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]

[brrring ringaling]

c: hello?

m: hey...! are you free? for about thirty seconds?

c: sure, I'm okay, what's up

m: well, well mmm. well, it's just that I just got out of my First Last Class of the semester and I'm feeling crazy about it.

c: your first laaa? first whaaat?? first laaab class?

m: no! no! my FIRST! LAST! CLASS. IT IS THE END. IT IS OVER. you know, cause it's Wednesday! it's the last Wednesday, and I just had my last class of Wednesday!

c: ohhhhh! wow congratulations! hahaha yeahhh nearing the end!

m: yyyyyyyyeah it's completely insane, right?! it's hitting me now, it's real, it's really the end, class ended and I was just standing there in the classroom and couldn't really move, like I just couldn't leave the class cause once I did it would officially be real and

c: wait wait where are you right now, are you still sitting in class?!

m: noooo! I leffftt!! and it was my Pavilion Seminar class, on the Lawn you know?! and as I was walking out it was like gooodbyyye, class! goodbye, Pavilion seven! goodbye LAWN, goodbye UVA, goodbye MY UNDERGRADUATE CAREER EVERYTHING IS ENDING!! IT IS REALLL AND TANGIBLEE AND IT IS FREAKING ME OUUUUTTT

c: hahaha it's good! good job and congratulations! hahaha

m: I just thought I'd call you cause you're my non-romantic significant other and all and this is what people do, right? they call their significant others when their heads are pounding with unbelievable reality and emotions are coming up the esophagus in excitement and insanity?!

--phone blips out--

m: helloo??!? helllo okay I think maybe my phone is freaking out and I can't hear you anymore but thank you for listeningggg! I really appreciate it!! okay goodbye now goodbye!!

--hang up; indistinct voices in background call out Sunnn? Sunnn! Sun!! SUNNN--

m: [turn around] hello?! I was wondering if those voices calling out for Sun were wanting for me to turn around!

herd of gcf kiddos: haha you guys have similar backpacks!!

m: haha yeah! where are you guys coming from?! why do you guys travel in herds? how is this the last Wednesday?! I just got out of my First Last Class!!! and man, the end is near and it's real and I am freaking ouutttttt because it is the end of ALL THINGSSSS!!!!!

[I join the herd and we travel in a slightly larger herd, me continuously asking why they are in a herd and where they are herdily headed to; we run into another, smaller, herd of gcf first years, all coming out of their Last Chem Lab of the year, on their way to celebrate with ice cream [adorable] and we all say hello hello hey aw congratulations ah! hahha ah! the end the beginning ahhh goodbye!]

--Calling: C--

m: hello??? hahaha sorry! my phone must have freaked out

c: no it's okay! 

m: well I just wanna say thank you! thank youu for being my non-romantic significant other! thank you for being the person I call when I am having a crisis-joy-fear freakout! thank youuu for these past four years! thank you, UVA! THANK YOU WORLD, THANK YOU GOD!!!!

--phone blips out in participatory overexcitement of all the fourth year feels; 

leaves me hanging, arms outstretched in absurdity and euphoria and bittersweetness of 

everything, everywhere, ever--

[end scene]

[begin: life]

schopen-hopen

“The present alone is true and actual; it is the only time which possesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively. Therefore we should always be glad of it, and give it the welcome it deserves, and enjoy every hour that is bearable by its freedom from pain and annoyance with a full consciousness of its value” (92).

For all the pessimism he displays other writings, this bit of advice from Schopenhauer is quite idealistic and hopeful.  His insistence on proper, well-balanced enjoyment of the present definitely rings true with me, especially in one of my personal maxims: “Be where you are.”

                
I spent my third year of undergraduate studies abroad, studying abroad for two semesters in two different locations, sandwiched by two summers abroad.  After the first summer of working in Korea, I spent my fall semester in Seoul, after which I was in Lyon, France for the spring semester.  The summer after this year was spent in Korea as well.  This whole period of time involved a lot of local traveling, too, around East Asia and Europe respectively.  It was during this time that I truly got to live out the value of this phrase that I’d always believed in, as a self-proclaimed “present-lover.”  One piece of advice that people gave me about studying abroad was to avoid “#fomo” – the fear of missing out.  Being abroad means precisely that – you are abroad! – and therefore, not at home.  Inevitably, you “miss out” on people’s lives back home, back at school, back on your side of the globe.  Friends experience things without you, traditions trudge on without you, relationships grow on without you.  And studying abroad, of course, is an experience that opens your eyes to alternate worlds going on all around you all the time.  There’s no way to have all the experiences.  You are limited in a vast, seemingly unlimited world, and all you can fully do is “Be where you are.”

The same is true of those alternative worlds in time.  As with alternative places, those alternative realities of the past and the future can’t ever compete with the reality of the present – “The present alone is true and actual… Therefore we should always be glad of it…with a full consciousness of its value.” Be where you are, when you are.

golden gifts for a golden 23

oh-h-h she
knows me
so-o-o-o-o well

I am at the library hing

My mama gets cuter and cuter every day.

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.

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.

“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. 

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.

;

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.

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.

"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

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

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.