Faith vs Fear

I want to talk a little bit about faith and fear. In my opinion faith and fear are the most basic components of life. Optimism is a type of faith and pessimism is a type of fear. Love is built out of faith and hate is built out of fear. This is a really personal subject for me, not least because of how I discovered my faith. I used to be a really negative, cynical, pessimistic person but when I was 18 I met someone, now my ex-boyfriend, who gave me faith. I shouldn't say that he gave me faith because it wasn't anything he did or even anything about who he was or is (in fact he's kind of pessimistic himself) it was more like an epiphany and it's entirely possible that it was simple coincidence that it came at the moment I met him, but I don't believe that it was a coincidence.

People who know me know that even now my ex is still able to renew my faith, when I feel it flagging, better than anyone else. Partly that is because he's a great friend to me. When I'm freaking out about the fact that I still have no idea what I really want to do with my life I will e-mail him and, of course, I won't say that I'm freaking out I'll just say that I'm thinking about doing _____ (fill in the blank - going to med school, or doing a study abroad program, or getting a PhD in film studies, or moving to the Himalayas and taking up basket weaving) and he will say that he's so excited for me and that he knows I will do great and have a great time. That kind of positive reinforcement is good for renewing my faith but it isn't the whole picture.

Part of it is that, in breaking up with me, he inspired even more faith in me because it was an amazing act of faith on his part and he'd never really been a very optimistic person. We'd been together for a long time (more than 7 years) and we both had our doubts about the relationship. He said once that he was 85% sure about us which wasn't nice to hear but at least it only left 15% uncertainty and when we broke up we were both thrown into the 100% uncertain world. He had a much harder time of it, ironically, since he's the one who made the final decision, and he asked me once why I seemed to be taking it so much better than him. I told him I had faith that everything would work out for the best. What I didn't tell him was that he gave me that faith. He gave it to me 10 years ago when I first met him and he renewed it 2 years ago when he left me and now when I start to feel it slipping away he reminds me what kind of person I am, that I am a person of faith.

I believe that their are two types of people, those that live in fear and those that have faith. Obviously, we all have fear from time to time, but some people get past fear and some can't. It should be clear by now that I don't mean, necessarily, religious faith or faith in anything specific but faith in general, faith that makes you ask yourself what you are afraid of and then enables you to toss that aside. That's what I'm trying to do now. What am I afraid of???

"You're afraid of fish. I'm afraid of dying in a hail of shrapnel. Who's crazier?" - Casey (Sports Night)

Pop Art

I love cheese, not the food (though I love that too), but the cultural concept. I love 70s and 80s power pop (Styx, REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner) and teen movies (10 Things I Hate About You, Drive Me Crazy, anything by John Hughes) and teen television shows (Beverly Hills 90210, Dawson's Creek, etc). I love calendars with pictures of kittens on them and sappy Hallmark cards. I'm a huge fan of cheese, but I wouldn't call any of those things "art". I don't really want to get into a whole discussion about what is and isn't art because I kind of burned myself out on that subject 10 years ago when I took "Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art". An hour a day for an entire quarter debating the question "what is art" is enough to drive even the most stable person to insanity. However, I realized today that the subject still inspires strong opinions in me. The mere mention of Marcel Duchamps still makes me irate.

One thing that used to really bug me (aside from the idea that a urinal and a snow shovel qualify as art) was the term "pop art". I have to give some credit to Andy Warhol for giving the world Interview magazine, but the soup cans and colorized images of Marilyn Monroe are not art and coining the term "pop art" doesn't make them art. That was the position I held for a long time.

One summer, about 5 years ago, I went to see The Who and it was at that concert that I finally decided that the term "pop art" might actually mean something. I know, it's a completely different medium than the term was coined for but it's far more applicable to The Who than Andy Warhol. Pete Townshend doesn't just write songs he tells stories, he creates characters and Roger Daltry brings them to life on stage. Like any art it is hard to really explain to someone else how it effects me, but I feel compelled to try.

There is a wall of stained glass by Chagall at the Chicago Art Institute Museum (Ferris and Sloane kiss in front of it in Ferris Beuller's Day Off) and every time I go there I go straight to the Chagall stained glass and stay there most of the day while my family explores the latest exhibits. My senior year in high school I went and took pictures of it from every angle I could think of. Every time I see that stained glass I see something different; I feel something different. It's kind of the same with The Who, especially seeing them live. However, every time I see that iconic Andy Warhol painting I see cans of soup and I feel nothing.

Retrospective

I'm looking back at the years of my blog here. I started out with indecisiveness and I didn't make much progress and still haven't. I considered going to med school but abandoned that idea. I thought about transferring to USC to get my bachelors in film and television writing but they only accept transfers once a year and I was so close to finishing my BA (in English) at UW that I'll be in my last quarter by the time the next transfer cycle comes around. So, I thought I might as well finish my BA and go to grad school, possibly for film studies (at UC Berkeley or UMich or UT Austin) or possibly for a masters in counseling or maybe midwifery...As you can see the indecision problem is still alive and well.

I don't want leave Seattle. I've lived here all my life, my family is here, my friends are here, I love the rain (I need the rain), Seattle is home. UT Austin has a great program in Radio, Television and Film studies though and I think I could like living in Austin. It's a great town, but way too hot especially in the summer and Ann Arbor, which also has a great Film and Television program, has the same problem with heat (plus humidity). Berkeley would be great climate wise and I have family there but I don't know that I want to commit to the fully academic route (a PhD in film studies from Berkeley really only qualifies me to teach film studies). Austin and Michigan at least have more technical programs (that teach writing, directing and production in addition to theory) but they're in Austin and Michigan and then I'd almost certainly have to move to LA to actually work. Boston University has a summer program for graduate students (in screenwriting) which I suspect wouldn't teach me anything that the UW extension program didn't already teach me but would certainly give me better connections for finding a job, but again I'd have to move to LA for that.

"We'll die with our options open" seemed really funny and appropriate when I started blogging but the indecision is starting to wear on me. I feel like I should have my mind made up by now. I mean, I thought the idea was that you spend your 20s fumbling around exploring and "finding yourself" and then once you reach 30 you sort of have it figured out. I don't have much time left if that's the case. I could claim that I have an excuse. I spent most of my 20s (age 19-26) being domestic. So, I kind of stunted my growth at age 19 and now I'm 7 or 8 years behind. However, I think the truth may be that I'm just indecisive by nature and will never be able to shake it.

As long as I'm doing a retrospective let me give a few updates. First of all the state of American cycling is shaky. Floyd Landis won the Tour and then tested positive for synthetic testosterone. His defense is actually a lot more convincing than I thought it would be. I know it was the same lab that leaked erroneous drug test results on Lance Armstrong to the press and I agreed that they should have been dropped by the UCI after that (when and independent investigation recommended it), but the Landis results seemed pretty solid to me. Sure, it didn't make any sense that all his tests before that one and all the ones after it would be clean since synthetic androgens are only performance enhancing over time, but I believed that he was guilty. After looking at some of the defense evidence (which they made available online) I'm kind of coming around. Doping is rampant in sports these days and, some people say, especially in cycling but I'm really trying not to get cynical about it. I believe Landis is innocent and I've always believed Tyler Hamilton was innocent but if they're not I still have Z (Dave Zabriskie) to route for. Hopefully he'll keep the sport alive here (in the US).

The PR monkeys at EMP are still totally laying down on the job. Nothing new to report there. The political spin doctors still aren't able to put the focus on things that the administration is doing right, but to be fair to the spin doctors the things that the administration is doing right are even fewer now than they were two years ago. At least I assume they are even fewer now because I'm not finding them even in the depths of the local news section of the paper anymore.

Television just keeps on getting better. This year there are a bunch of great new shows on. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip holds a special place in my heart because I'm an Aaron Sorkin super fan (and I have a little crush on Matthew Perry). The Nine, Brother's and Sisters, Standoff, Heroes and Six Degrees are all pretty excellent as well. I'm also enjoying The Class, Men in Trees and Shark, but I'm finding not a lot of people agree with me on those ones. There are also a ton of great returning shows. Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls are on back to back now thanks to the merger of UPN and the WB into the new CW network. Lost is back and just as bizarre. Grey's Anatomy, Desperate housewives, Bones, How I Met Your Mother, My Name is Earl, and The Office are all back and I hear that Scrubs and The Loop will both be back as well sometime around mid-season. It's a really great time to be a television connoisseur.

So, in my two years here I haven't gotten any more decisive, spin hasn't gotten any more focused or more convincing and American cycling keeps taking hits. I'm still optimistic, but I think that's even more ingrained in my nature than indecision.

Politics - 2006 Midterm Elections

This is the first year that I actually claimed a party affiliation and voted in the primary as well as the general election and it feels a little weird calling myself a Democrat (even though I have pretty much always voted for Democrats anyway). In the past I always considered myself an independent voter. I vote on issues - reproductive rights, civil rights, environmental protection, stem cell research, same-sex marriage (though I really think that kind of falls under the banner of civil rights), balancing the budget again and eliminating the concept of deficit spending even if it means raising taxes, protecting and not privatizing social security, not going to war pre-emptively (i.e. getting the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible and not doing anything like that ever again) - I think about all these things and more when I'm choosing a candidate to vote for. This year I finally realized that the Republican party is never going to agree with me on the issues I care about and while I may still vote for independent candidates sometimes I realized it might be interesting to declare a party affiliation and vote in the primary elections. So, I'm a Democrat now.

While the urge is strong to rejoice that the Democrats won back the majority in the House and may even win back the Senate majority as well (which was considered a long shot); as an "issues voter" I feel a little dejected at the results on some of the ballot measures. I'm happy that South Dakota's abortion ban failed but that happiness is diminished by the fact that they passed a ban on same sex marriage (by 78%) and their medical marijuana measure failed. South Carolina, Colorado, Idaho, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin also passed measures banning same sex marriage. The parental notification (of abortion) measure may have failed in California, which is great, but they also failed to pass the funds for alternative energy measure. The news here in Washington state is more positive (at least with regard to ballot measures). Our estate tax (I920) and property rights (I933) measures failed and our energy resources measure (I937) passed. The personal property tax exemption increase passed (by an overwhelming majority) which I find a little disappointing but I'm used to being in the minority in thinking that taxes are a good thing and always voting to increase them (or to not decrease them) when those measures come up. The Burner/Reichert race is still too close to call but Reichert is in the lead. While it will be disappointing if Burner loses it won't exactly be unexpected (that district has always gone Republican) and it's clear that the Democrats have already won back the House majority so they don't need Burner to win for that.