In Which I Am Alive

So, this semester I'm participating in the Artsbridge Scholar program at my university, where I get to work in an elementary classroom helping to integrate music into their curriculum. I'm going to be going to a 4th grade class once a week to teach music, and I am incredibly excited. As part of the program, I'm required to document my experiences in a blog. If you're interested in seeing what I'm up to, you can check it out here:  http://karissateachingadventure.wordpress.com/

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is my favorite.  Also, I visited the dump today, which I had never done before. And yesterday, I decided that fourth grade is my favorite grade to teach, which is ironic, considering it was my least favorite grade to be in. Also, today will be the first time I've ever listened to more than one Sufjan Stevens song in a row. And I can't decide how I feel about him. I think we're going with, "Bizarre, but in a way that kinda really appeals to me." But I'm not sure. Maybe I just like it because people have been telling me for years how much I would like Sufjan Stevens. That is all.

Our poor stake president. Just trying to get all us singletons married off. Never even saw it comin'. "Girls should be the passive ones. Don't argue with me!" he glared at those who giggled. "Boys need to be more aggressive." "Have you ever seen a flower chasing a bee?" he continued, "No! Flowers just stand there, and look pretty and smell sssoooo gooooood." And then a raised hand, "President, you do know that any bee you see outside the hive is female, right? The male bees stay inside the hive and pretty much do nothing." Made. My. Day. EDIT: I should admit that I took a little artistic license on this one. What he  actually  said was that all bees are girls. Which isn't true. So I changed it, because it's my blog and I can do that.

Sometimes I go back and read my old posts, and change around the words and phrases I don't like. Because I can't do it in real life, so it's nice to be able to do it somewhere . In fact, I just did it with this post. One full paragraph, GONE. Just because I can.

Hipsters, the twenty-first century enigma. Everyone has seen them. Everyone can recognize them. But when asked what exactly a hipster is, we all find it problematic to describe them without incriminating ourselves. We mock them. We revile them. We make blogs about them. And we protest vehemently if anybody accuses us of being them (except for those of us who wish we were cool enough to be hipsters...but that's an issue for another post) The main beef people seem to have with hipsters is that they are disingenuous. They listen to obscure music to sound sophisticated (but not music so obscure that nobody will be impressed by the band names). They eat organic food, wear TOMS shoes and recycle in order to appear socially aware. They dress in thrift store clothes to look original and unique, but really just end up looking like everyone else who shops at thrift stores. They liked Arcade Fire before  they won a Grammy. (As a brief side note, will everyone please t...

Since I'm going to teach elementary school one day, (well, actually tomorrow, if you count guest-teaching in somebody else's classroom as "teaching elementary school,") I think it's important I take a stand on a very divisive, and yet important, issue. Markers versus Crayons. I thought about listing the relative merits of each, but really all the marker has going for it is a lack of controversy about the pronunciation of its name. (Everybody, crayon is pronounced CRAY-ON. Not "cran." Not "crown." Not "crenn." Ok?) So I'll just list all the reasons why crayons are the superior coloring implement: With crayons, you don't get ink all over your hands and then leave inky smudges all over your previously-pristine visual aids. Crayons never run out of ink. Kids can't vandalize each other's faces with crayons. Crayons give you a much more brilliant color than markers, typically. There is so much tactile satisfact...

The phrase: "Attitude of Gratitude." I don't know why, but it makes me cringe. Every. Single. Time. The Washington Post Social Reader Facebook app. I refuse to download the app because I don't want the entire Facebook community to know that I'm reading about "Beyonce's Incredible, Unique, Miraculous Pregnancy." This means, however, that I get to see all the tantalizing headlines from articles my friends are reading, without being able to read them myself. It's...maddening. Spotify. For similar reasons. Too-long eyelash extensions. Girls, having baby tarantulas attached to your eyelids is not attractive. The dating scene. I would like to either be completely single and romance-less, or have a boyfriend who loves and adores me. None of this going on dates with boys who I don't actually like that much. None of these mini-crushes on menfolk who won't ever reciprocate. As Patrick Henry once said, give me true love or give me asexuality...

Friends, let me tell you a story. Three years ago, a friend of mine started a club. The purpose of this club was to raise awareness about human trafficking, and to make what difference we could in ending modern-day slavery. I was passionately involved in this club, and the following year, was an officer in it. I believed in the cause, I loved the people in the club, I felt like the little we were doing mattered. I had a grand vision of myself graduating college, swooping into third-world countries, and saving them from their poverty and despair. This vision expanded beyond slavery; in my fantasy world, I was going to solve world hunger, end poverty, and give everyone an education. And then...something changed. Maybe it was fighting with my then-boyfriend about whether or not I had a "Savior complex." Maybe it was the remorse I felt after I stood up my roommate for a temple trip in order to chat up the visiting founder of a non-profit organization I was particularly in...

Stephansdom Cathedral, 25 June 2011 Gothic cathedrals don't make me feel small. Or rather, they do, but they make me feel as if being small isn't a bad thing at all. I follow the lines of the arches and vaults and my soul expands to fill the entire space, joining with hundreds of other expanded souls, reaching, spilling upward to Heaven, to Our Lord. I do not feel small because I do not feel any size at all. I feel my being melt and merge into a Holiness full of souls, where each soul is unique and precious, and all are filled with the light and love of Christ.

I scribbled this down while awestruck in the Rembrandt room of the Kunsthistorisches museum in Vienna I think art, in its best form, is a way we share ourselves with each other. A way of saying, "This is how I  see the world, please let me show you." All truly honest painting, writing, musical composition, tries to do that. And I think that sharing of souls, of perspectives, is so important. "Here is what I think is moving, touching, beautiful, sacred, frightening. Please share it with me." And the sharing is never perfect. Everyone interprets each artistic conversation according to his or her own experience. But I think the communication is often more clear, more perfect than with verbal language. And I think it's wonderful that I can sit in front of these paintings, and maybe feel for a moment how Rembrandt felt about his son, or understand how he envisioned the Apostle Paul, or what the lines on his mother's face meant to him.