse for everything I don't accomplish in my iife? As singles are we really that shallow? Do we live and crave the next date so much so that every other thing we are meant to do goes out the window? Ok, I know, I am ranting....I am being unfair, but come on! Do I really want to hear this stuff every Sunday? No. Am I so tired of church coming down to the fact that I am single, so something is wrong with me? Yes.


Then another girl went off on how if we don't do our callings then the blood of all those we could have helped will be on our heads forever. I raised my hand and said that was a scare tactic. That doing our callings because we are afraid of the consequences of NOT doing them is not the right attitude. Also that we shouldn't think so highly of ourselves. The Lord will take care of his church, he has shown that time and time again, and if we are not ready and willing to step in and do something he has called us to do, then he will call someone else. Callings are more to benefit us individually and help us work together as a community than to be worried about the act of saving people. The teacher got completely offended and baffled at my comment and was quite upset. The rest of the group just looked at me as if "my whole body were covered in scales."

Not too bad, probably, but I am really, really, really tired of doing things that aren't in my heart because I am afraid of God and because I feel guilt. I am really, really, really tired of doing things out of guilt instead of doing them for the right reasons. I am tired of living according to some type of scare tactic. In fact, I am scared right now to even write this because many people who leave comments on this blog are not going to understand where I am coming from. They are going to want me to make decisons that conform to the decisions they are making and to the decisions they feel I should be making. But I am really tired of doing that lately. So, hopefully you will still be my friends, even if you feel the path I am choosing for my life right now is not quite what you think it should be.

I have taken a month off of church and it was nice, after yesterday, I just don't think I am ready to go back yet. And yes, I realize, the more I don't go, you say the easier it is not to go. But if I don't want to go, then I am not going to go. Somehow having that option, as a friend told me this morning, makes going an even better feeling, because I am going for the right reasons.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

God is a Big God

Poppy knew from when he was a boy there must be a kernel of truth on every avenue. "Does it make sense," Poppy said, "that any God would choose some people and leave the others out? If only Christians or Jews are right, what about most of Asia and the Middle East? All these millions of people are just--extras? Ridiculous! God's bigger than that!"

Why would God want to be only large enough to fit inside a certain group of hearts? God was a Big God. Once Liyana answered someone that way, but it didn't work very well.

"What religion are you?"

"Big God."



--From Habibi

Hell No!

Why would a woman stand next to her husband and support him as he talks about his involvement in a prostitution scandal?

Why would a woman stand next to her husband as he announces that he is indeed gay and has had relations with another man?

Why would a woman stand next to her husband when he performed sexual acts with another woman in the oval office?


You want to say that these women must not be smart or have any power of their own, but Hilary Clinton is one of the most powerful women in the world, and yet she stood by her man. Why?

I would never do that. I would emphatically say, "Hell No!" (say it with me girls!) I would be throwing tomatoes at my husband as he gave his forced "apology" to a crowd that really doesn't believe him. They only apologize once caught, and why do we insist on these forced apologies? We know they aren't sincere or repentant, right?

So I ask you, why are women this way in general, and in politics in particular?

Are they being bribed?

Are they getting better divorce settlements?

Are they being threatened?

Honestly, I don't get it...Is it some form of love and altruism (which again goes out the door for me the minute I learn about the prostitute)? Is it some ideal of civic duty?

Can someone please explain to me why these women are acting the way they do?

Saturday, March 8, 2008

I long to hold some Lady




I'm into poetry.


Yesterday in a literary conference at the Salt Palace there were several moments that could have been composed into poems about my life. I was sitting alone on a pea green bench during a break and a small, doe-eyed girl from India came up to me. She had a pink balloon tied to her wrist, and she looked at me with more boldness than I have seen in a child. There was no shyness there. We stared at each other for a long time. Longer than was probably proper for a stranger and child to stare. Her parents were about 20 feet away caught up in a conversation about medicine. She pointed at my hair and then she held up her wrist to show me her balloon. Before I was able to speak, her father whisked in and carried her away, the pink balloon bobbing like a bird on waves.

There were two other events, one involving a teenage boy and one involving a Hispanic woman...maybe I'll save those experiences for another post.


At the conference a world renown poet explained the interaction of the poet and the reader with a metaphor (dare he use anything else!) He said that when you read the poems of a poet, it is as personal as sharing a kiss. This quickened me and I was full of visions of kissing various poets. As poets faces flickered across the gray coils of my brain I shuttered a little when Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson flashed there, but the the images stopped and rested on Mr. Cohen. I pictured having a long, drawn out, soft French kiss with Leonard Cohen....and the metaphor came to life with piercing imagery.




I Long to Hold Some Lady from The Spice Box of Earth

I long to hold some lady
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.

There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady's bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:

As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.

Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.

But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

a pretty how town...

anyone lived in a pretty how town, with up so floating many bells down. i awoke in a haze of down comforters with this phrase buzzing in my head like a fly. have any of you ever reached out and grasped consciousness with e e cummings abuzz? in honor of e e, there will be no capitalization today!

i think it is because i have been "singing my didn't and dancing my did" lately. i get through the challenges happily and celebrate my victories emphatically.

i think it is also because i am moving to a pretty how town myself tonight, if sugarhouse can be called that...it's a long process because i have exactly or precisely 1,000 books and about 300 dvds....how did this happen to a simple girl like myself? is it shameful to have a home full of bookshelves and nothing else?

cummings is also speaking to me in my sleep because i have grown tired of sowing my isn't and reaping my same...sun moon stars rain. i don't want to sleep my dreams.


thanks for talking to me this morning cummings, i really appreciate it.


maybe he speaks to you too?

(this poem should be read aloud, it will blow your mind if it hasn't already)

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain