What's to come...

This is beautiful (and apparently epic) Vienna, the city that I will call home very soon. I fly out Friday afternoon and suddenly this blog may just come to life again.

Starry Starry Night in the Park with George

*Note: I've randomly decided to start blogging again which I generally only do when I'm overseas somewhere and I want to share my experience with the folks back home. We'll see how long this lasts, my money is on about a week and a half tops.

The other morning my roommate came up the stairs and said "I miss starry starry night." The laptop that I've had since I was seventeen had a skin on it of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night and I sort became known for it. At Christmas time, my computer kicked the bucket and I had to get a new one (even though my brother ended up picking the bucket back up and selling the repaired computer later) and though I looked for my next painting even before I got the new computer, to this point, the laptop remains bare. I must first explain why I chose this painting to color my life for the years that it did.

In High School, we had a lesson once about the creative process and the things that inspire people. The teacher showed us pictures of the stars and then showed us how Van Gogh had attempted to capture them and then showed us a song that had been written about the painting. This painting, came to represent to me the way that people have the power to inspire each other and the way that expression and art is not only some existential journey, but a lovely manifestation of human interdependence and God's intimate involvement thereof.

My new naked computer has been naked long enough (and not just because it's getting dirty and scratched from the weird places that I use my computer. I had originally chosen a painting called The Terrace at the Sainte Adresse by our own dear Claude Monet, but it stopped speaking to me before I saved up the money to order the skin. So, I've instead chosen to color my life with a piece called A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.

Because I am in theatre and because Stephen Sondheim wrote a musical in the 80s about this painting, most people that I frequently associate with will assume that I chose this because of its connection to my theatrical life. Truly, there are paintings that I find more beautiful, Caspar David Friedrich has done some incredible things and no one deals with light (which I am fascinated by) the way that Rembrandt does. And there are a thousand paintings that have moved me in museums around the world that I may never be able to see again because the artists names and the paintings titles have long since left me.

My connection to this painting cannot be separated from Sondheim and his musical, but it is not based solely on it. We worked briefly with that musical in my musical scene study class and exploring the content of these scenes in depth unearthed things that mean the world to me and to my understanding of art.

I love the something crazed in George's creative process and the way it pulls him to it the way it pulls him to it nearly as strongly as his love draws him to Dot. In a way, I even love the exquisiteness of the resulting heartbreak and I love the tragedy of a man whose life's work came down to making a hat where there never was a hat and he wasn't appreciated for it in his lifetime. I love that though simplistic, there is still something incredible about creation and the wonder of finding there is something there that wasn't there before because of you. In creation, you come close to godhood, but in loving you become a god and I love grappling between those things because love can be so painful too. I love that in the end Dot is surprised by joy, in that though she didn't end up with the person she should've belonged with, there was something beautiful about her having been allowed to know that love like that exists.

Most of all, I love that somebody could look at this painting and never know any of the above or what it meant to the artist. There's likely a thousand heart-wrenching stories that I've seen in strokes and colors and never known that I was seeing them. Though Sondheim took liberties with the facts of the story, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte reminds me that there are a million stories worth telling that are waiting for the right mouth or the right pen or the right heart to tell them.

Anything but Laos-y Pt 2

*playing catch up. I don't know what else I'm ever going to get to do with the pictures and video I have from this summer. This one I wrote while I was still in country.

Just before we reached Luang Prabang on the third day of travel we stopped at a cave in the middle of stark black cliffs coming out of the Mekong. It had over two thousand Buddhas in a just a few little caverns. It was interesting, but I think we were all ready to get there.

And get there we did. Laos is a jewel that I didn't know existed. I had a similar experience going to the Heshimite Kingdom of Jordan (not being snooty just distinguishing it from Jordan, Utah). I knew nothing of it so everything that was good was great because I had no expectations and everything was new and exciting. Luang Prabang was a resort town when Laos was a french colony so the whole thing had a European feel to it, while remaining charmingly Asian.

This guy was so cool, he smoked the daily paper. He was standing there holding a flag of the hammer and sickle in the threshold of a travel agency. Laos is a communist country, but you'd never know it. 'Cept for this paper-smoking guy and his flag.

Our hotel was really fine and the best shower I've had my entire time here. Looking right out on the Mekong. Our schedule in Laos was so laid back and the food was good and the culture was fun and fascinating—it was a perfect way to wind down my southeast Asia experience. We spent our days seeing fantastic waterfalls and views and our nights eating great food and reminiscing on what's passed for us. You never think that when you've already been with the same group of people for 3 months that you would suddenly make new friends, but I feel like I did that in Laos and I needed that so I'm glad.

One Night in Bangkok

For Heidi.

The story of MY one night in Bangkok.

Is that a Fat Joke?

I left for this summer hoping it would be a chance to lose weight and it turned into a growing experience, if you know what I mean. My running shows blew out about the same time that my host mother concluded that fried chicken and doughnuts were all I wanted to eat and so you can imagine the result.

My lovely Thai mother is trying so hard to find foods that I'll like, she'll give me a fish head and a doughnut and if I choose the doughnut, she concludes I must have a crazy sweet tooth. To confirm she offers me pig skin and an ice cream and when I choose the ice cream she assumes sugar must be all I ever want. Though her food is delicious, at this point I'm feeling a little like this bear and very ready to choose my own foods and PORPOTIONS.

Anything but Laos-y Pt 1

This past week was our “last hoorah” trip to Laos before everyone in the group goes their separate ways and get blown to the ends of the earth (for most of us, Provo is that place...). We drove for a day up to the northern border of Thailand and then stayed in this swanky guesthouse that looked like something out of a jungle/movie before waking up the next morning and crossing the river into Laos.

All told, it took us three days to get to our final destination of Luang Prabang, Laos, but what a three days they were! We rented out a slow boat for our group, so 2 of the 3 days were just floating down the Mekong (dodging the Nagas) and feeling like spoiled rich Colonial tourists of the 19^th century.

We all took for granted how breathtaking the sights were. Two days of boating (and playing cards and reading Life of Pi while adrift myself, and making creamer and sugars drinks) brought us more shades of green in the flora and fauna on the shore than I even knew existed. We stopped for the first night in a place whose name I never caught, but it was a village that consisted of one main drag and one hotel and one muskrat whose mouth (yes, mouth. Not teeth) had been removed and was still bloodied from it. We named him Job, cause that's a lot of suffering.

Contrary to popular belief, that's actually not a painting. That's the real Laos. It's beautiful. It was such a surprise to me because I went there sight unseen, with no prior knowledge of the place or what it offered. The Laotian people look a lot different than the Thais too, as different as Cambodians from Thais.

Also, because Laos was once a french colony, they have bread. We took much advantage. Many baguettes (I'm not going to mention that they were filled with peanut butter and banana and nutella) were had by all.

(NOTE: THE TAIWAN AIRPORT WONT LET ME UPLOAD VIDEO, BUT IT WILL COME LATER)

Don't Ostracize Me.

Let me explain. The following, was a result of many elements that all added up to create the perfect storm for me. The elements: 1)the proven fact that I'd been repeated to everyone with ears all day---ostriches can kill lions. 2) walking on to this ostrich farm and seeing the bums of the out-of-commission ostriches worm bare of feathers (no doubt from all of the fat tourists sliding around on their backs), 3) watching the little Thai men wrangle the ostriches with their more than sketchy methodology (lets not talk about the blood), AND last but not least--4) the fact that I never fall down. Even in my stumbling I have cat like reflexes and even when I first learned to ice skate, I never remember slipping. That being the case, I'm not really practiced at catching myself. With those grains of salt, watch the following (I recommend it without sound) :

Humiliations galore.

I grabbed the birds wings, but held loosely because I didn't want to crush its feathers and didn't lock my legs around the front of him because the other one was heaving and I didn't want to constrict this one's breathing so I essentially didn't even try to hold on. (Did you see what I did there? Now I'm the town martyr rather than the court jester. check.) Also, the funniest part of the whole video is the ostrich's face as it runs away. Feel free to go back for round two.

It's days later and I'm still in pain from that fall, but, in order that I can still use that old adage about getting back up the ostrich when you've fallen off (or whatever that saying is), I did re-mount.

A new item on my bucket list is to ride every ridable animal there is (yes.) Ostriches: check! Also, note to self: the chinstrap look? not flattering.