growing up &whatevers

I wonder if "growing up" simply means growing more and more "human" as we proceed through more and more of life, like becoming bigger- and bigger-hearted into the beings we were made to be.  Each life decision widens us; each big event expands our capacity to feel and then to empathize.  The highs and the lows are higher and lower as we grow older and more profound in our thinkings, feelings, the scope of our sandboxes.

Once you have fallen head over heels in infatuation, once your heart has been (seemingly) irreparably shattered, once you become responsible for a little life and a little soul whose growing-up you're put in charge of for a short little while, you get to tuck away each of those experiences into its right corner in your now-expanded heart, in spaces that hadn't existed before because there was nothing for them to hold.

You go through a shattering experience; it makes you feel more terrible than anything you had ever imagined even possible, and that's just fine because it's exactly right, how confusingly new this feels. That's how that new hurt is supposed to sting; those neurons just hadn't been fired ever before.  And through all of this, your spectrum of brokenness grows wider, and as does your spectrum of empathy.  Same with love.  And becoming a mom or a dad.  And your first-ever bite of chocolate, probably.  How could you rave about the wonders of the cacao bean without having tasted a sliver of its sugar-powered magic?

Makes tragedies seem that much less intimidating, that much more purposeful.  Makes future joys that much more exciting to look forward to.

But the key here is that you have to have those [shattering/falling/heart-expandingly delicious] experiences first, and suffer appropriate[ly beautiful/tragic] consequences for those choices.  To have courage to reach out and touch things previously unseen, to declare unabashedly that you are of This Camp or That, to decide to let go or hold on, whichever is scarier.

Someone described the concept of predestination to me by explaining that "you're chosen by God (like, since the beginning of eternity) once God chooses you." It sounds circular and probably makes philosophers jump up and down in illogical rage, but this weirdly makes sense to me; like in a this is sort of the only way it would make sense way.  Like how you have to reach out to touch someone who is reaching out to you for there to be a real connection, a genuine falling in love, but you know you were supposed to be together since the beginning of the stars or whatever.

Or whatever.

Stars or eternities or predestined love stories since the beginning of all galaxies, or whatever.

Why does everything always end up being about love?  Ohhhh English major.

Dear Jason; Love, Madison

My dad is very good at vocal inflections, almost comically so. He'll talk himself silly on the telephone with a native-born American, all his "Yep!"s and "Uhhhh huh!"s in all the right places, so vocally and inflectiony. Sometimes I pause in my room and listen to his too-loud voice booming through our whole second story, as he talks about "Yeah, that'll be grrrreat!"s and "Perfect, just perfect"s with those American friends and comrades. ["Good guy, very good guy"]

It's really amazing what he's done with his life - he came out of the womb wanting to be a mechanical engineer, and has never looked back. Breaking radios, fixing radios, dreaming about airplane models and taking anything apart that's take-apartable with a screwdriver, he took himself through college and supported little siblings, too, as the too-young head of household he became when his dad died. [Cannot imagine. I cannot even imagine.]

He fell in love with a lady who fell back in love with him (never knowing what a temper he was hiding behind that goofy grin and big 80s hair), and became a dad to two little girls with whom he also fell irrevocably in lifelong-love.

Brought them all over to the Land of the Dreamy Freedom with all the shiny hopes and sparkly eyes and well-groomed hair of a man recently promoted, and began his great American adventure, working every day on that particular Korean-American "Yep!"py accent my sister and I always used to tease him about. Along the way were un-rollable "rrr"s and other immigrant woes; jobs lost and jobs gained, lots of fighting with the lady and crying with the babies. But those babies are ladies now, and all his ladies dote on him, even especially when they're making fun of his American inflections.

You will never read this, and even if you do, will never fully comprehend my language in all its topsy-turvy lovefulness, but that's the tragi-comedy of our story, dad. Thank you for making this confusion happen, and you have to stick around for a long time, okay? so I can tell you in little bits and pieces all the things (un)explained here.

sassfrass trio

copycat post from sayrah

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. 

Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. 

God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.


"the rest of the article is meh but when I got to the end I was like WOAHHH COOLLLL" 

falling innnnnnnnnnnnnothing: penpals4ever

wonder what I would've thought of you if we had gone to the same school, been in the same group of friends throughout our college years. [I predict: love, or hate. or both.] or neither.

wonder how different my now-perception of you is from that alternate-reality perception of you, in which I hang out with you over at Peter's place occasionally [hookah smoke-filled afternoons], and watch you go through finals seasons and note how you react to the tyranny of your [our??] friends' alcohol-fueled belligerence nights.

wonder if the two are really that different - penpal-to-Madison you and uh...student-at-VT-normal-guy you. maybe I'm just overdramatizing it. repetition tends to make that happen. oops

wonder if you're gross, too, like so many boys, or really not. or gross in some different way (heh), and if I'll just be disappointed because penpal perfections can't ever last outside their bubble of postage stamps and slow-connection communication. [I really wonder if that's true.]

wonder if I'm ever gonna get the answer to these wonderings; wonder if I even wanna know.


do people even write letters anymore???

guilt-tripping in counterproductivity land:

things I feel like I should actively know about, but recently have only been picking up through small talk/overhearing mama smalltalkin' on the phone:

• the weather
• Sochi Olympic happenings
• current events

things I feel like I am always doing (things that are taking up all of my time):

• reading
• blogging
• blogging about readings
• reading blogs
• talking to people
• blogging after talking to people
• talking to people about blogging
• being in class
• blogging about being mindblown by classes
• blogging...in class? ;)
• commuting with music blastin' (no time to think)
• being at the library [blogging at the library]
• blogging to wonder about where all my time is going
• oh, goodness.

things I shall devote more time to, starting next week:

• Bible-readin' (morning)
• praying (morning, evening, all the time)
• reading the newspapers, mm (night?? ugh. this should be morning too, right?)
• exercising (GASP)
• at the gym (GASP)
• (GASP) 

things I [guess I] must cut out sigh:

• ...everything related to blogging except the actual blogging 

whew yeah that's enough ambition for today.

what a cutie pie

Luke

by Mary Oliver

I had a dog
   who loved flowers.
         Briskly she went
              through the fields,

yet paused
   for the honeysuckle
         or the rose,
              her dark head

and her wet nose
   touching
         the face
              of every one

with its petals
   of silk,
         with its fragrance
              rising

into the air
   where the bees,
         their bodies
              heavy with pollen,

hovered—
   and easily
         she adored
              every blossom,

not in the serious,
   careful way
         that we choose
              this blossom or that blossom—

the way we praise or don't praise—
   the way we love
         or don't love—
              but the way

we long to be—
   that happy
         in the heaven of earth—
              that wild, that loving.

the priorities of our society as told by the google toolbahr

And all these different answers on my question to google on this Thursday afternoon at the chemlibarry:

• http://grammar.about.com/od/editorsandediting/a/Ten-Characteristics-Of-A-Good-Editor.htm
• http://www.ccjeditorial.com/whatmakesagoodeditor.html
• http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Editor

I want to be a good editor. (More on this later, I hope.)
Sorry, S, I feel like I failed you today :(

the dears of the week

dear bob-haired girl in the corner,

you usually like sitting in the corner closest to the door but today we have some high school guests, they took your seat. but that was the only time you let your smile down, and once you settled into your new seat you resumed your smile-as-usual, emanating inner contentment about outer surroundings via your little contented smileyface that you wear all class long. I dunno how exactly to feel about it, I guess, that smile. sometimes I feel like you're letting on too much, revealing too much, too honestly, of your inner happinesses - about that smart comment someone just contributed to the discussion, or what our professor wrote on your response paper that she just handed back to you. but I also think it's lovely - I feel privileged (and uplifted!) by the happiness window reflecting your happy insidefeelings. though all of this is probably more reflexive than meditated, right? who knows, I barely know your name.

dear mr. cross-legged,

whenever you start speaking in class my mind immediately places a frame of black television screen around your face, and pretentious black horn-rimmed professor glasses that you'll fiddle with throughout the course of this BBC special segment about the Iliad and the Homeric Ideal. you raise your hand index finger, ever so slightly into the air, poking a little cloud just above your head for permission to speak and once granted, begin: ever so carefully lifting one leg to fold over the knee of the other, as if parallel-organizing the pleats of your pantlegs up against each other as you organize the pleats of your brain, just one millisecond before you'll un-purse those pursed lips and run knobby hands over your jet-black hair (which I can honestly only describe as "lustrous"; sorry if this is too femaley), launching into one, long, continuous breath of reasonable sentences and informed vocal inflections as I sit, stunned and weirdly jealous-repulsed by your ability to vocalize your thoughts so logically but praying that I'll never ever sound as pretentious as you did just now.

dear "ebg girl,"

I have forgotten who you are, though my phone Notes tell me that you should've been in this post, too. alas.

Gimpel of Frampol

"Where are you going?" they said.

I answered, "Into the world." And so I departed from Frampol.

I wandered over the land, and good people did not neglect me. After many years I became old and white; I heard a great deal, many lies and falsehoods, but the longer I lived the more I understood that there were really no lies. Whatever doesn't really happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn't happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year. What difference can it make? Often I heard tales of which I said, "Now this is a thing that cannot happen." But before a year had elapsed I heard that it actually had come to pass somewhere.

...

So it is with dreams too. It is many years since I left Frampol, but as soon as I shut my eyes I am there again. And whom do you think I see? Elka. She is standing by the washtub, as at our first encounter, but her face is shining and her eyes are as radiant as the eyes of a saint, and she speaks outlandish words to me, strange things. When I wake I have forgotten it all. But while the dream lasts I am comforted. She answers all my queries, and what comes out is that all is right. I weep and implore, "Let me be with you." And she consoles me and tells me to be patient. The time is nearer than it is far. Sometimes she strokes and kisses me and weeps upon my face. When I awaken I feel her lips and taste the salt of her tears.

No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed form the true world. At the door of the hovel where I lie, there stands the plank on which the dead are taken away. The gravedigger Jew has his spade ready. The grave waits and the worms are hungry; the shrouds are prepared -- I carry them in my beggar's sack. Another schnorrer is waiting to inherit my bed of straw. When the time comes I will go joyfully. Whatever may be there, it will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception. God be praised: there even Gimpel cannot be deceived.

how to be a straight-edge philanthrope:

Studies show that when encountering other women, women are most likely to fix their attention on the parts of the others' bodies that they're least happy with, on their own bodies. For example, if I am really unhappy with my upper arms, think they're really flabby and hateful, I'm most likely to focus my gaze on upper arms of other women I meet - immediately sizing myselfupper arms to her(s), and either 1. feel relieved because hers are flabbier than mine, or 2. dislike my arms even more than I did a minute ago, because gosh she has such great arms. She must also have a great life and no problems.

This could apply to any little thing - arms, legs, teeth, ankles, eyebrows... And while we focus our mind's eye on the hateful, flabby arms, we have less and less energy and time left to focus on what great toes we have. Or hair. Or tiny waist. Whatever-not-the-worst-thing.

I think this happens with character, too.

achhhhhhhhhh we are bad bad bad

She thinks she's "evil, too" because she is prone to "disposing of people, friends," while I point out that she's really good to the people in her present, she's good now, it's just harder for her to keep up with those things after people have moved on and away and apart.

But me, I'm terrible now, if I'm angry or stressed out or on some edge of insanity I'll take it out on you, no excuses or control or sparing of feelings, because I'm  feeling terrible and I'm just gonna act it out. Sure I empathize with people, and want them to be happy, but only when I am capable of these feelings for myself first. So self-centered.

Hey, what if we walk through life always focusing on our individual "evils," so mired in them that we can't look up and out to see the good things we have, or do? What if we miss out on showing off what great ankles (hah!) we have because all we see in the mirror is the evil of that bump on the nose? And what if everyone, even those Good People you think you know, are all stuck in the evilness of their evilnesses?

If everyone saw everyone else the way I see myself sometimes, there would be no worthy good in the world. Sure, fleeting, small bits of goodness, genuineness, adventure-spirit and happiness, but nothing beats that HUGE EVIL you know, ugh DESPAIR. We would never get anywhere. Or see anything, or get anything done at all. And besides, constantly seeing the negative about yourself is just another way of being mired in yourself, isn't it? Ultimately egocentric ;)

So choose one from below. And put it in your pocket like a little special gift and take it out when other people seem to be lacking it - they might be in need of just that, because they think it's great and sparkly even if you don't, cause they have that other great and sparkly thing they just can't see because all they're focused on is the badness of their small bad. Oh.

youse ur powersss for gooooooood!
make up your own square if it's not included in this very limited list. obvi.
(wait, ravenous? hm)

 Love and peace! in the Middle East! And in my heartYar!

how to be a hippie misanthrope:

• have beautiful thoughts about nature's bigness and oneness; how it transcends cultures and humanity
• foster beautiful relations in communities, in concert with nature
• ask beautiful questions to babies about what they would like their ideal playground to look like; really listen
• build beautiful structures that help humanity to be more aligned with its nature
• give beautiful lectures about your work, inspiring college students and the young-at-heart to think a little more about this transcendental nature thing, too. that it's bigger than us, that we shouldn't even try to conceptualize it, just accept and be in it and observe and seek understanding some-way-how
• after it's all over, answer questions curtly and dismissively.

PS you know, as much as I like his work, I feel like he's not a very nice person.
But I wonder how that can be possible, if he's so in tune with nature& its goodness.
yeah haha I could tell...
he thinks nature and its goodness is better/greater than humans
and thinks humans are in the wrong.
Wow. Makes such perfect sense. You can be a hippie misanthrope that way, huh
What a waste of beautiful thinking. Blehg

Oh eunoia.

present-perfect

I am a present-person. As in past-present-future, present. Usually, people's first reaction to this fact about me is "That's good! You live in the moment."

This is true. Being in the moment is delightful to me. I love getting caught up in the swirl of now, getting out of my head and into the tangible atmosphere of the fleeting, precious moment. I mean, it's fleeting and precious! It should be savored and enjoyed.

But it's also kind of a trap. Sometimes, there's this sense of being in a (now)cloud - living in a bubble of the present, impenetrable. Whichever person happens to be texting me, whoever happens to be running into me (runningrunningrunning), whatever I'm daydreaming about always gets first priority, no matter how much I need to shut off thoughts and

Just do homework.

I don't really have a good grasp on the OFF switch, and this is irritating when the brain gets all caught up in presently-unsolvable-problems-of-the-day. I think think think think think about it (or maybe it's more appropriate to say it thinks me all out; no agency) even if I can't do anything to change the situation in the moment. It's always about The Moment, and sometimes this leaves me nakedly helpless in the face of The Next One, cause I just did't have enough time to think about that. Also I wonder if this has anything to do with my love of repeating songs over and over - there's probably a warp in my brainfolds.s.s.s.secretly craving repetition of EVERYTHING.

Usually, the thoughts I get stuck in aren't really of great consequence, and I just end up thinking about my schedule for the day/week/semester over and over, carefully etching out the course of a time-map in my mind, and again, and again, where will I be, at what time shall I leave, who else will be there, what will the conversations be like (hm this all sounds very future-oriented, doesn't it), each iteration a little deeper in the grooves - annoying but not life-threatening. But it gets kind of scary when I'm up against a thought-monster bigger than my agenda and I can't stop taking it in. Metaphorically standing there and actually stuck, unable to stop, unable to start cause it's a loop with the same exact information feeding in and back in. Nothing's happening, and nothing else can. It's paralyzing, literally, because the only way to stop is to sleep, and sometimes this doesn't even work (cause remember, no grasp of the OFF switch), or at other times the agenda says I can't afford to cause if I fall asleep now when will all this work be done/it wont/and then you'll be behind the present and you don't know how to deal with that/remember.

How to fix this? In this way the present isn't so perfect sometimes.

what is an English major

What's in a name? that which we call a rose 

By any other name would smell as sweet.

some more ideas:

There's love and computers and good old reading, writing, thinking,
Soulstuff.
Lines and connections and disparate things coming poetically (or not) together.

And people, too, trying to figure all of it out.

Kinda like life.

"Balanced and Harmonious Life" -- do you agree?

-"self control or temperance will be a condition of internal harmony, all the parts being content with their legitimate satisfactions. Justice finally appears, no longer only as a matter of external behaviour towards others, but as an internal order of the soul, from which right behaviour will necessarily follow. Injustice is the opposite state of internal discord and faction." (139)

-"And it will be the business of reason to rule with wisdom and forethought on behalf of the entire soul; while the spirited element ought to act as its subordinate and ally. The two will be brought into accord, as we said earlier, by that combination of mental and bodily training which will tune up one string of the instrument and relax the other, nourishing the reasoning part on the study of noble literature and allaying the other's wildness by harmony and rhythm." (140)
 

-"At the same time, those two together will be the best of guardians for the entire soul and for the body against all enemies from without: the one will take counsel, while the other will do battle, following its ruler's commands and by its own bravery giving effect to the ruler's designs." (140)
 

-"And again, temperate by reason of the unanimity and concord of all three, when there is no internal conflict between the ruling element and its two subjects, but all are agreed that reason should be ruler." (141)
 

-"In reality justice, though evidently analogous to this principle, is not a matter of external behaviour, but of the inward self and of attending to all that is, in the fullest sense, a man's proper concern. The just man does not allow the several elements in his soul to usurp one another's functions; he is indeed one who sets his house in order, by self-mastery and discipline coming to be at peace with himself, and bringing into tune those three parts, like the terms in the proportion of a musical scale..." (142)
 

-injustice - "This must surely be a sort of civil strife among the three elements, whereby they usurp and encroach upon one another's functions and some one part of the soul rises up in rebellion against the whole, claiming a supremacy to which it has no right because its nature fits it only to be the servant of the ruling principle. Such turmoil and aberration we shall, I think, identify with injustice, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance, and in a word with all wickedness."

-Plato's Republic

 

There is a lot to think about here:
 

- is fragmentation such a bad thing? what about the extreme highs and the lows that justify and validate and real-ize each other?
 

- okay and what about God? is true happiness and harmony this kind of fragmented control over quivering entities, threatening to bust out, implosion-style, or do I talk about the oneness of being one can reach because there's that option to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."? It's like a oneness of mind, like focusing all your brain energies and heart energies into being aligned with the Creator of the Universe, and letting all the sub-decisions and sub-importances fall in place, because they will. but would Plato answer to that, that this is just assigning the Higher Power control over the "business of reason" within your entity of identities? or maybe this whole line of reasoning would just implode in his brain, Null Null Null, because there is no Jesus-God for Plato.
 

Okay so there actually wasn't too much to think about there. Or maybe my mind's one-sided ramblings just gave me the answer to its own question. On a side note, Plato is taking over my life.
 

Off to write the essay now.

The Republic: The Aim of Education in Music and Poetry

"...these Guardians we are to bring up will never be fully cultivated until we can recognize the essential Forms of temperance, courage, liberality, high-mindedness, and all other kindred qualities, and also their opposites, wherever they occur. We must be able to discern the presence of these Forms themselves and also of their images in anything that contains them, realizing that, to recognize either, the same skill and practice are required, and that the most insignificant instance is not beneath our notice.

That must surely be so.

And for him who has eyes to see it, there can be no fairer sight than the harmonious union of a noble character in the soul with an outward form answering thereto and bearing the same stamp of beauty.

There cannot.

And the fairest is also the most lovable.

Of course.

So the man who has been educated in poetry and music will be in love with such a person, but never with one who lacks this harmony.

Not if the defect should lie in the soul; if it were only some bodily blemish, he would accept that with patience and goodwill."

“Do you like good music?”

          There’s definitely something a little (a lot) magical about music – it travels through some different mode of movement than the rest of the world; vibrates through souls.  I haven’t quite figured it out, and to be honest, I don’t think I ever will because it’s a force that much greater than I am.  But there’s something about music that marks it different from anything else.  Music moves in rhythms so powerful, dangers arise.  Music is mysterious; “mysterious,” not quite worthy of being an adjective at its side.  Music is personal and universal, in impossible simultaneity; it pulses with the beat of your heart and palpitates in the beat of the world, forging the two into one.  Music is more than the sum of its sound waves; music is timbre, and pitch, and a pinch of the stuff God used on his First Day.

          It’s no wonder Plato was so concerned.  It’s revolutionary stuff, this music – he knew that it could easily become “that luxurious excess” from which the commonwealth needed “purging” (IX.3.399).  He sensed well that the “ultimate end of all education is insight into the harmonious order (cosmos) of the whole world,” because “musical expression and rhythm, and grace of form and movement, all depend on goodness of nature” (IX.3.400) – that it is in the world, yet of the world, as well.  To him, too, it was evident that we needed to be educated in its cadences, for “rhythm and harmony sink deep into the recesses of the soul and take the strongest hold there,” constantly molding us, nourishing us, unbeknownst to us, into beings of “noble spirit” (IX.3.401).

           All of this, yes, answers: “I love good music,” so much so that sometimes it makes me afraid. “Then is not our account of education in poetry and music now complete?  It has ended where it ought to end, in the love of beauty” (IX.3.403).

           I agree. 

music is everywhere

[The ultimate end of all education is insight into the harmonious order (cosmos) of the whole world. This earliest stage ends here in the perception of those 'images' of moral or spiritual excellences which, when combined with bodily beauty in a living person, are the proper object of love (eros).]

Then we must not only compel our poets, on pain of expulsion, to make poetry the express image of noble character; we must also supervise craftsmen of every kind and forbid them to leave the stamp of baseness, licence, meanness, unseemliness, on painting and sculpture, or building, or any other work of their hands; and anyone who cannot obey shall not practise his art in our commonwealth. We would not have our Guardians grow up among representations of moral deformity, as in some foul pasture where, day after day, feeding on every poisonous weed they would, little by little, gather insensibly a mass of corruption in their very souls. Rather we must seek out those craftsmen whose instinct guides them to whatsoever is lovely and gracious; so that our young men, dwelling in a wholesome climate, may drink in good from every quarter, whence, like a breeze bearing health from happy regions, some influence from noble works constantly falls upon eye and ear from childhood upward, and imperceptibly draws them into sympathy and harmony with the beauty of reason, whose impress they take.

-The Republic of Plato-
translated by Francis MacDonald Cornford

dear self,

• stop boxing people into the limited depictions of what short list of People Types you have accumulated in your brain.
• navigate socially-constructed viewpoints and expectations as exactly what they are - socially-constructed. this means GRAIN OF SOCIETAL SALT.
• learn to laugh things away, but like...genuinely. ugh "authentic is the most inauthentic word" rings true.
• be okay with not being ultimately right. let go of the squeezy feeling from "losing" to "better" people.
• be careful with normative statements and big words, even if the latter describes exactly what you mean. don't be afraid of absolutes and "shoulds" in an all-encompassing way; just be careful, is all.
• apologize quickly but genuinely - remember that genuineness will enact change.
• wonder more about where that sense of wonder went - and when? - back when you used to be amazed at the wonderfulness of people and let their honesty, creativity, good intentions blow your mind away and shape your world to be a little more multi-dimensional than before. come on, you used to be a lot more convinceable. where did that go?
• don't buy into "cynicism is inevitable." The World and its Goodness don't have to be categorized separately.
• read the Bible more. pray more. the end.

Night and Soup

Is it perverse that all I wanted to eat after reading Night by Elie Wiesel was soup?

• "At about noon, we were brought some soup, one bowl of thick soup for each of us. I was terribly hungry, yet I refused to touch it. I was still the spoiled child of long ago. My father swallowed my ration" (42).
• "Days went by. In the mornings: black coffee. At midday: soup. By the third day, I was eagerly eating any kind of soup... At six o'clock in the afternoon, roll call. Followed by bread with something. At nine o'clock: bedtime" (43).
• "At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup -- those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time" (52).
• "In no time, the camp had the look of an abandoned ship. No living soul in the alleys. Next to the kitchen, two cauldrons of hot, steaming soup had been left untended. Two cauldrons of soup! Smack in the middle of the road, two cauldrons of soup with no one to guard them! A royal feast going to waste! Supreme temptation! Hundreds of eyes were looking at them, shining with desire. Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in wait for them. Two lambs without a shepherd, free for the taking. But who would dare?" (59)
• "A man appeared, crawling snakelike in the direction of the cauldrons... Lying on the ground near the cauldron, he was trying to lift himself to the cauldron's rim. Either out of weakness or out of fear, he remained there, undoubtedly to muster his strength. At last he succeeded in pulling himself up to the rim. For a second, he seemed to be looking at himself in the soup, looking for his ghostly reflection there. Then, for no apparent reason, he let out a terrible scream, a death rattle such as I had never heard before and, with open mouth, thrust his head toward the still steaming liquid. We jumped at the sound of the shot. Falling to the ground, his face stained by the soup, the man writhed a few seconds at the base of the cauldron, and then he was still" (59-60).
• "Then the entire camp, block after block, filed past the hanged boy and stared at his extinguished eyes, the tongue hanging from his gaping mouth. The Kapos forced everyone to look him squarely in the face. Afterward, we were given permission to go back to our block and have our meal. I remember that on that evening, the soup tasted better than ever..." (63)
• "The evening meal was distributed, an especially thick soup, but nobody touched it. We wanted to wait until after prayer" (66).
• "I did not fast. First of all, to please my father who had forbidden me to do so. And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God's silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him.
  And I nibbled on my crust of bread.
  Deep inside me, I felt a great void opening" (69).
• "Christmas and New Year's we did not work. We were treated to a slightly less transparent soup" (78).
• "I gave him what was left of my soup. But my heart was heavy. I was aware that I was doing it grudgingly. Just like Rabbi Eliahu's son, I had not passed the test" (107).
• "Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations...
  I listened to him without interrupting. He was right, I though deep down, not daring to admit it to myself. Too late to save your old father... You could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup...
  It was only a fraction for a second, but it left me feeling guilty. I ran to get some soup and brought it to my father" (110)
• "I spent my days in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat. I no longer thought of my father, or my mother.
  From time to time, I would dream. But only about soup, an extra ration of soup" (113).

If you dream of soup, eat a bowl and give thanks.

And maybe write about it, if you're so inclined.

"Write it!"

One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

#hashtag

Why do I not know smalltalk topics that everyone else knows? How is it that random trivia and interesting facts about the world and numbers about populations I should be interested and invested in just fall out of my head? What exactly does my brain actually hold? How does everyone else in the world know so much more pop culture than I? What is it I need to do -- listen to the radio? read [trashy] magazines? subscribe to cable tv? watch more movies? get facebook? be on youtube all the time? Probably all of those things. But then, another question -- where does everyone find the time to live life, and do all of these things too? Am I just living really slowly? (I do read slowly, and I do a lot of reading. But is this really the whole answer?) How do I catch up?

Probably by writing less blogposts looking inside of myself and looking out at all the colorful things in the world.

But ya know,

I don't really feel like it.

no reason for to cryyyyy

ba-bump

God, thank you for letting me study these things. Thank you for being infinite and learnable at the same time. Thank you for the collision of connections, for religion in literature, for Judaism and the New Testament, for heretical love. You make all things good for those who love you.

God, blow up my brain and piece it all together with your hands, your glue, puzzle by puzzley bit; start your work of re-Creation and let everything be of you, make everything shine with your presence. Let me love the world as you love it, and let me pray same words with different convictions.

God, I want to hear your voice. Let me seek it fervently and without tiring, and guide my brain and my heart together; let those be just two pieces of a great, mysterious soul. Make me choke up with emotion, re-wire my brain synapse thingies; and in all of this, keep my soul aligned and directed toward you so that everything else is secondary, in their right place, without my own strain.

God, I love you. God, thank you for holding me. God, I want to love you more.

Amen.

hi excuse me nice to meet you i'm ladison

these past few days have been a time of chance encounters, luck-ful conversations, hopeful connections:

SE, 1/28/14: Clemons magic, of a different, very lucid kind. Asking left-field questions just because I wanted to rock his little boat of steadiness, though not maliciously. Finding about his worship through music and the apple-girl of his eye.

Random Antsy Interview Guy, 1/29/14: offered him the opposite side of my Newcomb table while he waited for an interview. Said he loves Comm School because it teaches him "hard, practical skills...unlike the College." Is from Nicaragua, but he speaks (almost) flawless English; couldn't think of his favorite Spanish word. I wished him luck and will probably never see him again. Or see him all the time.

CP 1/29/14: running chit chatting with her first year friends through Pav, blah blah la la chirpy cheery -- Maaadison?! Eep haven't seen you in forever chirpy blah cheer! How nice it is to have cheery people burst into sing-songy renditions of your name, so cheerful, cause they're happy to see you.

AFY 1/29/14: "Hi excuse me could you watch my stuff for a bit while I run to the bathroom are you in GCF I'm in GCF too nice to meet you I'm Madison"


different kinds of chances, lucks, hopefuls.