Stuck on You

Tonight I sat in one of the local pubs with a lovely person who is rapidly becoming one of my dearest friends out here. There was live music and good wine and delightful, meandering conversation. At some point our conversation turned to the future, to leaving Wolfville, and to the discomfort we both feel with that idea. This town is wonderful in so many ways. Of course it has it's problems. It's a small town. You run into people you would rather not see. Everybody knows everybody else's business. There's a lot of chatter, some of which is simply gossip. But it's also beautiful here. We talked about how this is the first point in our lives where when something goes horribly wrong our first instinct isn't to long to be back with our parents. There are places here that feel like home. I can go out. I can meet up with a friend. Basically, the things that would have made me feel like my world was ending only a year ago are now painful, but somehow more manageable. Thinking about leaving is unpleasant. This is a strange town though. Almost everyone here is in transition. None of this is permanent. Yes, there are people who actually live here, but for the most part people's time here comes with an expiry date. In some ways this impermanence is what allows for such a wonderful atmosphere here. Consequences are diminished somehow. But if the loveliness of living here is predicated on this transitory nature, then one can also outstay one's welcome. So staying sometimes seems impractical. How will the experience of the town change once all of my friends have left? We didn't really come to any conclusion, other than my feeble suggestion that perhaps we have reached a point in our lives where every decision we make means passing on something potentially wonderful. When I was trying to decide where to take my master's a very wise friend told me about her experience and said that no matter what decision I made I was always going to be missing out on something, but if I made a good decision then while I might wonder what would have happened if I'd chosen differently, I wouldn't be able to picture it any other way. I feel like this has become the case for every decision in my life. I just hope that I can continue to choose wisely, because right now I couldn't picture my life any other way.

Hot Mess

I look like a hot mess because I've been writing and editing hardcore for days now, but the thesis chapter (such as it is) is now handed in, which means it is officially Christmas break. Time to party (with lobster)!

Rangy

rangy, adj.
4. Of great scope or compass; expansive, broad, wide-ranging


I've come to a realization as I've been doing ridiculous amounts of reading for papers in the past month or so: the work of the authors I love most is repeatedly described as "rangy." I think this is one of the qualities that draws me to them. It's why I find them so rich and deserving of attention that I eagerly anticipate each new release and contemplate writing PhD dissertations on their work. However, it is also why writing on them feels almost impossible. I never feel like I'm done. I always feel like there is some other idea to explore, some other thread to be picked up and followed on a long, glorious journey of discovery. I'm struggling with this right now as I'm trying to produce a polished, edited, pretty much complete chapter for my thesis. This just isn't how my brain works. There is too much for me to still explore at this stage in the game for me to be able to produce something that is, in any sense of the word, finished. Ah well, tomorrow evening I will have to hand something in, and hopefully it is good enough.

Missing You

Paper-writing season is upon us.
I think my bed misses me.
I know I miss it.

Just because it's pretty

This photo has nothing to do with anything really. I just like it.


I thought I should drop in here and let you all know that I'm not dead. I'm just a student rapidly approaching the end of the semester. And since I'm trying to maintain a social life for the sake of my sanity, I've been a bit busy lately.

Songs for Late Nights

I've been pulling a lot of late nights recently. And I'll be pulling a lot of late nights this week. Such is the joy of this time of the academic year. Since you probably aren't all that interested in hearing yet another rant about a paper, I thought instead I would share some of the songs that I tend to have on repeat as the hours creep past midnight and there is no end in sight.

I Don't Feel It Anymore (Song of the Sparrow) -- William Fitzsimmons & Priscilla Ahn

Bloodbuzz Ohio -- The National

Re: Stacks -- Bon Iver

White Blank Page -- Mumford and Sons

How it Comes is How it Goes -- Jay Malinowski

Set the Fire to the Third Bar -- Snowpatrol & Martha Wainwright

Wake the Earth -- The Honey Trees

The Darkest Side -- The Middle East

I Won't Be Found -- The Tallest Man on Earth

Cicadas and Gulls -- Feist

Here I Am

Well, here it is. The reason I have moved across the country. 

I have arrived, vacationed, and returned. And I now have internet! Although I don't yet have furniture, and let me tell you that an air mattress is not the best all-purpose piece of furniture.

Today I wandered around campus and took pictures. It is so gorgeous. The architecture actually made me tear up. I am starting to get that tingly excited feeling about going back to school. Eeeeeeee! (That was a squeal of excitement in case you couldn't tell.)

Justification

I had a conversation today with someone I count as a friend that really bothered me. In this case it's not what was said, but how it was said. It's that incredulous tone people adopt whenever I talk about school and my academic world. The tone that says, "why would you do that?" and "that sounds like a total waste of time and energy." The attitude that causes people to say things like "I want to do so much more than research. I don't want to sit up in an ivory tower researching pointless things. I want to do something that has actual meaning and significance in the world." The attitude that constantly prompts the question, "And what are you going to do with an English degree?" or "What can you do with a Master's of English?", and not in a genuinely curious way either. I am tired of justifying myself to others. In part this is because I have yet to successfully translate my passion for literature into something that can truly be conveyed to others. So, a lot of my frustration is with myself. But it's more than that. It's the fact that people write off what I'm passionate about so flippantly. I know that I am guilty of this myself on occasion, but I am trying lately to be very conscious of it. I grew up with a group of people who, by and large, knew exactly where they were headed in life. Many of the people I grew up with are in school to become, or are already, doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses, veterinarians, computer experts and government workers. And when I am in those circles of people I often feel judged for not pursuing a "traditional" and "meaningful" profession. Even the people I've met in university who have no idea what they want to do now that they've graduated sometimes seem to think that their degrees hold more value than mine, or that because they've chosen to go into the workforce rather than go back to school they are somehow contributing more to society. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to go to graduate school. It is not for everybody. Sometimes I'm not even sure it's right for me. Nor do I wish to disparage those, or any other, professions. They are wonderful pursuits and I am thrilled when, for example, my friends who are going to be teachers light up with passion for what they are learning and doing. I'm irked, however, by the idea that going to school and finding a job are somehow not on equal footing when it comes to their intrinsic value. And I am even more bothered by the idea that seems to be so prevalent in society that choosing to pursue research (unless perhaps you are searching for a cure for cancer or alternative fuel sources or something) is not as important as other professions. No, I'm not curing cancer. I understand that. But literature holds such power and importance in human lives. We are inherently linguistic creatures. We are people of stories. We construct ourselves by telling our own stories. We understand ourselves by our own accounts of our stories. We come to understand ourselves better through an interaction with other people's stories. As Michael Ondaatje says in his novel Divisadero, "We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell." Literature, and art in a broader sense, has the power to be transformative, to be healing, to be enlightening. Again, Michael Ondaatje writes, "sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third person voice protects us." Is it not worthwhile to spend time deeply examining something that holds so much sway in humanity? Is it not worth time to try to understand what our literature is saying about us? I think it is. This is what excites me most about literature and language: the human expression, the fact that it simultaneously reveals and shapes us. Even if you are not the direct reader. Literature seeps into popular culture. It influences everything you see; advertisements, television shows, movies, are all permeated by references to literature. It's role in defining us is so immense that I don't think the full extent of it can even be understood. There are so many other things that I could say this of, art and music come to mind immediately, but the one that I have chosen to pursue formally right now is literature. So, that is why I am doing what I'm doing. That is my rambling and possibly unclear explanation of why I am passionate about literary research and studying. And I'm sorry if that is not good enough for you.

Oh How I Loathe Thee

I hate finals.

I realize that no one really loves finals. I have yet to hear, in all my years of schooling, someone say "Yay finals! This is my favourite time of the year!" or anything of a similar ilk. However, I really hate finals. I would rather write a paper. And if I have to write an exam then I would rather it be a take home than an in class. Exams just stress me out way more than papers. I think part of it has to do with the fact that studying isn't a finite task. I never really feel like I am done studying. It is more that I just run out of time and have to go write the exam. Papers I can feel like I am done. Studying just goes on and on and on...

I hate studying. And I am not good at it on the best of days. Today, however, it is exceptionally bad. See, I have one final exam left in my undergraduate career. One. It's tomorrow afternoon. By three o'clock Thursday afternoon I will be free. This alone would be enough to make studying a difficult task. To top it off though it is in a class that I just don't care about at all. It was a topic I wasn't particularly interested in to begin with, we had a horrible prof, and overall I feel like I learned very little. My notes are pathetic. And not in the this-prof-is-so-deep-I-don't-know-what-to-write way, but in the we-actually-didn't-discuss-this-in-any-sort-of-detail way. It's awful. Consequently I have very little motivation to study.

I'll still be panicking tomorrow though. Darn perfectionism.

Marginalia

Marginalia
Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - 
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. 
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird singing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page -
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

a few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil -
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet - 
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."


[Billy Collins writes incredible poetry.]

Why do I do this?

Because it matters.

Because I believe that words are powerful.

Because I believe that art can change the world.


[Just a reminder to myself that this is where I am supposed to be and this is what I'm supposed to be doing.]

Ten Things...Overwhelmed by School

I have less than two weeks until the semester is over. This is insane when I consider the amount of work that has to be accomplished between now and then. That includes all of my finals. I can't think about more than one thing at a time otherwise I start having some serious panic attacks. I love academic, but around this time of year I always start wondering why I am planning to stay in school for goodness knows how long. I know I will survive this though. Here are ten posts that prove that I've been in this place before and come out in one piece:

1. Now I'm hunched over a typewriter
2. After 17 pages I have a rough draft
3. Burning the Midnight Oil
4. Drowning in a Flood
5. Sink or Swim
6. Trucking Through
7. Not Wanted on the Voyage
8. Daydreams of Paris
9. Just Relax
10. So many people are looking to me to be strong and to fight

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Today was the first day back at school. I absolutely love this time of year. Everyone is still excited to see each other, classes haven't started to get stressful yet, it's autumn so the weather is lovely and the fashion is awesome, there are new books and notebooks and pens...everything about this part of the year makes me smile. I know I'm a dork, but I'm totally okay with that. Besides, someone has to be excited about academics. Although apparently once you get into senior level classes the profs stop taking it easy the first few days. In first year classes the first day is usually just going through the syllabus, maybe having a minor class discussion, but that is pretty much it. Second year is similar. By third year you usually have to stay for the full class time and have an actual intellectual discussion. But in fourth year they apparently start assigning homework on the first day. It's like the profs figure you've been at this long enough that you no longer need an adjustment period. For example, in the one class I had today I was informed that I need to read all of Great Expectations and write a one page reflection on the character of Pip by next Wednesday. Crikey.

Funny story from class today. Well, I think it is funny at least. So since I'm at a small school and there are not that many four year English majors, we pretty much all know each other (there are only nine people in the class I had today). We are all sitting there at the start of class and our prof (who we also know really well) comes in and jokingly says "Well, you guys don't know each other at all! You should really introduce yourselves." We are all laughing about this when suddenly some random guy walks into the class. I turned to the girl next to me and asked "How is there someone in this class we don't know?" and you could see that everyone else was asking each other the same thing. We were floored. Turns out he was a first year who was lost and looking for his intro English class. I would have felt bad for the guy except that when he discovered he was in the wrong class he made it seem like it was somehow our fault for being in that classroom. That attitude lost him my sympathy. I just thought the timing of that was too great not to share though.

In honour of back-to-school, I have here a picture of an apple. A crab apple on my parents' neighbours' tree to be specific. How did apples get associated with teachers anyway? Whenever I think about apples the first thing that pops into my head is "An apple a day keeps the doctor away". So why is it traditional to give your teacher an apple? Why are there so many ridiculous knick knacky gifts for teacher that are apple shaped or have pictures of apples on them? Intriguing...

By the way, sorry about the sparse posting lately. Since moving I've been dealing with unpacking, catching up with people, slow internet (the thought of uploading pictures scares me, although this situation should be remedied on Saturday when we get our high-speed installed), working Regestration Confirmation and the ensuing exhaustion, and a delightful cold to top it all off. Hopefully I will soon be resuming a more normal posting schedule.