thought of the day

to me, life is more about doing what you love rather than what you can’t stand.

salem and my birthday two weeks ago

i know i have not written since august, but hey, i figured i was really bored and have pretty much no homework today. i have a one-page art history paper due thursday, but oh well. perhaps i will just watch "it might get loud" later...such a good documentary. it's with jimmy page from led zeppelin, the edge from u2, and my favorite, jack white of the white stripes/raconteurs/the dead weather. i watched it for the first time this summer with jon, and he later bought it for me. so good.

well i am officially 21. it's odd. that's all i will have to say. my family got me luggage for my birthday, and i'm actually pretty happy to have my own set. on one of our family pieces of luggage, the extendable arm to pull the suitcase on wheels won't open, so it's pretty annoying. my luggage is a pretty deep maroon color. i can't wait to use it when i go to bermuda with the browns this coming summer. i am considering on applying to several internships again for next summer, a couple of which are in missouri. eek. i am very set on going on this cruise to bermuda, though. i keep thinking to myself that this is going to be my last official summer vacation (unless i end up teaching for some reason), and i want to still enjoy my life while i'm young. i think life is more about having fun and doing what you want/love while you're still young instead of wishing you could go back and do those sorts of things when you're older and sucked into your job. i have no idea what my job situation will be....part of me feels i have the potential to really push to get an artistic job, but another part of me keeps reminding me that lots and lots of people who graduate with a college degree do NOT get a job in their desired field...i hope going to art school was not a waste. i remember several times over the past few years at college when i reconsidered my major and wondered if i should leave the art school. i'm glad i've stayed, because it's like damn, i have been doing art since i was in my high chair. it would be an absolute waste for me to stop doing something that i've been doing my whole life. it brings me too much joy.

it's funny, but a random tidbit i learned from my art history class: rembrandt absolutely loved his own art, but at the time, people HATED it. he was almost always broke, but he kept doing what he loved. his last self-portrait of himself depicts him as an old man, laughing. i love it.

yesterday my suitemates and i went to salem. it was fairly spooky....the last time i went i was about 12 i believe, and it was with Girl Scouts. it only cost us $10 per person to go yesterday...such a good deal. we went to the salem witch museum, then shopped along the streets. it was really cold and windy, but still interesting and fun. we decided to go to this attraction called "the witches cottage." it was a "4-D" experience, with people on stage in this tiny little theater scaring the crap out of you. it was fun for me cause i love getting scared for some odd reason. then we went across the street and did the witch dungeon museum. it was a really good re-enactment of the trial of elizabeth proctor. the tour led us down into a recreation of the dungeon used to keep the accused victims of the witch trials in 1692. the original dungeon was dismanteled in the 1950's. they had one of the original wooden beams from the dungeon in the museem, and the woman who ran the tour said if you touched it, it would bring you good luck. we touched it and i was really spooked hahaha. i learned that if you were put into a dungeon during that time, you had to PAY to be in jail, and pay for a decent sized cell. you had to pay for food and even a bed. ridiculous. they told us one of the types of cells they used was called a "coffin cell", in which a person was chained to the wall and the cell was built directly around and up against them. people would stay inside those cells for months. that is awful.

it's amazing to me how big of a mistake the whole witch trails were. people realized once they were over, they had made a huge mistake for killing those 20 or so people. i also learned that during the 1600's and aroud then, women were barely permitted to do anything outside of the house. the girls going to meet tituba in the woods to play games and do magic tricks was all in good fun. i can see how they'd get wrapped up in it since they had nothing better to do for fun back in the day. i can picture how it got so blown out of proportion because they probably fed off each others' excitement and fear. anything not in the bible was considered devil's work during that time.

the last thing i learned is about the public's perception of witches. witches are really people who practice the wicca religion, where there is a god and a goddess and their practices honor the changing of the seasons and relationship to the earth. the term "warlock" is never used, for it means "traitor." the reason why witches are popularyly portrayed as evil is because of instances like the salem witch trials, where "witches" were considered followers of the devil. because their practices were not in the bible, people referred to them as ugly, child-eating, green-faced ladies on broomsticks. so bizarre but really interesting.

overall when it comes to salem, i feel like if you go once, it's enough. i feel like the only time really worth going again (if i ever do) is actually on halloween. that must be so awesome. i saw a few signs for events they are having there over the next couple weekends. one is a "grimm fairtyale" party, where you have to dress as a grimm fairytale character....so awesome. another was a "vampire's ball" where you have to dress glamourous and gothic. that seems so cool and intriguing.

i am in love with the halloween season, and autumn. but come and go halloween, it is such a debbie downer afterwards. celebrating halloween at college isn't really my favorite...nothing beats trick or treating as a kid. i have no idea what i am going to be for halloween, nor what i am doing. hopefully i will figure that out soon!