Wednesday, November 30, 2011

wednesday convictions

To not only read great literature as a "break from other homework"
To not only read great literature and only be "struck by it" "moved by it" even to tears or heart-clutching gasp-y-ness
To not only read great literature and tuck it away on an "I Own These" shelf
To not only read great literature and tuck it away in my pocket, in my little world, just as a part of this "grape semester"

But to pull it out every day and
To use it

  • To love,
  • To be kind,
  • To overcome my own me-ness,
As a tool God gives me 

To change the world.


Friday, November 18, 2011

Spying

on a beautiful moment of koinonia. Real fellowship. Was wondering why these otherwise seemingly-typical, JCrew scarf and pea coat-clad girls with be-Ugged feet and perfectly unperfect curl-ed hairs, seemed somehow so different. So earnest in conversation and dedication to each other, not their cellphones, sharing about Christ-filled revelations, jelly-filled donuts. Just kidding, no donuts. I wasn't planning on spying but when I saw the brown sweater girl pull out her journal and start reading from it to the grey sweater girl, I couldn't help but pause

(which had been repeatingrepeatingrepeatrepeatpepatiepaing like thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis)

and listen. Eyes sparkling, voices trembling, hands waving in excited gesticulation and true connection of love, truth, spirit-filled fellowship. What a blessed moment this is, this moment today in sunny Nau 11/18/11 12:something pm.

It reminds me of my own, so mystifyingly, tear-renderingly (okay no tears, usually, but you know what I mean?) beautiful fellowship moments with my beloved sisters in Christ. And makes me so excited for what lies ahead, what more beauty and tears (of tragedy, of joy) that God has in store for us all.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Love you, love you, love you.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

just keep breathing, silly.

The sky keeps holding its breath. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that it keeps making me hold my breath, because it keeps looking like it's gonna snow but it just keeps raining and not snowing. And holding my breath for snow is strangely self-defeating and self-deceptive and self-blinding (errmm self-noseplugging. METADUH) anyways because if I would just give in and take that swoosh of air into my lungs, my nostrils and my nostrils' little hairs and my nostrils' little hairs' sensory things (MMM SCIENCE) would be like oh! hay it doesn't smell like pre-snow atmosphere at all! and let my silly brain know.
But alas.

Only Wednesday and it has already been (half) a week full of breathlessness and "But alas"s.

1. Derek Walcott, lovechild of Yeats and St. Lucia, catches me off guard and leaves me confused because I don't get it but I love it, his poetry.

2. Jonne Dohn, who makes me feel like I'm choking. A terrible kind of breathless.


3. New Cabell trek up to the fifth floor that inspired a moment of community among three strangers this morning at 8:59am, commiserating and urging one another on, onward, onto the next floor! you can do it! - we were a makeshift sports team for those few moments of walking up those steps. Six coordinatedly burning thighs, three pairs of lungs running pitifully out of breath, one collection of random individuals who shared that connection and just as quickly parted ways, wishing each other well for the the rest of our days.

4. This, which I didn't even fully read for class today. which makes my heart beat faster. which was written by a man whose full-time job was in investment banking. which catches my breath, but which inspires me to breathe on.









In other news, I anxiously await Thanksgiving Break.

Heeeheeeehuuuuhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

please play us both at the same time!

Friday, November 11, 2011

"It rains" --yesterdayesterday

Foreword: These revelations are from Wednesday, 11.9.11, but were reborn in the writing of this blogpost during the wee hours of (technically) Thursday, 11.10.11. And I think it is kind of fitting that they are now being presented to the whole wide world on this crazymindexplodinglysignificant day of 11.11.11. If only I had been able to post it at 11:11:11 am. But alas I was sitting in Chinese, blabbering about what color, size, price t-shirt everyone was wearing today, so that I didn't even make a wish. Alas and alack indeed but also, yay for not getting stuck on the logistics - cause let's be real, I make enough 11:11 wishes on normal days to maybe even rival the huge-ness of today's 11:11:11...HAHA okay so even I'm not convinced by that argument but hope you enjoy the post anyways. Sleepyhead grammatical mistakes and all.

It rains. Il pleut. Está lloviendo. Piove.
It rains. It rains. It rains. It rains.

Who rains?

My mind was blown today, of all days, because of ENLT 2523: Lyric Poetry. It's a little bit weird, because we didn't talk about anything that we hadn't talked about before, but all of a sudden today it hit me extra mind-blowingly and then there I was, dumbstruck, gasping for my metaphorical breath, feeling (relatively to other brains,) stupid and a little (relatively to myself of just a few moments before that moment,) smart at the same time. I know. What a paradox. Alas and alack, such is my life as an English major (eep).

Despite the fact that Wednesdays are my infamously worst days (infamously known to...two whole people, me and my last year roommate), also known as "Wilde Wednesdays," combined with 2.4 hours of sleep on Tuesday night, today (Wednesday, 11.09.11, not 11.10.11 as the time stamp will show when I Publish this post) was quite wonderful. I shall summarize it below, but in order to not get completely lost in that, let me finish the whole rainy business first.

So it rains, right? Well sometimes, anyways, and I like when it does, but who the heck is doing all this raining? Who makes it rain? What makes it rain? When makes it rain Where rain How??

Who knows. But the thing is, no one cares. And this is because

the grammar (third person present) gives agency to...an unknown entity. Is this being a benevolent or dastardly being? Will he she or it continue to make it rain or withdraw in cruel drought? Does she he or it care that these watery drops fall on people's heads on their worst days, their best days? Do it he she they have pets or hobbies or achy backs? Will he they it shes ever find love, or write poetry, or survive these next twelve days or Do Great Things? The answer is unknown, because the agent is so utterly unknown. We do not know his (her its their) name or face. We have not met any members of his family, and we do not know his favorite color. A magnificently, mysteriously, movingly monumentalmystery.

It's almost as if we're attributing our own agency to nature. Like oh there simply must be a being out there, brewing and felling this rain, sprinkling it or bucketing it, with concrete hands of five fingers each, connected to wrists, elbows, practical hinges. Something out there, living, probably breathing, separate from the rain, that's making this magical thing happen.

This is called the pathetic fallacy.

Dahh. Even its name is so bleak, you know? It's pathetic (though it probably comes from pathos, feeling). It's a fallacy. But then yeah, even the "pathos" view of it, if anything, makes the "fallacy" even more supremely sad, because  you have put your feelings, your heart into this thing, and still, it has failed. Pathetic Fallacy. It is supremely sad that it's defined this way - the idea that to invoke another being out there in nature is a FALLACY. - You are alone. - And what's more, you are self-centered for even thinking these things, that nature is talking to you, patting your wee head, and eye-caressing you and sending you signs via owls and silences. And that is that! Like zip, nada, nope, case closed, blip blop blooop, cause that is the Definition and that is what all the smart people have decided and studied and hmm-ed and hmmmm-ed over and said. wrote.

And who am I to rub my sleepy eyes and write this feeble, run-on sentenceful blogpost about this Huge, Established thing that Huge and Established People have Hm-ed and Haw-ed over? Hmmm??


I am she. I am the same, identical woman. I am a he she it me they we they she, a she with an undeniable agency. I have a cat named Binky though I am infinitely more of a dog person. I am scared of many things, among which are bunny suits. Spores. (s h u d d e r.) I have two eyes and one mouth and I speak and write too many words and a lot of times I am rather, very, quite, seriously self-conscious of them. I spill over like water and feel bad about not having enough rigid structure to help protect you from the barrage of me. I can tell you about my favorite food and color, and I would like to know what-your-top-three-happiest-things-in-life-are-right-now-please-o-prease.  And sometimes I deteriorate in grammar. &always I am hurtling toward the end of this, my third semester of College and only really every stopping to breathe about every THursday or so. Ah Thursday.

But here I am - at least here I am, a being enough to, "Ah Thursday." To parallel stories of the rain and living out poetry underneath umbrellas and trying hard to find some sort of a perfect balance. An imperfect agent, who realizes the impossibility of the perfect and embraces the imperfect by virtue of its reality and stark, brave face. An agent who

reigns.

She he it reigns. I reigns rain, mainly in the plain Spain! Haha :)

Perfectly, completely, incompletely happy for this tiny domain in which I reside and the emotions and currents that run through it/stay in it and reveling in eye caresses and brainwave synchronizations and things that come in 38s and being concrete and true.

And here is the poem that inspired all this mindexplosion:


The Most of It — by Robert Frost

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree–hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder–broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter–love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush—and that was all.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

"i'm so sleepy" in the 411*

So she was sitting in front of her wheezing whirring laptop, which was working hard even though she was not, and she slow started to lean forward little by little, like so little-y that I didn't even notice until she was almost doubled over, forehead to the keyboard, almost almost. No one said anything but I was kind of worried because I wanted her to be comfortable and to not have an achy back and just sleep more in general because I am not sure if she ever sleeps, this grace. And her laptop, so oblivious to her apparent tiredness, still whirring and wheeeeeze-wheezing away, so inconsiderate, SHH please be quiet!! But you know how semi-old-ish (maybe?) laptops are. They'll be loud if they feel like being loud.

So she was sitting in front of her laptop and dozing a little and I think this is the first time that I've ever seen her so vulnerable. to sleep. and vulnerable just in general, maybe. That's strange and...also not strange at the same time. Gah sorry for saying nothing. But yeah so she is sleepy.

And I loooooooked over and leeeeeaned toward her cause I wasn't sure what I was to do. Shall I wake her from this tortuous state of half-sleep, half-waking? Shall I let her sleep even though it looks so uncomfortable and surely she will acquire a crick in her back (hah a crick in her back) if she stays in this position for a long time? Shall I close her laptop to shut it up from being so freaking loud so she will be that much more (just a leeeettle bit more) comfortable? Shall I call out her name or what? Shall I or shall I not?

I had no idea, so I just stayed leeeeeeeeeaned over and looked at her and kept wondering and then looked over at raney who is working in the room with us. We eye-connected and she smiled a wee smile that told me that this was a normal thing; that everything was and shall be okay. At least in this small moment. This is the life of this apartment here. People sit here and doze in front of their loud laptops and it's no big nothing whoop. And everything is going to be okay. And okay and okay and okay.

It was such a knowing and wee and somehow reassuring smile that it contented my heart and turn to sit to face to look to my own mediumly-loud computer and to open up this Ctrl T, mjl, New Post, and then Publish this fastest blogpost ever ever ever.

And to wonder if you are hating this stream of consciousness-esque-ness-itude-ity.

*quote attribution: some angel of the night