Plan Number Six

Right before school let out in early May, Michael and I wandered over to Borders for a break from campus for a few hours. I had my beautiful pocket sized Moleskine notebook with me to write down the names and authors of anything interesting with the intent of placing holds on all the books on the list with my local library system at home. While slowly making my way up and down the aisles, focusing particularly on the new releases, best-sellers, and employee recommendations, I came across The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? by Leslie Bennetts. After reading the description on the jacket, I was intrigued. It went on my list.

It's a popular book, apparently. In retrospect, I must have found it with the best-sellers or new releases, or else it wouldn't have taken so long for me to get a copy. My hold finally came through last week, and it's been staring at me on top of the stack of books next to my night stand ever since. After having difficulties falling asleep tonight, I decided to give up on dreams and broaden my horizons with a good read rather than continue to let my mind wander aimlessly. Surely a popular book apparently bemoaning the choices of modern women would be more interesting than endless speculation about how to help Sammy fix her awful hair?

I was right. I'm only twenty-one pages in, and I'm already a fan. It's odd, how life works; I was just talking to my parents about this issue while on the way to the airport to pick up the Dramatic Duo. As we were driving along, my mom mentioned that two more of our family friends are getting married during summer vacation from college, which brings the total up to four now. I couldn't believe that so many intelligent young women were putting their future education and careers on the line just so they could spend a bit more time every day with their beaux and finally be able to have sex. (You must understand that every couple here is Mormon, and therefore none believe in premarital sex.) My mom brought up not being able to hold back much longer as a reason to get married, which is ridiculous; if they are struggling so much with the law of chastity, they shouldn't be getting married in a temple anyway. It is strictly verboten to lust after what you can't have.

With the sex issue out of the way, the only positives left are spending more time together and feeling secure in the relationship. While I understand completely about wanting some security, I have no doubts whatsoever that the negatives far outweigh the positives to getting married before graduating from college. (These negatives are all doubly potent for the two couples I know who are getting married after their freshman year, the year they met. Insanity!) First and foremost is the temptation to just stop going to school. Why would a girl need a degree, anyway? Her husband is going to provide for her. All she needs to do is take care of the children. If she graduated and got a job, all she'd be earning would go toward childcare. So what's the point? It's just a waste of money, which is something newlyweds don't have much of. If she just drops out, she can focus on homemaking, and, hopefully soon after the marriage, raising a family.

( THAT IS SUCH A BAD IDEA. )

Please understand that I don't see anything wrong with a woman choosing to be a mother and a housewife, as long as she has a back-up plan. However, the only way I can see myself being prepared for life blowing up in my face, as it is wont to do, is to have a career of my own. So please, do me a favor: Slap me if you ever catch me thinking about quitting school or ending my career in order to be a mother/housewife while my husband wins the bread. I don't want to make the mistake my mother made.

I am feeling a pleasant mix of fatigue and accomplishment right now. In the back of my mind, however, is extreme aggravation.

Writing papers isn't very difficult for me. I don't have a problem with sitting down in front of a computer in the lab and working all through the night and right past dawn, for hours and hours if that's what it takes to get it done. Once I've started, I have a burst of energy that takes me through what would otherwise be the worst stage of the paper-writing process. The idea that I have to finish by nine keeps me working hard, and the prospect of more sleep if I finish earlier keeps me working fast. It's the perfect system! Except for one thing: starting.

The hardest thing for me to do is start a project. What I never quite realized about myself before was that I'm not a procrastinator solely because of laziness, but also because of my fear of starting. I want to delay the agony of doing the project for as long as possible. I just know it's going to be horrific. Now, that's funny, considering I've enjoyed writing every single paper I've written this year so far.

If I could just get it into my thick head that paper-writing is actually fun once I've finally sat down to do it, my life would be much easier.

School makes me nicer.

I don't know what it is, but it's true: I am a nicer person at school than I am at home. The longer I am away from Oregon, the more easily provoked I am by the stupidity of people and things around me. I realized this today when I started bashing on the newspaper with my dad, then followed that up with some rants about ridiculous commercials. I haven't ranted this much in a day since back in September.

I doubt this is a good thing. I should be able to be nice—well, as nice as possible—all year round. What is it about school that does this? Am I exposed to more stupidity at home, what with watching TV more often and reading the local newspaper? Am I not spending enough time with my friends here, causing me to ache for solid social interaction? Am I just in a better mood in general at school?

This is something I will have to ponder.

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life—well, valuable, but small—and sometimes I wonder: Do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer, I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So—goodnight, dear void."

This is a lovely quote from one of my favorite movies, You've Got Mail. I have a fairly firm opinion about part of this, and for some reason I felt like pausing the movie and writing sharing that opinion with all of you.

I am actually not all that fond of the end of this email. The part I like the most, the question about reading and seeing and connecting—that's the part I plan to address.

A book is a hard copy of someone's idea for the way a person could look at life. A book is an author's way of expressing his opinions on life, death, society, nature, and civilization. Each book contributed to our vast library is meant to share thoughts, feelings, values, and ideas about everything under the sun and beyond, and no one person could even hope to self-produce all the thoughts that have ever been preserved in books.

A book is both a teacher and a comrade. If you cannot see the ideas presented to you by literature appearing, contributing, connecting all around you, every day, you are leading a life limited by the fact that one cannot expand his mind without outside help. What better way to fix that than to turn to over a billion teachers? The written word often survives its author, and its author generally thinks on it more than he does it's spoken friend. Is it not obvious that this form of infomation is valuable? That it is, in fact, the most valuable?

The idea that a person relating life to books is a horrible thing is simply outrageous. It defies logic, in all honesty. Without books, where would we be? What could we possibly know? How would ideas and information from the past have kept on? They wouldn't have. We would be nowhere, knowing nothing but what our own minds could discover without the ideas of the ages behind our backs.

Books are not meant to remind their readers of life. Books are meant to broaden the horizons of their readers, to teach them things to apply to their world.

Books are not meant to be memories alone. Books are for growing.

I've always rather looked forward to the day when I could go by Victoria instead of Vicki. It sounds so dignified—a side effect of being borrowed from a famous queen, I suppose—and if I adopt it, well, then I automatically gain a bit of that dignity, right?

It would be sort of nice to have people call me Vicki on their own, because they're good friends with me, not because I told them that's what I go by, I think.

What say you?

It's amazing to me that I forgot to say anything about this. It was only the sole focus of my life for a three-day period, yet when I finally got around to putting my feelings into words, I distracted myself and wrote about different events, different feelings.

I sent off two large envelopes full of letters of recommendation and common application supplements and official transcripts on Saturday. On Sunday I submitted the actual common application, the real thing, to four different colleges—the four colleges in this country that really mean something to me, that I'm truly interested in, that I honestly feel a need to be a part of. It was the most important yet anti-climactic push of a button in my entire existence.

It's terrible, handing your dreams, your desires, your life to someone else to decide whether you're good enough to have those wants and wishes. It's hard. I thought it would be easier to think, now that I've handed my responsibility off to other people, but it's not. Right now, my stomach is clenching, my hands are shaking, and I know in my mind that there's nothing else I can do, that I used to be sure I could get into these schools, get to where I wanted to be, but it's different in my heart, in my soul.

My mind thinks with a voice, and right now it's impossible to hear. One of the most awe-inspiring speeches I've ever heard says that the human voice is different from other sounds, that it can be heard over noises that bury everything else—but what do you do when it's voices drowning out voices? It's difficult to determine what I'm doing, what I need to be doing, what I've done among the deafening sound of all my thoughts and my feelings.

It's not just about the applications. Is it ever really only about one thing? It's about my IB English oral on Wednesday, it's about my Extended Essay due next Friday, it's about my History Internal Assessment due in March, it's about my specimen drawings in biology, it's about my calculus project from last Thursday, it's about my IB French practice orals, and it's about my CAS hours. They warned us that this moment would come—this moment when we finally realize that every second of every day from 7 September 2005 to 12 May 2006 will directly affect out future, that we have it within our power to make or break our lives from now until then, and then onto forever.

The moment has come, and I've never been more worried in my entire life.

( Part II: Later. )

Am I the only one who thinks fate is comforting rather than confining?

At the ToK movie night on Tuesday, we were talking after the movie about perception and how emotion affects perception (because that is the only ToK aspect of the stupid movie we watched), and somehow we got into a short side-conversation about fate. Now, I don't know if this happens with anyone else, but nearly every time I enter into a of philosophical discussion, someone brings up fate, and then I don't get to make my point about it before the subject changes again. The usual happened on Tuesday: Tyler brought up fate, Sheila responded, Tyler might have made a comment, but then we moved on, and I didn't get a chance to say anything. So here I go, saying something.

Fate is comforting to me. Just think about it: Whatever you are doing right now, you are meant to be doing. Since the dawn of time, you were meant to be doing what you're doing right now, what you did yesterday, and what you will do tomorrow. That doesn't mean it was decided for you, just that--if you believe in a Supreme Being, and if you don't, you probably don't believe in fate anyway--He knows you well enough to know exactly what you are going to do, before you do it. Isn't it comforting to know that someone knows you that well? He knows you well enough to know what you would do in any situation, and he knows everyone well enough to know exactly what situation everyone is going to be in, all the time. You always have the ability to choose what to do, and you are constantly choosing and acting upon those decisions, but He knows you so well that He knows what your decision will be, every time. You can't fool Him. Isn't that wonderful?

I hope that makes sense. In the one time I've had the chance to explain this idea to someone before now, they didn't understand. I guess that's okay. As long as I understand, and continue to be comforted, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks, does it?

I've always wanted two things, two things I've always thought I could never have: a twin, and very bad far sight. I've always wanted the comfort someone you knew was exactly like you, yet different, could bring, the closeness I could feel in that kind of relationship. I knew from the moment I heard about twins that I wanted to be one. Of course, it's not generally something one suddenly becomes after their birth. I've always known it was unattainable, and it just depresses me to think of it, but I've never let go of it.

I never thought I could have my dream of terrible vision, either. I've always wished I could just take off my glasses and have the world disappear, leaving a place where nothing was perfect, nothing was clear, and nothing had to be perfect or clear. I've always thought that would be insanely comforting, in the oddest way. Of course, one doesn't generally develop near-sightedness in their youth. I've always known I could never actually experience that comfort for the depressed, but I've never let it go.

Until now. Because, you see, I have apparently achieved the generally impossible. By wishing hard enough, I suppose, I have become sligtly near-sighted—enough to get glasses. And seeing through those glasses, my friends, I have discovered a new world—a world of clean, sharp lines, a world of colors not dampened by blurs. Of course, this new world brings with it one even better, one I've always known, but never realized. I've found my comforting world, where everything smears together just enough to be perfect, but not. I've found the best thing that could ever have happened to me, on the best day of the worst two weeks of my life. It's perfect, it's brilliant, it's amazing, it's flawed, and even better is that my glorious books aren't marred at all! I've been set free into a new world of crisp lines and clean signs, and all I have to do to return to the comfort of imperfection is remove the glasses. What need exists for a dream once it has become reality?

A wonderful invention, glasses. They really improve a person's life. All I need now is to find my long-lost twin. Maybe if I head into the woods. . . .