;

In certain academic ways, it's very mysterious, but I feel very stupid. Like everyone else in the discussion is getting it gettting it getting it but my brain is just unable to process correctly and all I can do is grasp at wavy-vague brainstrings and go mmmmmmhmm mhm ...mhmm yeah.

And in certain social ways, I often also often feel very stupid. Whether it's the feeling-out-of-place and sorta bewildered in a large party setting because there are too many people to be able to concertedly hear the person I'm wanting to be concentrating on in front of me, or feeling jealous or self-conscious or both cause I'm tiny-hearted and evil sometimes.

But then I mull over all these things in the car ride home, snuggly in the carseat and singing out LOUD to all the right songs that come on, shufflin', and pray to God about all the fun things that happened, thank you, thank you, and for all the beauty and for my car that runs well and for school and for uncertain futures and all these things in my present. And re- re- re- realize that my ultimate identity lies in Christ, and this causes all the beauty; this makes all the happy; this redeems all my mysterious stupidities.

the world is a beautiful and mysterious place

A Hundred Years from Now

by David Shumate

I'm sorry I won't be around a hundred years from now. I'd like to

see how it all turns out. What language most of you are speaking.

What country is swaggering across the globe. I'm curious to know

if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent your

children are as they parachute down through the womb. Have

you invented new vegetables? Have you trained spiders to do your

bidding? Have baseball and opera merged into one melodic sport?

A hundred years....My grandfather lived almost that long. The

doctor who came to the farmhouse to deliver him arrived in a

horse-drawn carriage. Do you still have horses?

The world is a beautiful and mysterious place

will I still think this way a hundred years from now? a hundred days from now? after the magic of college is actually behind me and days and moods are less dependent on the quality of discussions I had in my classes and the lunch partner of that particular afternoon and who I happen to run into - who happens to run into me - all happy and bright, Maaaaadison?! I haven't seen you in forever!

Will I still think this way, mid-career, when I'll probably want to be having a mid-career crisis and feel panic, realizing that I'm realizing my desire to go back to school for something? On those days I will feel stuck, or stagnant, or too consumed with pesky details I have never liked?

Will I still feel this way when my baby gets sick and I realize I never learned how to take care of sick babies, or when that baby starts asking questions about where babies come from or about math (dear God please let me marry a math-science-technology genius who will be patient with me) or when that baby officially declares the end of her babyhood, ignores my curfew and phone calls? Or takes too many selfies? Or is a he?

Not certain. But today, the world is a beautiful and mysterious place. And today, the world was also a beautiful and mysterious place - of these things I am certain. 

There are: horses and beauty and mystery and happiness in the world today.

The world is a beautiful and mysterious place today.

Missing: Stars from Tonight's Sky

There were no stars to be seen in the sky as I drove home tonight - usually I look up and out to the left side of the driver's seat, dangerously not swerving in direction with the rest of my body, cause I'm a pro stargazer. Even while driving. Even if that means I compensate the multitasking by slowing to crawl-mode on the driving part.

Usually, this is okay because I have a nightly routine conducive to star-drive-gazing:

1. Leave the library sooper late, preferably past 12am.
2. Drive zoom zoomy all the way down 29, catching all the green lights cause no one is driving perpendicularly at this hour; almost no one is driving at all.
3. Make the right turn onto Rio [rye-ohh] from 29, dramatically decrease speed. The whole road is yours. This means almost home.
4. Crawl-mode: on. Swerve head (but not car) left and up, looking up and out my side window at all the stars that come out to glitter upon escape from all the light pollution that is metropolitan UVA.
5. Gaze. Drive, too, a little. All the way home.

But there were no stars to be seen in the sky as I drove home tonight.

Cause they were scattered all over humble earth, blanketing the roads the cars the stores the people's eyelashes with the fluffiest sparkliest most beautifullest gentlest-glowingest snow-stars I ever did see.

step 1.5. take endless pictures of snow scenes on the way from lib to car

Dah. The beautifullest. The bestest.
The cold-redeemingest.

TRANSDUCTION

It Is Enough

by Anne Alexander Bingham

To know that the atoms

of my body

will remain

to think of them rising

through the roots of a great oak

to live in

leaves, branches, twigs

perhaps to feed the

crimson peony

the blue iris

the broccoli

or rest on water

freeze and thaw

with the seasons

some atoms might become a

bit of fluff on the wing

of a chickadee

to feel the breeze

know the support of air

and some might drift

up and up into space

star dust returning from

whence it came

it is enough to know that

as long as there is a universe

I am a part of it.

Something

There's something about the sweetness of recounting memories of an undergrad friendship while sprawled out on the floor of a warm room that's capable of holding way more people than you first expected -- like a clown car, except the room version.

There's something about sitting around on worn comfy couches and munching on chicken wings and pizza and laugh-crying at 'Remember When's quickly devolving into embarrassing stories about the Girl Who Peed.

There's something about crying crying crying for the sadnesses of others; wondering why the tears are streaming down my face, why it seems so sad to me, or maybe it's the combination of a (non)goodbye and feeling like there's something being lost to indelibility. Mmm confusion.

There's something about tiny girls hugging each other's tiny girl bodies, holding fast, not wanting to let go, please can you just stay? hehehe, slouchy cardigans and teary-goodbye faces, looking out the glass slammy door until her backlights have turned the corner and out of view view view as the Friends theme song - I'lllll be there forrr youuuu - plays in the background, unaware of us and somehow perfect, but somehow  a little too self-confident for the goodbye of our friends.

There's something about saying goodbye. Even if it's so temporary. Feeling like the end of an era, and the beginning of one; or maybe just the beginning of an end. Emotions clouding the brain; there's no room for the coherent thoughts to congregate.

There's something about laying in bed, full head, full heart, wanting to record things I can't seem to grasp.

Something.

WARNING: NOT AWKWARD

There's something extra naked sounding about someone professing the need to "recharge my batteries." I know everyone needs to do it, some people (seemingly) more than others, and all of us in different ways that manifest themselves quite distinctly in social situations that sometimes make you wonder how come God made us so different, like incompatible-different (like men vs. women, too, sigh) when sometimes all we want to do is love each other, but we just can't figure out the best way to do this, for me, and for you, cause those two directions might be working very differently -- all of which could also be said about the state of being naked. Different preferences, you know?

This might sound silly; maybe it makes you chuckle uncomfortably and shift in your seat a little bit but that might be less because of an inherent silliness of the idea than the fact that as a mostly-clothed society, the very concept of nakedness just makes us chuckle, uncomfortably, and shift a little in our seats at the mere image of (presumably) our naked buttcheeks shifting a little in those very seats. But there's definitely something to this nakedbatteries instinct.

Because when you're drowning in a social situation where everyone else seems to be buzzing about at an extra-high pace and need to be back in the cozy folds of your room; when you're drowning in the solitude of your room and need to be in the company of those who make you feel shiny and bright and full (and all those unfortunate moments when two people of each of these different states collide in the same space and time), you're admitting an incompleteness of the moment. That you're not fully there yet. Your batteries aren't at 100%. As if you have walked out of your house, Hello, world!, with only a sweater and shoes on. Or just pants and a headband. And you don't want to show anyone that -- you're just not ready to face life that day yet.

Apparently I'm the Most Likely to End Up a Nudist friend, according to a trusted source. Not sure how I feel about this, except that I sort of agree -- for some reason, nakedness just doesn't make me squirm as much. I think I have a high tolerance for bareness, and simultaneously, a very low one for leggings-as-pants-in-public, which is ranty enough for a post of its own. But nakedness, yeah, I talk about it all the time, usually as the target end to my vague metaphors about life, and always have dreams about accidentally going to school in pajamas (which is another sort of being naked) in which I don't ever question the premises of WHY DID THIS HAPPEN but am always solely preoccupied with HOW DO I PASS OFF AS NORMAL.

Maybe it just means I'm tolerant to the idea of being naked, as long as context is appropriate, or maybe I'm secretly really vain about my unadorned physical appearance (dubious).

Or maybe it's just refreshing and energizing and appealing to me; this idea of being totally, unabashedly honest with others. And with myself -- hello, clothed self, meet naked self! be accustomed to and in tune with one another! Not to de-emphasize the importance/usefulness/goodness of self-improvement, but just wanting to find a good balance between that striving-towards-a-future-you and a true appreciation of the present you, fearfully and wonderfully made -- to be the You of Now right now, and to be the You of Later, later. Or me. Cause it might be totes awk for you right now, for Me to be talking about naked You. Or maybe not. nakedbuttcheeks!hah

NOT AWK NOT AWK NOT AWK NOT AWK NOT AWK

a mug or a sidewalk or a person or a poem or some cherries

"The difference is that our whole LIVES are different now, well, can be different now with this theoretical knowledge. It's actually the most applicable, practical thing - just a matter of how much you want to apply it. For example, how is this mug now an actant in relation to me? What kind of action is its presence making possible, in conjunction with me, or in conjunction with the table it's sitting on, or the coffee it holds (or doesn't)? Or this sidewalk we're walking on. I mean it's making all the difference in the world! Why else would I be walking on this particular patch of the Earth if not for the sidewalk?"

ahahahahaahahahaha etc.

ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY

the title is kind of misleading cause it still seems confusing to me

but it's narrated by a very cute-sounding Dutch boy-genius

WE HAVE NEVER BEEN MODERN

FLAT ONTOLOGY

,not flat stanley

These are the things we learned today in that space-and-a-wall. Just wanted to document the academic mind-explode goings-on of the early semester.

This semester, I hope to:

• become more organized in my speech, to practice better explaining my thoughts without excessive use of non-words and "I just thought that was really interesting" as filler utterance.
• get used to environments in which I am surrounded by people infinitely smarter than I am but realize the limitations of that state of awe-struckness. That not everyone is an expert at everything, and to take the opportunity of being out of my element as an experience to grow from, not one in which I pretend to know more than I do or end up missing opportunities to contribute for fear of looking stupid. To learn from others without judgment or fruitless jealousy.
• remember lots of details and names of theories and well-understood concepts in my brain so that I have a stock of things to coherently share with others once I'm done with the semester - not just vague recollections of being mind-blown all the time.
• always and mindfully give people good gifts, not necessarily in birthday-present format.
• make sense of Latourian Litanies; make use of theories in productive and satisfying applications to real life outside of the brain.

Dear God, please help me to survive to thrive this semester.

la confluence

from "Which Language Shall We Speak with Gaia?" -Latour



Story-telling is not just a property of human language, but one of the many
consequences of being thrown in a world that is, by itself, fully articulated and active.
It is easy to see why it will be utterly impossible to tell our common geostory without,
all of us — novelists, generals, engineers, scientists, politicians, activists, and citizens —
getting closer and closer within such a common trading zone. 
...
The reason why such a point is always lost is because of a long history during
which the “scientific world view” has reversed this order, inventing the idea of a
“material world” in which the agency of all the entities making up the world has been
made to vanish. A zombie atmosphere, in which the official version of the “natural
world” has shrunk all the agents that the scientific and engineering professions keep
multiplying, comes from such a reversion: nothing happens any more since the agent is
supposed to be “simply caused” by its predecessor. All the action has been put in the
antecedent. The consequent could just as well not be there at all. As we say in French:

“il n’est là que pour faire de la figuration”; to play the extra. You may still list the
succession of items one after the other, but their eventfulness has disappeared. (Do
you remember learning the facts of science at school? If you were often so bored,
that’s why!). The great paradox of the “scientific world view” is to have succeeded in
withdrawing historicity from the world. And with it, of course, the inner narrativity
that is part and parcel of being in the world — or, as Donna Haraway prefers to say,
“with the world”.


just another night of mindexplode, to the soundtrack of:

"best of luck to you"

Wow, yeah I know exactly what you mean about English lit -- I'm actually doing my undergrad major in English, too.

Oh really! That's funny. Yeah so you know what I'm talking about.

---

Well, thanks so much for the interview! For answering my questions, too. And good luck to you with everything, after your English Master's and all.

Haha yeah good luck to you too! I guess we all need a bit of luck, huh.

Hahaha yeah... Well thanks! Have a good evening!

Bye!


Who knew I'd ever be wishing an interviewer luck. Lots of people are kind of lost - just in different times of our lives and to varying degrees.

Best of luck to us allllll

photoshoot

 swish & flikk, with a swish of whiskers but no ruffle of scarf

the work of a true artist

 concentrating on pose; forgot about his tongue

artsy shot, half-screen coverage

note perpendicularity of the whiskers, the brow-whiskers

 now the other side

"That's enough for today."

swish and away

"Obsessed" doesn't even begin to describe it.

semi-fiction

m: I'm overwhelmed by how overwhelmed I already am about this semester.

c: Yeah there's just never enough time. This is going to get better once we're living in the real world, right? like working and stuff?

m: Yeah probably, I mean hopefully. Like we'll probably have busy times for work but they'll be more predictable and less terrible, like you'll never wake up one day and realize oh my gosh I have fiiive papers in twooo days!  hahaha

c: Yeah, but then I guess there will be family and responsibilities... Like how're you supposed to even begin thinking about childcare, and taking care of a house; like how will you make the trade-off? Make money and have someone else take care of your kids, make money and hire someone who cleans your house, or stop making money and do it all yourself? So many choices we're gonna have to make. I mean time is money.

m: Yeah so true! Time is money. So many trade-offs, so many opportunity costs. Yeah who is gonna care for my children and my carpet. WOw.

c: Haha well then right now we have infinite time. Since we have no money.

m: Dang. Good thing we have infinite time. I have so much to do tonight...for all my classes tomorrow.

mo' money no time; no money mo' time

"ten years from now, I am happy"

Ten years from now, I am happy.

Ten years from now, I am twent thirty-two, and married to a person I call "home." 

Not literally his nickname, unless...this becomes an inside joke. With "home" (uh-oh) we make a pair that needs no home other than (mostly) ourselves, living in places that were always recently "far-off lands," and reveling (and reeling) in all the mysteries and adventure (and difficulties) that come with that. Togetherly.

I will be working that dream job that I know exists out there (that I just don't know the title of yet), and 

-----------this is where I ran out of time-----------------

courage, 

contemplation, 

compassion, 

creativity

are just a few of the things I will be learning about this semester. Even though it's stressful and I'm apparently already procrastinate-blogging at the library like I do when I have too much to do, so all is normal. All is well. All is beautiful. Even the struggles. Especially the struggles. 

Another random, bleary-eyed-at-11pm question for contemplation:

"happiness or joy?"

Ten years from now, we will collectively be calmer and drink wine and live in France or wherever that "somewhere else" is (it can be that farmhouse in Virginia hum-buzzing with love), with a comfortable income and joy and/or happiness. 

And/or.

P.S. Do this. Mmmmm wilde wednesdayes mmmmm

Mohnny Jayer

After an afternoon of getting re-obsessed with John Mayer, getting my fingertips painfully reacquainted with their guitar string calluses, I've finally figured out why John Mayer is great.

It's because he's not. Great. He's actually a pretty big oaf, thinks much too highly of himself, and makes this last characteristic way too easy to see during his interviews. At least in the interviews that I watched when he was first getting big; when I was first getting obsessed with him, on the cusp of adoring fan-dom but never quite freeeeeee-fallen. I can't speak for any developments on this front because I stopped looking after that first off-putting bit. At least in me, he lost one avid youtube video watcher of his Him-related-internet-things, from the very beginning.

But I've realized that John Mayer is an artist I will keep getting re- re- re-obsessed with throughout my life (albeit from that distance of "Slightly Disgusted"), because he is an incredible singer-songwriter-guitarist making art about dickishly ended relationships; a pompous, ego-maniacal brat of a man crooning so expertly into his mic usually with a hideously contorted facial expression that makes your eyes hurt while his voice pampers your ears so movingly -- it's all goosebumpsland in the most confusing way. You want to love the man while also punching some of his values.

He sings about love in the best combinations of words, but picks the most confusing girlfriends. He is a genius lyricist who writes cringe-worthily perfect lines about weakness. A broken genius, who shows you  all his genius, brokeny insides. Which sounds like a good thing, and something that all artists always say they're doing, making art out of darkness, but this guy's level of honesty about his brokenness makes me embarrassed; kinda like asking your parents about their sex life or...that other ingenious example I was going to use but immediately forgot because the mere mention of asking parents about sex life was so distractingly disturbing. Despite his artsy tendencies I don't think he was a popular kid in high school and never managed to not care about that. And Battle Studies keeps asking "Who says I can't get stoned" and insisting that he is only "perfectly lonely." And though comparing love to a military conflict isn't the freshest metaphor ever, these songs - and his honesty they carry - make me cringe in a genuine and original way.

But probably, all this is just an outdated rant about a man who has amended the contemptible ways of his youth, whose virtuous progress I never really witnessed because I stopped watching youtube videos of his interviews so early on in his career.

But then again, maybe not.

~98% of videos related to him force you to endure through an advertisement, which means people will endure through an advertisement to watch them. As I've been doing all evening long, spending the nighttime chunk of my last full day of winter break writing this indecisive, lopsidey post about this genius-freak.

"No Such Thing"

"Welcome to the real world", she said to me
Condescendingly
Take a seat
Take your life
Plot it out in black and white
Well I never lived the dreams of the prom kings
And the drama queens
I'd like to think the best of me
Is still hiding
Up my sleeve

They love to tell you
Stay inside the lines
But something's better
On the other side

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

So the good boys and girls take the so called right track
Faded white hats
Grabbing credits
Maybe transfers
They read all the books but they can't find the answers
And all of our parents
They're getting older
I wonder if they've wished for anything better
While in their memories
Tiny tragedies

They love to tell you
Stay inside the lines
But something's better
On the other side

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you got to rise above

I am invincible
As long as I'm alive

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

I just can't wait til my 10 year reunion
I'm gonna bust down the double doors
And when I stand on these tables before you
You will know what all this time was for

"Stop This Train"

No I'm not color blind
I know the world is black and white
Try to keep an open mind but...
I just can't sleep on this tonight
Stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly won't someone stop this train

Don't know how else to say it, don't want to see my parents go
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own

Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't but honestly won't someone stop this train

So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find away to say that life has just begun
Had a talk with my old man
Said help me understand
He said turn 68, you'll renegotiate
Don't stop this train
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
Don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly we'll never stop this train

See once in a while when it's good
It'll feel like it should
And they're all still around
And you're still safe and sound
And you don't miss a thing
'til you cry when you're driving away in the dark.

Singing stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can't take this speed it's moving in
I know I can't
Cause now I see I'll never stop this train

happy naturalization cake

congrats! congratulations!

What for? Without taking away from the happy, kindly congratulatory feelings of the congratulations -- I really didn't get it. Is it indeed something to be congratulated for, this change of nationality? I didn't pay any part of the application fee, pass any particularly difficult test, or indeed, choose to come to this country in the first place. I didn't do any of it. Choose any of it.

But maybe it's not really about me anyways; what I've done or haven't. It's more like "congratulations for this great piece of luck" kind of deal. You're in the group, now -- may you officially and freely partake in Social Security (contributions). Even if you didn't know what you were getting yourself into (the most momentous life decisions get made this way, I feel). And it's true that I'm so thankful to be here, honestly. Not because I fled from an oppressive political regime or because my home country is war-torn and tattery now, but because I was free to think and to dress and to study and to dream the way I got to here.

And to eat celebratory Kroger cake and homemade pho in the same meal, surrounded by a rowdy bunch of hyphenated-Americans singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

America the Beautiful indeed.

email magic

Hello!

My name is Madison (officially "Jae") Lee, and I am a fourth year English major in the College. 

I am a present-focused English major -- this means that: though I know English was the right choice for me during my undergrad years, that it helped me grow as a student and as a whole person, that it has made my years at UVA so fruitful and wonderfully overwhelming; I had never imagined being an English major before first year, and that I won't be pursuing it in graduate studies.

Aside from presently-reveling in my English classes, I've been taking advantage of being an Echols scholar by taking as many "random" classes as possible, ranging from Statistics to Anthropology to Chemistry to Spanish to French to Chinese to Italian - a list whose heavy inclination for foreign languages wasn't an accident. I often took two or three language courses each semester, simply because I love this opportunity I have during my undergrad years to be able to study such a variety. It all started with an indecisive sophomore year in high school when I just couldn't decide between Spanish and French and so, decided to take both -- from there sprouted a desire to learn Italian (supplemented by my conviction that "I will live in Rome someday!"), then branched out to Mandarin Chinese, because I wanted to learn the language in which my native tongue, Korean, has its roots. On the horizon is German, which I'm convinced isn't as inevitably ugly as it's made out to be by the masses.

Despite this love of languages, I deliberately steered clear of Linguistics because I learned early on (in the inauspicious "Intro to Linguistics" course my first year) that it is the practice of language I love -- not the theory. I learn languages because of the side effect it tends to have in helping to create international, intercultural connections. Thinking about the roots of phonemes and morphemes is interesting, but...not enough. 

And I got to practice the application of foreign language-learning in a big, big way last year, while I spent my third year abroad through working and studying internationally. I worked as a Student Ambassador of the USA Pavilion for the 2012 World Expo in Yeosu, Korea, where I learned more about my own language and culture than I could have ever been prepared for (I was born in, then at age nine moved away from, South Korea). It was an incredible and mind-boggling experience -- to be a foreigner back in my "home" country, where, after over a decade of minority-hood in the states, I finally belonged. Physically, anyway. 

Then I continued my stay in Korea with a semester in Seoul, at Korea University, getting a glimpse of life as an undergraduate student that I might have had - and would have considered completely "normal" - if my family had never moved to the states. After this, I traveled to Lyon, France where I spent the second half of my third year carefully studying French outdoor markets with my stomach and my wallet, and stretching the amount of conversation I could hold (bit by nasally bit) with locals until that breaking point of them noticing I wasn't actually French. Though completely adventurous, completely exciting, I can't say that all this was a completely good experience -- there were ups and downs, as my blog and diaries insist, but in the end, I am glad indeed for the whole experience, with all its moments of elation and all the painful lessons, too.

In this vein of international outlook and love of foreign languages, I am considering the field of translation -- though tentatively. I am also interested in social justice issues, particularly those concerning women and children. I recently began volunteering at the Shelter for Help in Emergency, which runs the domestic violence hotline and shelter for Charlottesville (and surrounding counties). These things are simultaneously vague and specific, I know, but in a way, I feel like I just haven't come across the exact title of my job yet. It's out there, and it might be in the form of something totally unexpected and over-hyphenated, and I just have to be vigilant and ready for it. The tricky part is figuring out how best to be preparing myself.

I am interested in this course because it seems exactly as widely-interested in undiscovered connections as I am. I love interdisciplinary studies, and my most fruitful semesters have been those that have included different courses with overlapping time periods or subjects, between which I have been able to make connections and new discoveries through the unexpected overlaps. Communication, after all, is the key to solving the most daunting of problems. I truly believe that when people come together to collaborate, to communicate fruitfully, beautiful things happen. And I can't help but note Lisa Spaar in your list of professors as someone I'm especially excited to see in this course -- she is my advisor, my go-to recommendation letter-writer, the reason for me being an English major today.

As to specific contributions that I could add to the course, I'll point to my penchant for blogging. I wonder if this platform could come in handy as a tool of documentation, visualization, and reflection. 

I can be flexible to the changes of the course schedule and meeting times/locations - hurrah for a fourth year, low-load semester!

Thank you for your consideration. I am excited to hear from you!

saturday morning poetry

Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.


내가 일찍 일어나는 이유

내 얼굴 어루만져 주시는 

아침 햇님에게 인사--

새벽 빛을 만들어 들판위에 뿌려주시고

기다리는 튤립들에게,

꾸벅이는 나팔꽃들에게,

찌그러지고 찌푸린이들의 

창문까지도

빠짐없이 찾아주시는, 빛 나눠주시는 

아침 햇님에게 인사--

그 최고의 설교자,

별님, 

온 우주 중 어느 한 곳에서

어둠을 막아내시고,

따뜻이 둘러싸주시고,

빛의 손안에 담아주신다--

좋은 아침, 좋은 아침, 좋은 아침. 

자, 오늘의 좋은 아침은 

행복하게, 따스하게 시작할테다.

How Proust Can Change Your Life --Alain de Botton

My legs were uncomfortabl(ly warm)e so I slipped them out from under the covers.
Then my teeth were uncomfortabl(ly tight)e in their retainers so those got slipped out, too.

the following quotations are from here
(what the...there are youtube renditions of this)

How to Put Books Down:

"...we should be reading for a particular reason: not to pass the time, not out of detached curiosity, but out of a dispassionate wish to find out what Ruskin felt, but because, to repeat with italics, "there is no better way of coming to be aware of what one feels oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what a master has felt." We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing even if it is another writer's thoughts that help us do so. A fulfilled academic life would therefore require us to judge that the writers we were studying articulated in their books a sufficient range of our own concerns, and that in the act of understanding them through translation or commentary, we would simultaneously be understanding and developing the spiritually significant parts of ourselves.

And therein lay Proust's problem, because in his view, books could not make us aware of enough of the things we felt. They might open our eyes, sensitize us, enhance our powers of perception, but at a certain point they would stop, not by coincidence, not occasionally, not out of bad luck, but inevitably, by definition, for the stark and simple reason that the author wasn't us. There would come a moment with every book when we would feel that something was incongruous, misunderstood, or constraining, and it would give us a responsibility to leave our guide behind and continue our thoughts alone...

It is one of the great and wonderful characteristics of good books (which allow us to see the role at once essential yet limited that reading may play in our spiritual lives) that for the author they may be called "Conclusions" but for the reader "Incitements." We feel very strongly that our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off, and we would like him to provide us with answers when all he is able o do is provide us with desires... That is the value of reading, and also its inadequacy. To make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. 

It obliges us to read with care, to welcome the insights books give us, but not to subjugate our independence or smother the nuances of our own love life in the process.

Otherwise, we might suffer a range of symptoms that Proust identified in the overreverent, overreliant reader:

.........

Symptom No. 2: That we are unable to write after reading a good book:

Reading Proust nearly silenced Virginia Woolf... "Proust so titillates my own desire for expression that I can hardly set out the sentence. Oh if I could write like that! I cry. And at the moment such is the astonishing vibration and saturation that he procures -- there's something sexual in it -- that I feel I can write like that, and seize my pen and then I can't write like that." 

"I detest my own volubility. Why be always spouting words?"

"This is the worst time of all. It makes me suicidal. Nothing seems left to do. All seems insipid and worthless."

"[In Search of Lost Time] which is of course so magnificent that I can't write myself within its arc. For years I've put off finishing it; but now, thinking I may die one of these years, I've returned, and let my own scribble do what it likes. Lord what a hopeless bad book mine will be!"

The tone suggests that Woolf had at last made her peace with Proust. He could have his terrain, she had hers to scribble in. The path from depression and self-loathing to cheerful defiance suggested a gradual recognition that one person's achievements did not have to invalidate another's, that there would always be something left to do even if it momentarily appeared otherwise. Proust might have expressed many things well, but independent thought and the history of the novel had not come to a half with him. His book did not have to be followed by silence; there was still space for the scribbling of others, for Mrs. Dalloway, The Common Reader, A Room of One's Own, and in particular, there was space for what these books symbolized in this context -- perceptions of one's own."

--------------------------------the application:------------------------------

These are layers and layers of genius to grapple with, learn from, and irreverently throw aside after having ingested their healthy juices. As healthy and addictively refreshing as regular bowel movements, a happy colon with a diet full of fiber. 

I feel like I am learning how to read from this book. The best kinds of teachers are the ones you can leave behind, aren't they? No matter how good their handwriting, no matter how ingenious their analysis of To the Lighthouse, no matter how inferior you feel in their presence -- actually, the best, the most effective, the most truly inspirational of all teacherly beings are the ones who allow you to stand on their shoulders and look into worlds beyond their own scope. Teachers with teachings that are great enough to cause those heart tremors, but humble enough to allow for the possibility of greater, fiercer vibrations. 

Those who equip us with the real tools, of believing in the distinct realizability of our loftiest dreams. In made-up words and over-hyphenization, allll included. 

"Lord what a helpless bad book mine will be!"

There 

are unbreathed, disquieted rumblings on the insides of my insides. I can't wait to read A la recherche de temps perdu. I can't wait to finish it and to put it down and then to poop out my own poop (...sorry; stop thinking about it...now!). But for now, it's legs-under-the-covers and retainers, back on: getting prepared for the good work of tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrows.

recommendation letters

I bet this is something someone (some many ones) has already, so long ago, thought of and wished before, but

I wonder what kind of recommendation letters I've received over the course of my application-writing life. Sort of.

There must have been well-written ones and well-intentioned ones (not always the same); there must have been (must've been) some excellent ones ; and there must have been lukewarm ones from people who felt unqualified to write them -- in their lack of knowledge of the application, of my work, of me.

Not taking into consideration the impossible-to-determine factor of "How Much Did They Actually Count," there were letters that helped me get YES letters and those that didn't help or - who knows? - possibly even helped in the other, unhelpful direction toward the SORRY, UR GR8 BUT NOT ENOUGH letters.

But sometimes - sooooometimes - there are letters that serve a totally different purpose. Letters that your letter-writers show you in pride and happiness sparkling oozingly from their eyes - cue: puppy-like eagerness fill the space between you two - as they proudly display their work of fifteen Word Document minutes with the palpable, unverbalized thought bubbles of "Isn't it a great letter?!" "You will surely get this ______; can thank me later!" "Do you think anything should be added to make this letter any more perfect? NO RIGHT?"

as you realize that, "...maybe I won't get this ______ after all..." Hours of Personal Statement writing, all your resume polishing...careful essay editing...are crumbling to oblivion in the background of your mind. Hopes of a summer job, that dreamy fellowship, all the things that have polished you bit by bit to become the person who wins a YES letter into this program, are going, going, gone. No way anyone will read these bland few paragraphs and truly want to give you money or one of those coveted places, among all those other excellent people with other excellent letters of recommendation. Is this a grand exaggeration? Yes. But also no. But yes.

Cause sometimes - sooooooooooometimes - there are letters that serve a totally different purpose. Letters that make you hope that this particular application review committee throws out all the recommendation letters cause they're just a formality anyways; just to make sure people applying for this are for real for real, they'll go through the trouble of asking - nagging - for letters. Just that. But...letters that...at the end of the day, make you grateful for the relationship you have with this letter-writer, no matter how badly-worded their best efforts to help you out. You realize these things as you walk out after another day at your day job (hah), and she blows you air kisses and you blow kisses back, and the warm fuzzy feelings are really all that matter in these moments.

Thank you for air kisses.

travel

여행
-윤성택

여정이 일치하는 그곳에 당신이 있고
길이 생겨나기 시작 한다
시간은 망명과 같다 아무도 그
서사의 끝에서 돌아오지 못한다
그런 끝끝내 완성될 운명이
이렇게 읽히고 있다는 사실,
사랑은 단 한 번 펼친 면의 첫줄에서
비유 된다 이제 더 이상
우연한 방식의 이야기는 없다
이곳에 도착했으니 가방은
조용해지고 마음이 열리기 시작 한다
여행은 항상 당신의 궤도에 있다.


This is just to say

that the tra-
vel bug
is coming
back

and I am
quietly
ecstatic ab
-out this.

Let's go together.

This is How: final installment

part 1: heaa
and part 2: here

from: How to Live Unhappily Ever After

"This recipe of defining what happiness means to you and then fiddling with your life to make the changes needed to make yourself happy will work for some people. But not for others.

I am one of the others.

I am not a happy person.

A lot of the time what I feel is interested. Or I feel melancholy. And I also frequently feel tenderness, annoyance, confusion, fear, hopelessness, friskiness.

It doesn't all add up to anything I would call happiness.

What I'm thinking is, is that so terrible?

I used to say "I just want to be happy" all the time I said it so frequently and without care that I forgot to refill the phrase with meaning, so it was just a shell of words.

Happiness is a wonderful goal for those who are inclined on a genetic level toward that emotional end of the spectrum.

Happiness is a treadmill of a goal for people who are not happy by nature.

Being an unhappy person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested instead of happy. You can be fascinated instead of happy."

from: How to Stop Being Afraid of Your Anger

"By ignoring anger and applying a thick coating of positive thinking on top of it, you can successfully contain it. Until, that is, the most inappropriate moment imaginable where your anger will roil up inside of you, rise up your throat, and be propelled out of your mouth at a pregnant woman who reaches for the avocado at the same moment that you do at a farmers' market on some Saturday morning.

In my experience, people frequently repress small pieces of anger...because, it doesn't matter. Or, they didn't mean it. Or, I'm overly sensitive. Or, I want to focus on the positive. Or a thousand and twelve other reasons.

But these little angers are promiscuous; they breed like epidural addicts. And in time, you're sitting across from your husband at dinner and when he opens his mouth to take a bit of garlic bread, you clench your teeth, smile, and think to yourself, "I despise the way he chews. How could I have married a man who chews like such an animal?"

Anger that you shush will metastasize and can cause massive damage...

Anger is a natural emotion, not a character flaw and not a weakness. But unlike joy or sadness, anger needs just a little bit of a polish before you release it into the world. Even though it's horribly uncomfortable, you could try expressing how you feel to the subject of your wrath. Another quite useful and healthy outlet for anger is writing. Even if you "can't write." Because actually, if you can speak, you can write."

This winter break has been one of much self-helpin' -- unintentionally but...nevertheless, refreshingly so. Mmhmm winter break je t'aime

old-fashioned alors

Letter-writing is a magical thing because it's like a series of time-encapsulated bits and pieces of yourself that you leave with someone else for safekeeping. This trail of incredibly private, but also inherently and concertedly shared, form of communication between usually-two people.

Especially when the intervals of time between letters happen to be just the right length of long, you can kind of see what kind of person you were when you were writing your last letter -- the ways in which you wrote the things that you wrote to make them write back the way they did, on the subjects they did.

Apparently I was especially appreciative of poetry back when I last wrote. I remember that. Two whole "response poems" came back to me, but all I can do is appreciate the appreciation I used to have. And fall a little in love with this person I know almost exclusively through our letter correspondence, which, I found as I dug through my piles of PRECIOUS THINGS boxes, only consists of five whole letters from him, and I guess about six, maybe seven now, from me.

It's crazy how easy it is to fall little by little in love each time, because the action of letter-writing itself is not only incredibly romantic (why are old, outdated things so often rose-tinted?) but he's good at it -- it's lucky that we do this so infrequently and so horse-carriageishly, cause I'm sure if this correspondence lived on texts or facebook messages, there would have already been some kind of a denouement and resolution. With letters, there's ample time for the feels to fade away in between. And appropriately so. We've only met once, four loooooooong years ago.

Dear T --
Thank you so much -- for being patient and old-fashioned enough to go along with this thing, to faithfully write back to me every time I write to you, through all the address changes and country hopping, even with all the time in between correspondences; for being the person who gives me a tangible chance to remember my 3-months-ago self and what she appreciated and wanted to share with people she was sharing bits of her heart with. Little glimpses of my heart state in time-capsule form, in those pages that were sent - practically forever - away, but have always come back to me in the reflections of the pages that are sent in return.


Bon toi et moi, on est old-fashioned nous deux alors.

note the lovin'

what a blessed girl I am to have an inbox so full of lovin'

even if that clarisse girl never sees this post, because who knows when she'll stalk my blog ever again.

doesn't matter, cause it's all love love love here, and we are best friends, and this isn't my sneaky little non-way of actually answering all that unanswerable love in my inbox right now. I mean how does a person answer all those things? It is impossible. We need to talk to each other's faces, facing hearts. 

...and then that email to self on jobs and useful links.

hahahahahahahahahaha

is all I can say.

(hohoho)

Today, someone told me a sorta sheepish "thank you" for something nice I had done for that person, a little while ago.

This person prefaced her thanks by saying, "Now I know you might get embarrassed about this kinda thing, but I just wanted to tell you..." and proceeded to tell me how nice lovely unforgettable (hohoho) my nice something was, that I had done for her. How that card was one of the nicest she had ever received. How she's gonna keep it forever. How it's going in her "Treasure box." And of course, I graciously (hmm...actually this is questionable) replied that "of course, it was nothing, I am so glad you liked it, I truly meant that niceness, it was from my heart, because you more-than-deserve it," etc. 

And dashed out of the room because I really really really had to pee. In my hurry I didn't really think this thing through and basically ran out on her thanks/compliments to me, which she had brought up with that very preface that was supposed to keep me from running for the hills. er the toilets.

Probably solidifying this person's idea of me as this emotion-shy person who is only emotional in cards, not to be read in my presence after I have given it to you. That I am expressive, but reservedly, that I am emotional, but privately. That I can't bear to hear praises without blushing furiously in modesty, always running for the proverbial bathroom. ...All of which is not true! Just look at that unabashed (hohoho) up there. There is no shame at all about my emotions to be found here. None.

At least this is what I think of myself. Or how I used to be, unless I've changed without me noticing (or accepting):

To me, my true self, and I, I am abounding and joyful and expressively sorrowful, each in appropriate turn. And grateful (much), and complanatory (loudly), and actually really kind of adorable sometimes, though this might be biased. Like only my mom thinks so, because she sees a lot of me, in duration and depth, and also is the person who birthed me, which makes her prone to think nicer things about me than the rest of the world. Why...am I feeling less and less convinced by my own arguments?

FOcus: I exclaim!! liberally, try to concertedly color my language with underappreciated adjectives, get sparkly-eyed only all the time. 

But even with all these thoughts running through my head while my feet were running bathroom-ward and then back, when I found myself back in the presence of the person whom I had basically abandoned there in the room with her thankful emotions, I couldn't bring the conversation back, to appropriately pick up loose ends and appreciate all her feelings and express more of mine in return. Couldn't correct her, gently, that no indeed not, that does not make me feel embarrassed! I am very happy that you expressed these things to me. Thank you. Each second that passed was another grain of sand in the hourglass that fell through the skinny and irrevocable waist of its Passage of Time and I couldn't bring the moment back. It was gone -- and so were the emotions. To anyone not inside my head (read: everyone but me), I was indeed emotion-shy. It did indeed embarrass me, these profuse thankses. Whether accurately or not, she had noticed that I was "shy" -- and when she pointed this out, I felt...shy about it. Weird how self-fulfilling prophecies always sorta work in their weird self-fulfillingy ways. 

Is it true that I've become this person who doesn't do emotions, who makes you pause and tilt your head questioningly when I say something in a squeaky voice cause uh...Madison just doesn't do cute. Or is this just another self-fulfilling prophecy? 

What if I was cute when I felt like being so, or serious, or deep, or sad, overwhelmingly sad, and also ecstatic and thankful when I had cause to be? When I remembered to be? Being honest to momentary emotions and not thinking so much about "what kind of person I am & have always been" and thus, "what kind of person I am supposed to be; am expected to be."

Tonight, I am content. I am thankful, and hopeful, in different measures that feel like the gently different shades of one big ocean. I am aware of my inadequacies in ways that feel manageable and hopeful, rather than despairing, and I am a little tiny bit meta-ashamed of the exponentially increasing corny level of my blogposts, with all their intentional use of underappreciated adjectives and weird, un-thought-out imageries that I just type out as my mind blurts them out in their vague, overhyphenated sentences. And I am a little cold. Though that is more of a sensation, I suppose, and one that I will act upon by hopping into bed. Promptlybye

!

oh MY

when did January one, two, and three happen without a post?!

winter break, still, toujours je t'aime.