2008-04-19 6:59 p.m.
Bellare
bella: a Latin word, preserved in Spanish and Italian with only slight pronunciation changes, and in French as "belle" - in all cases, means "beautiful."
bellare: a Latin word, the root for the English words "belligerent" ['warlike', 'fierce'] and "antebellum" ('before the [American Civil] war')...loosely means "to fight".
It can be argued, also, that the two are from a common root word. That feistiness, the willingness and ability to fight, are not necessarily bad things. Can sometimes be useful and even beautiful.
I'm not so sure about it. But that's because of myself. See..."bella", is not me. But "bellare"...
That would be me.
I realized it this afternoon. I was dancing in my room to some Christian worship music [laugh if you like, but religious music is beautiful, and just feels sincere. It's easier to dance to because of that. :) Besides, most good religious songs sound like they could be love songs. It's kinda cool] and thinking about my novel as I was doing so.
(That's not contradictory, I often refer to my beliefs as "Authorism", ie, that God is an author. And a nicer one than I am, given the current state of all of my characters' "lives". Not only that, but my novel has more original gods and references to mythological gods than five encyclopedias of religion and mythology.)
One of my characters is a goddess of war. And as I was dancing, I realized how similarly I've written her to another character who began her life as, well, me. Autobiographical. In a fantasy world that my friends and I created, this character clawed to life as my alter-ego (my friends' characters did the same for them), and I never intended for her to pop up anywhere else. But there she is, in the novel that will never be done. And she's the goddess of war, no less.
I'm the belligerent one in my group of friends. The one nobody ever wants to see angry. Ha. They probably never will; the leash on my temper is as legendary as my temper itself. You have to have a tight hold on it when you're descended from Viking and Celtic warriors and have inherited their tempers along with their love for the arts, their friends, and a good time. (My ancestors were badass. *grin*)
When we all undertook a brief foray into Celtic paganism (which still influences our thinking), we defined everyone's elemental personalities. I was fire. My tarot deck refers to me as the fire queen - and so do my friends' decks. When it comes time to either challenge something/someone or run away, my friends run while I play the dumb decoy and duke it out with whoever/whatever's threatening us. I'm the youngest of the group, but all of my "titles", the nicknames we bestow on each other that have nothing to do with our names but instead describe our personalities and roles in the group, all of them refer to me as big sister, protector, fighter.
My nickname would be Bellatrix if it weren't for the associations in Harry Potter. (Bellatrix, meaning "female warrior", is the name in astronomy for one of the stars in the constellation Orion. I knew this as a kid, because instead of wishing on a single star, I wished on Orion. I figured that if one star was effective, than a constellation must be even better. I didn't know the legends of Orion - he as a rather unsavory character - and I used to tell stories when I was lonely (I had no friends as a child. Literally.) that Orion was looking out for me; that he was my friend and protector and would grant my wishes even when my life was falling apart. It seems really silly to me now, but then I was dead serious.)
Not that I fight these associations. (Except the Harry Potter one. Check all scheming, murderous, psychopaths at the door, please.) I know fully well that I am the bitchiest one in the group, and that if my amigas and I ever came to a bitch-fest, I would win. I'm strong and I fight for things when they're important to me.
I just don't associate myself much with ideas of beauty.
It's not that I have low self-esteem or whatever. I think I'm fabulous, on a good day. And on a not so good day, yeah, I focus on things that can be improved, but it's not in an "Oh my God I'm awful or unlovable or ugly or whatever" kind of way. Everyone is fabulous. THAT I believe without any uncertainty.
Even awkward, ungainly me. :D
And I like being the fighter. There's nothing I hate more than being ineffectual, or unable to make a difference. After years of being at the mercy of a really unstable home life, I'm able to get it now. Finally, I can have control of my life and I'll be damned if anyone gets in my way. And that's not a bad thing.
Anyway. Just my thoughts for the afternoon. There's no real connection between the thoughts and anything that's happening. I just figured I'd share my ponderings. :)
In other news, I'm an evil genius. I've got all of my friends playing off of each other in my planning of their birthday parties. They're all helping me to frighten the others...well. Sorta. There are two major group breakdowns among my amigos. And I'm exploiting the groups against each other, knowing that they're not talking about the party plans except to hint. And I'm playing them all against each other to make everyone's birthdays more fabulous. It is devious and evil and I LOVE IT. This is going to be the best summer ever.
And then I get to have the biggest adventure of my life and go to England for a year. Still scared shitless about that, by the way. I think I will be up until I'm there and settled and caught up to how the English university system works (because I know full well that it's quite different from the American - let's make that Californian, since we do things differently here than the rest of the country - university system). But that's part of the adventure.
To me, courage isn't not being afraid. It's doing something despite being afraid, and doing it with your whole heart rather than reluctantly, even though what you most want is to turn tail and run.
Nobody knows how afraid I am of all this. There are just so many things to take into account. There's finances, that's at the top of the list. There's the fact that I can't even handle two and a half months away from my friends without going stir-crazy (although that's only the highest compliment possible in the whole universe to the depth of our friendship and the incredible people they are...and testament to the fact that we're not friends, we're family attached on the soul (as opposed to blood) level). There's the fact that I am so attracted to British men that they're almost a fetish.
Mm...British accents. :D
I have at least 5 friends who have made me swear that I won't come back from England married or pregnant. My friends know that I'm a social person, and that men often take that to mean I'm flirting and then try to pick up on me, even though I'm not interested. They know that I'm an impulsive person. They know that I decide whether or not I love someone as a person within the first week of knowing them, and after that, unless they do something to shake my trust, I will always be there if they need anything. My fire nature, my warrior-like ways, they can get me into trouble.
My friends know this.
Of course, it was never likely that I would come back married or pregnant. I have no interest to be getting into a long-term, major commitment for a long time. And as for kids (*shudder*), I was an accident baby, the kid neither of my parents wanted or was ready to have when my mom's period skipped. They were both college students, nowhere near finishing, and really, honestly, truly were a match made in Hell. For that matter, mom was on the pill. They were using condoms with spermicide. It was the wrong time of the month. AND I STILL HAPPENED.
It's no wonder my mom blames me for that marriage. They got married because they honestly believed that they could maybe be happy together, and with a baby on the way, they figured it was better to be parents together than not. They kept me because mom didn't want my sister to be siblingless (she was the child of a previous marriage, and mom had intended to abort her. Needless to say, it didn't happen. Had it happened, who knows. None of us would be here, in all likelihood. Mom probably wouldn't have kept me and married dad, and then my brother wouldn't have happened either. Hell, mom wouldn't have met dad because when they met in college, she was going back to school after having to take a hiatus because my sister was born.)
My entire existence is the result of 4, count 'em, FOUR, failed methods of birth control. Needless to say, I've been wary about the male half of the species just because of that. I don't want to end up finding out that even though I was cautious, Fate decided to play games with me the way it did with them. And I would never be able to have an abortion, even though I support it's legality...I would never be able to look at my sister again if I did.
My friends don't know this; so they don't realize that sex is not something I plan on having until *after* I graduate college and am able to take care of myself and any possible baby that may result *without* a man's help. So I appreciate their concern, sorta, but it's really kind of redundant and ridiculous.
They don't know that, though. And what do I care? It's not like it really matters all that much.
But still. It's scary to know that I'll be away from all of my support network. I rely on my friends to let me know when I'm missing something because I'm too impulsive and tend to judge in people's favor without really having all the evidence on them. It would be all too easy to get into a relationship with someone who's bad for me...even if that relationship didn't get to the sex stage. (Or the marriage stage, lol)
For that matter, what the hell would happen if I got into a relationship with someone who was good for me? It couldn't last. I have to come home to California after that year.
And all the friends I'm going to make...leaving them is going to SUCK. (Of course, this is totally me being pessimistic and focusing on the bad parts about going to England. Which are, essentially, the getting there and settled in part at the beginning, and the leaving and returning to the States at the end. The middle's going to be fantastic.)
I just get too attached to people.
I idealize them. I put them up on shiny pedestals and beg them not to move or even breathe (not literally, of course), lest they put a toe out of line and shatter the illusion. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt too quickly, and with it my loyalty and pieces of my soul. I love people, I love humanity. And because of that, I give the benefit of the doubt too quickly, too easily, too trustingly; and in doing so I love too deeply, too soon, too much. (Friend-love, not romantic. I'm super-guarded in that arena.)
I don't know if this is necessarily negative. I think what this world could use is a little less caution and a lot more "hang the consequences, hang the rules" mentality when it comes to trying to deal with other people. We need to reach out to each other more. Unreservedly.
If there's one thing I've noticed in years of watching people, it's that if you treat people as though they're incredible and amazing and precious and like nothing they do could ever be bad enough to scare you away, they don't test that. They do everything to rise to the occasion, to feel worthy of that kind of view of themselves. We want our friends to be mirrors of ourselves in a way - not of who we are at that moment, flawed and imperfect and sometimes pretty unlovable - but mirrors of who we can be, who we are in the grander scheme of things as individuals with infinite power to beautify and bedazzle the universe if we'll only make that first step and take the risks.
I've been reading a lot of books about mythology - mostly because the stories I write tend to operate on mythic themes. One author stands out in particular: Joseph Campbell. In one of his books, he gives the advice:
"Follow your bliss."
Do whatever it takes to pursue that thing in your life that gives you fire and passion and creativity, that makes you feel beautiful and alive and amazing and inspires you in every aspect of your life.
I'm trying to live by that. It makes good sense.
For me, my bliss is my friendships. It's seeing the people that I love happy, and knowing that I helped to cause that. (Hence why I'm bankrupting myself on birthday parties before setting out to England, knowing full well that the exchange rate is totally not in my favor.)
My bliss is also adventures. But adventures are best had with friends, so that just loops us back to step one.
Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this entry was, so make of it what you will. I'm off to make dinner and then get back to my books. :)
