pretty red rocks

Okay, so a bunch of us went rock climbing yesterday at Palisades Sate Park. It was a whole lot of fun just to be outside with people. It was also a good learning experience for me. allow me to explain:

I've never been afraid of heights. I mean, I'll climb any mountain you put in front of me (especailly Mt. Baldy out at camp) and generally show such disregard for safety that it's a wonder my mother hasn't had a heart attack. But for some reason I can't handle climbing with a rope and harness. Puting my trust in a rope just wasn't going to cut it, and I'm still not sure why. I mean, I even tried finding places to free-climb, but was unable to get anywhere. It really frustrated me, especially because no one else seemed to be having any problems. Shannon and Jess learned to repel, and the others were experienced at it, and Dianna was content to stay firmly on the ground. But I wasn't content. I wanted to do more than watch, so I couldn't bear the idea that I was afraid. I'm not supposed to be afraid! And maybe I'm being overly-critical of the whole situation, but it bothered me that nobody else really cared whether I participated or even noticed when I wandered off. Except Dianna. She could tell something was bothering me, so we wandered off together for a bit but couldn't find anything better to climb on our side of the river.

When we came back something was finally different. Jason asked if either of us were willing to go down with him. What that meant was that he would be in charge of the rope, and the other person would just be along for the ride. That sounded better to me than trusting in my own power to get me down safely. After all, Jason is pretty much a prefessional at this sort of thing. Of course, even with professionals things sometimes go funny. The rope guards caught on the rope, and Adam had to cut them off with a knife so that we could continue our descent. Let me tell you, seeing a knife coming toward the rope that was holding me suspended above the ground was not a pleasant thing at all. But we made it down just fine, and it was actually really fun. I have decided that next time I will go down on my own and do things properly.

Jason said an interesting thing to me afterward. He said that it really took a lot of courage for me to trust him to get me down safely. It struch me as odd, since that was pretty much backward to how I was looking at things. After all, he was the experienced one. I figured he would be better able to get me down than I would.

Reflecting on that, it struck me as a parallel to the Christian walk. After all, God is the one who invented life and knows how everything works. We're just amatuers at this whole thing and don't really know what we're doing. so everything works a lot better if we just let the expert be in charge and do things his way. Sure it's dangerous, but going it alone will always be worse. And don't even consider just waiting on the solid ground. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say. The Christain life is hard sometimes, and scary, but it's worth it. nothing compares to the joy we find in living for God and following the path he has laid out for us.

Food for thought.

-Kim

Sharing my bears

No, I'm not just avoiding working on my Romantics paper. I actually have things to share.

This morning I presented in honors sem. Yes, I got in front of my class and read to them portions of the first two chapters of my book. I didn't like having to leave so much out, but I went too long as it was, so there wasn't much to do about that. I was so nervous before I did it that I actually felt ill. After all, this story is my creation, my art. It's a part of me, and I was frankly worried about how they would accept it. Apparently my worries were foolish, as I only heard good things afterward. Tricia even commented that I should come tell stories to her daughter. Hey, I'd love to babysit Noelle (sp?) from time to time. I got to hold her today during Dianna's presentation. Oh me goodness she is so sweet! I still have yet to see her with her eyes open, but she didn't fuss a bit and is simple adorable, and so tiny still! I don't think I've ever held a baby that new before, and I absolutely love her.

Anyway, on with the news of the day.

Delta David Gier (sp?) came to listen to our choir today. Apparently next spring the South Dakota Symphony is doing a work that involves a choir, so he's been visiting various groups to see who he wants to come sing with them. I siezed this opportunity to talk to him in the hallway after rehearsal. Explaining that I was a violinist, I asked him how auditions work and he encouraged me to come try out in September. I still don't know if I will, but this certainly bears more looking into.

On the subject of violins, I'm getting new music again! Whee! Maria picked out a Mozart concerto for me to find, and she'll be giving me a little more Bach, too. And we're looking at music from "Schindler's List" as well. I sight-read some of that today. It is such gorgeous and haunting music. And it was written by John Williams for Itzhak Perlman, so that makes it double good. Of course, it also means that I'll be playing notes I hadn't realized a violin could play, but the challenge is half the fun.

Tonight, in an effort to not go completely insane, Dianna, Amber and I are going to see "The Pink Panther" at the cheat seats. It should be a good study break. And this Saturday a whole bunch of us are heading out to the Palisades for some rock climbing (see, I told you I'd get out there eventually!). Now I just have to solve the debate with myself as to whether I should still ride the bike path in the morning before we go climb and/or swim in the afternoon. (don't worry, Mom, I'll still have time to get my homework done.) I may decide that sleep is more important, but that remains to be seen.

In any case, it's back to John Keats now. Have a happy and productive evening.

-Kim

Serendipity

Well, there's no way I'm going to remember all of the happy things that have happened recently, but we can hope to breeze through most of them before my mind goes entirely to sleep.

Friday was trebuchet day. Technically, another team won the contest, but we were the only ones to ever hit the target dead-on, and we won farthest distance. So it was a good time. Especially since Dianna survived driving on the interstate and I was able to navigate us around the highway construction. Eventually. Hey, we still beat Dr. Herman out there.
That night we competed in the dorm triathlon. Sullivan lost pretty badly, but we had only four people on our team by the end of it. And I still say our cake really did look like a giraffe. Shouldn't we at least get bonus points for creativity?

Saturday was laundry day. I spent the afternoon with Grandma and ended up vaccuuming the basement for her. In the evening was spring formal. I had so much fun just dancing around like an idiot. My legs still hurt, but it was way worth it.

Sunday was the spring choir concert. Not only was the concert great, but my cousins showed up! That was a quite welcome suprise, since I hadn't seen Laurel for a couple years. I think it's funny how many of my professors still remember them, although Nancy keeps forgetting that they're my cousins. Kirby won't forget, though. Especially not since he had Laurel for honors sem ten years ago.

Today was my violin jury. It actually went pretty well, but I'm still a little nervous to get the comments back.

So I've gotten a lot of interesting mail lately. Apparently I have to go be honored at the USF awards banquet this Friday, but they won't tell me why. I've been invited to join another honor society, but I can't be at the induction ceremony because it conflicts with the band concert. I have very unique problems.
Oh yeah, and I'm filling out an application for some hokey honors thing that Doc nominated me for. There's actually a chance for money, so I'm filling it out. And I'm terribly proud of my response to their prompt to describe my goals and asperations in 100 words or less. It's a shame it's going somewhere so pointless. So I'm going to share it here too:
It is my intention to attend graduate school to continue my studies in English. After getting my degree, I would like to be a librarian, so that I could help children learn to love reading. Of course, the library would only be my day job. I also intend to publish a series of novels that I have already begun work on. And I’ll still be playing my violin in whatever venue is available to me, whether it is my church worship team, a civic symphony or a gig touring with a rock band.

And now for some thoughts on writing. In my down time at work I've been re-writing a bit of my story to get it ready for my honors presentation, and I think I've realized why my story got stuck. It's not focused and doesn't aim for a single age group. So I need to fix that. I also need to adjust a few pieces of plot in order to make the history and timing work. There's no way I can go on and finish it until it starts properly. You have no idea how happy that realization made me. I pretty much ran back from work last night to keep working on it.

Well, time for sleep now. I hope some joy comes your way too!

-Kim

Busy, busy, busy

Well, I don't have time to rehash every detail, but the Casting Pearls, Remedy Drive concert on Tuesday night was pretty much amazing. It's so cool to actually hang out with the guys and feel like you sort of know them, and then see them on stage or hear them blasting out of the stereo and be like, hey, I know them! Anyway... It was so funny that Casting Pearls didn't have an encore planned. But we wouldn't let them get away without one, so they came back on and played "footloose." I'm pretty sure the four of us (me, Dianna, Corinne and Brandon) were the only people actually dancing like idiots during the chorus, but that's okay. I was just glad that there was room to dance without runing into other people.

In other news, tonight is the Mark O'Connor concert at the Pavilion. I cannot wait for that. And when it's over I'll be back in time to go to Gigglebee's! The activities this week are crazy, but I will participate nonetheless.

Oh yeah, and I have a paper topic for my final giant research paper! Woo! Now I just have to finish researching it and write the darn thing...

Ooh! And we have a choir concert this weekend to get ready for, so that'll be lovely. The band concert is two weeks from today. We met our possible new conductor yesterday, and he was just weird. Steve said he looked just like Zoolander. I wouldn't know, but I can't imaging that's a good thing. He had a strange accent and kept asking us all sorts of questions that we didn't know how to answer. I really don't know if I could handle having him as our conductor on a permanent basis. Of course, I don't think he was terribly impressed with our program either, but, eh. We'll meet another candidate next week and see what he's like.

Random funny story: Last night coming back from our night class, we were walking through the Sully parking lot and the duck was flying in to land on the pond, but Steph didn't see it until it was right over us and she totally freaked out. I laughed.

-Kim

"Tell yourself how lucky you are"

In an effort to try and figure out where I actually am right now, and to give all of you a better understanding, today I'm going to post excetps of an actually journal entry I wrote last night. It's not going to flow very well, as it was very late when I wrote it and portions have been omitted.

4/21/06
Okay, there's no way I'm crazy enough to become a music major, but I'm sensing a serious shift in my heart. It seems that what I truly love--above all else on this earth--is performing creatively, especially on my violin. Tonight's show was absolutely wonderful, and I didn't want it to end. I was exhausted, but the high I was on could have carried me through the whole thing all over again. Even though there were still pitch problems and some dropped measures, the music tonight was REAL. I could feel it. It was like Thursday morning--my heart was really in it. Tonight I was playing for my daddy out in the audience. Tonight I was playing for my other Daddy who's always with me and gave me this talent in the first place. I want to keep doing this. I *need* to keep doing something like this. God, where can I make music to please you? I think I finally feel a real passion in my soul.
***
Having someone to play for makes it easier to play. I have more confidence in myself and I play out strong, and am rewarded with a much better sound and a rather astounded conductor. I am a violinist to the core--I know that now. But tell me: how am I supposed to use this? Where can you use a violin, Lord?
(end quote)

So that's sort of where I'm at right now. It's not just the musical that's making me think about this right now--though it's deffinitely the catalyst. My wonderings also come from my discussion with Kirby and a wonderful book I am currently reading, The Heart of the Artist. Everything in that book seems to be something I really need to hear. I read another chapter today, and it's helping to push this line of thought along.

In any case, I need to get ready for tonight's show.

-Kim