Fang-tastic

Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock knows that Vampire lore is all the buzz in almost every media medium.  Most recently:  Twilight (plus the 3 sequels in both book and movie format); True Blood (HBO); Vampire Diaries (on the CW of all places); Buffy the Vampire Slayer; The Historian (book that loosely follows the history of Vlad the Impaler); Interview with a Vampire; all the way back to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  There are all sorts of other vampire-related books and such.  The common theme for most of these stories involves forbidden love between vampire and mortal.  Usually there is some vampire who decides to buck the trend of using human blood for food (for moral reasons of course) and winds up falling in love with the thing he’s supposed to eat.  Taking it out of a mythological level, that would be tantamount to a regular person falling in love with …say, a cow.

Alright, so I’d rather not spend most of my time commenting on the specifics of each of these stories.  Instead, I find it fascinating to consider why these stories are so appealing.  At least to most of the female population.  Vampires are always depicted as these extremely sexy, confident, overwhelmingly perfect beings with the drawback of an appetite for blood that is somehow only mildly repulsive in combination with the other things.  They have the added bonus of always being extremely intelligent, because they live so long and all.  I’m beginning to think it would be hilarious to for once have a vampire depicted as a fat slob who is extremely insecure and has not taken any time to enhance his intelligence over the many years he’s been dead.  Its kind of crazy that absolutely without fail ALL vampires are ripped.  Does that mean that vampires have discerning tastes and only prefer to drink fit people blood?  What if fat people are like junk food?

Okay, sorry, got lost there.  What is mind-blowing is how long the vampire legend has been perpetuated.  It goes all the way back to Mesopotamia.  For the most part through history it has been used as an excuse to get rid of people that didn’t fit the norm of society.  Women who didn’t get married due to refusing to be subservient or something like that, were conveniently burned at the stake for being vampires.  Sounds a lot like the Salem Witch Trials, something else I found fascinating and will probably talk about another time.  Btw, this is a good site to check out on all things Vampire, its pretty much someone’s dissertation on the subject.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~elektra/thesis.html

Somewhat interesting is the fine line drawn between the way a vampire eats, and that of a cannibal.  There is not much of a distinction in my opinion.  Think about it, cannibals eat humans.  Vampires drink human blood.  Yet cannibals are not nearly so appealing to modern society.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not remotely endorsing a cannibal craze.  I’m merely pointing out that Vampire eating habits should greatly diminish the allure of the Vampire.

If anything, vampires have staying power, this much is certain.  I won’t lie, it is a form of escapism I enjoy for the most part.  Its difficult to explain, so I won’t try much longer.  I think it is just really fun to imagine our world is less one-dimensional.  That the inexplicable can exist and can defy the laws of nature.  Beyond that, its thrilling to imagine that same nature-defying force being a super hot guy that decides he’s in love with me and will go against his very nature to be with me…:)  Yep, I’m a fool and I love mythology.

Rumspringa

First off, I’d like to apologize for my previous post insofar as it was one of those vague, ambiguous and all together mysterious posts that I tend to abhor in other blogs that I have read.  I hit an emotional block, and the result was an effort to convey my duress while at the same time keeping the matter entirely private.  Those two things don’t coincide well, especially in the realm of blogging.  In future I will endeavor to either be more specific, or simply defer my troubles to other venting methods.  I apologize for any frustration this may have caused.

In other news, my day started off much better as I listened to the podcast of “Stuff You Should Know” about the Amish.  I’ve always been fascinated by the Amish.  I grew up in Kansas, and Kansas does boast a few Amish communities.  They make excellent angel food cake.  Other than that vital piece of information, my knowledge of the Amish has been limited to stereotypes mostly perpetuated by movies.  Although after listening to the podcast, it sounds as though the stereotypes are not totally wrong.

One thing I did learn is that the Amish have a period of time in their teenage years called “rumspringa.”  Literally the term translates to “running around” but for the Amish it is a period of time that begins around the age of 16 where the youth chooses between being baptized in the Amish church or leaves the community permanently.  The popularly held belief is that rumspringa is a time that allows for Amish teens to simply abandon their upbringing and do whatever they want outside of the Amish community.  This is a bit of an exaggeration, as in most Amish communities there is no formal time period where youth are “released” from the rules established by their Ordnung (the set of rules by which the Amish live).  By and large, the Amish teens choose to be baptized in the Amish church.

That doesn’t seem all that surprising to me.  They grew up Amish, so what would make them think any other way of living would be preferable?  Seems a common theme amongst almost all religions, that if you are raised a certain way you tend to carry on the tradition/religion that you were raised in and practice the same way your parents did.  Its how organized religion survives.

I really like the term rumspringa though.  Partly because I really like the German language, and partly because I think it is apropos.  Teenagers are notorious for “running around” 🙂

Freedom

set them free?

Isn’t that how the saying goes?  “If you love someone, set them free.”  or ‘If you love them, let them go.”   The rest of these quotations state that after letting them go, to wait for them to come back.  If they come back, they love you too.  If not…well then you’re up shit creek without a paddle.

Seems really simple, right?  Well, its not.  Love implies a certain degree of attachment not normally encountered in your run of the mill relationships.  I guess the purpose of the statement is that there is some sort of implied blind faith that has to accompany love.  Blind faith that you give someone your heart and they won’t run away with it and never return.

Its just really difficult to believe in that premise sometimes.  Especially when you hop on the “letting them go” bandwagon, and are waiting for the second part.  And dreading the worst option.  It makes memories painful, memories that under normal circumstances would be happy ones.  I’m starting to believe that if you are ever in the situation where you have to let someone go, then there is little use in hoping for a happy outcome.

This is a universal principle that applies to friendships, and almost any relationship.  It might actually be worse with friendships.  I feel lost.