Today. Bizarre.

Today, I found myself in a thousand year old building with a giant statue of Jesus on the cross hanging from the ceiling. Wherever I was (I have no clue where), I was somehow sure that nobody I'd ever met had ever been within twenty miles of this place. To get there, my dad and I (this was one of those pity parent outings) had to drive along these narrow winding streets that I couldn't quite figure out. Then I listened to some medieval Jesus-praising hymns that I guess were the hippest thing around the time of the Protestant Reformation. And I was wondering, how the hell did I get here? And then I thought of everybody I know hanging out in the snow or drinking hot chocolate or whatever it is people do and thought about how far away I was. Upon imagining the big orange headphones I had brought along on Jesus' neck instead, I realized that I was a little out of place. Not to mention the youngest person there remembered when the hula hoop was invented.
This is not the first time I've been in situations like this. It's bizarre. And then somehow the narrow winding roads led us back onto the highway and we were passing the airport and billboards and I felt in the presence of normality again. This is the kind of thing that people usually can't relate to. You hear all the time, "Omg, I sometimes think I'm falling when I'm in bed, too!" But nobody understands any of the weird situations I get into sometimes. Maybe they do, but no one ever says so. Anyway, I'm just going to blog abut it because when I tell people it seems less bizarre.

Technology and Being Alone

People act like everyone else when they're with everyone else. No one does it on purpose. I guess it's just human nature. When people are alone with only their thoughts, that's the only time they are truly themselves. My problem with technology is that we are never truly by ourselves. Every time we receive a text we glide right back into school mode: be who you are when you're at school. We are constantly on facebook looking at what other people are doing and wondering what they'll think about what we're doing. We're always communicating: writing on each others' walls and such. We're only alone in the shower and in bed. I know someone who even texts in the shower. What is that!
If I'm on a vacation and my family ends up eating in a dirty restaurant in some slum we didn't know about with holes in the wall(or something like that), all I can think is that nobody in school would ever be in this situation. I'm usually not a person who cares, but for some reason, it's always on my mind. And because I have a cellphone in my pocket, home is never far away. And if I don't have my cellphone, someone I'm with does. And if they don't, there are phones all around us anyway. Maybe that's why people are so stressed. We never get a real vacation. We can go someplace different, but we carry everybody from home with us.
I feel like people spend less time being individuals when they have less time alone. It's like we're always being watched. Even if we are alone, we always have it in the back of our minds that someone could be judging us anyway. On our facebook profile. With facebook, we have the ability to find out a person's interests, their friends, what they do on the weekends, down to how they're feeling today. It gives us a lot to compare ourselves to. Whether we decide we are better or worse or cooler or less cool or prettier or uglier, we are comparing ourselves to others on characteristics that don't matter. I think being alone is just as important as not being alone. We grow in different ways. When we're never really alone, we're really missing something.

i felt like writing a little screenplay. so i did.

Dad, Dan, and Pete are in a car. Pete is directly behind Dad in the driver’s seat. Dan is next to Pete looking out the window with his headphones on.

Dad: You know, Dan, there’s a rowing competition in one of the lakes around where we’re going to be.

Dan doesn’t answer.

Dad: Hey, Dan. Dan, there’s a-
Pete: He has his headphones on, Dad.

Dad looks over his shoulder at Dan.

Dad: Hey. Dan.
Dan: What.
Dad: Hey, there’s a rowing competition in one of the lakes around where we’re going to be.
Dan: When?

Dad faces forward again.

Dad: Oh, in the fall, it’s not going to be going on while we’re there. I just thought you might think it’s interesting.

Dan stares for a few seconds, unimpressed, and puts his headphones back on.

Dad: I mean if you’re interested maybe we can come back-
Pete: His headphones are on again, Dad.
Dad: Oh.

Dad looks around for a few moments, thinking of what to do next. Then he stares back at Dan who gets the point and takes off his headphones.

Dad: Why don’t you leave those off for a while? Who needs an iPod when we’ve got three guys with vocal chords? What can we talk about? How’s school going?
Pete: Good.
Dad: Dan?
Dan: Good.
Dad: Could you be more specific?
Pete: We watched a documentary on China and isolationism.
Dad: Oh, yeah? That sounds interesting. How ‘bout you, Dan?
Dan: Same shit as always.
Dad: Alright, alright. You don’t want to talk. That’s fine. I just thought it would be nice to catch up a little. You boys are so busy lately. I’m pretty busy myself. It’s just nice to have some time-
Dan: Still talking?

Dad looks down, defeated. He blinks once for a long time. Dan puts his headphones back on.

Dad: Hey, look at those cows. You guys remember those cows at that farm we went to when you were little? Remember you got to milk them and everything? Wasn’t that fun?
Dan: Yeah, it’s hard to forget when you bring it up every time we get a new carton of milk.
Dad: Oh, so you can hear over that music?

Dan doesn’t answer. There is a long pause.

Pete: Those cows were real cool, Dad.
Dad (sighs): Thanks, Pete.

Let The Right One In

I'm usually not heavily effected by movies afterward. After Kontroll, I didn't think about it much. I haven't had much time to think about this movie either. Right after it was over, though, the room looked different to me. That doesn't happen. I don't know if it was because I never looked away or because I was so wonderfully disturbed, but it was a really odd feeling.
I definitely liked the way the camera barely moved. It made it seem like I was right there watching because people don't move like cameras. If we're watching something, we stay still. The distance of the camera was always close up enough that you don't see anything happen or far away enough that you don't see anything happen. One of the scenes that stuck with me was when Oskar arrived at his father's house and greeted him outside in the snow. It was so far that you could barely see them, but it was probably the one image that I see when I think of the movie.
Oskar's character was fascinating enough just by the look of the actor who played him. He looked like a little baby. He couldn't have seen more innocent. He slept in just his underwear. He WAS a baby. But then he carried around this knife, but you know that it's not his fault. He also would do little things like hum and the way he walked was strange. I loved the character who was one of the bullies but cried when he was beating Oskar. Oskar just stood there and closed his eyes and the one doing the beating cried. And I felt sorry for both of them. Another great little thing was the second time Oskar was talking to Eli and he told her to go home and then he smiled a little.
When we talked about Kontroll there was a part when the guys were talking and they sounded like they were in a small room. In this movie, every bit of dialogue sounded like they were in a small room, even if they were outside and half a mile away from the camera. It worked, though. There were a few times when all you could hear was breathing. Also, the gory things were all heard, but not seen. You just know what's happening.
Hakan was a really interesting guy. He would kill people and drain their blood and feed it to Eli to keep her alive. He must have really loved her. When he gets caught, he pours acid on his face so that he can't be identified. Even though he knew that Eli and Oskar had something going on, he still tried to help her. It was like he was so afraid to lose her that he would put himself through so much danger for her so that she couldn't leave him.
The way I saw the rubix cube was that both Eli and Oskar had the power to solve it, but only Eli knew how to use it, and she would try to teach Oskar to use his power, too. This is like how they both had the ability to kill, but Eli knew how and when to use it, and she taught Oskar.
I thought plotpoint 1 was when Hakan died because then Eli and Oskar were both alone and they both needed each other. And I thought plotpoint 2 was when Oskar told Eli she could come in because he was accepting her vampireness.
I can't figure out if it was a happy ending or not. I think it is because I felt happy at the end. I felt happy because he was unhappy where he was and he was without her, and now he was going somewhere else and he was with her.

Last Workshop

Today we interviewed Cathryn, and I asked her if she always knew what she wanted to do when she grew up, and right away she said yes. I know that everybody always says you don't have to know what you want to do yet, but I'm pretty sure life's a whole lot easier if you do. Whenever I see one of those people who have known exactly what they want to do since they were like four years old, I get so jealous. I like to do a lot of things. I like playing the violin and writing and I'm learning that I really enjoy visual arts, too. I also really like other things like history and the idea of being a teacher. I'm kind of interested in everything, and I'm cool with that. It doesn't bother me at all; I think it's a good thing to like a lot of things. The thing is, I can't afford to spend ten years in college trying everything out. Whether I do it now or later, I'm going to have to pick something and do it every day, and unless I can decide what I love to do the most, on those days when I don't enjoy what I'm doing, I'll get that awful feeling that I chose the wrong thing. And even though I like all these things, I also like stability. I don't want to have to change my lifestyle all the time just to fit everything in. I know this seems like something somebody choosing their major would write about, but I'm just a little bit of a worrier. I do all my worrying early. Despite that, though, I do very little planning ahead. I'm bound to change my mind, so I don't see the point. I pretty much do whatever seems good to me when I absolutely must make a decision. I guess that's my plan.