The Immeasurable Percent.

So, I have discovered something as of late, something I have always knew but never quite theorized. It's that confidence the most immeasurable thing. I'm sure scientifically speaking, it's not and they have probably found ways to measure it. From one human being to the other you can't just tell. You can't look at someone and say they have a lot of confidence or not. You may think you can, especially if you're the kind that looks at body language, but I am of the opinion that it can't be measured.

And why? It's because of this. The human race, as a whole, has many things in common. One of them being that when it's comes to pretending everything is all right we are pretty much the shit. I mean, some people, they wear their true feelings on their face and all, but I think in their minds they are still pretending. Our deepest pretend is that we are all confident.

I do it all the time, the pretending, I can walk into a room at a party and boldly announce my entry but the truth is I'm so scared of everyone noticing how not confident I am.. Or maybe not. I don't know. I can't tell you at any given moment how confident I am. But it's so hard to tell. And I never even think of confidence as a relative thing in my mind. I don't think , 'I am this confident right now' and 'I am not confident at the moment.' Instead I just do and I exist and I seem. Sometimes I seem confident and sometimes I don't. And even being myself, I am myself and therefore I should know. I should know this part of me, an essential part of makeup that is so important and shapes how interact with the people and things of the world, I should know. But I don't, I just don't fucking know. And I don't think any of us do.

I make assumptions a lot, especially those about human beings. I am probably wrong in every way. I mean, I have met a lot of human beings in my life and I have the uncanny ability to observe them without even meaning too. But the comparative number of humans I have met to that of the world is very small. I shouldn't make plural assumptions, but I do. I like to pretend we're all connected. I think we all have no fucking clue about confidence and how it effects our every reaction of everyday and how it shapes us. The confidence of one man or woman could shape the world differently. And it is the thing we know about least, an essential percent of us that I think can never be measured.

Fin.

-Keshia

#58/100 Books in 2012: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Spectrum of Us

Okay, so I've quoted him in here before but I'm going to do it again. Joss Wheddon is a genius and one of favorite Buffy quotes ever is in the musical episode where Dawn states the hardest to do in the world is live in it. Which is true, but what makes it so hard to live in it is the misunderstandings between people.
Humans really are these unique minded things, and the reason for most of our conflicts is from not understanding each other. I think it's too hard and we often forget the trouble that everyone deals with everyday. We are too wrapped in our own incomprehension of others and their own incomprehension of us. We're all very selfish, who like to reign the anthem of 'No one understands me' all the time. Or at least I do. I'm the most selfish person I know.

And somehow, I came up with this idea about humans. It's probably something you've heard before. I think human beings live all across this broad spectrum, it's dark at one end and light at the other. None of us is in the dark and none of us is in the light, instead we all wander around somewhere in the grey. And I think along the wondering among the spectrum we sometimes bump into or cross paths with other people. And sometimes because of these bumps the people within the spectrum like to stay close to you. These people become your friends and family, the ones who stay around you, the ones who are in the same general shade of grey as you are. If anyone, in my mind, ever existed in the exact same spot as you on the spectrum then they would understand you. Their mind would be in the exact same context as you. But I've never seen an example of that before. Instead I think they can understand parts of you and float around you, sometimes even aligning with you but never being in the exact same spot. And as of late I've come to realize how little I understand about my world around me and the friends I have in it. Before, when I imagined myself in this spectrum I imagined myself surround by my friends, aligned with a few but not all, and all of them just wandering in a general location near me. And now, when I think of it, I see no one in my general area. My friends are still there but when I think of them, they are miles away, too far away for either of us to reach each other. Too little understanding of each other. That's about it, the more I understand myself the more I understand that no one will understand me. And that's it, I just felt like raising an old flag.


And also, I am still happy. I realized how depressing that sounded, but it's not. And my friends, I love them. I may not understand them and they may not understand me but I love them either way.

Fin.

-Keshia

#55/100 Books in 2012: Specials by Scott Westerfeld

Jane Austen and other things...

So, it's been a while. It's June already. The June in which it's, you know, already halfway through the year that we call 2012. Mind blown, I'm telling you.

But yeah, I have some thoughts that I would like to share. And as always, the old report, yeah, I need to blog more. Essentially I have this schedule worked out in my head right now where I'll  blog every Sunday. I've started this new thing on YouTube where I'm adding old clips from my computer up every Sunday, which I call LifeVlogs. If I always blog while the videos are uploading, than therefore I blog once a week, which, as it always seems, my ultimate goal. So yeah, we're gonna try this out.

This one is going to be more of a rant than anything. Really.
First, I would like to talk about Jane Austen and how much I admire her. First off, she's a writer, a writer whose books I first read in seventh grade and now have read all of collection. And I adore them all (although I won't deny that I hold Pride and Prejudice above all others.) I admire any person who is a writer and who writes novels that me me feel something--like any good book should do. Second off, I find it beautiful that Jane Austen let all of her characters have a happy ending because she never got to her happy ending (you'll understand why if you read up on her or watch Becoming Jane, she was a great woman). And third off, I admire the fact that Jane was never married and she lived out her dreams 'by her pen' when she was born into a society where women were typically expected to do nothing more than find a rich, good husband and bare children. Jane did none of this, she broke society and lived off her own written word. She was strong for that and I yearn so much to be liker her.
Now, ranting time. I was told recently by an adult who thinks they know everything of the world that I'm taking on too much in my life with dreams. Okay, so I want to write, be an ESL teacher in foreign countries, act, and maybe chase a storm or two. Yeah, if I want to do that (and I will) then I am going too. Yeah, said person also told me that I remind her of her daughter who had all these dreams until she met the right guy, got married and settled down and had a family.
REALLY?!? Like, WTF, really? I though society had matured a lot since Jane Austen's time and that a woman could do a lot more in life than just settle down with a good husband and have kids? It really upset me so much that I wanted to slap her, yeah, I really did. I'm not usually a person who has physically violent habits, mostly just those of a mouth. In all honesty I'd rather call someone an ill-mannered tub of guts then slap them. But no, I felt the urge to inflict pain upon another person.

First off, I would just like to state that nothing will ever make me give up on my dreams. No man, no force, or no 2012 apocalypse will force me to give up on them. It's my life and it's what I want to do with it and I don't intend on wasting my life by following what others say. And I just don't understand how anyone would want to waste something as the precious one life that they have. God, follow your dreams, don't be a tub of lard. And really, I'd rather not have someone telling me to be a tub of lard when I know of a world so much more beautiful.

Second off, I have told this person time and time again, that I don't want to have a family. I have no urge to have children, I have no maternal feelings and I certainly know that I won't be a good mother. And I can hardly imagine myself married to someone. It's seems to me that I've always imagined my life single (and even now where I've been a serious relationship for nearly nine months) I still imagine myself as single through my life. It's not that I don't love people, it's just it seems like I'll be held back by anything and everything. As said before, no force will stop me from reaching my dreams. So the idea of 'settling down and having kids' is not appealing at all.

And lastly, I can barely even feel bad for her. She doesn't understand me. She got pregnant right out of high school, got married, and has had a husband who has always taken care of her. Her only thoughts have never been farther than that of what's playing on TV or of what her two daughters are doing. And I don't understand her either, like, I can't just can't wrap my mind around why someone would want to do nothing in their life other than be a wife and mother. But I respect her, it's what she chose and I'm not going to tell her to change her life. But I wish she respected me enough not to tell me to change mine.

And yeah, that's it, rant over. I'm going to live like Jane Austen, and live by my pen and dreams, because really, that's all I want to do with my life, is reach my dreams.

And on another subject. I'm seriously considering publishing an e-book. It's just a thought but I want to make it happen.

-Fin
Keshia

#36/100 Books in 2012: Write Good or Die

(I feel as though 100 will never be reached)

A Letter to God.

Dear God,

I'm Keshia, you've probably forgotten about me by now. So let me tell you about me, the current me. I regularly curse (a lot) and I've had pre-marital sex. I have a lot of mean and cruel thoughts, although I usually try to avoid saying them. I don't pray, go to church, or have the ultimate faith in you that I used to. You see, God, I've taken to reading my old journals lately and I used to not be able to go two paragraphs without mentioning you. I loved you so damn much.
I still believe in you, I do. I know this world cannot exist with so much beauty without something out there being bigger than us. You have to exist. But there's also a lot of wrath and hate in this world. Something I think you should understand, and something that a lot of  peopl need to understand is that you, God, created both the bad and the good. Even if Satan was somehow the creator of all this evil in the world it still wouldn't matter, you made him. You need to own up and be responsible. You made us imperfect creatures so as long as we apologize and try to be a good person I think we should be forgiven. I don't think we should have to do all this extra stuff and listen to all that bull shit that the bible feeds us. The bull shit that makes us close minded people. Instead I think you should cherish the life you gave us and truly live it.

To be honest, I know you didn't do this on purpose. I'm sure you're more disappointed in yourself for creating this world than you are disappointed in us for destroying it. But the thing is, I think you still love us even if we don't do what falls in your good opinion. I still have that much faith in you. Because you see God, I want to curse and I want to have sex. I want to be lazy and not make the effort to go to church because I'd rather not hear someone's opinion on what you think. No one knows what you're thinking. And I don't want to get down on my knees and pray. I expect you hear everything that you created, every tear drop on a little's girl face and every laugh from two people who are in love. If you're our father, then you should seek us out, we shouldn't have to seek you out? And above all, I do not want to believe in the bible. Almost everything in there is shit, honestly. I mean, how can you call something a divine word when it implores that some of us are wrong and sinful simply for being ourselves and existing? It's too frustrating, I don't like the bible much.

And really, I wish that so many people would see that. I wish they would come to the understanding that they don't know you or what you want--no one does. I wish people could understand that we all  exist in this world with each other and that we should just try our best to be good people and not try to judge others for their faults. It has never been our place to judge, it's yours. And God, there's only one thing I don't like about my faith today, I don't know if I'm going to heaven. Before, I was sure I was going to heaven but I hated the person I was. Now, I don't know, and I like the person I am, I am myself. And I'll never know God, because while my life is my own and I make it what I want, everything truly is in your hands.

Sincerrly,
Keshia

Fin
-Keshia

#12/100 Books in  2012: The Secret Garden

I just could not get through War of the Worlds, I conked out around five chapters. I'll try again someday.

The Fault in Our Stars

"Sometimes, you read a book and it feels you with a weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read that book"

Oddly, enough its the book itself that puts into words just how I feel about the book. The Fault in Our Stars is such a rarity to me, one of those books that speak to me. Everyday, hundreds of books are published and the amount of books that exist in this world is well past the billions. But somehow, every now and then, you'll come across these deep jewels that you want to treasure forever, it's like finding a needle in the haystack. There are so many good books out there but there are rare few that really get you, that really entrance you in a way that no other can. This book is one of those rare few. 

The Fault in Our Stars is told from the point of view of  Hazel, a sixteen you girl who has lung cancer and her story of how she falls in love with a boy named Augustus, who also has cancer. They also both, have a friend, Isaac, who has cancer as well. With so many people with cancer there's bound to be one who dies, and there is. I sincerely thought it was going to be Hazel, but about halfway through the book, when she really started to fall in love then I just knew it was going to be Augustus who died. And that's it, I completely and totally expected it, and yet, I still cried like a baby when it happened.

First off, I adore how Hazel and Augustus's love is. I love any story about young love that isn't vapid, half-seen, or considered puppy love. Too many adults in this world see young love as 'puppy love' and therefore make it hard to see that there can be a wholesome and truly pure love among the young. I think age is no defining factor in whether love is true or not. And the way John Green presents the two, how much they understand each other and how the faults are healed by each other, it gives me all the hope in the world to believe that love is out there and it is true. It really exists. 

Also, in this book both Augustus and Hazel seek out a writer who wrote their favorite book about a girl with cancer who died, mid-sentence, at the end of the book. They even go as far as traveling to Europe to meet him. But it turns out he is a lazy bum of a drunk, and they learn later that he was that way because his daughter had cancer and died. He wrote the book for her and when they came and pestered him about questions it reared up in him too much pain and he was quite the douche bag. The brilliant thing about the writer in this book, he says that pain demands to be felt, and I think he's somehow wallowing in all the pain and forgetting that even though pain will be felt, happiness that can be felt will outweigh all that pain. And honestly, the most emotional moment for me in the entire book is when the writer shows up to Augustus's funeral. He came to explain his behavior, sort of, and explain his thoughts on the book and why he wrote it, though, not the answers Hazel truly wants.

The best thing about John Green, in all his works, is that his thoughts on the world are so unique and beautiful. It's just, he sees things in such a clear way. Let's face it, most writers now a days have the typical thoughts of pain. God, I'm even one of those writers, and I'm waiting for the day when my brain will somehow think outside of the box. And John, he always does. If you haven't read this book, I suggest you do. It's just, simply one of the best books I've read in my life.

And also, it helped me, with the blog I posted the other day, about just writing. Honestly, I think it's the thing that knocked me over. I had been thinking about it forever but when I finished the book I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to write, I want to create literary masterpieces like this. Which is odd, considering the book isn't much about following your dreams. It's about existing, living, death, human interactions, and just life. Life is so lovely sometimes, and painful, but still great. It's a great expanse that we all have to go through and no matter we will always be connected in that one way. John Green captures that.

-Fin

Keshia

#12/100 Books in 2012: War of Worlds by H.G. Wells

I decided to just write.

 

If you type writing into Google the first suggestion is the Wikipedia page which tells you that writing is ' the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of set signs or symbols.' In other words, some jumbled definition set by the world. Writing is passion. Writing is taking everything you see and do and trying  to fit it into to words to make sense of this crazy world we live in. Writing is the one thing I'm sure I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

For the past two years of my life if you asked what I plan on doing with my college career then I would tell you, 'Double major in Education/English with a focus on Creative Writing, oh and a minor in Theater' and I usually I follow up with but really I would just love to write. And, I mean, after a few years of doing this I have to ask myself, now why do I plan on teaching when in reality I just want to write? Well here's the deal, there's no promise for a career in writing. So if I taught English then I could try to write books while doing it. There's also this, teaching seems like it would be fun, and it'd give me a way to touch someone's life. But really, I'd rather touch someone while uprooting some emotion and make them think about the world through writing. I'd rather do that than just teach them things. I'd like teaching, but I'd never truly be passionate about it.

Basically, it's come down to this. I just want to write, read, and perform for the rest of my life. So I'm not going to teach anymore. I'm going to just do what I'm passionate about even if that means working hourly paid jobs, living in a shitty apartment, and eating ramen for the rest of my life. I'm going to do it so I can write. 

So, Keshia, what are going to do in college?

'English Creative Writing Major with Minor in Theatre'

And that's it, I'm resolute, because I'm happy now. I feel so liberated, it's a brilliant thing, to know that you're going to live the rest of your life doing something you love.

Fin

-Keshia 

#10/100 Books in 2012: The Borrowers

Montevallo Memories

This past weekend (well, no, the weekend before that) I went with a group of friends to Montevallo, my future college. We got to participate in College Night and see the incredible tradition and beauty of the school, in short, it was an amazing experience.

I remember first hearing about Montevallo from Eric Browne my sophomore year. He told us about he and his friend doing the 'Poof' symbol at the Montevallo sign and after that I was bombarded the next three years with stories from him. His Alma Mater meant everything. I never considered it even a possibility for my college (even though it made the most perfect sense, it's a liberal arts college and my planned major is English/Creative Writing) until last year amid all the Mike/Mom drama. Ironically enough it was the college that offered me the second largest scholarship. Oh, how I wish I could go back to the night in my room where I looked at all my scholarships and turned them down. Sometimes I think if I would've just changed that one moment then things would've been fine. But let's no go into my regrets. Basically, somehow Montevallo became my premiere choice for a college when I came back to Alabama. To be honest I chose it because of my friends, and I'm sure that's a stupid reason to most people but I want to surround myself by people who I'm sure at least half like me and whom I all love. I see nothing wrong with it. And besides, I somehow realized that the only reason I ever wanted to go to Troy was for that label of  "The Sound of the South" marching band and the grandiose idea I had about it. Okay, let's not lie, Troy Marching Band is grand but when it's longed up with a line of comparable reasons, it's not grand enough, at least not for me.

But back to Montevallo, College Night is 97 year old tradition with the entire school split in half of purple and golds and compete with each other in a friendly yet extremely competitive attitude. I , of course, plan on being a purple, I'm sure, along with the small army that Eric Browne has encouraged to go there. (And also if we weren't purples then he would like be-head us or something). The part that we got to watch was the big part, the musicals written, composed, and performed by students. It was incredible and thrilling, definitely nothing I've seen before. And it's just that whole weekend, the whole sense of unity and family I felt there (with purple and gold) was overwhelming. I knew Montevallo was the only place for me. This would be home for at least the next four years of my life (now if I could have seen that in Nov. 2010, dammit!).

Not to mention that the weekend was amply provided with great friends, silly dancing, and lots of picture takings (all of which I recorded in the above video). There was also the usual teenage drama and confrontation couple with an awesome college party where I danced the night away. Oh, how you know I'm a fan of dancing the night away. PV parties overcome teenage immaturity any day.

Fin
-Keshia

#10/100 Books in 2012: The Borrowers