It's That Time of the Year Again

There are a couple times each year when the activity in the Harry Potter fandom flares up again even now. Years after the last film and even more years after the last book, Harry Potter still appears seemingly out of nowhere. On the second of May, to remember and commemorate the Battle Of Hogwarts, with tributes to the fallen and praises to the heroes. On the thirty-first of July, to celebrate Harry's birthday. On Hallowe'en, to remember the deaths of Lily and James Potter and the Boy Who Lived.
And, like now, around the first of September, when the Hogwarts Express leaves King's Cross at eleven o'clock in the morning to take the students to the castle - some going for the first time, nervous and excited. Others feel like they are coming home. Older students, and, well, we. The people who for a large part have grown up in the wizarding world, we who have followed Harry from his cupboard under the stairs all the way to the final battle. Although it seems to be over, we are still there, and still in love with the world J.K. Rowling showed to us all those years ago.
I first read Harry Potter in fourth grade, it was December and I was nine years old. There were only six books out at that time, and I read all of them over the course of two weeks. I stayed up way past my bedtime - in case of the Chamber of Secrets, until two in the morning. (Now that I think about it, that may have been the point where my parents gave up trying to give me a bedtime.) I used every free moment to read. I read in bed, in the car, on my way to school, in school... I had never been captured by a book this much. I've always been a passionate reader but I had never been this intense.
I made my best friend at the time read it. For the rest of the schoolyear, we acted out scenes on the playground, using pens as wands and parallel bars as broomsticks. When the Deathly Hallows came out in 2007, I had never been this excited about a book release. I cried in the theatre when the last film was over. Finding out my Hogwarts house was a much more important discovery than almost everything else I learned about myself (Hufflepuff and proud!). Harry Potter has shaped almost my entire life, influenced my personality, helped me meet people who are now my closest friends.
And the wonderful thing is, I'm not the only one. There are millions of people like me out there. Some are older than me and read Harry Potter when it was first published, some are much younger and only discovered him two days ago. But even though 'it's all over', it will never end.
Year after year, our love for this story flares up anew. Many of us appear to have moved on to other things, other stories. But we always remember and every once in a while we return to the halls and corridors of Hogwarts to look back and feel all warm and fuzzy, because Hogwarts will always be there to welcome us home.
And yes, for many (including me), these times don't only mean happiness. There's a very real emotion called Post-Potter-Depression, that feeling of vast emptiness when you realize that there is nothing more to come. Even though by now we know that that is not entirely true - there are fan films being made, music is written, there's an official film project happening at this very moment - it's still kind of over.
Every year on September 1st we regret that we cannot take the Hogwarts Express. We regret that we live in the Muggle world and cannot learn to do magic. And that makes us incredibly sad sometimes.
But you know what? Screw that feeling. Because as long as there's people like us, it will never be truly over. The world of Harry Potter lives on, welcoming everybody who wants to enter.
So I say: Welcome back. Take a seat. Have some pumpkin juice. Here's to another amazing year, and all the years yet to come. Here's to the Boy Who Lived, and the heroes who didn't. Here's to us, who keep the story alive. And here's to all the love and friendship that still comes from this community even after all these years.

Love,
Jojo

Mediocrity Or: Miniature Crisis

Hey, peeps. 

Ever since eighth grade, English was my thing. My talent. It's not my first language but learning it is highly valued here, much more than arts, for example (which is bad in itself). I'm very lucky to apparently pick up languages rather easily but it still wasn't child's play to get as good as I am now. And I liked to be rewarded for that, I enjoyed being the teacher's pet and not having to put in as much effort. Also, it's nice to have a reputation for being really good at something - the kind of reputation that has fellow students asking you for your help, and a sort of whisper among English teachers about that girl.
A friend of mine scored an A plus in her English final. I got an A.
And that's okay, for the most part. She deserves this grade, she's been deserving it for several years and our teacher somehow failed to acknowledge her abilities. I know that this English final wasn't my best performance, that I could have been better.
Not achieving the highest possible mark in this exam won't change the fact that English is practically second nature to me. It won't change how people think of me, for the most part. But now somebody else is obviously better at the thing I thought was my thing. And that stings, no matter how much that somebody deserves it.
See, in September, I'm going to go to university in England. Where speaking English fluently is like, normal. Results Day made me realise that my thing won't be a thing for very much longer. What, for years, was a big part of what people associated with me, what I used to set myself apart from others, what I thought of as special about me, will be nothing. Or at least, much less than it was.
I'll have to find something else, then. I'm the kind of person who needs to be able to remind themselves that there's some way that they're better than other people - "Her hair might be awesome but my freckles are cuter" "He's good at everything but I can read out Shakespeare without stuttering". And part of me keeps whispering, in the back of my head, what are you going to do now? What will you tell yourself, at one a.m., when all around you people are being awesome and you need something to pick you up?
For everyday life, my self-esteem is pretty high, I think. I'm relatively confident or at least good at pretending to be, and I'm starting to rise above society-induced body shame and expectations. But in the middle of the night? Entirely different.
I need something to hold onto. And I have no idea what that something is going to be for the next three years. 

Love, 
Jojo

BOOK REVIEW! NO. 4: ELEANOR & PARK BY RAINBOW ROWELL

So, reliable sources (meaning one of my best friends) assured me that they liked the totally unstructured and chaotic version of this segment more than the nicely sorted and tidy version so here we go again.

I bought Eleanor & Park in a Waterstones in London. I didn't really want to because I had entered that bookshop wanting to get a specific book and when they didn't have it I was annoyed and sort of defiant. But my friend (who was on the London trip with me) wanted to get a book and hers was part of a "buy one, get one half price" deal and she told me to just go and have a look at the shelf.

I immediately liked this book. Not only because there's a quote by John Green (who happens to be my role model in all things but perhaps hairstyle) on the front. Also because the cover art is really cute and quirky and the description sounded pretty neat. Also, an author whose name is Rainbow Rowell can only be great, right?

Eleanor & Park is a terribly sweet story. On her first day of school, Eleanor is faced with a crowd of well-adapted white people from the suburbs. Between them, she stands out like a peacock among, let's say chickens. She sits next to Park on the busride. Park has mastered the art of invisibility, never talks to her and reads comicbooks on the bus.

One day, he notices her reading his comics. Instead of talking to her, he just flips the pages more slowly. When they don't finish a book on the ride home, Eleanor is afraid he'll read it at home and she will never know the end. The next morning, he opens his comic exactly where they left of the afternoon before.

This is the beginning of possibly the nicest love story I ever read. With normal love stories, I think they're cute and romantic. With Eleanor & Park I not only want this to happen to me but I know that something similar is not even that unrealistic. I could totally be that girl reading other peoples' books over their shoulder.

But it's not only a love story. It's also about coming of age, finding out what you want, dealing with all sorts of quite horrible problems. It made me cry. Also I thought I had not understood the ending but my friend confirmed that it was rather open for interpretation.

I love this book because it might be one of the most honest books out there, and also it kind of touched a soft spot in me I didn't know I had before. Everybody (well, almost) in this book is so incredibly human. They're the sort of characters you somehow know when you've read the book, like they've sort of always been there. I honestly don't know how to describe it, but Eleanor & Park is going on the same shelf as John Green, that's for sure. It sort of reminded me of... living, I guess. I remembered why I love life so much. Which is not to say that this novel isn't depressing as hell, because it is.

I can't really say much about style in this case because I kind of rushed through it and didn't really pay attention that much but I know that there were a couple of beautiful phrases in there and it obviously was good enough for me to read it without thinking twice. But I just bloody loved this book.

Which is all I can give you on this, I'm afraid. I loved it. I also hate it but mostly I love it. Probably. So, yeah.

Love,
Jojo

BOOK REVIEW! NO. 3: THE GRAVEYARD BOOK BY NEIL GAIMAN

Okay, guys, let's do this with a bit less chaos than the last two ones.

INFO: "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman, published 2008, with illustrations by Dave McKean. The book was a #1 New York Times bestseller and won several awards. It says ages 10 and up on the back cover but I'm seventeen and loved it and I'll probably give it to my Dad to read because he'll enjoy it. So, whatever.

SUMMARY: When his parents and older sister are killed by a mysterious man, a baby boy is adopted by two ghosts living in the graveyard opposite his house. They name him Nobody Owens and raise him as their son - together with the other graveyard inhabitants and Bod's guardian Silas. The Graveyard Book is the story of how Bod grows up and learns more and more about both the living and the dead world.

EXECUTION: Have any of you read Rudyard Kipling's "Stories From The Jungle Book"? Unlike the Disney film (which I also love), the book is more of a collection of short stories, a series of Mowgli's adventures in the jungle (and a few other stories) that sort of follow him growing up and having a family on his own. While reading The Graveyard Book I thought that it was very similar to Kipling's work, and Gaiman says in the acknowledgements that Kipling was a huge inspiration in the process of writing The Graveyard Book. With all the similarities, it's still sort of different but not any less beautiful and exciting. Along the course of the book you learn more and more about the world of the dead and the supernatural (like ghouls and witches and some sort of werewolves) but you also watch Bod learn about the world of the living and about how he came to the graveyard and why. The book is completely coherent and the system works really well.

STYLE: Neil Gaiman writes beautifully. For those who don't know, he wrote the Doctor Who episodes "The Doctor's Wife" (S06 E04) and "Nightmare in Silver" (S07 E12), both of which were among the best episodes in the last three seasons. In The Graveyard Book he somehow manages to combine a certain "adult" poetry in his writing and Bod's (very authentic) childish perspective on life which changes ever so gently as he grows up. There were more than a few sentences or paragraphs that made me think "Wow. If I could write like that...". He's simply brilliant. And he has a way of playing with certain words or phrases that just makes me admire him. You can feel when reading how much this story meant to the author, and in my opinion, that's definitely a good thing.

MESSAGE: This is a coming-of-age story. It's about Bod growing up and finding out who he is and who he wants to be. He finds his courage and makes some mistakes and he's afraid and everything. This story shows how difficult it is to grow up and make your own decisions but it's also about parents. It's about loving someone and having to let that someone go, and not wanting to let them go but deep down knowing it has to be. When I finished reading, I had this sort of feeling that you want to cry but can't because it's so sweet and strange and beautiful.

ALSO: Neil Gaiman won the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. His acceptance speech is printed in the end of the book, and in addition to being sort of funny and smart and beautiful it also inspired me like crazy. This speech made me want to follow my dream and tell stories and make things up and make people happy with my stories. It also sort of taught me about why I love the books I love so much, and both the speech and the actual story stayed with me after I closed the book. I think I will read The Graveyard Book many, many times in the future.

CONCLUSION: This is not a book for pure entertainment. This is one of those books that you read when you feel lonely, or sad, or when you need someone to talk to and there's nobody there. It's a soulbook like chocolate is soulfood. This is a book for children and teens and adults. It's wonderful.

BREAKFAST

This is part one of a series of posts about food. Don't ask me why. I just think I have stuff to  say.

So when you read or hear about eating healthy and living well and stuff you will inevitably hear about the importance of breakfast. The most important meal of the day, energy for the day, skipping breakfast will kill you, all that. Now, I'm not a nutritionist or any sort of authority on this topic, but like everyone on the Internet, I have opinions.

I didn't have breakfast today. I returned from a vacation at two o'clock in the morning and slept until eleven. Because I wasn't hungry then, I waited until two pm and had lunch. And I feel fine. The thing is, no matter how important it is to start the day by filling up with energy, eating when you're not really hungry or even forcing yourself to eat really can't be healthy.

During schooltime I get up pretty early, and I just eat something sweet and probably very bad for me because that early in the day I can't even think about nutritious, healthy food and the shock of being woken up by my alarm clock requires therapy. But because of by now eleven years of school routine I know that I will be hungry again in time for the breaks, and I take proper, healthy food with me as a sort of second breakfast (I could now make a Lord of the Rings joke but I won't because I can't think of a good one). The point is, I know what I need to function on a regular day and I do that. So far, it's working really well for me.

But on irregular days - like on vacation, that routine is not only disrupted, but torn apart and burned. Sometimes you spend the vacation in a cabin or otherwise are responsible for your own food, in which case you can do whatever you want, which for my family usually means that we eat what we always have for breakfast. But, in our case most of the time, it might happen that you go out for food in the morning.

Generally, I like the idea of other people making my food in a way that is much better than I ever could. But with breakfast, that's different and depends a lot on the situation.

Take an American diner. A really nice, old fashioned, good one. I can enjoy pancakes and/or waffles for three days tops. Afterwards I miss my home routine so much I can barely look at a pancake without crying. But that's different for everyone, my father could survive on full American breakfast for eternity.

The worst "going out for breakfast" experience I had was in a coffee house in Vienna, where you could have a "normal" breakfast with cheese and jam and rolls and stuff, but it was so expensive that I felt guilty for eating and at the same time guilty for not eating, which means that I a) by far didn't eat enough to last till lunch and b) really didn't enjoy it.

Generally, ordering specific breakfast dishes doesn't work for me, and a lot of other people, because you are rather limited in choice and combination depending on what the restaurant decided to serve. If you want scrambled eggs but no bacon and a waffle and fresh fruit, ordering can feel more like puzzle work than anything else, and also it can turn out pretty expensive.

My favourite way of breakfast away from home is a buffet where you can just load your plate with whatever you like for a fixed price. I found that the best breakfast buffets can be found in business motels or hotels with conference facilities. Seriously. Warm dishes like eggs, bacon or sausages, different kinds of cheese, fresh fruit, yoghurt drinks or smoothies you don't have to pay extra for, and, my absolute favourite, miniature chocolate croissants. I've also been to a place where you could make your own pancakes.

I like breakfast buffets that much because they give you complete freedom on what to eat and how much. If you order eggs and bacon at a diner you might get too much egg and not enough bacon or the other way round or it might be too much altogether. At a buffet, you can not only choose the amount but also the combination. If you like bacon on your pancake, you can eat it and nobody will care. (Which doesn't mean that I like bacon on pancakes, but it's a good example.)

So, that's my (very chaotic) thoughts. There's not really a moral to this. Except for maybe eat what you want but that's my usual approach to food if you had to put it into one senctence. But, kids, that's a different story.

Until next time!

Love,
Jojo

SCIENCE

Hello, my friends.

Let's talk about something different today.

You might have gathered from this blog that I'm more of an artsy person. I feel at home on the "soft" side of the science spectrum. This spectrum is basically maths on the hard side with only a very limited, precisely defined number of correct answers and for example literature on the soft side with a very broad, undefined variety of possibilities.

Fun fact: At school, sciences are usually my worst subjects. Seriously. You don't want to get me started on my chemistry lessons. So while I always valued science when other people did it, researching stuff and curing illnesses and so on, I never thought I could actually, really care for it myself.

Then I became a nerd. As in, recognised I had been one for all my life. Because that realisation had me spend my time more around nerd-related things, which ultimately got me in touch with more sciencey stuff as well. And it turns out, there's so much more to physics than they teach you at school.

I could, right now, by heart, tell you the name of all six kinds of quarks, when they were discovered, and what they do. And I sure as hell didn't learn that in school. Things like that song that you randomly find on the Internet are so easy to access and so fun to use.

The Internet taught me that science, be it biology, chemistry or physics, can be incredibly interesting and even beautiful. Have you seen some of those pictures of galaxies? THAT is perfection. There are people out there who will talk for four minutes on a YouTube video and have you marvel at the extreme serendipity that is your existence. Seriously. It's awesome.

But even with all that, I never would have thought that I could be interested in taxidermy. Of all things, I am glued to my computer screen watching a twenty-something young woman with a pink flower in her blond ponytail cut up, skin and dissect a dead wolf. You have no idea how terribly fascinating (yet kind of gross) that is.

I'm talking about Emily Graslie, former art student who discovered her true passion by sort of accidentally walking into her university's zoological museum. She did a lot of volunteer work there and, after being featured in one of Hank Green's (www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers) videos, she was able to start her own YouTube show called The Brain Scoop where she shows her work in the collection or talks about related subjects like domestication.

While I'm not exactly planning on pursuing a career in taxidermy, I find Emily's videos extremely interesting. She has a very bubbly personality and was very comfortable in front of the camera from the first moment. Besides showing her viewers how a wolf looks from the inside, she also has first-hand experience on how the US government (and I'm pretty sure they aren't the only ones) cuts more and more money from the science and education budget, pretty much dooming small collections like the ones Emily presented.

So I guess what I want to say is, I care about science even though I'm not a science person, and I think not enough people do. So spread the word. Or something.

Love,
Jojo

DANCING

From a very young age

I was longing to dance

Ballett my mother forbade

And in first grade I knew nothing else

I did martial arts instead

And, in truth, no regrets

All during childhood I was jumping around

Trying to copy 

The beautiful moves

I had seen dancers perform

To no surprise, I failed

Miserably, and I sometimes stopped trying

I do HipHop now, and enjoy it

But it brings sweat, not beauty

The hours of ballroom dancing

Have passed beyond count

And yet still I lack

That timeless elegance

I have always dreamed of