I wasn't going to do this at all, but for a while everyone on Facebook was making these lists of random facts about themselves, and the more lists I read the more I found myself thinking about what I would write about myself. It reminded me of a time when someone asked me to make faces at a video camera for a minute as part of a school project, and after about the first 10 seconds I couldn't come up with any new faces. After my time was up, however, I started coming up with all kinds of interesting faces. So here are some of the facts I've come up with:
1. I have a scar underneath my chin. Apparently I got it falling down the stairs when I was little, but I don't remember that.
2. Lady Macbeth has always been the role that I wanted most in a play. I got it my senior year in high school, and people told me afterward that I really was evil. Later, when I went to India and played the game "two truths and a lie" with my team, they all thought that this was the lie.
3. If I feel like other people are unhappy, I will be too.
4. I will read absolutely anything while I am waiting for something. I usually have a book with me, but if I don't I will read boring magazines, posters on the walls, instruction manuals, or anything else I can find, and I will read them over and over.
5. I love nicknames when people who know me well use them. Almost everyone I know has called me Anna Banana at least once, and I like that except when people that I don't know use it, and that happens a lot. Someone at the restaurant where I work calls me Anna Phalactic. There are also people who call me Anna-La, and one who calls me Cat.
6. My mom has passed her extensive love of literature on to me, and although I have not read most of the classics, I can recognize most titles and can usually name their authors.
7. I failed the drivers license test 5 times. To this day when I drive down the street that they always took me on for the test, I get nervous. But I also have a great sense of victory because I can drive and there's nothing they can do about it.
8. My list of things that I hope to do sometime in my life includes riding an overnight train, skinny dipping, hitch hiking, riding a horse, and going to a lot of interesting places.
9. One of my favorite places in the world is the beach near my grandparent's house in Nova Scotia.
10. When my family and my cousins get together to celebrate birthdays, we sing four different birthday songs.
11. I had to get my passport renewed while I was in India. This included two trips to the US Embassy and two sets of passport pictures because they couldn't see my ears well enough in the first set.
12. Because my mom was born in Canada, I have claim to Canadian citizenship. Sadly, I have never actually gotten a citizenship card.
13. My camera case is in the hands of an unknown kid living at the Baan Nana center on the Thailand/Myanmar border.
14. I ate durian fruit once. That was enough.
15. I really love cats. I have had many of my own, but the only one that stayed for longer than about 2 years was a black and white tuxedo cat called Francine.
16. If I could instantly be good at any language right now, I would choose Thai.
17. I was never a coffee drinker before last summer, when my brother decided to try to make me into one at the same time that I decided to make him a tea drinker. Now he drinks tea and I drink coffee.
18. I love skirts, scarves, and bright, dangling jewelry, and I own way more than I ever actually wear.
19. I also love getting anything in the mail, even bank statements.
20. I turned 19 in India, and was totally and completely surprised by the birthday party my friends threw for me. I remember thinking that three of us were going to get in trouble for missing curfew, and instead when we got back there was a party waiting.
21. My family can quote hundreds of movies. We sometimes have entire conversations made up of things other people have said.
22. I have never eaten a hamburger.
23. I am horribly afraid of sharks and almost anything else that lives in the water.
24. I have glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls above my bed that my roommate from last year gave me. When I lie in bed at night, I make up constellations.
25. I firmly believe that a cup of tea can solve any problem.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
...And Then I Saw Durian Ice Cream
These questions are from the lovely Cuileann
Please list three things that have made you either (according to your need to release sadness or share joy) happy or sad recently.
1. An email from a friend describing her work with kids in Cambodia.
2. A few good words with a girl at work, whom I have been working with for a while but never felt like I have really gotten to know.
3. Hearing that a good friend of mine is pregnant.
What is one thing you would tell someone about yourself to help her understand you better?
Just because I don't tell you right out how much I love you doesn't mean that I don't.
If you could magically and instantaneously have one skill/talent/ability that you don't have, what would it be?
The ability to carry on a meaningful conversation with someone that I don't know very well. Or else being able to write music. Or the natural ability to dance. I am lacking in all those areas, and I can't decide which I would pick.
Last thing (not necessarily book) that you read and loved?
A poem whose title I have forgotten. I read it last week as homework for my poetry writing class.
Where do you want to be?
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Please list three things that have made you either (according to your need to release sadness or share joy) happy or sad recently.
1. An email from a friend describing her work with kids in Cambodia.
2. A few good words with a girl at work, whom I have been working with for a while but never felt like I have really gotten to know.
3. Hearing that a good friend of mine is pregnant.
What is one thing you would tell someone about yourself to help her understand you better?
Just because I don't tell you right out how much I love you doesn't mean that I don't.
If you could magically and instantaneously have one skill/talent/ability that you don't have, what would it be?
The ability to carry on a meaningful conversation with someone that I don't know very well. Or else being able to write music. Or the natural ability to dance. I am lacking in all those areas, and I can't decide which I would pick.
Last thing (not necessarily book) that you read and loved?
A poem whose title I have forgotten. I read it last week as homework for my poetry writing class.
Where do you want to be?
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Thursday, January 22, 2009
An Explanation
Your dainty face was buried, nestled
like an egg in wool, an egg
warm and brown, you slept soft
with a still nose and whiskers.
But I was not still.
Alarmed I pounced, cat-like I caught
you as you dreamed.
Hastily, greedily I snatched
the warm depth, the soft folds
of the peaceful nest,
disturbed your quiet snores.
You see,
sweaters are not for mice.
like an egg in wool, an egg
warm and brown, you slept soft
with a still nose and whiskers.
But I was not still.
Alarmed I pounced, cat-like I caught
you as you dreamed.
Hastily, greedily I snatched
the warm depth, the soft folds
of the peaceful nest,
disturbed your quiet snores.
You see,
sweaters are not for mice.
Friday, January 9, 2009
New Year's Realizations
Tonight at youth group we talked about the last year and what God has done. I don't know how much any of the kids in the group got out of it, but as I thought about the last year I realized that God is doing exactly what I asked him to do.
During the last semester I spent a lot of time wondering why nothing was happening in my life, and when I sat down to think about the last year I was completely overwhelmed when I realized that everything has been happening. God has been teaching me, almost exactly since January of last year, how to love people. Not the people far away whose pictures make my heart actually hurt, but usual, every day people. The ones that are hard to love. The ones that I don't know how to love. The ones that I have to love if I am to really love orphans, widows, prostitutes, and the desperately poor and sick.
What about friends who are hard to spend time with? What about kids in the youth group who annoy me to no end? What about my own family? What about the people in my church who have huge, glaringly obvious (to me) blindspots? What about the people who have hurt me the most?
Those are the very people that I have always told God I wanted to love, and this year he has given me exactly what I asked for by teaching me what love looks like. It's inconvenient, and stressful, and messy, and painful, and most of all humbling.
But the point is that this is what I asked for.
How can God be so good?
During the last semester I spent a lot of time wondering why nothing was happening in my life, and when I sat down to think about the last year I was completely overwhelmed when I realized that everything has been happening. God has been teaching me, almost exactly since January of last year, how to love people. Not the people far away whose pictures make my heart actually hurt, but usual, every day people. The ones that are hard to love. The ones that I don't know how to love. The ones that I have to love if I am to really love orphans, widows, prostitutes, and the desperately poor and sick.
What about friends who are hard to spend time with? What about kids in the youth group who annoy me to no end? What about my own family? What about the people in my church who have huge, glaringly obvious (to me) blindspots? What about the people who have hurt me the most?
Those are the very people that I have always told God I wanted to love, and this year he has given me exactly what I asked for by teaching me what love looks like. It's inconvenient, and stressful, and messy, and painful, and most of all humbling.
But the point is that this is what I asked for.
How can God be so good?
Friday, January 2, 2009
Something Lovely
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stoppig on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions
back from a series of hopsitalks back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you
with animals daying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
-W.S. Merwin
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stoppig on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions
back from a series of hopsitalks back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you
with animals daying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
-W.S. Merwin
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Why, oh why
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I've heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow
The bluebirds fly so high
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then oh why can't I
Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.
Somewhere over the rainbow
The Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then oh why can't I
Why then oh why can't I
(Harold Arlen and EY Harburg)
Way up high,
There's a land that I've heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow
The bluebirds fly so high
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then oh why can't I
Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.
Somewhere over the rainbow
The Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then oh why can't I
Why then oh why can't I
(Harold Arlen and EY Harburg)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
