Blood and Glory

I've had an interesting intertextual experience the last few days. At the same time that I've been finishing the extended editions of Lord of the Rings, I've been starting the 10 part HBO series Band of Brothers. I didn't see any obvious connections the first night that I watched some of both, and I think it had to do with the order in which they were watched. When I watched part one of Return of the King, and then watched part one of Band of Brothers, I didin't make any mental notes on the relationship between the two. Therefor, it was quite a shock the other night when I found it really jarring to go from two episodes of Band of Brothers, to the final portion of Return of the King.
Part of what is refreshing, inspiring or at least uncomplicated about Lord of the Rings, is that Sauron really is a faceless, one dimensional evil. Orcs and Uruk-Hai are merciless monsters whose deaths we can really root for. When we see Merry and Pippin rush at the Black Gates with swords raised, we are struck by their bravery and courage, and want to see them victorious in killing as many of the enemy as possible. We love seeing the Rohirrim ride onto Pelinor fields, stomping over the orcs and chopping off heads as they go, because evil is being stomped out, and the riders are overcoming their fear and fighting for a glorious cause against all odds. Basically, when we watch the battles in LOTR, our cheering for the warfare is not bloodthirsty- it's cheering for good triumphing over evil, courage conquering fear, nobility and strength overpowering darkeness.

But when you watch these massive battles, after watching portrayals of real WWII battles, the experience isn't so comfortable. If you don't know, Band of Brothers is based on the real experiences of one company, through the entirety of the war, and at the start of each episode, you hear interviews with some of the actual men who are characters, but it won't be revealed till the last episode which men these are, so you truly don't know who is going to survive or not. Even though the series is evocative in style of Saving Private Ryan, etc, watching Band of Brothers is a totally different experience because you really don't know who's going to make it from skirmish to skirmish. You can't rest in the secure narrative of a Hollywood plotline because this is what really happened: your main character could be shot randomly at any moment. It's intense. Well, add to that, that it's so much harder to watch these men, who are for the most part, terrified by what they're doing, have to run around shooting as many people as possible. You watch body after body fall, sometimes enemy, soemtimes not. And when the company succeeds in taking a position, it really means that they managed to kill everyone who was there. You really get a sense of how ridiculous war is. It comes down to a mere matter or killing more of them before they can kill more of you.
So the shift from watching two parts of Band of Brothers, to the final stands of Return of the King, the "glorious battles" were harder to watch. It's not that I questioned suddenly whether or not Aragorn and company were justified in fighting to save Middle Earth, but it was more that I found it less easy to want to let myself enjoy the battles. Only an hour or so ago, watching men fight and kill one another was stressful, sad, confusing, heartbreaking, and scary. Now it was (supposed to be) inspiring, uplifting and glorious. And allegorically, it totally is, but I just couldn't sit with it in the same way. It's actually something I've been thinking about recently: when it is that we feel roused and inspired by battle stories, where in real life, we cringe at it. I've had this image with me for awhile which I really won't try to explain because it wouldn't come across by writing it, and wouldn't make sense, but basically, this idea of a battle where the "good guys" defeat the enemy by disarming them through embrace. And I'm not gonna break it down too much, because I wouldn't succeed in making it less cheesy than it already sounds, but in my head it's very dramatic and cool, so just trust me on it. But could there have been a way, even in LOTR, that blood isn't the means by which victory is won? Or have I just accidentally, allegorically, answered my own question. Jesus, anyone?

I don't know. I'm just talking through this stuff. And here's a previous post where I ruminate similarly.

Moments of Shalom and Corporate American Convenience Food Providers

Albeit, it's not quite walking into Cheers and having everyone shout my name as I walk over to "my" barstool, but this Monday, I went to the Quiznos in Lower Queen Anne where I go a few times a week, either right before I go to work at Intiman, or between the matinee and evening show at Intiman, or before Monday night pub trivia at Jabu's down the street. Well, after my first few visits to the Quiznos a month or two ago, I decided to try to get to know the staff a little but, mostly because I kept running into them on the street or on the 15 bus, or because when I go there, I usually sit there for about an hour reading for class, and because I'm there for such long stretches of time, often the only customer in there, the staff just sort of got used to me and, in a nice way, stopped being on their best behavior when I'm around and started feeling free to bicker with one another in my presence or stock the beverage fridge, neither of which I mind at all. So, long story long, I walked into Quiznos this Monday, and only saw the newish guy whom I don't know yet, but I walked past the counter to go through to use the restroom before I ordered. When I came back in, staff member Curtis, whom I hadn't seen when I came in, shouted "Your sandwhich is ready." And whaddya know, he'd seen me come in, and went ahead and made my regular roast beef and chedder on wheat, extra mayo, two tomatoes, no oregano, extra toasted. Does this mean I go there too often or that I've finally found the place "where everybody knows my name"? I'm deciding to take this as a moment of heaven on earth, and ignore the part where I name myself as someone who actually hangs out at Quiznos.

Shalom #2
Free Slurpee day at 7-11. It was yesterday, July, 11. get it? 7/11? Albeit (note second use of albeit in one blog post) they were tiny one-serving cups, but it gave me the chance to try Bubble Yum slurpee without the risk of having it ruin a whole large slurpee if it was nasty. It wasn't nasty.

Not Shalom: Cabe and I trying to hit up another 7-11 for another free slurpee after the first one and having the other 7-11 not giving away free slurpees. So much for the free slurpee road trip!

Quotes of the Week

"Kj, I wish you were around because then I would play the accordian for you."

-Katrina Monta, Brooklyn, NY



"Homework is not mentioned in the Bible. Neither is dating or dinosaurs." Kj to Katrina

When the Moon hits your eye...Try to hit it right back!

It's not fair.
The full moon was last night.
There is no reason for me not to be able to sleep right now.
I was even a good girl and climbed into bed before 1am.
That never happens.
And here I am, over an hour later, having had to crawl down the ladder from my loft bed, because there's just no kidding anyone: I cannot sleep.

New moons and full moons tend to screw me up pretty badly, but for most of 2007, I've been so mentally, physically or emotionally exhausted, that I guess I've been able to sleep through crazy moon nights pretty well.
So why tonight, when the moon is only 98% full, am I sitting here typing instead of dreaming about bald eagles, swimming pools and the various B-list celebrities that regularly pop up in my unconcious wanderings?

But the moon last night was definately one for the record books. It may actualy have been the most beautiful moon I've ever seen. Around 10:45, when I was walking home from the bus, it was following me behind some evergreens, and it was glowing yellow- or at least a warm shade of papryus. Once i was at my cul de sac, I had a clear view. The sky was clear except a few linear wisps of cloud below the moon, which were lit up by reflection. It was one of those moons where you sort of expect it to start talking to you. You feel like it's just you and the moon. It's standing right there, you looking at it, it looking at you, and you kind of have to just say "Hey" because it would be rude to not to.

Well, last night I loved that moon.
Tonight, I'm very perturbed by it, if it is indeed the same moon. This moon says, "Hey, I know you're trying to sleep, but instead, why don't you lay awake, and be unavoidably aware of every twig snap on trees outside, every footfall of wild, wandering neighborhood cats, and every toss or turn of your roomates in the other rooms, and how about when you try to think of nice things as you try to fall asleep, you'll only be able to remember and rehash frustrating moments of your life that you can't seem to get away from. How about you do that instead of sleep? Sounds great, right?

Okay, I guess I'm done venting. Funny that I never really use this blog to vent, and the first time I do, it's to passive-aggressively insult the moon.

Extra: This blog entry from March feels very apropos right now. In more ways than one.

Seven Days and Counting...

It's strange that we mark things by year. I mean, I understand the whole 365 days (give or take) based on the earth orbiting the sun, etc, but when we say "Wow, I can't believe a year has passed" what do we mean? Can you feel 365 days? How do we know how long a year should feel like? Are we shocked that the earth has travelled around the sun since the last time it was June 28? Why don't we seem to notice the passage of time when it's been four and a half months or two and a quarter years since one's wedding or move to Nebraska? Yes, we may take note, but we don't have that calender reminder that says "Take note: a year has passed and you should take stock of your life since then" etc.

I bring this up, because I've definatley been thinking a lot since June 22, about what was going on this time last year. (Quick catch up for any newcomers: I was living in New York, had been accepted to Mars Hill Graduate School for the fall and was going to move to Seattle at the end of August, but instead, I was hospitalized for ten days for severe pneumonia and had to live with my parents in Arizona for two months while I recovered-learned to breathe and walk again- before moving up to Seattle at the original time planned). There was so much that happened during my hospitalization, so much time I was alone, seven days in the ICU with no TV, nothing on the walls and no way to fall asleep at night amidst endless rounds of blood tests and X-rays that never abated till morning, so many thoughts and experiences that I didn't talk about when people would show up to be with me the next morning, mostly because the last thing I wanted to talk about in the morning was the night before which had been spent solely counting the hours until Kim would walk through the door and bring familiar faces and voices to visit me. Well, in all that time of locking away memories, I just assumed that once I got to Arizona and had some time to process, or certainly once I got to Mars Hill and had to start walking through the story of my life and being counselled, etc, that I would re-examine, explore, give voice to and grieve over everything that experience was. Then "suddenly", I find that a year has passed, and I've barely shared any of that experience with anyone, much less looked at it myself.

Well, I'm not going to write out all the hours of the night that I stored up for those ten days of being in the hospital and realizing that, without any warning, I would never be returning to my work, my life in New York, or staying more than one last night in my apartment or neighborhood with my loved ones, but now, as each day ticks down to July 2, when I was released from the hospital, only to fly to Arizona the next morning, I've been trying to let my mind go back to some of those places. I want to put a few down, in hopes that I'll be able to face more of it on my own and not let another year pass without pausing to really look at what I came through/was brought through/survived. So here's a little bit.

1) Niegel came the first or second day that I was in the ICU, and I think he noticed that there was nothing on the walls in front of my bed except an empty bulletin board, so, on the back of what I later discovered to be a discarded title page of a script he was working on, he wrote "Kj is a Ray of Sunshine" and drew a little sun/cloud doodle and stuck it on the bulletin board. The wierd part is that all that night, (at this point I was being given sleeping pills at night, but having my sleep interrupted more than once an hour for blood tests and things, so I was really, really delirious and exhausted) I stared at that note which I could hardly see being that it was night and I wasn't wearing my glasses, and I stared at it to the point that it actually started to look like a full-color Italian oil painting that had a window sill looking out over a seascape with sailboats heading out to the sunset. The next morning, I looked at the simple pencil note and wondered what the heck they had put me on.

2) After seven days in the Intensive Care Unit, 36 hours of which I had been being promised to be moved out, they finally secured a bed for me out of the ICU. (Albeit, the only space left in the whole hopsital was in a 3 person room in the Geriatric Ward: yes, I was in the Geriatric ward with roommates Rose and Mary). So they brought a wheelchair, and I got into it and they moved me into the hall, but we stopped right in front of the door for a moment for someone to get something, and at that moment, I burst into tears, realziing that I hadn't been out of that room in a whole week. It felt so strange. frightening and relieveing to move past that doorway- to leave that room behind. Then, being rolled in the wheelchair, being overcome by the sensation of more movement than I'd experienced in seven days, seeing people and doorways and windows, I just couldn't believe how isolated I had been. That was a crazy, crazy feeling.

3) A good-ish memory: By my second morning being out of the ICU and being in the normal (though geriatric) portion of the hospital, I'd been given permission and encouragement to try taking brief walks down the hallway, which of course involved rolling an IV pole along wherever I went. Well, since they still kept me up all night with tests and IV changes, I found myself wide awake at about five in the morning when the sun was coming up, and decided to go for my first walk. Woodhull Hospital had been originally designed to be a prison (no pun intended), so it had these endless, like serioulsy quarter-of-a-mile long hallways, with windows looking out over Brooklyn. So I unplugged my little leg-circulation things that looked like moonboots for galactic Tokyo cheerleaders, and wheeled my IV pole around the bed and headed out the door of my room and went around to the endless hallway which was completley quiet and empty except for all the new morning sunlight, and I walked slower than any Grandma has ever walked, step by step down the hallway, going as far as I could until my breathing got laboured and it seemed like a good turnback point. It was the first time that being alone there felt peaceful, and felt like a choice.

So that's a few places I've found myself going in my head. Don't know if I'll put more on here, but until July 2, I'll still be trying to navigate this strange passage of ten days that happened 365 or so days ago.

When I Woke Up This Morning...

...this song was in my head. I haven't seen "Kids in the Hall" for at least ten years, but that doesn't stop this little ditty from rousing me from sleep at least once a month. Thought I'd share the gift that is having this song in your head ALL DAY! Thank you Bruce McCullough.



Don't you love his little belt and high waisted jeans? Not to mention his jaunty little walk.

Pocket Check

For most of my life, or at least as long as I've been wearing jeans everyday, I've had a habit of leaving things in my back pockets until they deteriorate, or until I realize there's no more room in my back pocket for anymore receipts or ticket stubs. I often take inventory of what's going on back there, and it reads as a dishevelled Book of Days for the past week to two months, depending on how long I've waited to empty my pockets and start afresh. As I'm currently about to start fresh, I thought I'd post my pocket inventory. Why? Because that is exactly what the interweb is for!

1) May 26 ticket stub to "Pirates of the Carribbean: At World's End" at Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue.

2) June 6 recepit from Sushiland Marineoplis, the Pacific Northwest sushi restaurant chain that has a conveyor belt with plates of tekka makki for $1.50!

3) June 7 ticket stub for "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" at Shoreline's Crest Cinema, and an $8.50 concessions receipt at well.

4) June 15 ticket stub to "Ocean's 13" at AMC Pacific Place downtown.

5) June 23 ticket pass to the Seattle Center Monorail, which is apparently one of the oldest or first city monorails or something like that. In less than one song length on your Ipod, the monorail takes you from downtown Seattle to the Seattle Center in Lower Queen Anne. It costs two bucks, and I could have just taken the bus and used my expensive three month bus pass that's already paid for, but I would have had to walk farther to the bus, waited about twenty minutes and had a twenty minute bus ride to get me exactly where the monorail got me in two minutes. Worth two extra bucks? June 23, definately. Regular basis? Not so much.

Stay tuned next month or so for another exciting installment of "What's in Kj's Pockets, and Who Cares Besides Her?"
Today's post was brought to you by The Film Industry: "Stealing your money one $10.50 ticket at a time."

June 21

I have a disturbingly good memory except when it comes to dates and knowing left from right. However, there are a few dates that somehow have succeeded in sticking in my memory amidst all the birthdays I cannot remember. June 21st has long been one of them. Every year since 1989, I've had a reason to remember June 21, and the reasons keep adding up. Its probably safe to say that I have a propensity towards remembering things having to do with the number 21 because I was born on a 21 and its my unnofficial favorite number. Anyway, here's a starting line-up of June 21sts.

June 21, 1989
The Swansons move from Maryland to San Diego, CA. This marks the official changeover from Katie to Kj (techinically still K.J. at that point), as I arrive in a new state where there's no one who ever knew me as Katie.

June 21, 2003
Mackenzie Newman (who I met not long after June 21, 1989 in Mr. Rosell's 4th grade class, thus making her my official oldest friend) marries Matt Sterling and becomes the first of my peers to wed, and my first time as a wedding party member (outside of family).

June 21, 2006
My last day working (or walking) in New York City. I'd be in the hospital the next day. Because of the proximity of my pneumonia adventure to June 21st, I'll now always remember the date of my chaotic exit from New York. More on that probably tomorrow. Or maybe not.

Seattle's Best

It didn't take long, once I arrived in Seattle, to notice a strange, new and alluring curiosity: men, of all shapes and ages, walking around in kilts, and specifically, kilts that look like they were made by Carharts. This at least weekly occurance combined a few things I'm very fond of:
a) Carharts
b) Scotland
c) men wearing kilts.

In Seattle, seeing kilts is about as common as seeing hair scrunchies- they're out there, but not overwhelmingly so, and when one walks by, you turn your head and think "Yeah- you wear that!"

And it's all thanks to local Seattle company Utilikilts, which is exactly what it sounds like: Kilts that are utilitarian and good for every day carpentry work, skateboarding or church pew sitting. I saw a fifteen year old kid get on the bus last week who was actually busting a sag with his utilikilt. I send a holla your way, young sir. Especially now, since I've done some research and see that utilikilts are not cheap. There is no apathy when it comes to public kilt wearing; It's all the way.

Kilt-wearing men of Seattle, I salute you!

Pub Trivia Update: Mama Treats Us Well

Our totem sitcom star keeps 'em coming. Team Candace Cameron won for the third time last night, with last week having a very respectful second place finish (including $20 in gift certificates). Last night we truly ruled the school, coming in first in every category except one, and for that one we still got 9 out of 10 questions correct. The hyper-dork-mega-squad category of the night (which we had suggested previously) was Greek Mythology, which we rocked hardcore, getting 10 out of 10 questions right (that might have been the first time). The surprise challenge of the night, was the category for the film "Stand By Me", which I felt pretty confident about since I've watched it three times in the past 8 months. It turned out to be pretty obtuse, but we still got half of them right.
All things considered, Team Candace Cameron has won almost $200. There is talk of quitting our jobs and going professional.