Thoughts on post-modernism

I just finished reading Brandon Sanderson's guest blog post over on "Whatever" . It was really an eye opener. One thing I have to say about Brandon Sanderson, is he is really really good about helping aspiring authors feel better about what they feel and think and hope, and of course giving them practical advice. I was lucky enough to be in Quark at BYU, and he was nice enough to come talk to us. He's a really really nice guy. As friendly as you'd like. Considering how prolific of an author he is, I'm amazed he made time to talk to a bunch of nerds like us.

Anyway I had a lot of fun while at BYU taking classes from John Talbot. He introduced me to Postmodernism in literature. Well as something that I thought about in literature anyway. What Mr. Sanderson was talking about was something completely different. What they both have in common is they got me thinking. A lot of the post-modern stuff I read with Mr. Talbot, when I really thought about it, was disturbing in its message and intent. Most of the disturbing underpinnings would have escaped me had he not pushed me to think about it.

I see that same intelligent approach to how Mr. Sanderson was addressing modern fantasy. I've read a great deal of Mr. Sanderson's stuff, and I like it, I like it a lot. I particularly loved Mistborn and those "tricks" he used.

Back on topic, I realized while reading his blog post about specialization, perhaps that's what I should title the article (welcome to Ben stream of consciousness). While I was engaged in Mr. Talbot's class I was used to THINKING about literature. But even then I only really thought about the classics I was assigned to read, because I knew that class could be so much more if I really engaged the topic before hand and really engaged Mr. Talbot during class. I realize now that I never really used that while thinking about what I read for fun. There are a couple of reasons for this. 1. I think a great deal of the fun of life can be sucked out, by looking for hidden meanings and agendas and everything. Dad does that a lot with grumbling about the Commies in Hollywood as his excuse to not watch or, if he doesn't want to, enjoy a movie. He'll let someones political orientation, whether or not it is evident in the movie or not, affect if he'll even watch it, let alone what he thinks about it. 2. I'm lazy. When I read for fun, I read for fun.

That being said, thinking about literature and culture is also fun! I look at myself now and when I read for fun it's really to give my brain a break. It's acquiring a lot of new knowledge and information at an alarming rate, and needs it's breaks. But reading Mr. Sanderson's essay really got the old juices running, and has me hankering to talk about literature again.

Some of my greatest memories are talking about literature with friends, not least of all is my mom, with whom I've talked about more literature and in more depth then anyone else.

This is a weird random post, but it's what is on my mind. I hope you all enjoyed it.

Grad School

My normal excuse for how very infrequently I post is that I usually put out a pretty good/long post. It's a fairly creative and draining task. It's also been how I feel better about being cheap and not having a camera which converts into not posting pictures. Plus most of my posts have as topics, things that traditionally don't have pictures involved with them.

I may not have the time or energy to do those kinds of posts anymore. Grad school has sucked a lot of energy lately, and after talking to my good friend Cyndi I was reminded that people use this as a way to get a snap shot, not just of what's happening in my life but how I feel about it. I had a really good Blog vibe going on the first day of school, but ended up being social instead of blogging it up, and like always happens when you have a good story idea, it went away. I remember the gyst of it, but the feeling is just gone.

Most of my best work is done when I've got that weird manic inspired feeling. Too bad I can't turn it on at will eh? Or even put it on hold.

So graduate school impressions:

1. Man is it nice to be moving along with my life plan. Been awhile since I've felt like I was doing that.

2. Moving is expensive.

3. Thank goodness for NSSLHA's buddy system (student version of the our professional body, the WCU chapter pairs first years up with second years, been invaluable so far).

4. Frisbee golf in the rain is fun.

5. My teachers are amazing and I think they really honestly care if I understand and are interested in filling in the caps of my knowledge and sating my hunger for more. No just teaching to the test here. Most of my BYU teachers taught to a test.

6. We are SO HELPFUL. I often used very uncharitable terms for the majority of the people in my major at BYU. Kelsy if you're reading this you're one of the few exceptions. To put it short. Me and the other grad students are working together. I have felt zero competitive vibes coming off my classmates. Those of you that think women aren't competitive are crazy.

7. Greg is very nice to invite me to bowling, even if the social situation makes it not as fun as it could be. (Being only first year and other stuff). Still better then most situations like that I've been in in the past.

8. My fluency professor is really really sincere about doing his scholarly work for the greater good of human kind. I mean on a visceral level. This guy is awesome. I've never met another academic with such passion.

9. I'm way more worried about starting clinic then I should be. I've trained for this for a while, I've got a great Clinical instructor there to help me if I need it/

10. I need to find a better way of managing stress (staying up to all hours of the night reading recreation books just does not fit with the life I need to live right now). Perhaps blogging?

Anyway over all things are really well. I'm really enjoying having my own apartment, a lot more then I thought I would.

I am VERY thankful to all the people who have talked to me on the phone when I've felt lonely (often). In fact I've gone over my phone minutes for the first time since I've owned a Cell phone I think. That's been another one of my stress management methods that is probably not as wise as it could be. I really should blog more often. It's like talking but with my fingers, and while not quite as good as calling you sweet people up (partially due to the gnats who love my computer monitor here) it is relaxing me a bit.

Anyway thanks for everyone who cares and looks at my blog despite the slowness of updating. And Kudos to those of you who are smart and use some kind of browser plugin or google tool to keep track of my blog, as well as others you're interested in. I'm still too lazy to set that up and currently just rotate through bookmarks. Thanks for any of you that prayed for me for this transition, it's been helpful I don't doubt it.

I have a new, and profound respect for anyone who does this (let alone a doctoral) program with a family. It is time consuming in a way that I had no way of understanding. I'm no stranger to insanely busy (last summer, 3 jobs ect.) but grad school, no job, no GA just me class, clinic and a little grant class and I often find myself wondering where my day went. Mom, I have no idea how you were not only able to do it, but do it while being the world's best mom in the universe. Joe you are amazing. Angela you must be a saint as well, I'm sure a PHD program is much crazier then a masters, and that can't be fun for you.

Love you all!

More Creative "I Got In!"

There's a half finished piece about "Glee" floating around I could finish first, but I thought I'd blog about my mid-week weekend.

In case ya'll haven't heard, I'm working retail. Which translates to me very rarely having two days off in a row. Any time this happens it's a weekend. Even if I have to schedule it. Which I did in this case. I spent some wonderful time with my brother Ed and his wife Laura who were kind enough to share their house and animals with me for my little mid-week three day weekend. I used this chance to go check Cullowhee out, talk to Dr. Rice (the faculty member who's my advisor at the moment) and do some apartment hunting.

I found a nice little place that I'm very excited about. I feel like Heavenly Father is really helping me out with this transition. With strong feelings about the place I should live and good weather to do random exploring with. This trip was great to make it feel more real, more immediate. I'm so excited to get the education I need to work as a Speech-language Pathologist. The building is nice, the facilities look nice and wonderful. Campus was nice, it's obviously been upgraded a lot lately. I would rate the bathroom sub-BYU in most buildings, but still well within acceptable.

It's a much smaller town than Provo, and a much smaller school. All in a good way. I already feel like I know Dr. Rice fairly well. And I felt like everyone was trying to make me feel welcome (except for the comic book guy in Asheville, but well... you've seen The Simpsons... it's an archetype for a reason). I had forgotten how comfortable and relaxed the mountains could be. I think the main thing that annoyed people was how long it took me to adjust to mountain driving.

For those of you thinking, "But Ben, you've lived there before, plus two years in Montana and nearly four in Provo." I site that I moved from Asheville when I was 13, well before I drove (well other then my awesome sister Mary letting me steer once or twice on this awesome long driveway some family friends had). Also Provo does not have curvy confusing narrow roads like the Appalachian mountains do. I credit Brigham Young and many other excellent city/area planners. Even Montana roads are wider and make more sense. That being said other then having to turn around because I overshot stuff a lot I feel like I did pretty good, in no small part to how great my Brother Ed's directions were.

So bottom line, I had a great time. Found a place that I like. And got very excited to go to Grad School this fall. Heck I'm even excited about getting the bits of furniture together to put in the place. Did I mention that, it's un-furnished! Mom and dad at one point have already bought me a dresser and book shelf (a very generous and handy b-day gift), two essentials. And there's a few pieces laying around the house that they may be willing to part with. But yeah I'm also excited for finding other stuff that they don't have extras collecting dust, like a bed and what not.

I hope this was more like the excitement people expect, because I care about stuff like that.

By the way school/moving won't be happening until mid-late august, so I've got plenty of time and wiggle room.

I got in!

I got into Western North Carolina University. I already talked about it on Facebook, so most of you probably already know, but I promised it'd be blogged about. Sadly I'm not feeling terribly creative right now, so this is about the extent of it. Perhaps a creative writing vent will come along in a bit and I'll expand on it.

In short, I AM VERY EXCITED and VERY THANKFUL. I plan on working my little touche off for the next two years. It'll be great.

Thoughts on Journals and Blogs

I was reading Alma 37 today, and was thinking about the faith it took for the prophets to keep and make the Book of Mormon. Many of them had some hint of what the Lord would do with it, but I'm not sure if any of them knew what part of their own record would become what it is today, with the exception of Mormon and Moroni.

Whenever there's a talk on journal writing I always end up thinking "what's the point it's not like mine will ever be needed like that." But I had a bit of a realization today, in the Book of Mormon we have an edited and assembled account of many people's journals and records. The record we keep is something that we can someday show others, 100% unabridged. It won't be as powerful or potent as the Book of Mormon, but it may be as important to one of descendants. It may be that important to us. To remember a strong feeling or spiritual moment. It can help us remember when things were so dark we didn't think we could find a way out, but we managed to. It keeps us in touch with the rhythm of our own lives, and can pass that information on. Things aren't always sweet, if they were we'd probably get tired of it anyway.

I'm still awful at journal writing, and for most of the last year it's all been in a once a month blog form. I figure I'm trying and that counts for something, right?

On a personal note, I've applied to three Universities for Grad school. All in North Carolina, WNC, Appalachian, and Central. I appreciate the thought and concern behind questions about the status, but when you ask it just dials up the worry and frustration on my part for not having heard yet. I will do a post once I know, but I won't know for a while. And the question of "Which are you really hoping to go to?" is the same as last time, I really hope to go to all of them. I'd be delighted if I had to choose, but I'm not going to cross that bridge unless I need to.

I'm going to be spending the next several months trying very hard not to think about it, while hoping and praying that I get in.

A Merry Christmas From Santa

Santa is a bit busy, since it's about 2:35 AM when I start this, so I'm going to blog a bit for him. He still has most of the world to cover before the night wears out. Santa knows that this is a really tough time of the year for me. I flat out did sit down and cry a couple of times yesterday, and wanted to a few more times.

Things he gave me:

1. I have not 1, not 2, but 3 jobs in this icky economy.
2. I have a wonderful family that has taken me in and loves me, and is helping me cope with the big let down that is life not going as planned.
3. I ran into an old high school friend while working at Best Buy yesterday who was shocked that my GPA is a bit low for grad schools. It felt great to have someone feel that way. I feel like I used to be so smart. BYU changed a lot of my self perception, probably for the better, but man it did feel good. Plus it was just nice to see someone and have them hug me and be happy to see me. I was probably a bit of a prideful snot last time she met me.
4. I have a large and loving family, even if we are a bit unconventional.
5. I have the best friends in the whole world. Seriously, I was very upset yesterday and wanted people to talk to. Over chat Jeff immediately made me laugh and feel better. My great friend Ben texted me to see if he could call, which was very thoughtful since I did work yesterday, unfortunately I didn't hear my cell phone until it was too late because he was enjoying his family Christmas Eve traditions. But the fact that he tried to call really cheered me up. I don't have words for how much that made my day.
6. My best friends Ken and Jen have been pretty constant phone and chat buddies for the last several weeks, and despite a tough year it sounds like they're going to have a great Christmas. Literally, every time I talk to them I love them more. There's nothing better then that.
7. My wonderful family lets me experiment with cooking when I get the time, and they eat it, even when it doesn't turn out all that well (plus my mom made me a delicious B-day dinner).
8. The most wonderful gift of all, has been that in those quiet, lonely and sad moments I've felt cause and need to reach out and touch the divine gift that this season is meant to celebrate. Most importantly that it's there, and recently I've felt like I understand it a bit better then I used to. I don't think any mortal can understand the full scope of it, but it is the beautiful labor of our lives to understand here a little and there a little and to help others gain understanding in the same way. He answers our prayers, and there is enough healing in his wings to tend to lonely mid twenty-somethings, as well as to the weighty matters of sin and death. That gift never goes stale, never stops being needed or wanted, and only grows in power and sweetness as time goes on. But perhaps that is the effect of experience talking. Without that gift I doubt any of us could deal with the insanity that the season can bring. I'm even thankful that we go ahead and celebrate this time of year, when the lessening of light makes a bit of holiday prompted remembrance especially useful.

So Santa has delegated this year. That's ok, I think the best gifts tend to happen when he does. Oh I did go ahead and continue my fun single tradition of buying myself a Christmas gift. This year I went a bit over board and bought myself a new computer, with a shiny video card and a new computer game or two to go with it. In my defense it was on sale pretty cheap.


Merry Christmas to everyone, I love you all. If you have a link to this blog it's because you're on my list of my favorite people in the world. If you happen to stumble on this blog then I hope it cheers you up to read some of my things, and I hope that you're having a good year, and will have many more to come.

May God bless you all.

P.S. The Bones link above is a little pop culture treat similar to what I've encountered over at Cheerful Cynicism, a blog of one of my college friends.

Greensboro Garden of Forking Paths

The Garden of Forking Paths is a story that I read in college my last semester, thanks to Dr. Talbot. It was one of the first pieces that really helped me understand Post-Modernism. Feel free to read it, it's actually pretty enjoyable.

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Anyway this last weekend was something of a Garden of Forking Paths in my own life. For some reason I've been a bit hung up on both Modernism and Post-Modernism for a while. They both seemed to speak to me, a lot more then any of the romantics (William Blake exempted), or any of the art I looked at in my art history class (they didn't show any Blake :( ).

So this weekend my old friend Chad invited me to go spend it with him in Greensboro. There was a regional Young Single Adults activity for church, and it sounded like a good idea. So up I went. The first night I was kind of tired and not much fun, but Chad was a champ and didn't seem to mind. The next day we drove down to some little town north of Charlotte for the regional activity. I was enjoying hanging out with Chad and laughing with some of the people from Asheville (none of whom I remembered from my childhood there). Thanks to them I discovered that my childhood friend Cory was in Greensboro, just not at this activity.

The excitement over that discovery was interrupted by me hearing a voice yell "BEN!" It was my old co-worker and friend Jordan. We had a spontaneous man hug and spent a great deal of time hanging out and enjoying the unexpected reunion. I knew he lived on that side of the state but I didn't expect to see him. We had worked at the BYU Law School for over two years together, and had a blast!

The next day I got to see go to church with Chad and see Cory. It had been at least 7 years since I'd last seen him, and there was a lot of catching up to do. Unfortunately we caught up a bit loudly and embarrassed ourselves in Stake conference, but it was nice. I have some fond memories with him. Over all it was a great weekend with representatives from most of the major chapters of my life.

I got to thinking while Chad was helping a friend of his out with car troubles (He's a genius that way, I'm relatively useless.) I've been in a bit of a funk lately. Grad school didn't happen like I hoped it would, getting a job was tough as all get out and ended up with me living in my parents house again. I felt like my plan was falling apart. I felt like I was in a constant state of questioning my plans and their validity. I mean if I had a good plan, it should work right?

I've talked about post-modernism before (giving names to our fears is one of those things that let us surpass them, so I've used it to name a set of fears I have.) Nothing is scarier to me, and I think most Latter-Day Saints feel it too, then the idea that there is no plan. We are big on plans. From General Authorities talking about goals and tracking them and it helps us improve, to the big Plan of Salvation. A massive Plan that encompasses all of our mortal existence and beyond. Post-modernisms claim that there is no plan, and that everything just happens is a bit threatening, the first time I felt the implications of it my heart raced like somebody just slapped me in the face.

Modernism can be equally challenging, although on the surface it looks a lot more appealing. On the one hand can any argue that there is something seriously wrong with this world? That it's a sick, sad world? Daria references aside, it is becoming noticeably less comfortable and more scary to live in this world. But does this fear mean that something has gone wrong with the plan? Does it mean that things need fixed? Faith in revelation gives us some claim to a plan that tells us everything will fall apart before it all gets put back together again. The simple answer is, yes things need fixed, but no the plan isn't flawed.

So I've decided that live has me somewhere in between, and perhaps a student of philosophy could give me the name for it, but I'm going to call it modified modernism. Because the world is sick, and I should try my best to make a difference for good in the world, but in the end MY PLAN isn't going to be what wins the day, it'll be God's plan. My plan won't stand up to his plan, it just won't. Hopefully the next time I find myself sitting in a position in life that I never expected I hope I can sit at another Garden of Forking Paths, being able to see my past, embarrassing and proud moments together, and realize that life in all of it's bitter sweet nature will always take me down different Forking Paths then I expected, and that is part of the richness of the experience.

Robert Frost's famous line about the path untaken are beautiful, but I sometimes yearn for something as well done about discovering the path you set out on is completely different then you expected.