So the plan now is to start writing some new stuff, since Caltech humanities course are sparse and, frankly, you can only read so many of other people's literature essays. No planned topics (yet), no bold timescale (a new essay every week! hah), just me doing what I do best: blathering on in front of a computer screen.
... if all you knew about me came from this website. I doubt there are more than half a dozen instances where I refer, even obliquely, to the fact that I spent thirteen years of my childhood as a Jehovah's Witness. That's even counting things like a bibliography reference to a Witness brochure in my organic food report and a passing reference to "meetings" and "Awake!" and "La tour de garde" in my essay on time. The only time I directly discuss (and defend) my former religion online, in fact, is in an essay entitled Why I don't Celebrate Christmas, which isn't even on my website, but my little step-brother's, at his request. (There is also another real essay, my last attempt to justify to myself the official stance on evolution, which is stored on my hard drive and may find its way onto my site sometime soon.)
The Christmas piece is remarkable for only one reason, and a rather ironic one: it's the only thing I've ever written that's been professionally published (circulation of millions, too). The one catch is that I wrote it when I was eleven. The other catch is that it was published in the Awake! magazine (which is not exactly famous for choosing its submissions based on literary or scholarly merit) precisely because I was eleven and saying exactly what I was supposed to say (and, to be fair, honestly thought was the truth).
But I digress. I did write about my religion, although not very much remains in electronic format, because I believed it was the truth (until, of course, I left), but that was generally on matters relating to religion: reports on evolution, say, or essays about why I didn't do anything much over the holidays. The rest of my intellectual life was my own, and I was generally unwilling to mire down a good story or a clever argument with points of doctrine (except when I felt it absolutely necessary to "take a stand"). The same year that I wrote my Christmas essay, my best friend Kristin and I created a detailed 10,000 year future history for our dolls and their pet leopard (complete with histories and maps of a number of different planets and stories of their many adventures). Nothing in the binder full of writings and drawings (all hardcopy, sorry) gives any indication of my then-conviction that Armageddon would have long since wiped out the whole current socio-economic system the timeline was based on, probably before I got to high school. When my mom suggested (naively) that the well-travelled Karie and Karin could go witnessing "from asteroid to asteroid", the thought repelled me. It just didn't seem right; in their universe, the witness world had no place, and going around talking about witness doctrine wasn't their life.
It took me a while to realize that didn't want it to be mine, either.
©2001 by Elisabeth Adams. Universal Rights Reserved.