Silence.

I talk a mile a minute. I am never at a loss for words.
I stumble on my words as they fall out of my mouth faster than my brain can process them.
But at the end of the day, I say what has to be said.
I have no fear of saying what's on my mind.
I never lack in the capability to articulate.

But you know that look that people give you when there's something you're supposed to say?
The one that says, please say that thing I've been waiting for you to hear?
Yeah, I got that look.
For the first time ever, I was speechless.
My ability to articulate was no longer existent.
My thoughts flew at the speed of sound into a black hole.
No words could convey my infinite thoughts as I processed the situation.

If you looked in my eyes you'd see that I have so many things to say, just no way to articulate it.
If you let the silence speak, it said it all.

Why do I need to articulate it?
Why do we rely on finite amounts of words?
Do those words ever fully explain the things we mean?
Are there enough words in the finite system to allow for the explanation of infinite emotions?
Why do we rely on these finite words for everything?

Maybe the cliche of silence is golden is really true.
Maybe the absence of an articulation conveys more than finite arrangements of letters with arbitrary meanings.
Maybe it's what between the lines that counts.

Imply in the silence the words you want to hear.
Let your eyes show the infinite emotions.
Contemplate which finite word appears appropriate.
Juxtapose it all, and you'll realize that words matter, but the silence says more.

I have infinite thoughts, but no way to say them that says what it needs to.
As long as the silence says it all....

Red.

For those of you that are not religious, do not be put off that the inspiration of this post comes from a church sermon. Just hear me out....

At church today, we discussed the Christmas colors, but we focused on the color red. The pastor focused on this analogy of the red card in soccer. The red card means game over, you're out. As it is the holiday season, there's always going to be that one person you want to red card and kick out. Beyond the holidays, there's always that one person that you want to red card due to a horrible past experience.

But what about this idea - You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

What if the red card was no longer a way to kick people out, but rather a card you pull to show them unconditional love? What if every time you wanted to red card someone, you loved them instead? There's always going to be that one person you want to punch in the face. There's always going to be that person that broke your heart. There's always going to be a list of exceptions that will make you want to hate that person. This hate drives you toward anger and vengeance that ruins everything else about your life.

Let me clarify, I'm not writing this as a way to condescend others for their anger and emotions based on other people's past actions. Rather, I'm writing this in a state of personal reflection and epiphany. I have that one person just like everyone else where often all I feel toward them is anger and a desire to pull the red card. But today after pondering this I realized something more about myself.

You can hurt me all you want, but at the core of me, I will always be that person that who will be there to help you in your time of need. I will never red card you, no matter how angry or hurt I may be. This has been a long process for me to accept this truth about who I am. It's a difficult way to be, as I can often care too much and it backfires. It's also not easy to care. The majority of the time, it is way easier to not care. It's also way easier to be angry. But after a while it becomes an exhausting experience to be angry and to not care.

You can stay angry and not care, but I tend to wonder... What if everyone could let go and drop their red card? What if everyone spent more time loving their enemies than their neighbors? By no means is this an easy task. I speak from personal experience when I say it is far more difficult to care than to not care. I also firmly believe, religious or not, that everyone should drop their red card and love.

This isn't just a holiday thing. This is forever. No one ever deserves to be walked out on. No one deserves a red card. Let the time and effort you spend on loving your neighbors be only a portion of the love you show to those who have wronged you. Let the moments when you want to pull the red card be the moments you show the most love.

Red.

On Self-Exploration....

People always say that college is the time to explore and find yourself. A lot of times, this concept takes place in the form of self destruction. Excessive alcohol, drugs and partying. Destructive friendships and relationships. Poor academic performance. You name it, you destruct it, it's all apart of the process. As I sit and reflect on my first semester, I realized I may have found myself, but not in the way I wanted to. I have not gone through the typical self destructive behavior, but through all of the massive changes and exploration, I have found myself. I just don't know I like the state I found myself in...

See, I had this conversation tonight. Someone I care for basically said to me, I want to know your story, but I will never make you tell me. If you know me at all, you know I'm a horribly guarded person. I build my walls and I do not take them down unless necessary. With that said, if you know my story, you know I have good reason for my walls being built.

Let me get this straight, I don't like the walls I've built. I spend many a days wishing I could tear them down simply with a little poke where the walls fall and disintegrate into nothing. Rather, for me to take down my walls, it's like going at tons and tons of masonry with a toothpick. Tonight, I managed to poke all the way through the masonry to allow someone to see a peephole into my life. It's a peephole, but to me, it feels like a gaping hole in the ozone layer.

I admitted things I don't think I could regularly admit. Ask me? I'll never admit to anything. I will never admit I have a fear of commitment, that I am unable to trust people, that I am cynical (and for good reason), that I question that my drive will get in the way of my relationships, that I fully believe my dreams will leave me forever alone, and a multitude of other things that make me a mess of contradictions and doubt.

And tonight, I admitted to the intricacies that make me who I am. I don't know that I want to be as intricately layered as I am. I don't know that I want to be this complex and cynical. I'm not as depressed as this blog post makes me sound, but I want things to be different. For some reason, admitting to my life story out loud made me feel like I had found me. I had found the answers I had been looking for, and I had admitted life to myself. I just found me in a place where the earth is no longer below my feet. With that being said, after saying my life story, I expected a push back. A denial and negation. A departure. That the story is too much for any one person. Instead the answer was, I accept you, I understand you, and it's okay.

And that's the truth of the matter. It is okay. It is okay to explore and to be you in whatever broken and beautiful state you're in. Your intricacies are unique to you. It's not about who you become in the end. It's about the journey you take to get there. It's about the things you learn, and how you use them to help others. As for me? I've been exploring, but the abyss is dense and dark. I'll float into a new phase of my life where the walls fall away as the earth returns below my feet.

On to float through the abyss..

Finals....

With the doom of finals looming, life seems to be a black pit of despair. Finals are death. Cramming all of your knowledge into one week where you are forced to get up at arbitrary and early times based on University standards. All of this makes life seem like it's a lost cause in the last two weeks of the semester. With this being said, I can't help but contemplate the ridiculous amounts of change that are occurring as my first semester of college comes to a close.

I moved to Iowa City to go to school on August 16. It is almost four months later, and the ways that my life has changed are endless. In four months, I've packed up all my possessions to go to a university of 30,000 people where I knew only a handful upon my arrival. I said goodbye to all of my close friends who are attending various colleges across the country. I am attending the number two party school in the nation, despite my straight edge and conservative up bringing that leaves me clueless about everything. I left my life of music and theatre to study something I love (art history), while knowing that my education will be infinite for abysmal amounts of money. In order to try to earn more money, I decided to take a chance and earn two additional degrees in fields I have no experience in (studio arts and museum studies). I currently live in a 12x12 room with my favorite two-year old schizophrenic roommate. That's an adventure and a change in and of itself. Basically, my life in Iowa City has little relation to my life in Naperville.

With all of this said, I feel like in the last four months my life has become so much different, that my head is still spinning. I've dedicated to spend my life in an art library (which I love). I have a completely different group of friends in Iowa, whom I love dearly. And in a short matter of months, I will pack up my life and move to Iowa City permanently. And after that? I'll pick up and move to New York.

Wow. Four months. Change hits you like a flying rabid squirrel that jumped off a cliff and lands directly on your face. And all I can think is, I could not possibly be happier with the changes in my life. Sure, finals make me want to cry and cuddle with burritos. But if all I have to do is suffer through one week of finals in order to continue on this path of change where I pursue what I love?

I'll take it.

Iowa City/New York City, here I come.

On Materialism and Consumerism....

In the spirit of Black Friday, I felt the need to impose a thought on materialism and consumerism. The common theme about Black Friday is that we spend an entire day before being thankful for everything we have, but a few hours after the feast is over, we begin trampling each other to buy more and more things we don't need, just because they are inexpensive. Which makes me wonder, why are we so obsessed with materialism and consumerism?

Don't get me wrong, I am a girl. Therefore, whenever I go to the mall, my debit card commits suicide as I spend my life savings. Why do we all love to shop? We all realize we don't need half the stuff that we buy. We know we don't need to spend the money, especially in the current difficult economic state. So what do we get out of shopping?

I've come to realize that shopping and buying new things, in a way, allows you to become a new you. Every store you enter allows you a different taste of something you could be. Go in one store, you can be a skater punk. The next, a hipster. The last, a prep. Your options are endless, and chances are you'll go in each store and come out with something from each store. With these endless options, who you are is endless.

And so with these options, we continue to shop to continue to change every part of who we are. Our appearance is as versatile as the world we live in, and we adapt in our outward appearance to fit in to our ever changing world. But if we always change how we appear, what about the inside? Is that as ever changing?

I'd like to think our inside is stable. At our core, we know who we are. We know the qualities that define us and our strengths and weaknesses, and our outward appearance is a manifestation of the things we do or do not want people to know, but mostly the things we do not want people to know. But we keep all this hidden, as our true identity is our greatest secret is held dear to our hearts and only expelled to those we trust the most, in hope they do not turn against us.

Remember, who you are is beautiful, no matter what. No amount of things you purchase will change who you are. You are beautiful because you are you and you are unique in every way. Your story and your identity are meant to be shared to change someone's life. Let your light shine.

On family....

John Mayer once said, "I believe that my life's gonna see the love I give returned to me."

As I am home for break, I have tons of time to see people I am close with. One of the first places I went was back to my school to see the production of the Crucible. I picked up my friends and we went and I tried to keep a low profile. Funny joke...I got mauled like a baby tiger. Today, I went to school to see teachers and friends....and I got mauled again....

As much as I tried to keep a low profile, I really expected that my arrival would be a non event. I see my arrival as a non event, so why would anyone else see it differently? Don't read this wrong, I'm really not full of myself. But being home and being surrounded by so many people makes me feel so loved and so happy. Whether I am here or far away, I have a huge support system behind me of amazing people who love me unconditionally.

As much as I love Iowa City, in my heart of hearts I did miss home. After an interesting transitional period to college, I have never been more thankful for a group of friends who love and support me indefinitely. I can never express how grateful I am to my friends and family who care about me so much. I will never understand what I ever did to deserve their amazing love and support, but I am thankful for them everyday.

At the end of the day, I am going to my dream school, I am studying what I love, I have a roof over my head, I have food, I have a family who loves me, and I have the best group of friends who are there for me no matter what. I am amazed at my blessings, and I am so grateful. What more could a girl ask for?

On Life Decisions and Singularity....

Today, I met with my academic advisor and another professor to discuss plans for my next three years in school and for graduate school. As I had these discussions, I was able to answer life altering questions with answers that appear to be permanent, and they are what I want with complete certainty. It makes me wonder...

How do I know what I want in life? As they asked questions about things I wanted and how I intended to achieve them, I had no doubt in my answers. I will graduate with my undergraduate in three years with three degrees and honors. I will then move immediately to graduate school. I had no doubt in my mind that taking these risks and making these decisions are exactly what I want in life. I've taken all the right steps there. Within my first semester at school, I have glowing references, and I have dipped my feet into everything I need to to build my resume.

While I am thrilled that I am not stressing about making decisions, I question if I am complacent. Don't get me wrong, none of my goals by any means are a way of me settling. I am ambitious and my goals are incredibly high. However, am I losing something by already knowing what I want, and being settled?

As the conversation developed, all I had left was one decision to make. Do I go to graduate school for gothic architecture, or modern/contemporary art? Gothic architecture is fascinating to me in its developments and grandiosity, but I hate that it is already done and settled. Everything is already known and understood about it. Modern and contemporary art are beautiful to me in that everything is in progress and undecided and still has questions that I can answer. I am basically deciding between stability or adventure.

Then I realized, the decision of stability or adventure is basically my life at this point. By going through my undergraduate quickly and going straight to grad school, there is little stability in that I will be younger than everyone else. I am also studying art history, which is possibly the biggest gamble I could have. Everything I'm doing in life is an adventure. I'm studying art history with little stability, I am constantly making new friends and evolving socially, I'm dating (which is the weirdest thing...ever...), I'm learning things that I never thought I would, and everything is all new.

I'm learning that adventure is stable idea. By committing your life to an adventure, you are committing yourself to the stable idea that nothing is consistent. You are committing to the constant change that life brings. As contradictory as it all sounds, it really quite makes sense.

As for me? I'm happy being stable and committed to adventure...

The Persistence of Memory

Whenever I think about the persistence of memory, I think about the art work of Salvador Dali. Mainly, his work with the melted clock hanging over the tree. In this work, time is morphed into a state of nothingness based on the lack of a clock. This clock is placed over a tree showing the connection of time with nature.

Nature is something that is always shown as being ever changing. I think memory is this same thing. As I prepare to go home for Thanksgiving break, I can not help but consider how my memories are ever changing. I am making plans to see friends when I go home, and it is amazes me how different my plans are to go home, and how much I will miss Iowa City while I am home.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family, but for arguments of this blog I will leave them out of the equation. I have made some of my best friends at home and I am thrilled to see them all. We are spread out across the country, separated by miles and time zones. I have my best friends, and I never doubt their importance in my life. I contemplate how these groups of friends have changed though.

I'm not friends with the same people I was even two years ago. With that being said, I'm not tied down to home anymore for reasons of friends and relationships. As a whole, I am not tied down anywhere. In a stage of life where I have to make decisions that are permanent, I am free as a bird to anyone and anything.

With these freedom, my memories are not persistent. My memories are as beautiful and ever changing as the people in my life. My memories are free to be created and to change with the seasons. As I float around like a leaf blowing in the fall breeze, I allow my memory to blow with me, knowing that the appropriate memories are being planted as seeds that will grow into seeds when time is appropriate.

Off to float...

Sometimes, I feel like Carrie Bradshaw....

Tonight, my roommate called me and asked me to go to dinner with her in the dining hall. On my way there, I ran into a rather attractive fellow. I was feeling pretty confident, having recently returned to wearing my skinny jeans, and I was already wearing my riding boots which are AWESOME. This fellow then proceeded to start a conversation and blatantly hit on me. To me, this is already awkward, considering I have no game, no ability to flirt, and no idea how to date. This fellow then ate dinner with my roommate and I (after my roommate encouraging me to invite him). About half way through dinner, he began to talk about some girl he's interested in (who isn't me, despite him hitting on me), and it got me thinking....

Being a single woman makes me feel like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. No, not by the negative connotations of Carrie's actions. By this, I mean, are there any AVAILABLE men that aren't disgusting and weird? Don't get me wrong, I'm newly single and I am presently enjoying the experience of meeting people and having fun. However, the majority of the men I have met recently leave me hopeless for the human race. They also disprove any theories of evolution.

I'm at a period in life where it has been the decided upon plan that I go to school so I can get a job, and in the process I find someone and I get married. These men that I have met recently range from, you're a creep, to zero personality, to I think you're gay. So, how does an average single woman find a guy that isn't a total weirdo? I mean, maybe after a few more bizarre run ins on my way to the cafeteria I'll strike gold.....or....have another brilliant blog post.

Anyways, shout out to the creep I ate dinner with who is very clearly interested in someone else but felt the bizarre need to hit on me with his unappealing monotone personality and bizarre interest in starting girl fights. You suck.

Next?

Allow me to Introduce Myself...

My name is Rachel. I'm a college kid studying art history and studio arts. With that being said, that sets the tone for everything I write. I try to see the art in life. Everything I do oozes the art kid within me. I analyze everything and look for the beauty and the philosophical content. I have many thoughts, and some of them may be entirely worthless, but some of them I tend to think have value and could help. What better way is there to spew my thoughts into the endless sea of interwebs? All I can hope is my thoughts will float into the sea, and my creativity will serve some purpose somewhere....