NYU and other adventures.

Well, for those of you who don't know, I'm moving to Manhattan in 64 days, and if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that time flies and I'm going to be living in a little teeny dorm on the lower east side of Manhattan in what will feel like, oh, five minutes.

Anyway. With some prodding from @laurenvalmai and @justplainhanna, I've decided to blog it. The adventures. The move. The prep, even, maybe. I guess if you people will read it, I'll write it.

I'm going to NYU, class of 2017, off to study French, journalism, art history, creative writing, and dramatic literature. My first road block has been that my academic advisor won't let me take 20 credits my first semester, so... Anyway. I'm thrilled.

I spent the last two and a half weeks running around the world, hitting Paris, Venice, Telfs (in Austria), Munich, coming home for thirtysomeodd hours, and then jetting off to New York. I'm really lucky. In the last 365 days, I have seen six countries. I've ridden so many planes I can't even remember all of them. I've journaled and read and waited and slept, climbed 670 steps and taken two elevators at the Eiffel Tower, ridden in a water taxi in Venice, eaten authentic Japanese ramen, had authentic German weinerschnitzel in a brewery outside of Munich, been to a public bathhouse in Japan, done a handstand in the middle of fifth avenue, seen 8 Broadway plays, put my hands in Gene Kelly's handprints at the Chinese Theater, gone on morning runs through Palm Springs, morning runs through Central Park, watched fireworks on the river in Portland, OR, thrown up four times on the flight from Paris to Venice, spoken French to some strangers at Shake Shack -- and I couldn't be more grateful. The world is full of so many things and I've spent a year seeing a few of them.

When I was in Austria, my dad found this incredible article on ESPN (read it here -- definitely worth your time) that made me think, well, about a lot of things, but one part in particular made me think about the importance of travel. The reporter asks an Italian player about the root of racism in Italian soccer, and he replies with, "Italians don't travel."

Travel does a thousand things for the traveler. It has made me more grateful, patient, curious, appreciative, understanding. The world is truly so enormous. There are so many languages to speak, foods to eat, people to meet, sights to see, experiences to have; it's simultaneously overwhelming and comforting. The lists of the world travels are sort of like books-to-read lists, for me. There's a sense of despair that I'll never get to read every single book out there, but also a sense of comfort in the idea that I'll never run out of books to read. Glass half empty, glass half full. I guess you decide which you like to see. (I am, however cliche it may be, a glass-half-full type of girl.)

Travel has made me more grateful for the small things which I take for granted at home. Like clean laundry every day. And conditioner. And hairbrushes and ice in water and the ability to make phone calls at will. Travel made me also grateful for my own good fortune, things like sight and working legs, or cars large enough to fit my entire family or a roof over my head at night.

Travel made me more patient -- a virtue of which I still have very little, but I'm getting better. I waited in airports. I waited in lines. I waited for trains and meals and planes and people, and I found small moments in those lines and wait rooms to write in journals, to people watch, to sketch, or photograph, or organize.

Travel had made me more comfortable with my body, thanks to the Japanese onsen and the Austrian sauna village. Travel has made me better at early mornings, bumpy rides, taking pills, carefully planning sleep time, and at being okay to go without.

Travel made me appreciate the little things, like hot showers or fresh strawberries or whip cream. Travel has made me understanding (maybe these people had to wake up at 4 am to get here, too). It has, ironically enough, made me less materialistic, and maybe even less technologically dependent, more appreciative of "here and now" moments, better at seeing what's right in front of me.

On a wider scale, and sort of the all-encompassing reason for the importance of world travel, in our efforts to explore and adventure and sightsee and eat, we become world citizens. Travel makes us appreciate and understand the world as a greater whole rather than in pieces. When we step outside ourselves (or make fools of ourselves as tourists), we become more fully members of the human race. We try new foods, speak new languages, and see new things, and then we fall in love. We become less convinced of our own absolute perfection, more appreciative of things different than ourselves, and, in such, we grow into better people.

So. There were a thousand reasons behind my decision to go to NYU, but this is one of the forefront reasons for the choice: A global city, global adventures, and and the opportunity to become more fully a world citizen.

I'm excited and scared and nervous and overjoyed and and and and... And I think, if you guys want, and let me know if you do, I'll write about it all here. From dorms to semesters abroad (fingers crossed!) to the best food in the city.

Here's to the Japan and here's to CA and OR and France and Austria and Italy and Germany, and here's to NYC. Here's to NYU.

"Travel brings power and love back into your life." -Rumi
-Addy Sue

How To Fall In Love On Accident and Also On Purpose

All I think about are skyscrapers. I think this is the aftermath of reading The Fountainhead. You read about buildings for 800 pages and then you think about buildings for the rest of forever.

I mean that very literally, though. I think about mid-town Manhattan and how everything is up and up and up into the clouds.

There is a part of me that left high school a long time ago. A part of me that’s ready to take the graduation gown, not even ironed, and run, burn it down, take only my proof of graduation and set out into the world.

And then there’s a part of me that’s falling in love. Not just with boys, but with the way my calculus class is more about what it’s like to have a baby inside of you than integrals and derivatives. I’m in love with the way J teaches so much more than Shakespeare and tap dancing, how I leave his classroom every day and I feel like I’m somewhat more prepared for the world, but I never want to go out in it because I want to listen to him say things like, “We have to remember that human connections are the reason we’re doing this. This whole life thing.” And I want to talk to Kira, who is smart, who I will never be able to call “Mrs. Ludwig-Shelton,” who is just as scared as I am. Mr. Beeson, who made me a lot of what I am.

I’m falling in love with the way my high school has its own weird music scene and I’m falling in love with the people in it and I’m falling in love with the boys in my physics class and the way we haven’t actually paid attention to physics for the entire term. I'm falling in love with the way I can't seem to keep my headphones in because there are so many people to talk to and hug in the hallways, which is wonderful even if it took me three years to feel that way. I love seminary and prayers and friends and lunch times and Sterling Scholars (be a sterling scholar, you guys) and I never meant to love all that stuff.

I’m falling in love with long-limbed boys every evening, getting locked inside, sitting outside, having dinner, holding hands. I’m falling in love with French and Madame and the way Madame teaches French and the moments when I’m suddenly just speaking it. I’m falling in love with these things and these people and this is where my heart is.

It's like high school was never something I was good at until now. I never meant to like this place. I never meant to be here or give any part of my heart to the people that fill up these hallways. God has a sense of humor.

One morning, you’ll wake up and realize that your soul is in one city and your heart is in another and that’s a really conflicting moment.

But change happens and here is comes and there is goes and you can’t stop it or shift it or change it. It just is.

But then there is New York. It is just out there, waiting for me. Maybe that's narcissistic; New York isn't a city that waits for anyone, let alone Addy Sue Baird from somewhere in Utah. But I feel like that's a true thing. I feel like all those buildings are reaching for the sky and just waiting for me to join them in doing so. I feel like the lights will wait.

I think sometimes about the mornings when I will wake up on the lower east side. The edge of Washington Square Park. The thought of it almost reduces me to tears of excitement and sheer shock that I'm actually going to do that. Wake up there, I mean. Have a life there. I will ride the subway. I will read books in the park. I think of Madi Bass of Fort Worth, TX, studying sports management in Robert Preston Tisch, who is Mormon, who I'm planning on being exact best friends with, so I hope she's planning on the same thing. I think of Alex from Philly, studying acting in Tisch, who was so nice, who I can't wait to find again. I think of Deena from just outside either Chicago or Detroit (I don't remember which), studying anthropology in CAS (which is where I'll be, too) and how I'm secretly praying she'll be my roommate.

I think about New York-y things like trains and buildings and alleyways and Joey Tolboe once getting hit by a taxi and saying, "Hey! I'm walkin' here!" and all the other people in the crosswalk going, "Yeeah! He's walkin' he-a!" and how I literally almost started weeping when he told me that story because I love that city so much. I say stupid things like, "That's my borough!" and I just agree with people when they're like, "omg i no xactly wat college will b lyke 4 u bcuz i watched gossip gurl" and I think about how I thought the mission age change wasn't going to affect me, but here I am, praying in French, feeling a little bit okay about setting out into the world because so is everyone else that I love.

I think about Hailey and Harvard and how I promise I will see her at least once a month no matter what.

And this whole thing is waxing poetic. For that I apologize. Basically, I just wanted to say that I love you, and I will think of you all often when I head out.

Seventeen years old and bossy, I never meant to fall in love.

"I am half agony, half hope." -Jane Austen

Sincerest,

Addy SB

Art I Love and Why You Should Love it too: take i

Hey, blogosphere: I want to talk art.

I've had some sort of lingering writer's block for, like, a year now, but art, you guys. It's the one thing I've never run out of words for. Maybe because there's so much to talk about and so many ways to discuss it and wonder about it. It's just exciting to me. I had to give a presentation on some sort of French artist in AP French last week and I stood up in front of my class and just started speaking French about Matisse, like, without worrying about my conjugations or anything at all. I was just speaking French and of course it happened while I got to talk about art.

So. This shall be the first installment of my newest ongoing series here at le blog: Art I Love And Why You Should Love It Too. I want to talk about what makes it beautiful and what people think about it, what people thought about it, where it came from, why it looks the way it does, because art feels the realest to me.

So I suppose it ought to all start from the beginning.

Meet the Nike at Samothrace. The Winged Victory. The Hellenistic Beauty.

This. This is one of my favorite pieces of art ever. It’s hard for me to even put it into words because I loved it before I ever understood art history at all, before I understood the context (Hellenistic Greece) or where her head went (nowhere special, just somewhere in time) or why she was flowing (Hellenistic Greece, again) or anything about her really except that she was simply the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I loved her. I love her. I love this piece without words, which makes her special probably for that reason alone.

I love The Winged Victory like I love holding hands or sleeping in or reading chick lit. It's simple to me. It doesn't need explaining. She doesn't need serious art history lessons to explain why she's wonderful. She's not Matisse or Picasso or Pollack or Rothko (all of whom we will discuss) who take understanding to appreciate. No one's requiring that you consider her or understand her or appreciate her. You just love her. I just love her.

So she's in the Louvre, right? In Paris. So the Nazis start to bomb Paris, right? The Beauty is actually in a million little pieces (which you can kind of see below) and if the Louvre got rocked, it was Sayonara to Nike.

And to make matters worse, she sits at the top of a flight of stairs:

So these workers at the Louvre lifted her off her pedestal and carried her to safety in some sort of hide-out for the rest of the war.

Art saves us, you guys. Art holds our hands and lets us sleep in and reads us chick lit, guys. Art is what brings us home and reminds us that it's okay to be human and we have to save it back. I mean, in my heart, the Nike at Samothrace has a soul and she was just stuck up there just as afraid of dying as the rest of us are, and she needed saving.

To be honest, The Hellenistic Beauty is a work I've never gotten all too technical with. It almost ruins it for me if I start to think of her as a production piece from an art historical period to explain why she is the way she is. She simply is. She's just the Hellenistic Beauty. The Winged Victory. The Nike at Samothrace, and she still leaves me wordless, and there's a part of me that just wants to remain that way, at least where she's concerned.

I realize this is hardly a scholarly and technical way to start off my deep discussions of art and art history, but this is the reason I ended up in AP Art History with Gina last year and the reason I'll study art history no matter where I end up next year and for years and years after that. Because I saw her, and I felt something, and that's what art is supposed to do.

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls." -Pablo Picasso

Yours,

me.

A Post Where I Preach to You About Life

 

I was a great journaler for, like, two seconds there, right after I ruined my life. Ha. Not very many of you know about that, do you? Well, blogosphere, I ruined my life one time. My only advice to you is to avoid ruining yours at all costs. The point is, I suddenly had an enormous amount of time to sit around and bask in my own misery and journal about disaster.

The times in my life when I have been an awful journaler seem far more numerous than the times when I've been really wonderful -- Times when I've been an awful journal girl:

1.) my first kiss

2.) my first hearbreak

3.) the primetime of friendgroup

4.) falling in love (all times)

5.) Japan/New York trips

6.) that one time when Matt Colemere sort of put his lips in my hair at the Highland Fling and me and Avery and Kait had to talk about it on the phone for, like, 80 hours

7.) Sterling Scholar goodness with Hailey James
8.) Any show I've ever been in

Like, one time, this crazy ordeal went down and I literally wrote in my journal the basics of what happened and then "it was crazy and it was crazy" and went to call Avery (who, to this day, sometimes still says to me, "and it was crazy and it was crazy").

This is my tragedy: My life starts to get wonderful and I start to get awful at recording its wonder. Which is sad because when I look back, I want to be able to say, "I did wonderful things like see Tokyo and fall in love and have a wonderful friendgroup and one time Matt Colemere got back from Europe earlier than expected and Kaitlyn lent me a sweater and Emily curled my hair and Avery fixed my makeup and then it worked, apparently, because he, like, sort of put his lips in my hair that night" (although it didn't really work in the long run (which is okay (because that's how life works))).

The point is. Here I am. Here I am, four months later, having picked up the little pieces of my life and sifted through them, tossing out the ugly pieces, lacing up running shoes, rolling out the yoga mat, dusting off the windowsill, piecing together a nicer puzzle, and I'm the worst journaler ever again.

Suddenly I'm falling in love and making friends and hotel reservations and flying to New York on a Thursday and going to prom and sitting in Mr. Beeson's room getting my senior pictures taken and wondering how everything passed so quickly and singing along with ABBA in the kitchen and eating Oreos with peanut butter and studying for AP tests and understanding physics and getting ready for college and still calling Avery and Kaitlyn at least once a week to say things like "it was crazy and it was crazy" and filling up the gas tank and getting home at two in the morning and learning to play beer pong (except with Hawaiian Punch so no need to get your panties bunched up) and hugging my best friend Morgan and checking on Mallory and experimenting with green eyeliner and harmony laughing and wishing all the world would bend to Hailey's will and holding my sisters and eating salmon and singing as much as possible in the car and suddenly I haven't put any of that anywhere in my little floppy-cover Moleskin notebook.

It's funny to me that I even mentioned the fact that I once ruined my life. Just yesterday I was talking to my hairdresser about the fact that the entire point of social media is to make everyone else think that your entire life consists of good food and getting accepted to your dream college and being surrounded by cute boys and best friends and nothing bad ever happens to you. That's what most of my social media seems to scream. I just want you to know that yes, I have all sorts of good food and yes, I did get accepted to my dream college and sure, I take pictures when I'm surrounded by cute boys and best friends, but life isn't perfect; I ruined mine once.

But what I want you to know more than that, is that I put it back together. My life is pretty wonderful. There are smoothies and prom dates and new friends and old friends and cool aunts and funny parents and scary movies and warm showers and sisters who are just innately lovely. No matter what happens to you, you're going to come out of it better and stronger and happier and even if you don't get it down in your journal, it's happening; your life is happening and it's good and God watches over you and wants good things for you. Whatever happens to you that is sad or scary or hard, I promise you it won't last forever, it's just a chance to sift through the pieces that aren't so pretty and it's not going to be easy and you might feel like it isn't always worth it but it is.

This has been a blog post.

"The most important thing is to enjoy your life -- to be happy -- that's all that matters." -Audrey Hepburn
-Addy B

Honestly, no one is going to completely comprehend all the things in this post unless their name is Hailey James

This is for Hailey, who is not only a saint, but the Science and General Sterling Scholars for the state of Utah. I don't think any of you truly comprehend this accomplishment. And if I may brag: I was runner-up for Speech and Drama for the state of Utah, lost to a debate kid, and watching him win was actually one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. 

Anyway. Cheers, Hailey. We're pretty neat, eh?*

"[insert that brilliant math thing about axis stuff and creativity that was very intelligent and thus hot]" -Hot Math Sterling Scholar

Me 

*It's funny because Hailey's Canadian.

Saint Hailey Lynn James

Note: This was supposed to be posted yesterday; however, due to technical difficulties, that did not happen. So even though today is the 12th, St. Hailey's day is really March 11. Xoxo -Addy

Excuse me? Excuse me? Hi. Hi, everyone, hi. Listen up, because I've got some important stuff to say to you guys.

Do you know what today is? It's HAILEY JAMES DAY. I'm serious. Sometime in the future, today will be a official international holiday. Perhaps they will appropriately call it St. Hailey's Day. On St. Hailey's Day, school will not be cancelled. Rather, everyone will attend school and do all the things Hailey loves the most about school: there will be water bugs and labs class and early morning seminary and everyone will disrupt AP Lang (but not out of disrespect of course; please forgive us). There will be calculus, of course. But more importantly, St. Hailey's Day will be a celebration of independent, intelligent, selfless women, because that is exactly what Hailey James is. St. Hailey's Day will be a celebration of courage and women in science. On St. Hailey's Day, everyone will write on graph paper, have bulletproof phone cases, read thick Russian novels. On St. Hailey's Day, everyone will finally understand the truth behind Love is Sacrifice, and there will be a steel drum band, and hot older brothers and wonderful boyfriends will be honored in honor of the hot older brother and wonderful boyfriend of Hailey Lynn's life. On St. Hailey's Day, Harvard will hang Hailey flags, pleased with the glory of their favorite alumna.

But let me brag. Today, March 11, 2013, St. Hailey's Day has yet to be made official by world leaders, but I'm lucky enough to hang out with Hailey James herself every single day. I don't know what I did to get so lucky to be blessed with her presence, but I'm grateful for it.

Hailey Lynn James. My own saint. Bless you. Happy birthday, love!

"There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know." -Lewis Carroll
Addy B.

Sunday with Steinam

I've been thinking about --

Feminism. Not so much in a Gloria Steinam sort of way so much as feminism in the context of my own life. Feminism isn't about gender equality or gender supremacy, I think. It's more about a respect for women in any context, whether they choose to be a stay-at-home mom, career centered, study math, write novels, get married, stay single -- this feminism, my feminism, means that women are offered the same opportunities as men without any judgement whether or not they choose to take them. Perhaps feminism is more of an understanding that while yes, there are things men can do that women cannot, there are also things women can do that men cannot. This is an appreciation. This is judgement-free. This is a study of the things that are important to you, a becoming of what you want to be, without shunning or shaming, and that can be that. This is the 21st century, isn't it? And this is, for goodness sake, a discussion of the protection of women, too. For women and by women and by the people that love women (which is everybody).

Duck boots. Are they a thing? Are they cool? Are they worth wearing? Is it too late in the season buy a pair? Help.

Vegetarianism. Ryan Woodfield, who sits next to me in AP Lang, is writing his research paper on veganism. One of my best friends called Hailey James is a passionate pescetarian. I'm reading The Ten Trusts. I'll get back to you on this one.

Hugging. Hey, Avery and Kaitlyn! All our problems with hugging have been solved on account of a 200+ page book called The Art of Hugging: A Heartwarming Guide to Everyone's Favorite Gesture of Love by Brainard and Delia Carey. I'm going to read it real quick and we'll all converse about hugs and the art thereof.

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." -Gloria Steinam (/Ruby Oliver)
-Addy-san