I am a very bad blogger. Scarcely deserving of the title, really, except by virtue of the fact that I am, in fact, blogging ("to blog" = "to create a web log") at this precise moment. Of course, you people on the other side of the web have no idea if I composed this in one blaze, or if I wrote one word a day, and thus took a very long time to write this (I didn't, but still). 

I'm still not entirely sure what I'm writing about. Undoubtedly I could find something heart-felt and personal, but I don't really feel like it. Besides, anything heartfelt and personal I could write about now would be very soppy and un-heroic, so I won't burden anyone with that. 

So, I think, I will talk about poetry. 

As those 2.5* people who might actually read this post probably already know, I love Roman epic. Latin dactylic hexameter has the capacity for such storytelling and emotion that it adds a dimension to the poem modern audiences wouldn't even imagine—the closest thing we can really get to the recitation of ancient epic might be musical theater or opera, and even that is a tenuous comparison at best. Latin dactylic hexameter is the most rigid water imaginable—technically, of course, it's locked into the standard long short short (dactyl) rhythm of hexameter, and all the permutations thereof, but what permutations those are! A dactyl may well resolve into a spondee, but no two spondees are made the same; what might be a strongly-felt caesura (pause) in one foot may be barely a breath in the next. So while it does have a formula it must meet, and technically every single line of the Aeneid will scan into that standard pattern, in actual recitation the possibilities are unending with no line quite the same as any other. In some ways, it's the ultimate storytelling medium, methinks. 

But the most remarkable part, in my opinion, is that Latin does all that—in a non-native meter. Dactylic hexameter is Greek's natural meter, and it's actually possible to fall into hexameter when using Ancient Greek conversationally (it does happen, you know); it was only used for Latin epic because the Romans practically worshiped the poetic achievements of Homer (as they ought, and so ought we all) and, consequently, moved away from their natural stress meter into dactylic hexameter. As you might imagine, this led to some horribly clunky poems in Latin and hexameter—but it also led to the Aeneid, which is...THE AENEID. 

There is something to be said for a language that is simply beautiful—there is hardly anything, I'm convinced (saith the Classics major, so be hereafter warned of bias), more beautiful linguistically than a Latin or Greek story told in its proper meter. it's as though the very spirit (more accurately, the Romans might call it a genius) of the people who told these stories first, two or three thousand years ago, lives and breathes again with the recitation of their myths. Amusingly, the result so desired by Hector in the Iliad was indirectly achieved for an entire civilization in these poems—the lives of those who treasured these stories are somehow preserved within the words we read and write and speak. 

Be it far from me to protest "kids these days" (that's praeteritio right there, folks), but I feel convinced that when a language loses its capability to tell its stories eloquently, continuously, and with beauty, it has lost its soul. It may well be practical, but each language is representative of the people who use it—and art is inexorably entwined in our souls. If we find a way to remove that art from our language, what on earth will that say about us?

 *the .5 is for the GoogleBot, who faithfully reads my posts, or so I hear. At any rate, he hasn't come after me yet in the form of Hugo Weaving, so I feel pretty safe.

What with the recent Hunger Games rising, dystopian literature has been reborn in the public eye. It had its modern genesis in the forms of 1984, Brave New World and the like, wherein the story told was often rather bleak and ended without a single ray of hope (at least, that's my recollection). Sort of how The Matrix would have gone if Neo had died right after realizing that the Matrix was all a lie, and where would the fun be in that?

As it is, however, modern dystopian (by which I mean predominantly young adult dystopian, as I'm not highly familiar of any other breed) has more of a hopeful tone. The focus is increasingly not on "oh-what-a-crappy-situation" and more on "crappy-situation--what-can-we-do-about-it?"—that is, less about the horrors of the world and more about how to act in the face of those horrors. To put on my psychologist hat, I'd say that it's indicative of a weariness on the population's part with being merely complacent throughout life. Alternatively, it also just makes a better story. 

As it is, however, my guess is that classic dystopian (i.e. 1984, Brave New World, etc.) has its roots in classical literature (anyone surprised at this, coming from a classics major? I thought not). Time and time again throughout ancient myth we see mortals serving essentially as pawns for the gods' amusement, especially in tragedy. The function that mortals serve in tragedy against the gods is equivalent to the function that individual characters serve in classic dystopian against society. This function is reflected in the lack of control that the mortals/individual characters have within their own circumstances. Modern dystopian, though, is somewhat different—it shares its focus with ancient epic instead of ancient tragedy. Both modern dystopian and ancient epic typically focus around  people actively working toward a certain goal in the face of tremendous adversity—except that in epic, the prospects aren't quite as grim for the protagonists as in tragedy. Granted, even in epic the endings are rarely 'happy', but there's still the possibility of the hero living with a fragment of individuality intact and some semblance of independence. That's got to count for something. 

The issue, of course, is that it's easy to hate a society that forces people to do blatantly horrible things, and it's easy for a character to decide to stand up against such obvious evil. The dangerous dystopia is one that doesn't really look like it—one that looks like it might not be too bad, one that looks fairly normal from the outside, possibly even rather egalitarian. And that's when things get interesting. 

It is, of course, far harder to revolt against something that people are okay with than it is to revolt against something universally despised. Even aside from the whole host of human emotions that might get in the way, including self-doubt and potential apathy, there'd still be the problem of garnering support. That's why books featuring revolutions against "soft" dystopias can be so much fun!

No topic is so profoundly human as revolution. It is in the act of revolution that all the virtues can be brought into one—no one revolts because he hates a society; one revolts because one loves a society and knows that it can be better than what it is. Genuine revolution takes courage; genuine resistance exists in the moments when it's least popular. It allows people to show their best qualities and their worst, though we tend to hope that the latter doesn't occur. It unites people behind a common cause, fueled by a desire to make something better. No one revolts in order to make something worse. Revolt is what happens when people step out of complacency. 

Of course, a genuine revolution doesn't have to come in the form of Operation Valkyrie. Revolutions can occur with no weapons at all, or with lots of them. We tend to hope the former, but the latter is better for books. Revolutions can be as soft as inspiration going out to an entire generation, or as hard as banding together to kill Hitler. 
 
It seems to me that this desire for revolution (whether they know it or not) is what inspires modern readers to go for dystopian. Because they know, somewhere, that someday they could be in the place of those characters. 

Dystopian Lit — Revolution 2.0. Coming continuously to a bookstore near you.

I haven't been around much lately--lots of Uni homework, see--but as the term slowly draws to a close, I've decided to put together a collage of images that have to do with my latest project. You know, the All Wrong But I Wuvs It Anyway one. 

Earlier this week I was listening to a renowned professor recite Latin poetry. It was a fascinating experience, because the words positively flowed. Unlike in English poetry, where we tend to do things by stress, Latin poetry works because of meter and vowels that have to be either long or short because of their position. So, for example, if I want to write something in hendecasyllables, it *must* have eleven syllables with five feet, and in each of those feet there have to be however many syllables, blah blah blah. The point is that meter--which is really to say rhythm--is of vital importance in Latin poetry. As a result, its recitation is almost musical--not quite a song, because the pitches aren't fixed, but nearly chant-like. 

Now, the particular poem I was listening to was a love poem, and the meter is typically considered bouncy (there's an ictus [emphasis] on the first syllable of each foot, which makes it go BUM bum bum BUM bum bum, etc.). That's all well and good, but the gentleman reciting it had a deep, rumbly sort of voice, and with his particular style the poetry seemed to flow like a brook, bubbling and rushing down around rocks in the creek-bed. It seemed as natural and continuous as the wind in the trees, or....

Wait, I thought to myself, what did I just suppose?

And in an instant--an instant more revelatory than any research could be--I got Treebeard's voice. 

You may well laugh, and say, "Ho, Rachel! You've read the books, you've watched the movies, of course you got his voice!" Well, yes, but you see, this instant made it absolutely, totally clear where the inspiration for the Ents' voices came from (remember, Tolkien started his collegiate career as a classicist!)--the sort of rumbly, flowing sound that the poetry has when delivered just so is precisely what I always imagined when I read Treebeard's lines. 

In short, Treebeard was a Roman poet. 

This may seem very silly to you, considering that there is precisely no evidence that Tolkien ever woke up and thought, "Goodness, I'll take some Catullus poetry and use its meter as the basis for Treebeard!" But it is tremendously important to me, because whenever there are those precious moments in which the fantastic and otherworldly become realized in the form of something actual and historical, I find myself that much closer to those in the past. The thing, of course, is that my field happens to be one that is chock full of stories. All of history, really, is a series of stories, and we only consider the present not a story because we live it. Our own sub-created stories, fictional though they may be, reflect certain elements of our own world in their way, though maybe a bit dimly and disguised. Thus, you see, why I am happy to find Treebeard hiding in Latin poetry. 

I don't really have a lot of fears. I'm not afraid of heights. I'm not afraid of spiders, or rats, or snakes, or any of those other creatures that send some people running. Thus, when a Very Wise Person asked me recently what I was afraid of with regards to a particular career choice, my initial response was silent indignation. Just what was he implying? 

Then I thought about it--for a very long time (more like three hours, but still). What was keeping me from pursuing this career--the career I'd wanted for years and years--the career that everyone had thought I'd seize from the moment it was a possibility?  I didn't know. How could I know?

Maybe I should back up. I tend towards being a perfectionist, and it's no fun. Being a perfectionist is not the same thing as redoing a certain pillow design until it's just so; it's not an overwhelming desire to do your best, it's a desire to be the best or else live with perpetual inadequacy, as though you're a defective piece of machinery. It's crippling, debilitating, and it sucks any fun out of doing well. Ultimately, it comes down to a knee-jerk sense of self-worth--not an intellectual one, mind you, but an emotional one--the kind you can't help, and if you could, you still wouldn't know how. 

Some people, like me, are fortunate enough that their ability matches their desire to do exceedingly well. The very concept of failure is devastating, let alone its actuality, but it's not a concept I've ever had to face, because I keep to subjects that I'm good with (which includes overtly breaking common English rules, like not ending sentences with prepositions). For this I'm acutely grateful, but the more something matters, the greater the fear of failure--and that is what perfectionism is, make no mistake--becomes. It feeds on a love for something and turns it into terror, growing proportionately with whatever feeds it--almost cancerous in nature. 

And it's even worse if your natural inclination, as far as character defects go, happens to be pride. Ouch.

Of course, perfectionism is particularly insidious because it hides in the form of honors students, in overachievers, in those who--outwardly--can do it all. It hides under a very nice, well-put-together mask, and ultimately it's acutely destructive. 

And, yeah--this career choice that I'm so politely being vague about? I'm only not saying what it is because if I wash out, then you won't know what I failed in. See what I mean? But suffice it to say that I love it. I love it for so many reasons, not the least of which is natural proclivity. It just works. 

I love it. I want it. And above all, I want to succeed in it. Above all, I don't want to fail. Dear God, don't let me fail. 

The issue, of course, is that a person just can't live like that. Courage is not avoiding confronting your problems, even if your problem  happens to be as nebulous and undefined as some monstrous Blob of Perfectionism. If there's anything I aspire not to be, it's cowardly. If I give it my all and wash out, then, well--I made a valiant effort, and I can go be bitter, but at least I'll have tried. My subconscious enemy has been sabotaging me for years now, providing any number of excuses for not overcoming it. But life's far too short to live by the rules of some amorphous psychological device that a person's psyche uses to subconsciously undercut themselves. 

But I know my enemy. Now I can try to defeat it. And, as you can probably tell, I don't make a habit of losing. 

Imagine it. It's the night after Christmas, and Unsuspecting Girl goes to plug in her dearly beloved iPhone (named Odile, for what it's worth). With one hand firmly wrapped around the iPhone--a layer of silicon between her hand and the phone in all but one spot, where her thumb barely touches the metal case--she reaches her other hand to plug her charger into a power strip. Then--BZZZAAAAAP--an audible crackle sounds in the air and zaps her poor, unsuspecting thumb. She jerks back, hoping that she just imagined it. Then she goes to do it again--BZZZAAAP. Now highly suspicious of her phone, she plugs it into the wall instead, and encounters no further dangers. 

Well. Yeah. As you may be able to tell, Unsuspecting Girl is me. For whatever reason, beloved Odile decided she wanted to kill me last night, and I have no idea why. Until last night, I hadn't had any problems with my iPhone shocking me--ever--and I tend to be a staticky person. But apparently Odile was feeling testy and decided to get back at me, hence the shock. I suspect it wasn't actually the outlet that was shocking me, but I have no proof of why it would do--well, anything. I've only ever been wonderfully kind to Odile, and in return she's given me 3G speeds whenever possible. 

I am, however, very leery of spending too much time with my iPhone now. This is bad, because I need it on my side. If it turns against me, well...let's just say I don't want it watching 2001 any time soon.

And, before you ask--no, I wasn't touching the prongs. 

(anthropomorphisation of technology done only for humorous purposes)

I should say that I love giveaways. Like, really--a lot. And, ever so fortunately for me, YA Highway is having one. But you shouldn't enter it, because that'll decrease my chances of getting something (I jest, I jest). 

Nothing puts me in the holiday spirit quite like drooling over books that I can't possibly have for half a year. (sniffle)

We all have some of those terribly, terribly awkward moments in which time itself seems to stop, as if to say, "Awkwardness alert! Awkwardness alert!" And, yet, somehow those moments keep coming. I have no idea how to slay the Awkwardness Fairy, and thus survive she does. With that in mind, I've compiled a list of Really Awkward Moments for your perusal (in no particular order). 

1. Family Reunions. You see, there's something inherently difficult about trying to remember the names of thirty-some relatives that you see all of once a year. In consequence, there's a lot of, "Hello!...you!..." going on, which is an instant recipe for awkwardness. And that's not including the nearly unavoidable "You've grown so much!" comments, which cease to be a compliment around age 13 and instead turn into a worrisome remark that sends probably 95% of teenage girls running to the mirror just to make sure...

2. Cases Where Life Imitates Art. I'm positive that people-who-are-not-me have also had the unsettling experience of realizing that Circumstance Whatever bears a striking resemblance to Novel Whatever. What was really surprising was when an entire conversation unfolded that was nearly a perfect paraphrase of another conversation out of a certain novel. It was highly unsettling, and made for a very interesting journal entry. And no, I won't tell you what it was, mostly because I scarcely remember it myself. Rest assured, though, that it was very entertaining. 

3. Moments of Awkward Affection--Familial Edition. Much like #1, and often taking place at such, you feel quite strongly that you should probably know this person that is expressing heartfelt sentiments towards you, and yet...just...can't...place...it...

3.2 Moments of Awkward Affection--Romantic Edition. Often juxtaposed with #2. Times when you're really, really sure that someone in your presence is flirting very heavily with someone else in your presence, and there's absolutely no way you, an innocent bystander, can possibly get out of it. Amount of awkwardness is usually directly proportional to the amount of time that said flirting takes place. Extra awkwardness if the flirter is getting no response from the flirtee, and therefore increases the amount of flirtatiousness to the point where you'd think the flirter was suffering from either seizures (from the rapidity of eye-blinks, undoubtedly intended to showcase the eyelashes of the flirter) or a mental disorder (from the various contortions in position intended to demonstrate the attractiveness of said flirter). Frequently, the only solution for this is to incredulously watch, laugh it off inwardly, and then write a blog post about it.

4. Making a joke about some piece of classic literature that, to you, seems patently obvious, only to have the receiver of the joke stare blankly at you for fully ten seconds before you break down and mumble something explanatory about the joke. This is frequently accompanied by a deep feeling of embarrassment at having made what you thought was an obvious joke and, thus, also embarrassing the receiver of the joke, as well as resentment that your joke-receiver didn't get THE MOST OBVIOUS JOKE IN THE WOOOOORLD. (this is frequently preeminently awkward only when the joker has been deprived of coffee, and therefore is utterly unreasonable in nearly every imaginable way)

5. Laughter At Inappropriate Times. This can be either obvious awkwardness, such as when someone in church misreads "immorality" as "immortality" or the like. In that case, though, it's less potent awkwardness because everyone heard it and everyone, then, is feeling awkward. The Most Potent Awkward, however, occurs when it's actually rooted in your own thoughts and feelings. For instance--if, hypothetically, someone made a reference that you found wholly ironic, and you were just barely restraining your laughter, and then looked up at a friend only to see a similar pinched look indicative of restrained chuckles, resulting in not one but two fits of half-choked laughs--yeah. Like that. Of course, full Awkward Potential is only achieved afterwards, when the person who expressed joy looks at you as if to say, "Was it something I said?" resulting in renewed hilarity. 

5.2 Laughter At Inappropriate Times--Being Made To Laugh While Taking A Drink. Self-explanatory. 

There are, obviously, many more subsets of Awkwardness, but these are the ones that--for one reason or another--seem to float around me half the time, and I have no idea why. By far the most obvious, however, is the latter, because--well, have you ever heard someone break out laughing when they had been physically clamping their jaw shut? It's not pretty. And it can hurt your neck. Plus, it's really hard to explain to people why you burst out laughing in the middle of a prayer, or a dramatic reading, or a conversation about the stock market.

Being an odd sort of person whose interests usually draw out dull, blank stares from others, I'm quite used to having to explain and defend my interests and activities to everyone imaginable. I'm not a superb salesman, but I've long mastered the art of talking enthusiastically about a subject in the hopes of evincing a favorable view of said subject out of any given person. One of the things which I frequently have to explain, and defend, and 'sell' all around is my major. Classics. Not just classics, either, but classical philology, the very epitome of impractical study (though I do not believe that is wholly the case, as I'll explain later) and for which I do not love it any less. 

In essence, my field is the study of the classical world through its primary languages (Greek and Latin) and literature. Sounds straightforward enough, of course, but the fact is that most people don't give a whit about the classical world--and if they do, chances are that their interest consists solely of the Vestal Virgins. Part of this, I think, is due to the persistent and nefarious conception that civilization began after the Enlightenment, and thus everything that came before must've been the work of knuckle-dragging ape-men (which is quite clearly not the case). (Also, it was never a widespread belief that the world was flat. At least, not after the 6th c. BC.  Cicero wrote about "orbis terrarum", that is, the "orb of the earth". So please, for the love of humanity, don't perpetuate the stereotype!) 

Even so, having established that (in fact) there was an incredibly high level of cultural sophistication in the classical world, most people still can't fathom why a young woman such as myself would want to study something like that. My canned answer, of course, is that it is an inherently self-reflexive major; that is, one in which you absolutely cannot be lazy with regards to evaluating your own values and actions, and that by studying the ancient world we can better learn how to act and deal with business in our own (translation: they made almost every mistake in the book. Learn from their mistakes so that we don't have to make them ourselves!). 
As it is, however, my core motive is much simpler and much less officious. I really like a good story.
As a kid, I adored books and stories, especially those of epic proportions, and I tried very hard to imitate them with disastrous and mildly comical results. At any rate, that love stuck, and it's still with me today. Fall quarter of my freshman year, I was a history major...and I was also in a classics course. 

In which we read the Iliad. 

And I fell in love. 

Because it was, functionally, the great-grandfather of the stories I loved as a kid, complete with heroes and scumbags alike. The saying goes that there are only five stories in the world (or however many it is these days), and I can believe that--and most of them were written down in classical literature. (I also love Beowulf--so I'm quite consistent in my love of epic poetry, you see.)
And, when it came down to it, I figured that if it were between an impractical major that I disliked and an impractical major that I loved, I'd be better off going with the one I loved. 

But it's not just about the story, you know. A story, by its definition, is the creation of a certain person (or multiple people, potentially, but usually just one) and that person indelibly marks that story as their own by virtue of having written it. You can learn an invaluable amount about an author by reading something they write that is purely fictional--it is very, very hard to write something that is truly dishonest with regards to one's own opinions and ideas. By studying literature, I'm also studying the people who wrote the literature. Fundamentally, I think, all disciplines are about communication. Except possibly engineering, but that's beside the point. 

Of course, that's not the whole story behind my classics major. I could very well read a boatload of literature without ever majoring in it, and be perfectly happy (imagine my distress when I learned being an English major did not guarantee a re-read of Pride and Prejudice every month). So, then, here is the other dirty little secret: I'm kinda good at it. 

I can practically see you, reader, whoever you happen to be (if you exist at all), scratching your head and wondering silently, so as not to offend me, how on earth someone can be good at a humanities major, since it's all the mushy kind of stuff that typically doesn't take special talent of any sort. Well, to an extent, I would agree with you, except I've been proven quite wrong here recently. 
Thus far, both Latin and Greek have come relatively easy for me, and I can't say that I've had trouble grasping the material. Well, I thought that was just because it just wasn't that hard. 

Until I noticed that I got everything done in half the time of my classmates. 
Until I realized how profoundly uncharitable it is to assume that others weren't getting it because they just weren't working.
Until my professor informed me that it's "one of the hardest subjects we offer". 

Until, yesterday, while looking at transcriptions of several sentences in Arabic and their translations, I was able to figure out the verbs and their endings with no experience in Arabic at all (<--this experience with linguistic structure is one of the reasons that I think philology is more practical than people think). 

For whatever reason, my brain takes to languages and critical analysis with relative ease. In consequence, classics and I get along very nicely. Thus, you see, why I have chosen a classics major. Besides, I hear that philology is a good starting point for cryptolinguistics. 

I hate having writerly things to say, and no (that I know of...if there are any of you, for heavens' sake, come out of the woodwork!) writer-friends to commiserate with (yeah, I ended a sentence with a preposition. What are you going to do about it?). The problem, of course, is that while a two people with totally different disciplines can commiserate and, at least, more or less understand one another, it's very hard for a non-writer to understand a writer. Writers are such strange people, you know? It's hard to explain to Random Person A that yes, I do in fact create entire worlds and see nothing abnormal about it is perfectly normal for a writerly type. That's why a blog is nice. Chances are that no one will actually read this post, seeing as I don't plan to repost it on my Social Media Site, but what the heck--I'm writing it anyway. Like my Writerly Projects of an Unspecified Nature, it will probably have a lonely existence in the digital drawer of the internet, but c'est la vie.
At present, I have a story lingering in my head. It's just sort of festering there, creeping into my dreams on occasion. I can see dozens of potential situations that could make it really cool. It's not exceptionally original, nor particularly new, but that's never stopped me before. The thing is that this story is just all wrong. 
It's wrong because it's a genre I've never written before, mostly because I don't usually find it interesting. I usually write in a time of myth, and this is a world filled to the brim with machines. Additionally, it's an area in which I could make dozens of epic mistakes that make people laugh at me just as much as I laugh at authors who make egregious historical errors. Nothing good can come of it, I'm certain. 
So why is it sticking with me? 
In the deepest recesses of my gut, I want it to be something. I want for it to get written and be sparkling and beautiful and amazing. I just don't want to risk the disappointment that I know would come if I tried to write it. 
And, even while I'm convinced that that's the case, there's a little niggling fear that is informing me kindly that this is what could be notable for me, and that if I don't write it, I'll be utterly destroying my future and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE. (note: not an actual example of the way my brain thinks.)
You get the idea. 
So. Confession. My name is Rachel, and I happen to write. No, I will not write you in my novel (unless you really tick me off), and no, you will never ever ever ever read anything fictional that I write unless it has the letters ARC stamped across the top or is buyable in an actual, legitimate bookstore. Thanks.