Now My Life is in Bricks

I’ve been thinking about war a lot lately. There’s the Occupy [fill in city or street here] campaigns happening. Technology is going crazy but mostly it’s this class I’m taking. It’s called the History of War and it’s a history/international relations course. The premise is that war is not foreign it is within us. It amazes what people are capable of in both positive and negative ways but I wonder what within me is capable of war because there is no question, as a human being, I am capable. I may crack, in fact I believe I would, but I am capable. I love dart gun fighting and video games. My favorite games growing up were Rayman and Spyro a game based on punching everyone between you and your goal and setting fire to or bashing into those who block your path. You are relentless, your goal is the one true cause and you have to follow it. We keep talking in this course about the psychological effects of the gore. I couldn’t eat my lunch today because I was reading about Waterloo and the wounded and the horrible horrible stories that come from the lecture on Napoleons invasion of Russia. Why do we do it? I mean according to the logic of this course it is part of what we are. I believe that, I have felt a crowd mentality and I have felt strongly for a cause. I just hate the idea that we are all capable of killing in the right circumstances with the right cause. That shouldn’t seem so bad, really, I mean we are animals and it is ignorant to deny it. The very reason we have families is based on the protection of young. Don’t soldiers go into battle for posterity’s sake? But to kill, to apply a force to another body with the intent of ending a life. I can’t even do trust falls and put my body weight on others. That’s why the gun is so scary; it would let someone like me become able to kill. I am not half-bad with a dart gun if I do say so myself. Last year I turned the back of the door to my room into a target practice with scotch tape circles of varying sizes to aim for.

I guess the video games thing counts for more than I realize. People are always asking if they make kids more violent I wonder now if they don’t just highlight how violent we already are. Our existence is based on the idea that we are special. We have large brains but look how we apply them. My professor pointed out in his first lecture where he brought so many these ideas I’m grappling with that if war were not part of humanity why have we fought so many of them? I can’t answer him. It is the same reason that after my intro to quantum mechanics I am waiting for someone to prove a solid, rather than probable, universe to me. It’s not that I want to believe something but in the waiting time for new research I have to be content with skepticism rather than solid acceptance. I love video games but I don’t want Spyro to be violent. I mean he’s just a kid dragon and he goes on a massacre every game.

I believe in the usefulness of college in a very romanticized way. I believe it is for self-development. It is time set aside for a scholar to solidify their own philosophy and identity. I don’t believe in taking a course for the sake of taking a course. If your goal is to enter the workforce rather than self-development then that should be a separate track. I know I attend college because I don’t know who I am or where I am in the world and I want to discover that. I take each course as a lesson plan for self-development. I was dealing with some pretty bad depression last year and was enrolled in a course based on the classics. I didn’t go into the class with the view that I was about to read what a bunch of dead white guys said and didn’t apply anymore. A classic is a classic because somebody said something in a way that nobody has figured out how to say better. If someone can describe heaven and hell better than Dante we’ll stop reading his Comedy. I wanted to know what the men who said it best had to say about happiness and the meaning of life. We started off with the Aristotles Nichomachean Eithics which is all about what it is to be happy. I am taking a course load this semester which is teaching me why not to be happy. I am learning about war and technology. I am learning about why the North and South decided that killing each other was the best course of action. I am learning about how to teach students by learning how to analyze myself and my life. I want to be a better person. I guess I’m just scared that that phrase is an oxymoron.

The only person we live with all of our lives is ourselves and a rejection of self is a rejection of life. Not rejection of self in the eastern sense. I live in this body; I must maintain and care for this body. I have this self and I must prune my tree of attributes to make myself into the best I can possibly be. If I live my life in the belief that what I am is evil and wrong than what is the point? When I get into conversations about what we’re all aiming for and what we are capable of that is beautiful, I wonder if everyone before us thought the same way and then maybe didn’t succeed? I am a historian and I know that my personal philosophy is that those who came before us were like us. I think if you study history with the belief that people who came before us might as well be aliens and we can’t understand them without viewing them as foreign then the true detriment is to yourself. It is not just that you will not be able to understand past peoples on a more human level it is that the similarities you will find between yourself and those past peoples will cause you to alienate parts of you. Again a rejection of self is not justifiable in this way because you are only asking to never feel happy. Joy cannot last if the foundation, you, is not open to joy. Anyways if people before me thought of crazy schemes to get everyone to get along and be happy and we don’t all get along and aren’t all happy then who’s to say I won’t fail? This isn’t a reason not to act. Like rejection of self, rejection of action can only lead to a fruitless life. But is there such a thing as ensuring success if the very idea of succeeding doesn’t seem possible? It seems to me that the world spins a certain way and we’re all on it for a very brief time. It doesn’t matter how you spin it, our time is limited [earth spinning pun intended] I guess the meaning of my blog title has changed a little since getting back to school. I love legos and my life in bricks is important to me but what I’m really trying to do and what makes this blog so hard to write and so easy to write is that my life is in bricks and I’m trying to figure out how to build it. There are no directions I can do what I want and build whatever I can imagine but the bricks have much heavier implications than just building a tardis. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t43VgJ4U9_Q&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aryowLsJJY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74ezTBSuKy0

New City New Post

Hello there everyone!

So summer got a little crazy for awhile but I'm back up in Boston now and after a great first week of classes I finally had time to sit down with my Legos :D

This is the part where I write something thoughtful. I'm going to set a few goals for the coming semester so you, my beloved readers (a girl can have imaginary friends at this age right?) can hold me to them.

1. I will update this hopefully every week but if not every two weeks. Cut me some slack I do too much.

2. I will build beautiful things for you my dear friends.

3. My epic roommate Jamie will make it onto this blog and we will have pretty songs we sing for you with our band Hannahbal (the pun is always intended)

4. I will start posting my webcomic up here. It is as yet untitled but the jokes are so bad that titling them might raise your expectations too much.

It's a new school year which is like a new year so these are my new school year resolutions.

But here's the part you all really came to see. The product of many hours of Doctor Who all summer

LEGO TARDIS!

The Watermelon Ice Cream Incident

Life’s greatest moments are those when you lose yourself in the simple. A lazy summer has me thinking a lot about what makes a moment memorable. I’ve been thinking about an experience I had when my parents came to bring me home from Boston. I spent a long while trying to figure out what was worth showing them in this place I called home. But as I went down the list of amazing experiences I’d had throughout the city I realized that what made each place so special to me was the story of getting there. Whether it was stumbling around MIT far too late at night, a three-hour walk to find somewhere only a few T-stops away or the places you wander into after attending a convention none of these places were memorable for the place but for the journey. So let me tell you about one of my journeys from before Boston, a deceptive story where it’s not the place at the end of the journey that makes this memorable but the journey itself.

So my friend Em travels to Spain on at least every year. Cool fact I learned from going with her once, everything is delicious there. But this story takes place before I learned that lesson.

One night we have Em’s family over for dinner and as the parents are sitting and chatting over coffee Em turns to me with that crazed look she gets in her eyes before we end up on an adventure and said to me, “ I need watermelon ice cream.”

“They make watermelon ice cream?” I asked incredulously.

“In Spain. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted and I need some right now.”

“You just got your license why don’t we ask if we can go for a drive.” The look was still there so I knew the chances of us this being more than meets the eye were high but this seemed innocent enough so I asked and when the confirmation came in we were in the car in 30 seconds.

Now my car at the time was a 1993 silver Crown Victoria and this was not a young car but I loved it. That was the Boat. I’ll end up talking about the boat a lot more, trust me.  

Anyways, I ramble. So we hopped in the car, turned on Bon Jovi and drove off towards the closest grocery store and the possibilities its freezer section offered.

But alas we were doomed to disappointment. Now the grocery stores in my area don’t skimp on variety but watermelon was not among that variety. Most nights we would have called one stop and a failure an evening well-hunted and returned home to make up crazy stories but that was not this night. This night was destined to become the Watermelon Ice Cream Incident.

And so we ventured on towards Whole Foods a sure fire for your oddly flavored normal foods. Soon we found ourselves standing in front of the large section of ice creams with flavors of fruits I hadn’t even heard. We found flavors we hadn’t imagined people would want ice cream to taste like (and I’ve watched Iron Chef before) but no watermelon. We even asked an employee who told us that they’d just run out. I take that as proof fate was against us that night.

So we moved on, winding our way further from our homes. We found ourselves at Wegmans and believe me their parking garage is not somewhere you want to get lost in at night, no directions to find your way to the entrance, the exit, or even the store itself.

 Yeah, I know, this is a boring story about me driving around with my friend to find some ice cream but there’s something between the driving and listening to Slippery When Wet. There’s the feeling between the actual trajectory and the goal that makes a simple experience like driving to find watermelon ice cream an adventure referenced for years after as one of those great nights. You know you’re in it when you slide your windows down during “Livin’ on a Prayer” and the driver beside you smiles. Something out of the ordinary happens and you know this moment you can’t replicate it, you can’t grasp it but you’re making a memory. And that moment is so sweet, as sweet as watermelon ice cream.

                                      A year later in Spain we found our watermelon ice cream

Castillos de Arena en la Arena (Sandcastles in the Sand)

I was “Hannah, you can call me Nyx” but upon my return from Mexico I have been dubbed “Tannah” until further notice. Have no fear Boston shall suck every drop of Melanin from my skin like a thirsty vampire. Oh Boston such a cunning city, lock us inside and take away our memories of what the sky looks like.

                                                             Boston Sky (actual image)

I had a good number of adventures south of the border. I met James Bond, went swimming in a cave, read seven whole books, saw a thunderstorm over the ocean (breathtaking), and went on a cruise the week before. Yeah, in terms of summer vacations this was right up there.

I have to say my love of lazing around may border on obsession, ask me what I’ve done in a given day and the activities I list may take an hour total to complete. However, lazing around on a beach or by a pool is somehow different. There’s a breeze that you just can’t get anywhere else and an openness that crushes you into such a tiny dot that you can’t help but start to place yourself in the grand scheme.

But truly I’m not a beach person. I spent the majority of my childhood attempting to enjoy the beach like everyone else and feeling oddly empty about it. However, I have my own way of enjoying the beach. Sand castles are boring, unless you’re an amazing sand artist who can make something like this:

                                                         With Legos, easy. Sand, not so much.

So instead you can either try to be content with dinky sand piles

or you can create giant canal systems that fill up holes you’ve created for the moats of your nonexistent castle (less interesting to make) PRAIRIE SAND KINGDOM DEFENDED BY MOAT!

                                      Artists version of Prairie Sand Kingdom Defended by Moat

The ocean itself has no appeal to me. I have been pulled under too many times, I have tasted that water and I don’t want to go back. I know what happens in the waters at the beach and that should enter no mouth. I guess I’m being really negative on beaches which is odd because as much as I don’t physically enjoy having sand everywhere (discovery of sand in mouth yaaaaaayyy----) I really think they’re beautiful. I guess it’s just beaches at night that I love. The sticky feeling goes away and just leaves a cool openness where the mind can wander.

Fun fact #1 about “Tannah”: I’m afraid of the dark.

But the last night in Mexico I knew I had to see stars. I went camping in New Mexico one time and since then I’ve had a hunger for stars suburbia can’t hope to quench, much less good old Boston. So stars are worth walking in the dark.

Okay I lied, stars are worth walking into the dark the same way one gets into a hot bathtub. Slowly slide a toe in, pull it out, try again, nope, try, nope, try hmm maybe this isn’t so bad, nope. Until finally you’re sitting by the water with your neck at an angle it really doesn’t want to be at.

So this is me, on the beach, hating the sand, loving the stars.

I leave with a fitting song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_yiprpYwNI

Taking Back the Bricks

So here it goes; embarking upon the grand adventure of blog writing. Checklist:

1. Cheesy opening line-  Check
2. Content-   In progress

Step two. So let’s start with the question why Legos?

Like many children of my generation I leveled up from basic toys that could sing and spin with many shiny moving parts to be thrown into the joyous world of Legos.

While my brother built machines in preparation for battle with this cubic rainbow world, I saw an opportunity to grow something. The pile of bricks was like a celestial soup just waiting for some ones will to form it into whole worlds of imagination. My fathers’ generation of Lego sets contained basic colors and an encouragement to explore new possibilities. Newer Lego sets are more devious with sets based on movies, games or Lego company adventures, so that you can’t be satisfied until you own the whole set. But what does that lead to? I’ve had the Harry Potter troll in the bathroom scene in Legos sitting in my room since I first put it together. Why you ask? Because when you buy the set for a droid ship and you build it, what next? It’s huge, its taken hours of your life. How can you just break that down, mixing it into the obscurity of Lego soup? Instead my brother and I had a sort of cycle where once something was built it sat out long enough for us to stop feeling bad about the idea of tearing it apart and then promptly proceeded to do just that. But just to be clear this doesn’t always work. Take for example my find while organizing Legos for this blog.

My brother and my reaction? Not to tear it apart but put it back to together so it can continue to sit and look pretty. Legos are trophy wives. I’m sad too but luckily “with the hands we will destroy and with these hands we will rebuild.” You hold the power. This blog seeks to take our beautiful wives off of the shelf, stop paying dues to the country club and make stories from the broken down pieces of our childhood trophies. Sounds epic no? Well this blog is really supposed to be funny so can I just be immensely bother by the following image from the Lego store?

                                                        Why do we need a separate section? 

So here we go, taking back legos.