The World According to J.

This has been an insane semester so far.  I’m teaching Western World Lit from 1700-1900 and auditing French in the afternoons MWF.  TR I have Poetry, 19th Century Lit, and Literature & Sociology. W afternoons I have a class on teaching methods. And in the evenings I run. This doesn’t leave me a lot of time to do things like grocery shop or remember to get my glasses fixed.  Also I kinda need to take the cat to the vet but I can never seem to find the time. Poor D doesn’t get to see a lot of me and I’m glad I live with my friends otherwise I’d never see them.

The world according to J is this: I can’t wait until I can just have a normal job, live in one place for more than 10 months at a time, grow some tomatoes, have time to go to the grocery store, and remember what it’s like to have a life.  I yearn for the day when I can do something crazy like take a vacation, read a book for fun, or sit through an entire movie without remembering 1,000 things I should be doing instead.  I never thought I’d say it but the real world is kinda looking good. Being an adult is easier than being an adult and a student.

Currently reading:

• Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
• Selected Poems, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• From Mandeville to Marx, by Louis Dumont
• Platero y yo, by Juan Ramon Jimenez
• The Complete Book of Running for Women, by Claire Kowalchick
• Mise en Scene, by Cheryl Krueger
• Pause-Cafe, by Nora Megharbi
• What to Eat, by Marion Nestle
• Ahead of All Parting, by Ranier Maria Rilke
• The Red and the Black, by Stendhal
• Lyrical Ballads, by William Wordsworth

I think you can guess which ones of those are for my classes.

Four A.M.

The hour between night and day.

The hour between toss and turn.

The hour of thirty-year-olds.

The hour swept clean for rooster’s crowing.

The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace.

The hour of cool drafts from extinguished stars.

The hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace.

Empty hour.

Hollow. Vain.

Rock bottom of all the other hours.

No one feels fine at four a.m.

If ants feel fine at four a.m.,

we’re happy for the ants.  And let five a.m. come

if we’ve got to go on living.

Wisława Szymborska

Thoreau, Walden

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived … I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…” (Walden, 1854).

Light. (Emily, not Juliet).

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings, are.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

Emily Dickinson

I have too many words today…

For some time I have felt quite at a loss, but for what I have not known. I was reminded today that I am actually passionate about something: literature. Truth be told (and I hope it often is), I believe myself to have spent the better part of my life running away from this passion rather than pursuing it. As a child, seeing no real reward for what I considered to be merely “reading”, I attempted to excel at science and mathematics. When I succeeded in these efforts I was rewarded on a much higher scale than when I proved myself to be a good reader or writer. High grades on math exams were applauded, successful science projects earned me allowance increases or special dinners. Successfully reading an obscene number of books in a month earned me further trips to the library and nothing more.

While I have overcome this, it makes me question the manner in which we as a society seem to be indoctrinating future generations. Lesser developed nations are experiencing a “brain drain” as the United States soaks up technical knowledge from their most educated citizens. University freshmen are well aware that the best paying jobs go to those who hold degrees in the math and science related fields. The idealist in me would hold on to the belief that people could still pursue what they love, but I think we all know this is less than the norm. I am ashamed to admit that I not only majored but double majored in subjects about which I am less than thoroughly passionate because I thought the chances of employment to be higher (please note: they are not). I wonder how many great problems could be avoided if people would just pursue that which makes them happy, rather than that which society deems to be better or more useful or more profitable.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair –
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin –
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
(from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)

Although I know it to be an issue as old as time, the fact that people are so concerned with “disturbing the universe” really makes me angry. What, exactly, are we afraid of? And who are we trying so desperately not to anger? I am not convinced that God would be angered by our choosing the wrong tie for an outfit, or the “wrong” major in college.

I got to feeling exceptionally antsy this evening and, upon looking around, realized that I was going through poetry withdrawal. Most of my books are currently in storage as I am in a bit of a temporary living arrangement, and there was no poetry to be found on my shelves. In order to rectify the situation, I made an emergency trip to the bookstore and purchased the collected works of Dylan Thomas. I rationalize this by thinking it to be the intellectual equivalent of a fashion emergency that requires one to run to the mall for new shoes (save that books have a much longer shelf life than shoes). In short, Thomas has rectified the situation. And with that, I can finally rest.

Frost

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20

Magnetic Poetry

A collection of what I found on my fridge…

when science would open
find first desire

who can judge love between souls

illustrate romance
as soon as
we give these
empty pages
life

story
character
sentence
dream a novel

curl up with him and laugh
whisper ancient magic

vivid volume
of no man

i enter a new world
each word another escape through time
i travel beneath spines

imagine mystery