Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.


Sorry about being MIA this weekend. I was at my parents and I just don't spend as much time on the computer when I'm there. Probably because I don't have to use my computer to play music and therefore it is not always on. It just seems silly to have a stereo in my tiny dorm room when all of my music is on my computer anyway. I decided on Friday that even though I had monstrous amounts of homework to do on the weekend I needed to destress a bit. And that worked great Friday and Saturday. I got some research done on Friday and then headed to a Good Friday service with my family and got to catch up with some friends that I don't talk to nearly enough. Saturday I went for tea with three of my incredibly good friends and then we went to church in the evening and I came home and decided that it would be my day off so I just read The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, which is positively beautiful. Books like that remind me why I love words so much. Sadly, this lovely, non-stressful weekend came to a crashing halt Sunday night when I suddenly ran headlong into the brick wall of end of the year stress. Cue the blind panic and the obsessive list-making and the desire to scream my head off. Actually, I was doing some Art History reading today and one on the images was Edvard Munch's The Scream and the textbook says this: "In the painting itself...the figure is on a bridge and the scream emanates from him. Although he vainly attempts to shut out its sound by covering his ears, the screm fills the landscape with clouds of 'actual blood'." Now, the last couple words are a quote from Munch himself and make a lot more sense when you read the whole section on the painting, but I won't subject you to that. Anyway, I read that and thought "how appropriate" given that I really would appreciate a good gut-wrenching, soul-cleansing scream right about now. I actually feel like this tiny little part of my brain is just constantly screaming for the last month or so of every semester and no matter how hard I try to shut it out I just keep hearing this panic-filled scream. Ah well.

Moving on from my stress to the lovely springy picture. It was actually a beautiful weekend weather-wise. It was a little bit cloudy and looked like it might rain (it didn't) on Saturday night, but otherwise it was lovely. I got to do my reading in the sunshine, which was lovely. I had to compete with the cats though since there is limited sunshiney real estate in the house. This picture is from a couple years ago and is of some of the flowers on one of our neighbour's trees. They have these three trees that are just beautiful in every season (I talked about them here). I'm excited to see them in bloom again. Pictures like this have the ability to make me pause, take a deep breath, and let a sense of calm wash over me, all of which are really good things at this time of year. I think it has to do with the lighting and the color and the fact that it's a flower...they all combine to whisper "spring is coming" and that lifts my spirits.

No comments:

Post a Comment