#this was such a moving movie it's basically my mom and sister in a nutshell

[black-0rpheus]

Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata/Höstsonaten (1978) dir. Ingmar Bergman

[amygeeunit]

The Quarantine Chronicles: These Last Five Years & What I Thought I Wanted

There’s nothing like being alone in your own thoughts at 1:00am in the midst of a global pandemic... Instead of aimlessly scrolling through my Instagram timeline or checking my bank account with all the money I have saved from not going out, I’ve had time to think about what the 28 year old, almost 29 year old Amy needs versus wants...

I think in high school or at some point in our lives we have all fallen victim to “By the time I’m age this, I want to have x, y and z.” At 16, I thought at 25 I would have my life 85% figured out. Pretty funny concept now that you think about it, right? I actually laugh at how naive or how troublesome it is to have these unrealistic goals and tag an age onto them... I pictured myself living in a nice apartment, potentially dating someone, or if not just focusing on my career. Fast forward to 2020, besides this year being a complete clusterf*ck, I’ve had extra time to sit down and think of these last five years in a nutshell.

All I remember from 2015 was going to Vegas, still working in retail, having foot surgery and getting into CSUF. The rest is foggy because it’s been five years. Huh? I thought 2015 was last year...

2016 seemed to be one of my better years. I started at CSUF, went to Iceland, interned at Rastaclat, ended up getting a job at Rastaclat, entered into my first serious relationship, moved back out to Orange County and felt like at 24 - 25 I was killing the game (or so I thought.)

2017 wasn’t too bad. I graduated from CSUF in the spring, went to Oahu, continued on in my relationship and spent a majority of my time focusing on my career.

2018 is when life started to get real interesting. My pup, Ben G, passed away while I was out in Illinois visiting my cousin (long story to save for another post,) I started a new job at Pretty Great LLC, traveled to escape 99% of the time, started taking birth control that made me bloated, emotional and feel weird and moved back to Moreno Valley. During this time, my relationship started to crumble due to lack of communication, the wave of grief I was experiencing and everything in else in between that couples go through. I started going to therapy in July and in August, I had my first panic attack. In September, I decided I needed to get as far away from my life as possible. I booked a flight to Japan to visit Sarah since she was stationed out in Yokosuka. Yokosuka has a naval base and is about an hour from Tokyo. I talked to my boss at work a few weeks prior and asked for a week and a half off. Luckily, he was one of the most understanding and best people I have ever worked for in my career so far. Most bosses would have told you to “Get over it” or “Figure it out.” Rob Myers was a saving grace for me that year for letting me have my time off to not think about life. 

While I was in Japan, I remember the time change messing me up quite a bit. I think it took around three days for me to finally be okay without passing out in the middle of the day. In short, this trip changed me. It changed how I traveled, it changed how I process emotions, it changed my outlook on life, it changed many things for me. I came back from this trip and my relationship was virtually over. I didn’t know how to feel, I didn’t know what to do, it just sort of fizzled like a candle using its last part of the wick. October came and I spent my birthday in Big Bear with my parents. I remember crying in the cabin when we got back from Octoberfest. I don’t think it really hit me that I was single, with no friends around and that 27 was already a shit show on day 1. I visited my best guy friend and his sisters in Arizona at the end of October to make up for the previous weekend. I had no idea that November could get any worse for me, but it did. It was two days before Thanksgiving, November 20th, 2018. 

I was driving from Moreno Valley to Santa Ana one morning on my way to work. I took my normal route, left at my normal time, a pretty standard commute. About 2 miles from work, I was at a stop light. At this stop light I waited for about 30 seconds while the other cars went. The light turned green. As I was pressing my gas to accelerate, out of nowhere, a semi truck plows its way through the intersection and t-bones my driver’s side. I remember screaming. I remember it being like a scene from a Final Destination movie where the victim doesn’t know that death or uncertainty is upon them. In that moment, I remember thinking “This is it.” My reflexes shifted real quick and that was it. I remember pulling off to the side of the road leading up to the 5 freeway. I felt like my soul left my body for seconds then came back. I was shaking. I called my dad first and let him know what had happened. I called my mom and then the insurance company. I exchanged words and information with the driver. I remember being upset, but I couldn’t yell or get any words out. I just went by the protocol of what to do when you get involved with an accident. Sure, I have been rear ended before, but never t-boned and let alone by a damn semi truck. This accident passed, I was awarded some half ass money and in the midst of it all, I remember being so mentally drained that I cried out for help on Instagram Stories... I remember going through survivors guilt. I remember saying to myself “Why am I still here? There are people that die in accidents or by drunk/distracted drivers all the time... Why do I still have to live this life of pain and suffering?” In my mind and in 2018, I never knew how to take pain and suffering very well. I didn’t know it would shape me for what these next couple years would throw at me. 

December came and went. It was like a sigh of relief for me to know that the vicious cycle of the 2018 rollercoaster was coming to an end. At this point, I kind of gave zero f*cks as to what happened in life. A few days before Christmas, I visited my Grandma in Illinois and my grandparents’ grave site. I think my trip to Illinois was some type of closure to my 2018 year. I hadn’t been back to Illinois since my Grandma’s funeral in 2011. It was a cold and frigid trip. It was the first trip I had ever driven by myself. The only cool thing was running into Ja Rule at the Palm Springs Airport (before the Fyre Festival documentary came out, otherwise I would have yelled at him.) He was on my flight to Chicago. Jeffrey Atkins, you sneaky motherfucker, you! How I wish I would have known about you tricking people with that one guy... I ordered a “Survived 2018″ crewneck from this small online business store, went to Disneyland with my mom on Christmas and threw caution to the wind.

2019 was interesting, but not as heavy as 2018. I called 2019 the year where I  “rushed to get back to normalcy.” I realized the commute to PG was getting tiring pretty fast, I accepted being single and got back into dance. Dance saved my life, point blank. Whether it was subbing, teaching, training or being on a team, it brought back a sense of joy and also established new friendships along the way. I started a job at a marketing agency in March 2019 that was a short commute and about 6 months in, I realized this was something I wasn’t a fan of. It took me a while to realize that that was okay to feel uneasy about the jobs I once knew.

If I had to rate 2019 on a point scale, I would say it was a 6/10. I felt like the last few months I was suppose to be back to normal and healed from a lot of things I kept to myself. Dating people was weird because 1. I felt behind. What I mean by that was I thought by age 27 - 28, I would have met my “person,” by now. As I seen other friends get proposed to, plan their weddings and start their families, I started to feel like the odd woman out. Was there something wrong with me? Am I that complicated or hard to love? Are my values not aligning with people I like? Am I going to be that person that gets married at 40 or even at all? Will I always be the friend and not the potential girlfriend or wife? Who knows? 2. The reciprocity factor of it all and setting boundaries. 3. I don’t think I ever got over everything that had happened in my first relationship because we never cheated on each other, our trust when out without each other was never questioned and there was a best friend component in it. I was filled with regret, frustration and memories I forced myself to black out even after going to therapy and journaling it. Fact: I dread my birthday each year. I don’t like my birthday in general, but October I have mixed emotions about. The anniversary of my Grandma’s death is on 10/13, my Grandpa’s birthday is 10/14 and my birthday is 10/20. I spent the last couple months of 2019 drinking more than usual, especially after my friend, Beka, passed away suddenly in November. December came and went. I had my first trip to Puerto Vallarta and enjoyed some much needed beach time. I had this “idea” that I would move to the east coast with Sarah because I wanted to start over. That idea went out the window. I ended 2019 with buying a new car after having paid off my Kia Forte back in 2016.

It’s now 2020 and boy... It has been a shit show for the world I feel like. I can’t even begin to describe what a rollercoaster of emotions everyone is feeling right now, but I do have one word for me personally: gratitude. I started off the year so uneasy with finding out my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer again for a second time. I remember going into February with no expectations, yet I had expectations (weird right?) Without going into too much detail I felt like that quote by DJ Khaled saying “Congratulations, you played ya self!” I was constantly frantic about work, friendships, relationships, my future, dance, my parents, basically everything. I was a walking, talking ball of stress. March came around and I downloaded Bumble (yup, I went there) and matched with a really nice guy who actually knew two of my nurse friends. Then, COVID-19 was in full effect in the states and suddenly the idea of dating or wanting any kind of human interaction made me cringe... I had to politely excuse myself and move on. I checked in on friends and they checked in on me. 

I’ve spent more time with my parents, more time on myself and then it finally clicked: I am where I need to be in this exact moment. I don’t want to date anyone in quarantine, I don’t want to understand or have expectations for another human like I’ve been searching for these last 6 months. What the fuck, Amy? You are everything you need right now and it is not in another person. I’ve danced in quarantine, I’ve cried in quarantine, I’ve laughed in quarantine, I’ve journaled in quarantine, I’ve found myself again in quarantine. As easy as it sounds for most people, the concept is quite large. Since I was 18 years old, I have ALWAYS wanted to live by myself and try it out. It’s ten years later and in the midst of this uncertain time period, I know that 2020 is the year that I finally accomplish this. So, in short, 2021 I’ll be back on the “dating” field or whatever, but 2020 is my year to literally work. on. myself. This includes: my relationship with myself, my relationship with my friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers, etc., my health regiment, my mental health, my physical health, my emotional health, I think you get the point, right? In a time where some of us feel alone, I feel secure. My days vary and maybe I’ll post something tomorrow where I say “That post was trash, quarantine was terrible,” and while it is on most days, I’m so grateful to connect more deeply with people on a spiritual and conversational level. I was tired of hiding behind my day-to-day busy routine when I finally came to terms with myself.

We are all in this together. We are all processing what we need and want. I use this blog as a way to express and share what so many people keep to themselves. Maybe you can relate, maybe you think I’m too out there. Either way, to each their own. 

Until next time.

[chasemisprintedlies]

Thank you for the tag, @moonchildwildheart! I honestly love these things so much. 😂

1. What is your middle name?

Raeshell. Pronounced RAY-Shell.

2. How old are you?

25

3. When is your birthday?

September 23rd

4. What is your zodiac sign?

Libra

5. What is your favourite colour?

Black

6. What’s your lucky number?

13 or 23

7. Do you have any pets?

One dog (a chow named Maurice), two cats (Gary and Snoopy, who is currently missing), a savannah monitor (Gem, who was originally named Jim after the Lizard King himself, but we ended up finding out she was a girl), and a ball python (Edgar)

8. Where are you from?

Kentucky

9. How tall are you?

5'4″

10. What shoe size are you?

8

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

I don’t know, it’s been a while since I counted. Probably bordering on 100.

12. What was your last dream about?

I was under my sister’s house, walking through a drain system, looking for my cat Snoopy. 

13. What talents do you have?

I can draw pretty well. 

14. Are you psychic in any way?

I have dreams that end up coming true quite often, so... Maybe?

15. Favourite song?

Nutshell by Alice in Chains or Spooky by Classics IV

16. Favourite movie?

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

17. Who would be your ideal partner?

I have my ideal partner! He's hilarious, kind, caring, fun to be around, adventurous, determined, motivated, encouraging, artistic, and so, so much more. 😊🖤

18. Do you want children?

Maybe one day.

19. Do you want a church wedding?

I never really cared where I got married until Tyler showed me this cute church that's over 100 years old and told me that's where he'd want to get married... And it's cute because he's not religious at all, but he's so set on that church.

20. Are you religious?

Somewhat.

21. Have you ever been to the hospital?

Multiple times!

22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law?

I've had quite a few speeding tickets. One was double the speed limit, but that's about it.

23. Have you ever met any celebrities?

I've met a lot of bands members. Ronnie Radke, Brian Welch, all the members or Black Stone Cherry, Spencer Charnas, Hugo Ferreira, and quite a few more that I can't remember off the top of my head.

24. Baths or showers?

Baths when I'm alone or showers when Tyler takes them with me. Lol

25. What color socks are you wearing?

I'm barefoot right now... And basically all the time.

26. Have you ever been famous?

Nope

27. Would you like to be a big celebrity?

No, I like my privacy.

28. What type of music do you like?

Classic rock and metal

29. Have you ever been skinny dipping?

Nope

30. How many pillows do you sleep with?

2

31. What position do you usually sleep in?

My side

32. How big is your house?

Small. Big houses make me uncomfortable.

33. What do you typically have for breakfast?

I usually don't eat breakfast

34. Have you ever shot a gun?

Plenty of times

35. Have you ever tried archery?

Yeah, not my favorite.

36. Favourite clean word?

I don't think I have one.

37. Favorite swear word?

Fuck. It's very versatile. 😂

38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep?

Almost 72 hours

39. Do you have any scars?

Lots. From surgeries and various injuries.

40. Have you ever had a secret admirer?

Yes

41. Are you a good liar?

No, I'm terrible.

42. Are you a good judge of character?

Definitely.

43. Can you do any other accents other than your own?

Not very well

44. Do you have a strong accent?

I don't think so.

45. What is your favourite accent?

I don't really have one.

46. What is your personality type?

Laid back and mostly reserved

47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing?

I have like a $200 black Victorian style coat. It's so freaking warm.

48. Can you curl your tongue?

If I try hard enough

49. Are you an innie or an outie?

Innie

50. Left or right-handed?

Right

51. Are you scared of spiders?

Terrified

52. Favourite food?

Lasagna or broccoli casserole

53. Favourite foreign food?

I'm not really sure

54. Are you a clean or messy person?

Clean

55. Most used phrase?

“but anyway" because I get sidetracked a lot.

56. Most used word?

Okay

57. How long does it take for you to get ready?

Depends on if I really feel like trying. Sometimes and hour, sometimes 10 minutes.

58. Do you have much of an ego?

Nope

59. Do you suck or bite lollipops?

Both

60. Do you talk to yourself?

Sometimes

61. Do you sing to yourself?

All the time

62. Are you a good singer?

Absolutely not

63. Biggest Fear?

Drowning or losing someone I care about

64. Are you a gossip?

I'd like to say no, but I can be sometimes.

65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen?

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

66. Do you like long or short hair?

Long. I don't look good with short hair. Lol

67. Can you name all 50 states of America?

Yes, but I'm not going to.

68. Favourite school subject?

English or Art

69. Extrovert or Introvert?

Introvert. I'm trying to formulate a plan as we speak to get out of a team bonding dinner for work tonight.

70. Have you ever been scuba diving?

No, I'm not really a good swimmer so that would be a terrible idea.

71. What makes you nervous?

Starting a new job. When Tyler and I move and I have to transfer to a different office, I'm screwed.

72. Are you scared of the dark?

Not anymore.

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes?

Sometimes, but I really try not to because I feel rude when I do.

74. Are you ticklish?

Only on my feet

75. Have you ever started a rumour?

I'm sure that I unintentionally have at some point.

76. Have you ever been in a position of authority?

Often

77. Have you ever drank underage?

Once, but I've never really been into drinking. Nothing about it is enjoyable to me.

78. Have you ever done drugs?

Nope

79. Who was your first real crush?

One of my close friends in fourth grade that I'd known since first grade. 

80. How many piercings do you have?

Well I have three in my nose (two in the right side and septum), my ears are stretched and then pierced once above that on both sides, and then my left ear has four additional piercings. So... 11?

81. Can you roll your R’s?

I can't.

82. How fast can you type?

Fast enough

83. How fast can you run?

Pretty fast, but not for very long.

84. What colour is your hair?

Black

85. What color is your eyes?

Blue

86. What are you allergic to?

Any animal with hair and basically anything outside

87. Do you keep a journal?

Not really

88. What do your parents do?

My dad works at a Toyota Manufacturing plant and my mom works in retail

89. Do you like your age?

I guess

90. What makes you angry?

My sorority girl neighbors that like to party until past midnight and scream and yell for no reason so no one in our subdivision can sleep. Like, Tyler wakes up for work at 4am. Some people work. Don't be dicks.

91. Do you like your own name?

I guess so

92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they?

Kind of, I don't know.

93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child?

I'd like to have both.

94. What are your strengths?

I'm a problem-solver and I try to do as much as I can to help people.

95. What are your weaknesses?

I have a hard time saying no to people sometimes.

96. How did you get your name?

Janet came from my dad's mom and my mom just heard a variation of Rachelle somewhere and it inspired her to alter it to Raeshell.

97. Were your ancestors royalty?

Actually, yes.

98. Do you have any scars?

Pretty sure this was already asked, but yes.

99. Colour of your bedspread?

Dark grey

100. Colour of your room?

Grey

So... Now I'm tagging @autumnfell, @astarkey, @i-have-no-username-idea, @edyaleda, and @bonjourmiamigo 🖤

[humansofhds]

Eliot Davenport, MTS '18

“Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day.”

Eliot graduated in 2018 from the MTS program at HDS and is currently applying to PhD programs in South Asian and Religious Studies departments, where she will continue to study Sanskrit and Indian philosophy.

Leaving the Bubble

I am Texan, through and through. I was born and raised in Fort Worth. Same house, same school, same all-the-things for my whole childhood. Religion tied into my life in an early way. When my mom found out she was going to have kids, she thought, “What was important to me when I was small? The Church!” So she immediately started attending again, and my sister and I were raised in the Episcopal Church. My mom worked as the secretary to the rector, so we ended up going to the church school for K-12. It was sort of a bubble of a life.

For most of my life, I wanted to be a priest. Whenever anybody asked me what I wanted to do I would say, “I want to be an Episcopal priest,” and they’d be like “Great, except that you’re a lady.” Turns out that I totally could have, but my diocese was very not progressive. It was stagnant. I didn’t know that women could be clergy until I went off to college and I had already changed my plan at that point. I was good at math and I thought I’d just be an engineer, so I moved to College Station and earned my bachelors of science in civil and ocean/coastal engineering at Texas A&M.

Once I found out about female clergy I called my parents and I was like “what the heck, I could have done this!” They suggested that I put a pin in it and try out the engineering thing. So I did—I worked as an engineer in Austin for about five years. But I still always thought I wanted to go to seminary. About a year into the formal discernment process in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, I thought, “Wait, that’s not what I want after all. Turns out I want to study Sanskrit.” And everybody said, “Excuse me, what?” That’s how I ended up coming to Massachusetts in a nutshell.

Serendipitous Encounters

When I moved to Austin to begin my first real job after graduating from Texas A&M, I realized that engineering had taken up my whole life. I just felt like I didn’t have much of a personality outside of my education and career. So I started to do a bunch of stuff, thinking that year that I would do literally anything that came my way hoping that something would catch me and hold tight. One day somebody said that I should go to a yoga class. I initially thought, “No thanks,’ but something changed and I walked into one, some free class somewhere, and it just stuck. It became my thing.

A couple of years later I started yoga teacher training and was introduced to Sanskrit. From the moment we started learning proper syllable pronunciation, I was hooked. I realized that if I intended to be a yoga teacher who said the names of poses in Sanskrit and spoke with any sense of authority about anything related to the Yoga Sutras, then I better be able to read them as a primary source and not just as an English translation. So, at the suggestion of Professor Clooney, I applied to the University of Texas to try my hand at first-year Sanskrit, and three years later here I am applying for PhD programs.

I started practicing yoga in 2012. I became one of those people who practiced multiple times a day, then I started teaching, and then I quit my full-time engineering job all-together. Then I came here (HDS), and it disappeared from my life. I didn’t grieve the loss of this thing that I had loved; it was just that it's time sort of ended for me. I still do it from time to time, and I’ve started doing it more since graduating. Although yoga is the thing that introduced me to Sanskrit, my relationship to yoga is different now. For me it is physical. I don’t buy into the way that people are trying to package a spiritual experience and a bodily experience all at once. After coming to HDS, I separated the philosophy, the language, and then finally the actual physical practice, so when I do it now I do it just to feel good in my body.

I usually don’t get a lot of good reactions when I tell people this story. Overall there seems to be a sense that this undeniably modern avenue into the world of studying religion, South Asia, and Sanskrit somehow indicates an inability to take it seriously. People have mixed reactions to the idea that the billion dollar, stretchy-pants yoga boom could lead somebody into the academic study of religion, but it did for me and I hope others are lucky enough to let it do the same for them.

Learning Curve

Engineering school never felt right. I never really meshed with that culture. Honestly, even when I thought I was going to be a priest, that didn’t feel quite right either. And then I walked into that first class of beginner Sanskrit at UT and I was like “Oh! I found the thing, and it’s not a place, or a particular career; it’s this other new thing that I’m so glad I ran into.” It was a beautiful accident. And I’m thankful for it, every day.

Because my first year at HDS was also my first year in the humanities, my time here was like a compressed undergraduate education. There was a huge learning curve. I mean, my first paper in my life that was longer than three pages was my first paper here at HDS. So, I had to give myself time and space to properly develop an idea of what I wanted to do. Even now I can say more easily what I don’t want to do than what I do want to do, whether it’s in regard to a simple term paper or a future book. My dearest friend back in Austin teases me that I went from wanting to do everything in all the libraries in all over the world to wanting to do something in all of the libraries on one continent, and now I’m trying to shrink it down to one country, one city, and perhaps a single library.

Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day. This whole world didn’t initially open up to me through English translations of Sanskrit texts or even from the mouths of my professors. I became familiar with some of India’s epic narratives and philosophical works simply by reading them in the language in which they were meant to be heard and read. In fact, it was only after my second full year of language study that I was finally asked to think critically about them from a non-language-based perspective. This perhaps odd way of doing things, learning the language before knowing what my academic questions might be, has certainly affected the way I study. I’ve finally zeroed in on the thing I love reading the most: Indian philosophy. In particular I’m interested in epistemology, philosophy of language, theories of sensory experience, and the efficacy of sound as a source of knowledge. I’m interested in not just what these philosophers had to say, but also the intricacies of how they chose to say it. What do they have to say about language and how, in turn, do they utilize language to do so? For a lot of people, it probably sounds like the most boring thing in the world. But this is what’s captured my imagination, so I am just going with it.

Hidden Motivations

In my last semester, I took a class with Professor Hallisey about Buddhism and modern fiction. In this course, it was incredible to me how we were all presented with the same paper prompts and every single one of us wrote on distinctly different topics for each. When we were asked “What is the author of this novel asking us to reflect on?” each of us zeroed in on such fascinating and differing topics that it made me wonder if we’d even read the same book.

In the final paper for that class, the basic question was: Why read fiction at all? I started thinking about how fiction forces us not only to look into the minds of different authors, but also to dive deep into our own brains to see what we’re reflecting on. Fiction is a conduit for us to live other lives and see what in those lives is important to us. I wrote about grief and loss for one assignment and about the human tendency to self-deceive for another. As I wrote the final, I thought back and self-psychoanalyzed a bit, realizing that those topics are things that are always present in my mind. I was totally unaware of this while I was reading the novels and writing the individual papers. All this to say that this class changed the way I want to approach the works of certain Indian philosophers. In addition to looking at what they were trying to convey through their arguments, I want to analyze the ways in which they were attempting to convey it in order to gain insight into their world. Perhaps this insight may be able to add to our own experience in unexpected ways.

What is it that I think I’m going to discover there? I don’t know. But I want to get into their brains and I want to know why they chose to talk about the things they chose to talk about. Who were they? What was important to them? What motivated them to write these difficult, intense, complicated things? The engineering side of my brain wants to break down the structure of the texts, the specific sentences, words, and letters. But I also want to put the puzzle pieces together of what they were thinking about on the surface to see what they may have been thinking about below it. Hopefully it leads me somewhere I can’t quite yet imagine.

Elton John

I played the piano competitively for a long time. I started really young because The Lion King was my favorite movie. I remember walking out of the film and being like, “Mom—that music! Who wrote it?” And she told me “Elton John!” I said “I’m going to marry Elton John.” She replied by saying, “Do you want to play the piano?” Soon after that I started to play and still do just for fun. Elton John came here last fall when he was awarded the Harvard Foundation’s Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian, and I finally had the chance to see him in person after 25 years. It was amazing.

Interview and photos by Anaïs Garvanian