translation: a hundred million welcomes
pronunciation: kayd me-lay fall-chuh

Welcome to Ealain, my new personal site where lots other things will be stuffed in. So far the new layout and my journal are the only things up, but in the next few weeks I plan on adding some other things including the usual non-unique about me page, possibly a photo album (not sure whether or not I want them all accessible to the public yet), probably a portfolio, etc. Though “journal” sounds average, I plan on doing a lot with it. So far I created 27 categories (not including “uncategorized”) and I plan on using them. They range from everyday life to what I’m working on with my websites to what I’m working on with my drawing and writing (work in progress logs) to memories. Normally when opening a blog, it is just that: blog. You’ll have to trust me on this since it hasn’t ever really worked out in the past, but I really do intend on making this work and I have a good feeling about it.

The new layout is called Hybrid Lore. I actually had three different versions of “professional” and “modern” layouts, none of which I liked. So I threw them all into one and fell in love. It is my first professional, modern-feeling layout. It is my first layout with no images (only a screenshot of the minimize-fullscreen-close buttons and the checkerboard, but I’m not counting that. *hides* XP). I hope you like it. Feedback welcomed.

I have to run to class now. I’m typing this in the school library since we got out of clase de espan~ol* early. I’ll save this and come back later to keep typing…

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After an hour of Euchlid’s Algorithm, I’m back. 20 minutes until I have to go to my next class. o_O

Anyways, today in my first class (Interpretation of Fiction), he had us start writing our own version of a short story we read. The story was a Spanish fable (translated into English) called “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Ma’rquez.* In it, a fallen angel appears in the road in front of this family’s house. He sticks around all throughout the winter, living in the filth, being displayed as a freak for the monetary benifit of the town’s citizens, etc. Then, in spring, he seems to get better (he had been grey, sick, depressed, etc.), un-fallen, and flies back up into the sky. I have no idea what the moral of the story was. Usually I can figure it out, the “theme,” my professor calls it, but in this one… it was just weird. Our professor told us to write our own story where an angel appears in our everyday life. How do we react to it? What do our families do? How do they react? Etc.

So, after an hour and a half of writing, right before class ends, he asks us some questions. How many people had the angel speak? (In the original, the angel spoke but very little and only in a foreign dialect). Most did. Mine didn’t. How many incorporated eating or drinking of some sort? Most did. Mine didn’t. How many mentioned death, dying, or severe illness? A few did. Mine didn’t. My angel bled some, but not much. Etc. Then he asked us what our underlying theme was. Of course, none of us sat down and said “I’m going to make my story give a lesson about this.” We just sat and wrote like he said. But most (if not all) of us had some sort of meaning. He said that most people think that authors write sit down with a theme in mind, but in reality it is usually the other way around. He also told us to think about how we decided what to write, what went into it, and how we figured out what our meaning (our theme) was.

I got five pages into my story (written in a notebook) but I like how it is coming. We aren’t required to, but I think I’m going to finish it. Finish the draft, type it, and then rewrite, expand, and polish. See how it comes out.

I’m currently working on a biographical “story” of my life. I’ve never been able to finish a story and they (the people who have finished stuff) say to write about your childhood because 1) you know it 2) it is when you paid the most attention to detail, using your senses, etc. 3) other reasons I can’t remember. One of the themes I want to bring into it is why people believe in religion and why I do. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life (6 to be exact; all were family and I was very close to 2 of them), one being my mom. My family is a Protestant denomination of Christian, though my mom branched off and was non-denominational. She had her own views and passed most of them down to me. I’ve always believed in God. But it gives me comfort to “know” that, if there is a God, then my mom is somewhere. She isn’t just gone. After all, gone completely is a hard concept for us to really understand.

When he asked what our themes were, I realized that mine related to that. If an angel appeared in my life and I discovered that it really was a real angel, then wouldn’t I feel that comfort in knowing that my mom was there?

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* I don’t have accent keys on my keyboard and I have no intention of learning the HTML icon keys for them, so if I know an accent is supposed to be there, I’ll put a little ` after it. If I know it needs a whatchamacallit ~ above the n, I will put it after. eg. i’ and n~. Clarification.