You Get What You Give

The following is an excerpt from the play “Tartuffe” by Moliere. The context of the dialog is this: Mariane loves Valére; but, the hypocrite, Tartuffe, has deceived Mariane’s father, Orgon, and Orgon is trying to force her to marry Tartuffe after he had already set the date for her and Valere’s wedding. So, Dorine, Mariane’s hand-maiden, is upset with Mariane because, after coming to her defense against her father’s ludicrous demand, Mariane said nothing and sat idly by basically having a pity party in the corner. In essence, Dorine is about to light into Mariane.

M: “I’ll kill myself, if I’m forced to wed that man.”

D: “I hadn’t thought of that recourse. How splendid!

Just die, and all your troubles will be ended!

A fine solution. Oh, it maddens me

to hear you talk in that self-pitying key.”

M: “Dorine, how harsh you are! It’s most unfair.

You have no sympathy for my despair.”

D: “I’ve none at all for people who talk drivel

and, faced with difficulties, whine and snivel.”

M: “No doubt I’m timid, but it would be wrong…”

D: “True love requires a heart that’s firm and strong.”

M: “I’m strong in my affection for Valére,

but coping with my father is his affair.”

D: “But if your father’s brain has grown so cracked

over his dear Tartuffe that he can retract

his blessing, though your wedding day was named,

it’s surely not Valére who’s to be blamed.”

M: “If I defied my father, as you suggest,

would it not seem unmaidenly, at best?

Shall I defend my love at the expense

of brazenness and disobedience?

Shall I parade my heart’s desires, and flaunt…”

D: “No, I ask nothing of you. 

Clearly you want to be Madame Tartuffe…”

(Later:)

M: "Dorine, I beg of you..."

D: “No you deserve it; this marriage must go through.”

M: "Not Tartuffe! You know I think him..."

D: “Tartuffe’s your cup of tea, and you shall drink him.”

Now, obviously, Dorine was being melodramatic, because she wanted to show Mariane that if she wasn't even going to try to do anything about it then she couldn't complain about the outcome. Don't worry; Mariane ends up with Valére and Tartuffe goes to prison and they all live happily ever after because it's a comedy. 

I decided to write about this because something has persistently been on my mind, and after I read this I thought it was the most perfect illustration that I could use where everyone that it reminded me of would remain anonymous. 

I have become thoroughly convinced that people who are their "own worst enemy" and are always at war with themselves and don't like who they are or the situation they're in, are actually just scared... to death... or at least scared to inactivity (like Mariane) and lifelessness, which one could say is equally detrimental. Mariane was scared of opposing her father (who epitomizes "bark worse than bite;" he's harmless; a paper-tiger), and if it weren't for Tartuffe being exposed at the end, she would have been stuck with that nasty scum bag for the rest of her miserable life. And how easy would it have been to fix that situation if she'd only "rubbed some dirt on it," "manned up" or what have you and told her father "No! I will not marry Tartuffe, because he is a nasty piece of scum that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, and you won't be doing yourself any favors if you don't get your head out of his rear end, and open your eyes before he really robs you blind!" Luckily for her, it worked out; but no thanks to her whiney butt. Folks, that was a comedy, but real life is rarely as merciful on people who are too scared to try and change things. You may be scared of you father (or whatever appropriate authority figure), or scared of failure, or scared of yourself and what you might become if you fail at changing. Whatever you're afraid of or avoiding (whether you realize it or not), just stop it. No offense, but stop being so pathetic... It's really hard to feel bad for you when you just sit there and whine about how much you suck at life and how much your life sucks, while never actually putting forth real effort to change yourself/your life. Don't be your own worst enemy, or you'll get what you deserve. 

I could rampage in much more detail, but I'll shut up.

So here is an update on the window/art/picture-holder/welcome-sign that I made for my and Clayton's apartment. :D

This was before the welcome sign.

This is the welcome sign... inspired
by "southernness" 

Again. Might change things later
but this is it for now.

 

who reads titles anymore

This was supposed to posted at the beginning of last week, so, sorry if some stuff is a little off :/ Alright so I always suck at starting these posts off soo I am just gonna jump right in there. Sunday was Mother's Day, just in case any of you non decent folks didn't remember. S0, most of the family went to Summerville (that fantastic town in GA that is the size of my bathtub). My parents and I went on Wednesday. Thursday we went to pick up my GPS hating Aunt Kristy at the ATL airport. The trip for the most part was fine on the way there but when we picked her up is when my GPS decided to stop speaking to us and then we were basically just guessing where to go. I think it knew how my aunt felt about it. BUT ANYWAYS, we finally just stopped and got directions. By the way, Atlanta is crazy and I will never ever live there. Thursday night my BFF/cousin Shelby finally arrived. The next day we went to see Something Borrowed. Now, I particularly do not go for "chick flicks" as they are extremely predictable and non realistic. HOWEVER, this movie was awesome, for a chick flick anyway. So everyone should go see it. Then Saturday some other family members came over for lunch. They mainly consisted of cousins that I am not close to and have nothing in common with, but don't you worry I was still forced to talk to them. They aren't THAT bad, I am just a horrible conversationalist so I tend to make things awkward and what not. It isn't a pretty sight. If you ever meet me in person and I'm acting a little strange don't take it personally. I am just socially awkward. I am trying to work on it though, so we'll see how that goes.

ANYWAYS.. My aunt sent me an article earlier this week and one of the last paragraphs stated "The more you love the Universe, the more it loves you. You can sulk, mope and despair about what's not right in your life, or you can look at what you do have and find something there to value and appreciate. Changing your attitude changes everything." I love that.

Irrelevant Title. (Supreme Double Entendre)

Sometimes I have the overwhelming desire for my blog to mean something substantial and only write things that are serious, intellectual and/or thought-provoking. But, then I'm reminded that a lot (sometimes too many) of the things in life are serious/intellectual/thought-provoking, and I that's why I do things like habitually leave my t.v. on Comedy Central, avoid all things dramatic except for my crime shows, and attempt to blog about things only from my whimsical perspective in order to avoid slipping into the labyrinth of melancholy. Don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating denial or apathy or pollyanna-esque behavior, because I do believe that, sometimes, just like Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst) said in Elizabethtown,

you need "to get into the deep beautiful melancholy of everything that's happened;" because, sometimes, it's good for you. Besides, if you don't, and you just suppress it and bury it deep down inside, like statistically most middle-aged white men do, then you'll eventually erupt and go on a crazy, homicidal rampage and ruin your life. And no one wants that. Also, if this melancholy is a product of your own foolishness and its consequences, then, if you let Him, God can/will help you learn something from it and eventually get you back onto the narrow path you deviated from, with some newly acquired knowledge to apply this go-around. Believe me when I say this, because most of my significant life experiences have consisted of this, because God knows that my "spirit is willing but the flesh is weak". Jesus actually said that in Matthew 26:41 but Paul knows a lot about it too, and he wrote 2 really good chapters on it in Romans, hence I linked them. Anyyyyyway, all of this was sort of an unintentional lead up to a let down, because what I was supposed to blog about was Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins." I honestly don't even want to italicize it because it's so blasphemous, I fear drawing any attention to it; but, I guess that's inevitable seeing as how I'm writing about it. I wanted to wait until I had the chance to listen to my own pastor's sermon addressing this issue, but it seems that isn't going to happen due to "technical difficulties." So here goes my personal epistle on the matter.
  
     When I was in high school and participated in Young Life, one of the things we did was watch these Nooma videos by Rob Bell. Bell is artsy/hip/cool and very alluring with his thick-rimmed glass, platinum blonde/trimmed hair, trendy clothes, and intimidatingly precocious demeanor. So when I thought he was the coolest preacher ever and wanted to show my parents one of the videos we had watched, I was sort of surprised that they were not as captivated by him as I was. No, they didn't really like what he said at all, because they knew that I hadn't noticed what they had: a subtle, hidden deviance from truth. My parents knew 3 years ago that there was something shady about Rob Bell and the things he acts so sure of. From then on, if I watched one of his nooma's, I did so skeptically. I would like to clarify, also, that I don't think Young Life or my leaders at the time had any perception of Bell's clandestine nature and certainly did not foresee him writing a book that forsakes the basic principles of Christianity. I like that word (forsake) here, because it's eloquent in its divinity.
  
     The idea in this book that is under the most scrutiny is that of the notion that hell does not exist, which is absurd (it's in the Bible more times than I can count). The title itself is misleading and irrelevant to that specific (asinine) concept. Yeah, love does win: if you love Jesus, you won't lose your life (perish), but you'll win everlasting life. But that's not what Bell was trying to convey when he titled his book. I don't actually know what he was trying to say, because I can't possibly imagine what sadistic, twisted paradox he was trying to apply to that title. (Also I haven't read it, nor am I going to.) All I know is that he knew what he was doing when he named it that because he is gifted in the art of rhetoric and knows how to grab people's attention. I'm not trying to make Rob Bell seem like the anti-Christ because God loves him too, and I'm sure, is very upset about Bell's unfortunate divergence from truth. But I'm not going to let any pity I might have for him overwhelm my scrupulosity of his deceitfulness.
    Honestly, this is all just very sad, and I hope that if you were unsure before you read this, now you know.

Well, I'm still not readily "equipped" on the topic that I was planning to blog about today, but hopefully I soon will be. I'm also hoping I won't simply forget to talk about it at all because of a lost enthusiasm due to time delay. But, fortunately, I do have other things to talk about today.
  As you all [hopefully] know, this weekend was Mother's Day weekend, which, for me, meant that I got to spend a good 3 days away from most civilization in the little treasure of a town called Summerville, GA (right next to Snuffyville, if that helps you out). It also meant that I spent good, quality time with my family, including my cousin/b.f.f.a.e.a.e., Katie (the other author of this blog, which I would hope you know by now). Also included was an out-of-the-ordinary, non-Christmas visit by my Aunt Kristy, all the way from New York. Anyway, to pass some of the time, Katie and I took a little trip to Rome to see a movie. Unfortunately, Rome in this instance, is only that of Floyd County, GA (for those of you who aren't aware of this charming north-Georgia town, either), and not that of Italy, which I would love to see some day. But I digress. The movie we chose was Something Borrowed.

Now, I don't normally rant or rave over romantic comedies due to the (typically) completely false view of life/love that they subliminally give women of all ages; but, this one was really good. Maybe it's just because John Krasinski is one of my many celebrity boyfriends or maybe it's because this romantic comedy was particularly more comedic than most (thanks to John no doubt); but either way, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Aunt Kristy also brought her own selection of movies for the family to enjoy together. One of which was The King's Speech. I had been wanting to see this, mainly because it won some awards and I wanted to see what was so good about it. Well, it won those awards for a reason, because it was superb. I used that word because it sounds British to me and I thought it was appropriate.
And last but not least of the movies I saw this weekend is Water for Elephants, which I fully expected to be just like another one of those Nicholas Sparks books-turned-movie (despite the fact that it was definitely not written by Sparks). I guess that just shows my severe lack of insight into the world of literature (probably due to the fact that I don't read). Anyway, suffice it to say I was very pleasantly surprised. There were even a few action sequences that actually did have me on the "edge of my seat" saying "Get him! Get him!"... Oh and Rob Pattinson didn't hurt, either. 

Here are a couple pictures of the card I drew my mom for Mother's Day, by the way.

I suppose they're kind of personal, but I'm pretty proud of this since I'm not typically the best at hand-lettering.

Mi Cumpleaños Feliz

So basically Clayton is The Best Gift Giver in the world. Maybe it has to do with being thoughtful, or maybe it’s just a gift God gave her. But either way I’m lucky to have her as a friend because I got the best birthday presents EVER, and I don’t deserve it because I’m probably the least thoughtful person ever. I’m not saying I give bad gifts; it’s just that they look that way when you compare them to Clayton’s gifts because hers are so perfect. She knew what I wanted before I even knew it. Monday’s gift was an e.l.f. eye makeup palette, which, for me, is basically the equivalent of getting a professional art kit with every color acrylic under the sun. Tuesday’s gift was the movie Easy A because we love it and are infatuated with Emma Stone. Wednesday’s gift was my “Night Y’all” sleep shirt/gown because we’re southern (thank God) and we’re proud. Thursday’s gift was a ticket to see Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors who literally become the most magical couple/musicians/spectacle all over again, every time I see them. And Friday’s gift was the most marvelous pillow I’ve ever laid my eyes on: my Fruit Bird Opera Singer pillow named Frederica Von Stade. 

Yes, it was quite eventful; I even involuntarily screamed and accidentally woke up her slumbering stepfather. Anyway, it was definitely the best birthday ever, from the fact that I'm officially not a "teenager" anymore to being held against my will and forced to stay up until 12 a.m. the night of my birthday and while simultaneously enjoying the little verbal absurdities of my friends including "So, is your mom cute like you or what? What's going on there? What does she look like?"  Well, William, she's beautiful, that's what. 

     Anyway, I spent my real birthday at my Papa's house. (You know, the guy who's the cat's meow of everything cool?) So, needless to say I accumulated even more awesome old pictures, which I will be sharing in a post soon to come.

I'm not going to talk about anything else in this post because I am waiting until I'm equipped with all of the necessary information for my next post, which will probably come pretty soon...hopefully...