eschatos for real.

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eschatos

[last things]

first intentionally kosher meal for [last] Jewish Fiction class

"studying" in the Dome Room; "[last]" time

goodbye Transduction conversations, [last] leaning and laughing across tables

furious paper writing with the fdf-ers 

at shenanjoe's for the [last] time together

quintessential PIJ sermon, [last] as an undergrad, anyway

[last] mid-finals RVA trip

running into other finals-ditchers for the [last] bubbles and the teas

[last] triumphant nightwalks down summer streets

not the [last] midnight doughnuts, but 

[last] time it's socially acceptable though, 

cause we were college students in exam season

[last] enigmatically, crucially unfinished notes. universe of WHAT 

AH pleaseE

my first epic novellette, [last] English major paper

the [last] On my Honor

[last] barging-into Bryan Hall's faculty lounge

[last] look back after the epic paper turn-in

[last] shenanjoe's paper-writing trip

[last] collab exchange

and the [last] SIS one, too.

 [last] O'Hill bfast: let the dining hall marathon begin

 [last] Newc Lunch

 [last] Runk dinner, with first sprinklewaffle

 [last] picket tick-ups from the bookstore

 NOT the [last] cville cidery visit

 the [last] epically teary event at this epically beautiful uvaplace

 [last]-day bodos; though not the last bodos 

and certainly not the last faceless rebs photo

 [last] planner consulting

[last] alumni hall event as students

goodbye, uva 2014

 the [last] midnight fdf selfie at someone's JPA apartment

 the [last] first selfie with the selfiestick

 the [last]-day purse contents

the [woah]

the [last] balloons

the [last] look down le lawn

the [last] triumphant march

 the [last] words of Gothic carousal at the [best] diploma ceremony

 the [last] thank you

our [last] first/fourth year pda-pic

 AH gcf family, thank you, also not the [last]

 [last]-day flowers

[last]-day sandwich. a fourth-year-purse essential

[last]

The Tables Turned

by William Wordsworth

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

ominous wennsday poem

At the Very Lengthy Meeting

by Kevin McCaffrey

At the very lengthy meeting

I actually felt my soul leave my body

and rush toward the ceiling—

and fly around the walls and flare

toward daylight, toward the windows—

to throw silently its impetuous emptiness

against the glass in vain.

It could not go anywhere, the clear moth.

Then it lay on the rug, not exhausted

but bored and so inert that it almost—

though nothing—

took on a hue, stained with all the breaths

and words and thoughts that filled the room:

the yellow-green color of old teeth.

this isn't foreboding 

at all

on the final wednesday

before 

the rest of my life.

please let me keep my soul.

extremely loud & incredibly close

119 was I worried about her, putting all of her life into her life story, no, I was so happy for her, I remembered the feeling she was feeling, the exhilaration of building the world anew, I heard from behind the door the sounds of creation, the letters pressing into the paper, the pages being pulled from the machine, everything being, for once, better than it was and as good as it could be, everything full of meaning, and then one morning this spring, after years of working in solitude.

130 I press her hand against her heart, and then against my heart, or I touch her forefinger to the mirror, or touch it, quickly, against the hotplate, sometimes I wonder if she knows, I wonder in my Nothingest moments if she's testing me, if she types nonsense all day long, or types nothing at all, just to see what I'll do in response, she wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.

232 When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.

words by: Jonathan Safran Foer

things that make me [feel] good, whole, kind:

cake, obviously

• repeat-listening to songs, perfect for their moment in my moments
• overcoming the kitchenphobia and creating an edible something to moderate success
• sharing beyond my "means"
• finishing things (early)
• tying up loose ends rightly
• people-watching so hard, forgetting myself
• sitting at my white white desk, window open to the green green outside
• proactive seeking out of things; checking things off of "_____ List"s
• creating opportunity to do something and then...doing it
• 2 cor 12:9 but he said to me, "my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me
• conversing in nods and glances, only punctuated by real words and "mmmmhmm"s
• being grateful

[untied]

unmoored freedom

and enjoying that

is rare, so sweet.

these moments are

few and far-gapped.

so hold tight

but no crying

when the slip-away goes.

let your hair down,

and dance in the flurry of papers,

savor it

because hey


why the heck not.

[a young packrat], or, "WHAT YOU NEED TO REMEMBER"

I am the most delibrately packratty young person I know. The "young" part is there because when I think "packrat," I always think of an old cat lady type with lace doilies all over her house for some reason and a basement and attic and cellar and whatever storage rooms and other rooms that aren't supposed to be storage rooms but serve as storage rooms full of useless, meaningful knickknacks she can't throw away ever. That's pretty much me except for the old part and the house part because I don't own my own house and if I tried to fulfill my packratty inclinations to their fullest packratty extents right now, anywhere outside the boundary of my room, my mama would go crazy and throw me right out.

Whether it's ticket stubs or pictures or bottle caps or just little cute things that don't actually mean anything significant, I stash and keep and forget until I unearth it years later and reminisce. Maybe it's because I have such a bad memory -- I feel like I have to stash souvenirs to remind me of the special days and the not so special days. Or maybe it's because I've moved so much? It's made me more aware of everything-in-flux and how, if you don't hold onto the grounding grips of your rockclimbing life metaphor, the memories of even the most precious days and nights can slip away in the fast currents of everythingelse. So I stash. And I forget. And I wait for those Memory Lane Days [or Nights] when I will dig through the piles of meaningless, meaningful mementos and match each thing with a corresponding memory in the brain troves, hold the preciousness to my cheek and breathe in its scent of old with a splash of reminiscent.

-------------^unearthed from the Draft archives, from January 2011-------------

But all of this is strangely appropriate, three and a third years later, as I watch fourth years and first years alike move out of their apartments and their dorms, end-of-semester goodbyes and beginning-of-summer hellos abounding. For some it's the first, for others, the very last, Moving Out. Scraping and scrapping the last bits of this past year's life, full of memories and inescapable dust bunnies, along with unearthed memories and forgettables, too. And it's all goodbye goodbye goodbye, feeling like no one's ever gone this way down Forever Avenue before, no one's ever felt this way, so bittersweet, before, but deep down, knowing that we're all a part of this eternal cycle of beginnings and endings and all their convergences. Just as old blogpost drafts resurface into your life at the perfectly three-years-later moment, and wsj articles that have been sitting on your floor for the past three weeks catch your eye, all like "WHAT YOU NEED TO REMEMBER" and perfectly grabbing your three-weeks-later attention.