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~Conundra

a most mischievous muffin
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do not go gentle

Mon Dec 28, 2009, 12:26 AM
Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbance; the departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences
should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I've noticed a pattern in my life.
Every half-decade or so, a period of time comes along that reminds me of the reasons why I learned to find joy in small, simple things in the first place, of why I demand so vehemently that people appreciate and love life and its experiences in all their iterations. I found the stubbornness, the determination, and the refusal to give up that serve me so well because of times like these when things became so hard that I not only started to lose hope, but to lose myself.

The last few months mark the first time period in nearly five years when I've looked at my life and wondered why I bother keeping my head above water. I can say without hyperbole or exaggeration of any kind that I had nearly three solid months without more than a day or two's worth of respite. The loss of the longest relationship of my life, a physically and mentally crippling illness, my grandfather's months-long decline in health that ended in death a week ago, the most intellectually challenging academic work I've ever faced in the form of a conference project that my professor stated was more than likely impossible on top of the burden of an advanced Biology course, further exacerbated by weeks of incapacitation that set me back nearly a month, financial issues, problems in the lives of the people I love most, financial issues, and a number of smaller, day-to-day stressors all decided to darken my doorstep in very quick, often overlapping succession, and more often than not I found myself doubting if I could make it through. It was more than the usual doubt when things get rough, it was genuine fear that my mind or my body would give out, and I am a bit ashamed to admit that the former very nearly happened on a few occasions in November and December.

I don't know if I'm out of the woods yet. I can certainly hope that I've seen the worst, but it seems likely that I haven't. Even if things improve from here, the cycle will come back around again. People I love will leave my life, by my own choice or not. People will shift and change and grow apart. People will die. Pain and suffering and misery, often without any sort of rhyme or reason, will come and go, come and stay for a while, or come and try to set up permanent residence; this is, quite simply, the way of the world.

It isn't enough to just preach hope, optimism, and love of life when things are good, or at the very least stable.
I have no delusions about the world being a good, happy, wonderful place full of sunshine, roses, and fluffy kittens. It isn't. But it's the only world I've got, and this is the only life I'll ever live as the person I am.

and whether that life is worth living or not, as long as there is breath in my body, I am not going to give up.



My Grandpa Bill was one hell of a human being.
He lived for ninety-six years, three months, and twenty-nine days.

His youngest son Ritchie was born with a hole in his heart, and died twice before he was ten. My grandfather lived every single day of that child's first sixteen years of life knowing that day could be Ritchie's last. Whether it was by determination on Ritchie's part, Bill's part, or some combination of the two, Ritchie survived until the surgery that could save his life was pioneered. His life expectancy, set with incredible optimism at 35, more than doubled - he's lived for sixty-two years, and is still going strong. When he was forty, Ritchie's girlfriend of more than seven years became pregnant. Seven months later, they were married, and two months after that, the couple's first and only daughter was born. Me.

he lived to see the death of the woman he'd loved for nearly forty years and sat beside her, helpless despite his profound medical skills, as she succumbed to the cancer in her lungs.

a few years later, his only daughter - beautiful and brilliant - died of a drug overdose at the age of thirty-two. He outlived her by twenty-six years.

He was a general practitioner and surgeon for nearly fifty years. During that time, he founded a hospital, identified the bacterium that caused giardia, was one of the only people to ever successfully treat and cure spinal meningitis, invented the respiratory spray delivery system for influenza vaccine, and saved tens of thousands of lives (many of those patients didn't have the money for the treatment and procedures that saved them, so he adopted a policy of accepting pies and homegrown produce as payment). When I visited him in August he could still recall the details of every case in his room full of file cabinets.
He died without recognition for the majority of his accomplishments. His research was stolen by others, or simply passed over, and his name will not go down in history in the annals of medicine.

He spent much of his life miserable.
and he never gave up. Ever. He was determined to the last to make his world and his life worth living, and when they weren't the cantankerous, stubborn old cuss kept going, anyway.

I can think of no better way to honor his memory than to simply live my life as best I can and face the world with all the strength I have, whether it's enough or not. Like him, I will make mistakes. I will not always be proud of the person I am. I will not always succeed. I will be bitter, sometimes. I will have flaws.
But I will live.
and, God willing, I will accomplish half as much and live half as much as he did in my years on this earth, however many lie before me.

I can think of no better conclusion to this entry than the poem I recited under my breath the last time I saw Grandpa Bill over Thanksgiving (which my favorite professor, in a coincidence I very much enjoyed, sent to me a few days ago upon hearing of my grandfather's death).

Do not go gentle into that good night,
old age should burn and rave at close of day;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at the end know dark is right;
because their words had forked no lightning they
do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay
rage, rage against the dying of the light.

and you, my father, there on the sad height,
curse, bless, men now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night;
rage, rage against the dying of the light."

- Dylan Thomas



In memory of William Albert Phillips.
August 21, 1913 - December 20, 2009

May you find whatever Heaven you hoped for, or simple darkness and peace, if that was your wish.
I love you for always.

  • Mood: Emotional

Apoptosis / Permanent Hiatus

Sun Dec 27, 2009, 6:54 PM
In the two and a half months since I've updated my journal here, the following has happened:

- I contracted lyme disease, and was very sick from mid-October 'til early November.

- despite the above, I managed to rock my performance as Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror.

- I was featured in Skin & Ink magazine in November, I'm not sure if the issue is November 09 or December 09. Still need to find and scan myself a copy.

- I spent all of November and part of December making up work I missed while sick. The total page count of work I did over those six weeks is staggering, but I managed to complete everything, with the exception of a six-page paper, and pull off my theoretical cure for HIV/AIDS. I've never been so burnt out in my life.

- my 96-year old grandfather died on December 20, two days after the end of the fall 2009 semester. I've been fortunate enough to have very few important people in my life pass away; his death was only the second I've ever had to cope with in my family (God willing, this will be true for a long time to come). I don't really know how to deal with it.

It was easily the worst semester of my academic career, and I'm glad its over.

Now that the quick-and-dirty update is over, I can get to the actual reason for this journal entry.
I've decided to make my hiatus from nude modeling permanent. I've promised shoots to a few photographers, and I'll be keeping those commitments, but after that, I'm done.

This is a decision nearly a year in the making. The simple fact of the matter is that, for me, the detrimental effects of nude modeling far outweigh the benefits.

I have a number of personality and physiological traits that make modeling a risky proposition, and when combined, make it just plain unhealthy (for example: I'm competitive, I'm envious, I compare myself to others far too readily, and I'm prone to low self-esteem).

I won't ever be able to do the sorts of shoots I want to do because of my weight (and the fact that while I have some talent, I really don't have enough), and that's not going to change, and I've wasted far too much energy and emotion trying to be something I'm not and fit into a mold I have no chance in hell of ever squeezing into.
I've been avoiding shoots and shooting off and on practically since I started because of this.

It's been a fun ride, but I'm tired of playing this game.
I can live with my body if I don't have to see it in front of cameras. When I don't have to look at myself with a model's eyes, concentrating on every little flaw, my weight doesn't bother me very much, and I can almost be happy with the way I look.
By the outside world's standards, I'm a beautiful girl.
By the modeling world's standards - both those of others and those I have set for myself - I don't measure up.

I'm grateful for all the wonderful experiences I've had and all of the fantastic people I've met, but this isn't for me any longer. It's been months since my last shoot, and in some ways I barely miss it, in others I miss it horribly. I love being part of the artistic process, spending hours and hours, sometimes days to create something and looking back with pride and awe that I was part of bringing it into being. Bittersweet, bittersweet.
I'll devote more time to my feelings about this when I'm less exhausted, and not fighting off a cold and a nasty headache.

Thank you all so much for your comments, love, and support.

I'm still supposed to receive photos from at least nine shoots, if not more, and I'll be posting them as this happens.

  • Mood: Tired

Sexy-Time with the Death Star

Mon Oct 12, 2009, 9:47 PM
I may have just won the greatest battle of wits of my life against the Death Star ([link])... and seduced it in the process

I'm presenting it here, because I'm just that proud of it.
and I'm just that much of an incorrigible geek.

PotentSaarlac:
Dear Shower: 20 minutes of attempts to scald me to death will not go unpunished. This house is no longer big enough for the both of us.

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
My dear battle station, I desperately need your assistance. Will you help me dispatch the Galaxy's most cantankerous shower?

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
Dammit woman, I'm a battle-station not a plumber. I could fire my superlaser at it, but you may not like the side effects.

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
Piffle, my good destroyer of worlds. I want it annihilated, not coddled - if I wanted a plumber, I would have asked Boba Fett.

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
I could annihilate it, certainly, but if I were to fire at your planet, hot water would be the least of your worries.

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
Not that you would HAVE any worries, since you'd just be a small cloud of sub-atomic dust, but you know what I mean.

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
Nonsense. My subnuclear particles have feelings, too. If you could arrange to transport me before firing your laser...

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
... I could make it worth your while

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
Worth my while? What would you pay a planet-destroying space station?

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
When was the last time you experienced a neutrino flux that rocked you to your very gluons? I can make that happen, baby...

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
... and then some

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
Setting course for Earth.

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
I knew you'd see things my way, lover. :) Sweet recharging - dream of the quantum singularities we'll create together.

PotentSaarlac:
Have successfully lured @death_star to Earth by talking dirty to it about quantum physics. My life is now complete.


TREMBLE BEFORE MY MIGHTY NERDINESS!!! TREMBLE, I SAY!!!!

  • Mood: Triumph

60,000 pageviews

Mon Oct 12, 2009, 7:53 PM
Another landmark, come and gone.

Granted, I know people who have had 60,000 pageviews in their first month on DA, but hey, who am I to complain? I'm holding my breath for 100k. Let's hope it doesn't take another two years. :)

Lessee... it's been a while since my last real update.

Things aren't so great right now in Megan-land.
I've had a really rough month. Significant life changes are not the sort of thing one makes contingency plans for when one is in college - I couldn't very well have not taken Virology because I was afraid of my life being turned upside down - and between dealing with emotional backlash, serious illness and impending death in the family, my own illness (contemptible hormones!), a period of very significant transitions and re-orienting myself in the world, and all my schoolwork, life is, for lack of a more delicate, euphemistic way to put it, kicking the crap out of me.

I'm finding lots of pennies, seeing lots of chipmunks, receiving a lot of hugs, and coming across a lot of little things that help me get through the day, but I won't lie; I'm a little sick of having to scrounge so hard for reasons to be happy. Oh, well. That's life, I suppose.

  • Mood: Neutral
  • Listening to: Rammstein - "Pussy"

Twitter-Time!

Fri Oct 9, 2009, 5:25 PM
I've finally given in and joined Twitter under copious amounts of peer pressure.
Come validate my internet existence by stalking me - there is much tomfoolery, absurdity, random silliness, and more insight into my best friends' and my twisted little minds than anyone could ever want.
[link]

  • Mood: Lazy

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