Discover_

Are astonishing. I went to Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum with my dad today. G-d definitely gave man incredible creative powers, you know? Today I've seen everything, from the beautiful(delicate paintings eggshells and fragile leaves), to the cool (Spiderman comics painted on tablets made out of spiderwebs. Quite appropriate), weird (penis sheaths from Africa and Papua New Guinea. No, I'm not making that up. Apparently as well as being 'decorative', they protected one's tender parts from insect bites. Fair enough, but still weird.), wacky (I'm sorry, but I still don't understand why one would want to paint a full body potrait of Elvis on a common household needle) ...to the downright disturbing.
I saw actual medieval torture devices. Two real executioner's axes. All kinds of iron contraptions, all shining and clean, and all stained with invisible but very real blood. The designs were varied, but the purposes were all the same: to inlict pain (and often humiliation as well) on another human being. It's one thing to read that someone was whipped, it's quite another to actually see the heavy, spiked chain. It was locked in a display case, but even from the other side of the glass you could feel its oppressive weight. Even as a history buff who's read and known about such things from a young age, it was somewhat shocking. You couldn't see that room and not wonder what's wrong with humanity. How can we be so cruel to our friends and brothers? What is wrong with us, that we feel a need to kill and maim and destroy?
Man has great creative power. What we can do with it blows my mind. It can be used for such beauty, for such good. Or for such terrible ugliness.
I don't think I'll be forgetting the shrunken head of a five year old child any time soon.

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Nothing terribly unusual, but here I am, time to write some more. We were shifting house all through December.. oy. Never try to move house over Christmas, it's just not pretty. So moving over, it's time for me to start packing again. I leave for New Zealand in less than a month now, a prospect that's exciting and terrifying all at once. I think over all it's a good move, but I'm going to miss my family. Speaking of my family, oy the the fights are getting on my nerves. A girl can only take so much at a time. But that's enough of the mishygoss! I feel really good now. I had a good talk with Dad this morning and I think he understands what I've been trying to explain for years, at least a little bit. I have exciting things happening, things are kind of pulling together a bit in life, I've been having some fun, and to cap it off, it's Shabbat! I love Shabbat so much. Let me see... I might be getting baptised tomorrow evening, that's very exciting. Fun and interesting things are happening in the book-world too, though my poor NaNovel is a mess and it's scaring me a bit, just thinking of how much work I still have to do with it before it's even worthy of being stuffed in that drawer and forgotten for the rest of time. But it's ok, good things take time and effort and I'm rather fond of the poor sad little story. I went into the City the other night with Matthew and went to a concert, to see The Kin. I'm so, so glad I went! That was amazing. If you've never heard them, you must. Their voices are just beautiful, and they match so well! Listen to an accoustic version of their song Abraham on YouTube and you'll understand what I mean.

So yeah. I'm just lying on my bed, playing The Kin, enjoying the fact that there's a ceiling fan in my room... this is Shabbat. Everything is just fine. Shabbat shalom, haverim ^_^