Dreams Count

Dreams count for quite a lot, although keeping faith in my dreams isn't always easy. Still, as Mark Mathabane said to his grade-school headmaster, "I will go somewhere, sir. I just have a feeling I will. I don't know why I have that feeling. Maybe I'm just dreaming. But I've had so many dreams come true in my life, that I now look toward dreams for the meaning of my life."

So before I sign off for the next two months to live another piece of my dream, here's theme song I've adopted as I've made choices between the familiar same and the crazy dream:

**close your eyes when listening. the song is better than the video.

And when the theme song wasn't enough, this TED talk helped me too:

So here it goes--the China-mohawk dream. And if my dreams can come true, so can yours.

Valentines with Style

This is niche humor, but oh so great.

And here's something a little more mainstream, for good measure:

Identity Crisis

My roommate is taking a multicultural psychology course in her graduate program, and she told me the section in her textbook on dealing with Asian Americans reminded her a lot of dealing with me. I hope "dealing" was in the non-pejorative sense. If so, I'm highly amused.

I swiped her textbook tonight to find out what she meant. There was a part about selective directness, something about allowing for pauses in conversation, and a bit about the client's need to establish trust and context before easing into difficult (especially emotional) topics. I might concede those points. Maybe that means I'm more ready for my China trip than I thought.

Sometimes I really hate dance.

I mean, sometimes my inner Amazon warrior (cough, feminist) rebels at the choreography. Some of it just seems so...ugh. Demeaning, objectifying, sexist.

Over the holidays, I saw the performance of a couple called "The Duo Amaury" who were somewhere between ballet dancers and acrobats. The first number they danced put him in a position of significant power and made her into his puppet. My inner Amazon started threatening. The next number was better, and the next one after that was better still. The choreography told a powerful story from song to song. I loved it. In the beginning, he sought her out, and she followed, an unwilling marionette. As they danced together, they grew in harmony, and united, they took flight.

Sometimes and really hate dance, and then, sometimes I love it.

The most beautiful film I think I've seen to date

It's a triple story, influenced by both Buddhism and Mayan lore--three parallel versions of the same very human experience. 

One--the lived-in narrative. 

Two--the fictional retelling of one.

Three--the metaphysical redrawing of one and two. 

It's the story of losing of a loved one, losing of oneself, and learning what matters most. It's also the story of a quest. It tells of the sometimes prerequisite descent into hellish darkness before ascent to glory becomes possible and how the way to glory (or "the road to awe") requires that we learn to let go of our own way and accept a higher road. We must sometimes relinquish the things we cling to, things that we imagine hold life-giving properties, in order to accept the ultimate source of life and glory. In the end, the things that matter to us most will all be ours; we will have changed to make room for them. Although our own hand-sketched blue print may be altered or discarded along the way, and sometimes several times along the way, it is this release that yields an internal change of state and finally allows us to accommodate an even better state--"awe." 

Economics Class is Still Fun

On Google Translate:

"And with Google Translate, it's amazing what you can get off government websites. Google Translate does an 85 percent good job. The other 15 percent it's fun to guess on your own."

On Occupy Wall Street: 

"They hold up Occupy Wall Street as the liberal alternative to the Tea Party, but the thing is the Tea Party at least had a charter they coalesced around. Occupy Wall Street doesn't even have a charter."

(Student: well, actually they have a charter now…no government debt, forgive all student debts, trillion dollar increase in this and that, free secondary education for everybody...and somehow no debt?)

"They've made progress. I didn't know they'd coalesced around something. (pause.) If you want to coalesce around fairyland, I guess that's fine."

On Medicare and the debt crisis: 

"Lots of fun stuff to talk about today. The subject is 'what destroyed the United States of America.' "

Students: (laughter, already?, it's finished?)

(Laughter) "I don't know exactly what tense it's in."

On Halloween:

"We instituted what we called the daddy tax. It had multiple functions, but one of them was to teach the functions of government. If you get a service like being driven around the neighborhood, you have to pay for that. The tax came in a variety of forms; it was particularly high in chocolate." 

It's an umbrella day.

Oh, life. Some days just take it out of me. Knock me off my feet, scare me blind. Then friends caught me when I fell, steadied my umbrella-holding hand, and ameliorated the storm for me and for everyone I try to keep under my umbrella. Except I'm learning how very much that umbrella isn't mine at all, but God's. I am the steward. Under His eye I learn to turn the umbrella just so to hold out the worst of the storm. Deep inside, where my breath is rapid and my heart beats fast and the interior liquid motion is found, exists a well of gratitude, deep and still, for those surprisingly steady influencers who stand by to lift and watch and hold me and my umbrella.


Grateful, too, for the gentle voice of the Holy Ghost in reassuring me. Grateful for the healing and peace that is restored thereby. I remember something I read once, a lesson taught President Henry B. Eyring by his father, who was dying of cancer. Of his father, he wrote, 

One night when I was not with him and the pain seemed more than he could bear, he somehow got out of bed and on his knees beside it--I know not how. He pled with God to know why he was suffering so. And the next morning he said, with quiet firmness, "I know why now. God needs brave sons."

I know too, God needs brave sons and strong daughters and strong sons and brave daughters. He needs children who will hold out an umbrella and who will be willing to get caught in the storm by doing so. And if that's the errand He needs run, I'll run it. I'm just unspeakably relieved that I don't run it alone.