Beethoven's fifth symphony

It puts me in an interesting mood. I have to listen to it for music History 3, but the actual music is the most enjoyable part of the course. Reading about Beethoven has been pretty inspiring, too - a deaf musician? Can you imagine being that unbelievably talented and then losing your hearing? I read that he had to be turned around to see how wildly people were applauding after his Ninth Symphony (the one with Ode to Joy) because his hearing had completely gone, and he broke into tears. Just...wow. I actually think the Classical era is one of my favorites for music. Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven - really, who wants more? I mean, not that I don't love Bach and Handel and Vivaldi. Vivaldi's Four Seasons = LOVE. But Classical will always hold a special place in my heart.

In other news, I have trouble saying no, getting out of bed when I say I will, and I'll probably always be hopeless at having a busy life. Yeah. I've started to reread Wheel of Time, and am enjoying the first book probably more than I enjoyed it the initial time through. Mostly because this time, unlike then, I did not read the whole book trying a million different ways of pronouncing Nynaeve and Egwene. No, I did not discover the glossary until I finished the book. I was also unclear on the definition of an Aes Sedai for probably the first three. I like Rand SO much better in the earlier books, before he goes angsty and emo. It's not that I judge him for being angsty and emo, because if I were him, I would probably be more so, but all the same I like him better now.

And that, I think, is all for tonight. I am going to go to bed. Or rather, I am going to get ready for bed, read Eye of the World until I can't keep my eyes open, shut off the light, and dream of a certain angsty romantic pairing and a k-word.



"Hi, I'm Ben. Remember me? I was your brother before you got that laptop."

Lookit!

I made this yesterday.

I'm actually SO proud of it - 41 layers! And the most fun with brushes that I've ever had in my entire life. I love swirly decorative-looking brushes. And my precious rain texture, and Caribbean Blue texture. Yes, I use both of these on half the graphics I make. Probably good I'm not going into graphic design, tee hee. I have problems with variety.



"This could be minorly problematic."
Best Phantom Grey quote ever.

Things I love

(and that have happened in the last few days)

- Staying up late talking about character philosophy
- Listening to thunderstorms
- Thinking of ideas and having time to write them
- Believing that dreams actually do come true (watching Enchanted helps. Hehe)
- Lying in bed just thinking
- Waking up and doing devotions and enjoying them
- Feeling like you know what, life's gonna be okay, I'll just roll with it
- Talking to five people simultaneously in different MSN conversations and genuinely enjoying all five
- Getting so wrapped up in a story that the characters seem like real people (and feeling for them like real people, too)
- Wondering if I am one of those people I looked up to so long ago
- Doing something I know I'll enjoy doing and not caring if people think I'm weird
- Feeling guilty, angsty, uberly hyper, mournful, and excited all at the same time (this has to do with the one three above this one, yes)
- Singing random songs to myself, in the shower and out
- Looking back and seeing that I've grown
- Enjoying little things like compliments and yummy food
- Being proud of a 40+ score on the Mary-Sue Litmus Test, cause I'm not changing a thing
- EPIC (read: angsty) crystallization
- Enjoying the quiet and not minding the loud
- Reading excellent fan fiction
- Liking cheesy little signature dragons and giving them names

and last but not least - trusting that ultimately I am not the one who plans my life, and the one who does is far better at it than me.

So I feel very poetic now. Often that happens before bed. All my poetry gets written at two in the morning. I often also like it after I've slept, which is remarkable, because there are times when I wake up and go "Melda, WHAT the HECK were you THINKING?" after writing something late at night. Yes, I do refer to myself in third person, and often as Melda as well. If people call you something long enough...I do not kid, if I was ever in a random public place and someone shouted "Melda!" I would turn around. Yep. I think I'll write another post later when my thoughts aren't so fragmented by wanting to sleep.

Melda

[several quotes]

"My member of parliament calls my dad. A loser."

"Will, can't I even walk around you without you trying to kill me?!"

"Oh, here's the coffee. It was in the syrup container."
"...I had that on my waffles this morning!"

"Does anyone know where my swimsuit is?"
"Oh, it's on top of the freezer."

"If you remember nothing else from school, remember what it feels like to get out for the summer."

Prompt: Dancing

This round of A-U's Writing Prompt Contest was dancing, and this is my slightly random-ish entry. I'm not sure what I think of it. Comments and criticism are welcome :)

Heart of Fire

I sit on the outer edges of the bonfire, watching them dance.

I used to love Midsummer’s Eve. Nothing but play in the day, and in the night, dancing until your knees are weak. I used to be the best dancer of them all.

That was before the accident. I can remember, like a horrible dream, the day I knew I would never dance again. Next I remember the Midsummer’s Eve, a year ago, to which I hobbled on crutches – wooden legs that are no use for dancing - and tried to whirl around the blaze, tried to play the part of a dancer. I didn’t miss the looks of pity, not one. What a tragedy, they whispered behind their hands. Doesn’t she know she’s crippled? Why does she try?

And others answered: She used to be the best, didn’t you know?

After that night, I never tried again. The first thundershower in which I did not leap to the sky with my exultation and cavort with the storm was a month later. I sat at the window and watched lightning shatter the sky into millions of pieces, while thunder scattered them to the four winds. But the next day, the sky was miraculously whole again. My legs weren’t.

There was once. Once I escaped to the meadow and capered through the long grass as best as I knew how. That dance was more a hobble than a jig, but who could know? It was only me, and my heart knew how to dance, even if my legs were forever deaf to its pleas. There, I could fall and lie under the sun in the soft grass and pretend, if only for moments, that I was whole and free and happy. It was always worse, dragging myself home after that, but who in this world will not seize a minute of happiness over an hour of pain?

It gave me hope, for a while, to stretch my hands to the sky and tell it that I could dance, because it did not judge. But the little boys that hid in the bushes judged. Their titters told me what I thought, and their shrill voices told me, even across the meadow, what they saw. She looks like a frog, or a monkey. My mama said she’s crazy, and her mind went when her legs did.

How soon they forgot. And how soon, I knew, they would forget again. Since then I have never danced. If they can forget, why can I not? I asked myself. I will forget. Perhaps I will learn to spin or sew or work a loom, and when I see dancing, my heart will have forgotten, and so it will not twist in my breast like the tortured thing it is. Then there will be no whispers behind hands.

Did it work? No. Because here I sit, staring past wild silhouettes into a fire that beckons my spirit to join it in its darts and leaps of reckless abandon; but my spirit must overcome my body, and my body is too great a weight for it to carry. It wilts like the flowers in the meadow, and with it I wilt, too. This time, I try not to hear what they say behind their hands, but I know its hurt nonetheless. Every day I hear the same from my trapped soul, which beats itself senseless against bars – wooden bars like the legs that cannot dance – and falls, only to awake knowing that it must do the same again. Why won’t she get up again and keep going? We all know loss. This is no different.

Mayhap it isn’t. Mayhap I am only weak. But does a bird burrow like a mole because it loses its wings? Does a fish turn to building nests in trees because its fins fail? Does a heart cease its dancing because its body cannot carry it?

This Midsummer’s Eve, I can feel the flames that kindle in my breast. For a year, they were ashes like a phoenix’s death. But every phoenix is born again. Every heart must again catch the spark that once made it blaze.

Is there talking behind hands, hands that have no hearts? I don’t know. What do they say about me, the girl whose legs will not dance, but whose crutches will? I don’t care. Which is the worse – wooden legs, or no legs at all? The fire leaps and dances with wood.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Because in the end, all that is left is my heart.

And my heart needs no legs to dance.