All that glisters is not gold...

Usually, it's actually from Ross.

Tonight Jamie and Rachel, two of my law school friends (as well as Claire and her husband and my classmates and all my other law school friends, just saying that Jamie and Rachel were the primary influences and focus of the photographic evidence) dragged me/each other to the Barrister's Ball. South Texas holds a formal every spring for students and faculty, giving us a chance to dress up and eat a nice dinner in a nice ballroom (and drink nice alcohol, if that's your thing - Jamie bargained for the two drink tickets included with my meal, and enjoyed them immensely).

Granted, I might not have been the most willing participant, but it was a decently fun night - it was nice to get out and talk to everyone and relax in pretty clothes. Pretty clothes are, on very rare occasions, sort of fun.

Heels are a different story altogether - my feet aren't speaking to me.

The day started far too early - Jamie and I went to an exam-writing seminar the school offered. The information was good, specific and usefull and I felt a little better about the tests, but the seminar lasted from 8 in the morning to 3:30 - we had an hour break for lunch. The first four hours were good, but by the last two... no one could pay any attention. I liked the teaching style of the woman who taught the course, though: straightforward and simple.

After that long and brain-draining exercise, Jamie and I went back to her apartment and changed/got ready. This, naturally, took longer than it should have, but we were still the first people of our little group to show up at the ball.

Pre-Ball pictures:

You can see the cute shawl/wrap on me to keep my dress modest - yes, I kept it on all night.

More playful picture

Jamie actually took this one while I was stumbling... heels and grass don't mix.

The ball itself was pretty fun - mostly a dinner/talking thing. There was some dancing at the end, but by that point all of the women had been in our high heels for at least four, maybe five hours. Some girls danced... I don't understand how. A hidden streak of masochism, perhaps? They are in law school, after all... and we're all crazy here.

Me at the ball - this is actually a much better representation of my dress's color.

This is Jamie and me...






Annnd Rachel and me.






Never, ever argue with a camera.



The final showing of photographic evidence demonstrates that, in my opinion, I need to never, ever wear tights with this dress again. They aren't white - they're just normal nylon-color - but the visual combination of the dress and the shawl and the nylons is baad.





Things I Learned in Law School:

4. Words like 'consideration' contain whole encyclopedias of unsuspected information.
5. Houston thunderstorms are loud.
6. It's actually kind of interesting to look up a bunch of cases and decide what the law is from them... maybe I'm weird?
7. (I'm definitely weird).

Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice honesty.

I will be honest here. That might... get a little uncomfortable, sometimes. I'll try not to use this as a forum to vent - more like a collection of random thoughts. But sometimes my thoughts might be of things that are sensitive in nature, things that are personal to me and the ramblings of my mind. As I'm assuming it will be mostly friends and family (if even you poor souls, heh) who read this, that might lead to some awkwardness when we're together again in person,. I'll try to avoid writing anything that's too personal or issue-causing, without holding myself back from being me. Sound like a fair deal?

A lot of this will probably be law-school related, to give y'all sort of a glimpse of my life and Texas and all that, but there will probably be just journal-like entries too, thoughts that I want put down and readable by people (like my rambling discussion of love in the previous post). Try not to read too much into these; if you have questions, comments, concerns, put them in the comments or email or call me - I love to hear from all y'all (and there's a phrase I never thought I'd use...).

Speaking of law school: forty days til my first final exam. Yikes - the clock's ticking... and that means I need to go study.

-Whitt

Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be

Love makes you better.

You don't realize this until you first really love someone. Until the first time you comprehend how it is possible to love a person even when and while you're furious at them. The first time you know with absolute certainty that you can tell them, that one person, anything. When you balance their needs with your own and find them equal, when their happiness is an essential part of you being happy, when you trust them with anything and everything. When even when you don't understand each other, you still know, still trust, still love. It doesn't have to be sexual or even familial. The first person who really teaches you how to love might be a friend, a brother, a companion. Parents teach us something different: what it is to be loved unconditionally, a love we cannot ever equal.

Perhaps no love is ever really equal - there always seems to be a push and pull, a time when one loves more, then the other. Or perhaps simply it's a time when one needs more, and then the balance of need shifts. Such things can happen over months, or weeks, or days, or even hours and minutes. But love... love is constant.

Each person might have his own faults, her own difficulties, but those are faced and known and accepted, even if they are not comprehended. Maybe I don't understand why certain words trigger a reaction in you that you don't even recognize - but I do, and I know those words, and I step lightly around them. Perhaps you will never be able to understand why my vulnerabilities run narrow and deep, a core handful of issues the mere touching of which is enough to send me into a tailspin that might last days. But you remind me of them, remind me when I am most exposed to them, and when all else fails... you pick up the pieces and form them into me again. Love means that I watch myself carefully, so that the tailspin doesn't harm you; love means that you're there for me even when it does.

Love doesn't require wholeness, or enough-ness, or change. Love sees you exactly as you are today, with every flaw and fault and issue, every wound-tight tension and heavy load, every imperfection of character or form or thought, and says one thing: "Let me be closer to you."

And then love shakes its head. "Let us just... be one in heart, and I will be happy. Let me know that the hurts we do each other will not last in the long run, that you will always be with me, that no distance will part the closeness we have in heart."

Love doesn't care that this morning we were fighting, if you need me now. Love will shelve any difficulty, irritation, or upsetness until it can be faced and handled - but love will make us face them, so that no weaknesses from them fester in either of us.

Love does not fight dirty. Two who love know each other's fault lines, weak points, know the words that would hurt the most, know which idea will do the most damage in a moment of weakness. Love is fighting without using those cracks in the soul to win. Love knows there are things it will never say to you, no matter how true, because they are the things you need love most not to say.

Love is not spent, or limited. Loving one person, even infinitely, does not infringe upon the ability to bear more love, to show it to others. Love is not hoarded or reserved for special occasions, because it cannot be restrained. And yet... love is imperfect. Or perhaps it is just that we love imperfectly.

Sometimes we say the things we shouldn't; sometimes the issues between us become more important, for a moment, than us - and sometimes in that moment we make mistakes. But even then, love is there to understand, to regret, to repent, to forgive. Love lets your hurts pull me out of mine, so that I may attend to you; by such, love helps us both.

Love is a moment and a memory. It is a smile, a hug, a family, a friend, an understanding of something no one else in the world knows. It bends, perhaps it changes, but when it's real it never goes away.

And as the Clint Black song goes... it is truly something that we do.

Inconsistency, thy name is Blog

Already, a consistency problem. If I make every blog title a corrupted Shakespeare quote, I am eventually going to run out of recognizable quotes. Hmph. I graduated in Technical Writing - consistency in titles is of grade-level importance to me, for good or ill.

Solution: Corrupt other things. Yay.

(I don't promise to not get lazy about said corruption. If you wake up one morning and I've named something "Whiteout, oh where are thou, Whiteout," you'll only have yourselves to blame. In legal terms, I will 12(b)(6) you - dismiss suit for failure to state a claim).

This, being my first post on this new blog and written at a time when normal, sensible mortals are sleeping, will likely ramble and make little, y'know, sense. You have been warned.

First, why a new blog when I'm heading into the final month of my first semester of law school? Well, posting will be erratic, but I've been wanting to start one of these for a while, and I'm very awake with nothing (lies - law students always have something) to do, so here we are and welcome!

Second, the title. Hard Light Breaking from a Near Window is Whittney-style corruption of "But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?" from Romeo and Juliet, and I'm not going to cite that because Shakespeare is in the public domain and I don't have to cite it, dangit!. I was trying to think of something that encompassed law school and me (Torts, Tartes, ?), but something about this just... strikes me right. There's a poetry to the sound of it. I like it. Then again, I tend to like weird, obscure, and occasionally abnormal things. But I don't have a problem with that.

Third. An ongoing part of this blog will be "Things I Learned in Law School". I'll throw these in at the bottom of posts when I remember/think of something new.

There will be more of me and my ramblings at a later date; I'm going to try to get a little sleep.

-Whitt


Things I Learned in Law School:

1. It is possible to become so tired that it physically hurts.
2. Due to the contrary nature of the universe, this will lead to two hours of sleep followed by a night of insomnia.
3. And thus, the blog was born.



Advice from Shakespeare (again, not citing, neener neener neener, from King Lear) (though I guess that counts as a cite, sort of...)

Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy ...,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shall have more
Than two tens to a score.

(King Lear, ACT I, SC. 4. Fiiiiine. I'll cite. Cite. See? Cite.)