Jamie Ortega
 
"It is possible that we wake up next morning dead" - props to Phenomenology

"We are all looking for forever - something that doesn't change" - props to Plato

"How scanners and photocopying machines work" - cause I was curious one night

"Drawing: Reflections of a Noob" -I've been sketching

"Mia Ali's interview (if she'd permit, fingers crossed!)" - cause I'm itching to do this

Stay with me til then!
 
Disclaimer: I love Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and I will forever quote Lewis Carroll

"People don't change, they only get softer," said Lex the Clone to his father. This was from a Smallville season 4 episode, if you were interested. So this episode deals with an experiment gone wrong, creating the mean, tougher badass annoying version of Lex. The real Lex argues that the other one is just a clone and not at all part of him. The clone then takes a shot at him, "are you sure?", implying that he was everything Lex suppressed and he in fact is the real deal.

Do I believe people change? No. Funny. My favorite quotes are mostly about change:
  • ..Step out of the person you've been and be the person you're meant to be. -One Tree Hill
  • We cannot step twice into the same river. - Heroclitus
  • I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle! -Alice in Wonderland
  • I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'- Alice in Wonderland
So what do I think? I'd have to side with Parmanides on this. Nothing can become anything other than it was. There is no actual change. I believe that we only become less or more of what we are.. sort of like.. well the volume adjustments on your TV or Ipod or computer. I believe that we can be different levels of who we are. Who controls this? I don't know, I'd like to believe we hold the remote controls to adjust ourselves but then there are so many other factors like different circumstances, situations so I don't think you can solely pinpoint the person.

What I do know is at the end of the day, you are who you are - beginning to end, no excuses.

Things change, people don't have to.

The Duchess: Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. - Alice in Wonderland
 
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent.  Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.


Jamie Ortega