cooler today, but still nice enough to walk down the trail to the gorge after church. i'm looking for an alternative route to an old building downstream i'd like to tresspass in, and thought of just walking the edge of the gorge to it instead of climbing the fence to get to the stairs that lead to it from the top, but the way the creek turns makes the cliffside too steep and i forgot about the waterfall between the two points. oh well. there's plenty of trout lily down there, so i take some to eat with my lunch of ramen and instant coffee.
good food, good books, good views. do i need much else? my recent worry to dwell on is how i'll make friends if i really do move back to taiwan after university. it's more productive to focus on right now and not three years off, so i do that instead. good weather to have the window open and sit at my desk with jeans and nothing else on and finish slideshows. trying to decide the best way to get to enceladus.
"wilkes comes up next to him, shoulder to shoulder. 'what're you brooding about now?' pethor shrugs, still staring out the porthole. 'the stars are too bright. i can't get any work done.'" - mad dog, ???
it's hot and humid when i wake up, so i'm happy. i don't like the actual sensation of sweat all that much, but all my favorite memories are from times and climates where that was how it felt, so it's associated with good memories. yesterday was even better, warm with a good wind. i spent my lunch break on the slope, sitting on a rock and mostly staring out across the valley. i spent the break after my next class explaining seafort ships to a classmate while eating smoked salmon, so that was also fun, although i probably should've been studying for the latin test i had immediately afterward.
i have three presentations next week. i made the first one, the only solo one, in the morning, and put off working on the others. group projects stress me out bc i have to be accountable to others and i have to trust said others to also fulfill their end of the thing. scary... i read all of orb: on the movements of the earth, which was very nice, and read a bit more of children of hope.
rereading seafort is always evil, especially since this book has one of the scenes i talk the most about (kevin's death) but i talk about it so much that kevin is mostly just his death to me. i forget about all the hopes and dreams he had, his friendship with the main character, his father... i'm talking about kevin here because talking about randy, the main character, makes me even more sad. i forgot just how much of a continuation of jared he is, even before he gets to properly pick up where jared left off (his execution).
"despite my pain and battering, i exulted. derek carr, i've avenged you at last. rest easy. captain seafort is dead." - children of hope, pg 55
breakfasts of stale bread dipped in instant coffee and soup of ramp and nettles. i wake up full of the desire to do the latin homework i was supposed to do last week and somehow still only start it with thirty minutes before class.
after classes, i put my other plans of homework on hold to visit the mall with friend from latin class. we get garlic knots from one of the three restaraunts still in the food court and wander around target for a while. when we get back, we work on latin homework in the library together, but this gives me no time to catch up on the previous homeworks. the day is warm and beautiful and classwork seems meaningless in the face of that.
physics problem set done in two hours on the day that it's due again. break to read all of inside mari. barely work on the essay due tomorrow, but i mostly figure out the angle i want for it.
8pm easter vigil. the walk there is thick and muggy, not quite hot but certainly not the cold i've been accustomed to. it's been raining all day, as it always does whenever i decide to go to the chapel i was baptized in, but it's stopped just long enough for me to walk there. the cool smell of rain isn't quite there--it's too hot, but you can smell everything else, the grass and the blossoms fresh and old from the large tree behind the humanities building. the chapel smells like wax and incense and i spend the service thinking about the olfactory sense of god. i listened to a talk once about the "odor at pentecost." that's still 40 days away, but i think smell is often underated in religious contexts.
"so i prophesied as i was commanded; and as i prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. and when i beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them." - ezekiel 37:7-8
return one book to the library and get out five more. it's like a shopping addiction except it costs me no money, only time. event i've been helping plan goes well. i do little else, though the weather is finally the perfect 60 degrees i've been waiting for.
"the cold night breeze is up. it's two hours since you went to bed. i pick my way through the wood in the shimmering orange light, over the dead autumn leaves in their ghostly marbled pattern. the blue smoke from the bonfire drifts in the branches, silhouetted against the clear winter night. a jet roars through the cold stars. i hug myself to keep warm." - at your own risk, pg 3
last year in taiwan, when i woke up unenthusiastic for the day ahead, i liked to pretend that i was a peasant who had just made it to the city for the first time and wonder at the giant buildings all around me. here, the buildings aren't quite tall enough for that, so i've mostly stopped doing it. after my second class (astrobiology lecture), i walk outside and look at the clear blue sky and imagine i'm on a different planet. i go to bed missing my home planet and my home family, though i have no recollection of who they are.
as i finish my reading before class yesterday night, i occasionally see strange flashes in the distance. just as i close my computer, finally complete, the entire sky flashes and the sky opens up as the thunder finally rolls in. i sleep without a single dream and all the sins of the world are washed away by the rain. in the morning, it is bright and warm and lovely.
i read all of shadow of the hegemon in under 24 hours... not even in an obsessive way i just spent my free time reading it yesterday evening and this afternoon. what prelim on thursday. i liked most of it a lot but the one part i did not like unfortunately seems to come up in the next book from a mistaken glance at the fanwiki. i went back and forth on achilles as a villain. he seems a bit stupid and two-bit compared to his opponents, but the fact he can stand up to them at all shows just how good he is given their very very different backgrounds. i think he and peter should have teamed up because that would have ended badly for everyone.
"he'd have to kill himself if he ever came to care what some teacher thought of an essay he wrote, or what some girl thought about the clothes he wore, or whether one soccer team could beat another... peter wouldn't give up. there was some way to get back on track. and sitting there in the library in greensboro, north carolina, leaning back in the chair with his eyes closed like any other weary student, he'd think of it." - shadow of the hegemon, pg 64-65
palm sunday. sword fights with six year olds. foraging for ramps and asking old family friends to help out on the farm over the summer.
not to be overdramatic, but i think picking ramps is probably the closest any living person can get to heaven. it's still cold, the trees still brown and dead, but through the decaying leaf litter of the forest floor poke thick green leaves. inbetween the patches that make up the sea of green are the occasional trout lily (a good snack while you're foraging) and spring beauties, their small white flowers just barely opened. the sun comes out from behind the clouds and everything is wonderful. this, i hope, is as good as it gets.
walking home from the first party since halloween last year, i see the face of god in the shadows cast by still-dead trees and street lights in the thick mist, perfect glowing orbs and faroff cities on the other side of the gorge.
i stop skipping latin and decide it's really not that bad. i fall in love again and again, with the valley and my friends and the small spring flowers. "going to class" is a scam created by "big university" to stop you from appreciating the purple crocuses growing on the edge of the drainage ditch.
i forgot to bring my tablet back from spring break, so i've taken to forcing myself to learn acrylic paints by trial and error and, more importantly, darth maul, when the upperclassman i'm trying to convince to marry me holds her art workshop hours. she criticizes my paintings as harshly as she criticizes anything and everything (scathingly) but only after i get past the parts where i feel like i can fix the things she points out.
"within the calm of the mist, your ears hear nothing besides your footsteps in the water, but your eyes can distinguish subtle silhouettes slowly moving around you. if you walk toward one of them to find out who hides in the fog, you will find nothing but a whisper. do not turn your back to the shadows." - vermis
it's snowing again, which matches my mood. early last semester, i declared latin my favorite class. now, physics and math are the only things i can hold onto. i skip latin again. i had dreams about it over break.
i need time to percolate, but i have set myself on a path that will take too much time to finish and i am too stubborn to give up on it. the sky and ground match each other in perfect white.
a darth maul action figure stares at me from my desk and i remember the first time i gave up on something (violin). i've spent too much time remembering little bits of my childhood recently. perhaps i do too much for the girl i fell in love with in a dream a long time ago. i haven't seen her recently. at some point in middle school i stopped dreaming, so she stopped seeing me too. confusing timeloop nonsense. boethius' wheel of fortune. you get the idea.
leaving home again to stay with my grandparents for a couple days before break ends. vegan breakfast pastries with my mother and tiny middle eastern groceries in a city more beautiful than i remembered. dominos and card games and martinis.
"posession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul" - a confederacy of dunces, pg 13
been thinking about things to write but not getting much done--the bottom row of keys on my laptop hasn't been working at all. writing this on the dell inspiron 1520 i used when i was 8.
i get home on saturday, where i clean the kitchen and mudroom while they're off at the next two showings of the musical. sunday gets spent cooking elaborate meals and driving an hour deeper into the countryside to watch my kid sister's basketball tournament. it's easy to think my village is the middle of nowhere when i'm off at school, but the smaller, older towns surrounded by more fields have a stronger dignity to them, i feel.
on monday, i decide to try and bike out there and barely get out of the village before realizing the muscles i have trained so well to walk down hills do not work half as well for biking up them. refreshments of chickpea flour pancakes, barley tea, and my next book (gideon the ninth) are taken in a clearing that probably doesn't count as tresspassing because all the signs saying "private property" have long since fallen. once i get paranoid enough that someone is going to catch me, i move on to the old concrete dam where the mill that started the whole village business once stood and eat the rest of my pancakes there. i finish the book, too, which i quite liked until the ending, so i probably won't read the next book.
the rest of my time that isn't spent reading is taken up by playing marbles and go-fish with the kids, fixing up the other stickfort in the forest behind my neighbor's house, and watching lina wertmuller films with my father. hutch's dreaming giant might be onto something.
i finish up the week in bursts and sprints that leave me panting. thursday i go see the pre-opening night of my sisters' high school musical despite the two assignments due at midnight--my astro problem set gets in at 11:59 pm, so it works out. the writing assignment (museum catalog--i choose to write about japanese and chinese ceramics made for european consumers) due friday at midnight gets done by 9 pm, so i have time to draw a bit.
this morning i use an alarm for the first time in ages to get up at 6:30 am to help my beloved upperclassman open a rare morning session of found coffee for all the people catching buses, but she's late and only one person shows up anyway. we spend the following two hours talking about books and chinese history and gacha games and exchange programs. it's not so much that i'm madly in love with her as it is that i wish we could talk like this forever and ever.
i spend the rest of the morning finishing the source of the light (i think about hutch's childhood belief that he was simply part of some distant giant's dream), finally taking out the trash and sweeping my room, packing clothes, and deciding on what books i ought to bring home (the final list: gideon the ninth, shadow of the hegemon, writing to learn, and a confederacy of dunces). the latin textbook comes too so i can catch up on readings and reference it for review (i'd like to try and translate some of rodrigo into latin--originally i thought of seafort, but rodrigo has less words that i'll need to invent).
my post-prelim adrenaline is replaced by wanderlust, but i still have to go to my classes. the snow falls in swirls, melting as it touches the ground, before i find my way to the housing office to get a poster approved. once i emerge from the warren of hallways and rooms, the snow is falling hard enough to stick, the flakes big, fluffy, larger than my finger tips. i don't care much for snow in the beginning of winter--the first snow of the season only tells of the countless to follow--but the snow in early spring, when you're never sure if it'll be the last you see for a while, is far more wonderous and comforting.
instead of working on the homework due tomorrow, i spend too long talking to friends i haven't seen in recent days (spring break camping won't happen until the end of the week if at all, so i have some free time to just read at home... yay) and even more time looking at old houses in need of fixing up for sale that me and the upperclassmen fantasize about buying together in the dorm library.
"by the time he'd cleared the outskirts of town, he began to wonder how he'd ever left--the place at least, bare of people. the clinging sun threw a white shine as different from its english gray or italian rose as the tall pines here from the low umbrellas that sheltered rome. in its thruthful light the road, not flattered or pitied by the sky, narrowed to a dirt lane and curved on gently through woods--rolling fields of dry brown stalks with only the odd suspended buzzard to watch his progress." - the source of the light, pg 192
i've nearly put down the source of the light several times over the last few days, but i skipped my physics discussion (optional attendance because of the prelim tonight) to spend an hour reading it in the library and finally really got into it. i like price's style a lot, it has that crisp, silent feeling of an early christmas morning. not really sure how the book will go from here (i'm almost 2/3rds done now) but looking forward to it. hoping to finish it before break so i only have to take 11 books home to read instead of 12.
while not reading, i'm redoing homework and practice problems i've gotten wrong for physics. it's a very nice process once i sit myself and get into it. i take short breaks by looking out my window (the sky blue and dotted with fluffy white clouds). the window in my dorm is split into three vertical sections and i like to imagine that they are a set of stained glass. the leftmost one shows a yellow house, the middle a large tree bereft of leaves, the right the path students climb back to the other dorms.
"that simple line from forehead to chin seemed now to hutch all he'd ever meant to understand, praise, and save--its brave seal thrust toward the patient fruitful matrix of the world. he leaned, pressed his own mouth against dry hair on the ridge of rowlet's neck. 'i'm the orphan,' he said 'good luck anyhow.'" - the source of the light, pg 183
the snow comes and goes over the weekend. today it is still cold, but it is spring now. the morning air has a thickness to it, the kind that the butter knife of lew and hutch, hoplessly retelling the tale of tristan and iseult in a small cornish apartment, cannot cut, only glide through. as the day goes on, the air thins again, but it is still spring. the other side of the valley looks as invitingly blue as ever.
my two tests today go fine. i get the rejection email from iowa (my hypothesis that the application deadline being pushed back twice meant that they didn't have enough applicants was wrong). i bring one of my upperclassmen to meet my mother and i wallow around the library while she asks questions about work and graduate school. the bubble tea chain i've spent so long defending tastes really bad.
"quentin and shreve stared at one another--glared rather--their quiet regular breathing vaporizing faintly and steadily in the now tomblike air. there was something curious in the way they looked at one another, curious and quiet and profoundly intent, not at all as two young men might look at each other but almost as a youth and a very young girl might out of virginity itself--a sort of hushed and naked searching, each look burdened with youth's immemorial obsession not with time's dragging weight which the old live with but with its fluidity: the bright heels of all the lost moments of fifteen and sixteen" - absalom, absalom! pg 299
i like reading how other people approach education, talking to classmates and upperclassmen about assignments and exams. i think i'm too willing to accept that i don't know things, sometimes. as long as i'm having fun in a class (which is usually always, even with the anxiety induced by latin) i consider it a win, as long as i pass the exams, it doesn't matter how close i got to failing. this is perhaps a mindset that will not serve me well in the future--this is okay, i don't want to go to grad school for astronomy anyway. why am i doing an undergrad in astronomy then? idk man. the classes are fun.
recently i've been watching more varied video diary type channels. i like ones with weird editing and meandering natures and cars. i can't drive. i would like to never drive, but in the spirit of eternally chasing a half-remembered childhood, the only missing part now is summer roadtrips and camping out west, ancient and unarable land that seems to go on forever. public transportation is rather nonexistent in any place i'd like to actually go, so driving it may have to be. we'll see.
more of the books and themes i linger on are about transitions between life stages. faulkner, price, feintuch (at least rodrigo, less seafort), the shitty romance books my beloved upperclassman recommends me. i know what i want to do after graduation, i think, at least for a couple years (go back to taiwan, probably as an english teacher. if i do this for five years i can get a permenant resident visa and spend more time in the mountains since i don't have to be constantly employed like on the normal work visa. maybe farm workshares elsewhere). three more years before any of those plans can come to fruition, so for now i bide my time and get better at talking to people and try to save up more money.
to avoid the sharp shooting pain of whatever back muscle i somehow pulled wednesday, i am forced to finally adopt a proper, upright posture.
my lack of physical slouching does not prevent my academic slouching; instead of finishing (or starting) the latin translations i was supposed to do last night for the class i planned to skip today, i waste my morning on medieval depictions of jesus and john. this bent comes from a talk i heard yesterday about queer scandal in the lives of john boswell, st. aelred, and derek jarman (recommended to me by my beloved upperclassman). i still don't really agree with boswell or aelred about their interpretation of jesus and john but i get some new favorite paintings out of the rabbit hole (valentin de boulogne my newly beloved).
i skip the scientific ethics lecture in addition to latin because i'm not feeling well in the afternoon, returning to my room to nap with a documentary playing for an hour or two. after i wake up, feeling a bit better, i spend too long looking through online museum collections for another assignment, read a bit of genesis and play some stellaris.
"something cold struck his calf. he waited, then probed on down to find it...a dull table-knife. he drew it out quietly and held it to the moon...lew whispered. 'she lay down and tristan put his naked sword between them. to their good fortune they'd kept on their clothes. so they slept dvided in the heart of the wood'...neither of them slept at ease all night." - the source of the light, pg 97
today is even warmer, the only cool from the morning breeze--still not spring though, the scent not here yet. no buds, no sprouts. the plants are as yet unconvinced of this false spring as me. i sketch landscapes in an old notebook bought in a convenience store on the other side of the world, an artifact from a time where i found waiting nearly unbearable brought into a time where i wish i had nothing to do but wait.
a month ago, i started reading reynolds price's the source of the light, but couldn't get very far at the time. i liked the book just fine, i simply had no desire to keep reading. perhaps the weather suits it better now. i still care little about rob, but this is perhaps my fault for starting in the second book of the series.
though i skip afternoon lab with the intention of working on math homework, i get little done.
"maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. maybe happen is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilcial water-cord to the next pool which the first pool feeds, has fed, did feed, let this second pool contain a different temperature of water, a different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered, reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it doesn't matter: that pebble's watery echo whose fall it did not even see moves across its surface too at the original ripple-space, to the old ineradicable rhythm" - absalom, absalom! pg 261
i spend the morning contemplating the face of god. out here, i don't get to hear the wind in the trees as much as i do back home. maybe that's one aspect of god's face (or voice)?
in the afternoon, i fix clay pots made from the dirt of the riverbed and dig up the rich black soil of compost and plant peas and radishes with my mother. we trim the miscanthus gigantus that gets bigger every year and use it to make trellises for the peas while the wind i've missed so much blows the bucket i left outside the garden gate to the end of the park, past both baseball fields. we walk around the woods in the back after we walk to fetch the bucket, examining the skunk cabbage (the first flowers of spring) and finding the other half of the bottom jaw of a deer skull i pulled from these woods years ago.
my mother tells me delightful stories of village life, that seemed nonexistent when i still lived here but somehow transformed into the idealized form i always wished it had as soon as i left. homework gets put off for spending time with friends and upperclassmen.
early spring feels more like fall on days like these. the grass is still yellow and dead, the fresh smell of plants not here yet. walking to the dining hall, the wind is cold and i have to keep pulling on my jacket (red, thin, the crowning piece of my country boy outfit--a plaid button up tucked into my jeans and the workboots i've finally broken in) to keep it around me.
i've pushed off the majority of my physics homework until today, due at 5pm, but i get through it without much issue. amazing what paying attention in class instead of reading does to a guy's understanding of concepts. to refresh my mind between problems, i do my spring cleaning. i nearly halve the amount of clothes in my closet, weeding out the ones i brought with me to college and then never wore. i'll hand them down to my sisters when i go home to visit tomorrow, but i'll offer the skirts to one of my dormmates first. i slightly reorganize my bookshelf--i'm far less willing to part way with my books, but i pull out a couple to bring home for storage, since i don't think i'll reread them anytime soon.
listening to music i last listened to a year ago, i talk to my best friend. after lunch (breakfast sausages and pancakes and potato soup, with a side of a few more pages of absalom, absalom!), i can't shake the feeling that i'm forgetting something, that some due date is approaching against my will.
"i learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man's abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books" - absalom, absalom! pg 241-242
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