Life in 10 seconds

Preparing an application for an overseas research grant for the summer is not a piece of cake. Maybe it is, but it's a pretty stale piece of cake. Due Feb. 1, lots to do yet. Now reading David Walker's Appeal, Merchant of Venice, and The Country Wife, among dozens of articles. Just finished a rewrite of a novel I wrote six years ago; bravely stepping out to the next phase--getting feedback from friends. Yikes. Conference next week to present a paper on Plato and Thomas Hardy. Double yikes. Classes, work, homework, and deep thoughts top off the list.

The Grad Student's Nightmare

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Back in Business

Starting back to classes tomorrow.

Graduate school, take 2. Newly resolved NOT to leave final papers for the last week, but not particularly confident in my ability to fulfill said resolution. Newly resolved not to trip on the stairs as frequently, or to patronize Starbucks as often, or...

Cancel that.

Newly resolved that classes start tomorrow.

End of story.

Avatar Messiah

Check out "The Messiah Complex," an interesting perspective on the film Avatar, by David Brooks in the New York Times. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I find Brooks' analysis fascinating, especially in light of some of the literary theory I've been reading.

Those of you who've already seen the movie, what do you think?

Bucket-less Bucket Lists

Today, I donated my hair to Locks of Love.

Although I've been planning to do it for a while, I must confess feeling a little like Jo in Little Women, and that "vain part of me" misses my long hair. However, the fact that I was really worried/nervous/almost chickened out tells me it was probably a good time to do it.

Donating my hair is one of the first things I've been able to "check off" my unofficial bucket-less bucket list.

I don't want to be the kind of person who can only repeat, with envy, the stories of others.

I've been thinking a lot in the past year about what it means to live fully, and to live free from fear, rather than carpe diem. I think living free from fear means being wholly present in whatever circumstances I find myself, willing to experience both delight and sorrow without hiding, and keeping my eyes open for glimpses of beauty in the people, events, and places I encounter.

I'm still formulating my ideas, and I doubt I'll formally write a checklist, because for me it's harder to take advantage of spontaneous opportunities than to make lists.

Some ideas are trivial, some serious: I'd like to road trip across the United States, volunteer with a humanitarian/social justice organization here or overseas, perform in a musical, and ride in a hot air balloon, among other things.

There are elements of fear in each, and that's part of the reason I want to do them; because I know there is something more than the fear, and the ability to step out in faith is part of being healed, of being made new.

So here's to being made new! (short hair and all...)

2009 (+) Pages Turned

Following the trend, I decided to pull together the list of books I've read over the past year. My list of "to read" books grows faster than I can read them, but I'd still love to hear the number one "must read" book you think I should tackle in 2010.

Cheers!

Reading List 2009

Adorno – The Culture Industry
Alvarez – In the Time of the Butterflies
Aristotle – On Poetics
Baudrillard – Simulacra and Simulation (Glaser)
Bauer – The Well-Educated Mind
Benjamin – Illuminations
Blake – "The Book of Urizen"
Blake – "Visions of the Daughters of Albion"
Blake – "Milton"
Bloom – Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
Braddon – Lady Audley’s Secret
Camus – “Myth of Sisyphus”
Camus – The Rebel
Camus – Reflections on the Guillotine
Coetzee – Waiting for the Barbarians
Collins – The Woman in White
Cooper – Over Sea, Under Stone
Cooper – The Dark is Rising
Cooper – Greenwitch
Cooper – The Grey King
Cooper – Silver on the Tree
Cosby – Cosbyology
Dickens – Great Expectations
Dickens – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Dostoevsky – The Idiot (Garnett/Yuffa)
Durkheim – The Division of Labor
Eagleton – Literary Theory: An Introduction
El Saadawi – Woman at Point Zero
Eliot – The Lifted Veil
Everts – God in the Flesh
Fanon – Peau noir, masques blancs
FitzGerald – The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Frye – Fearful Symmetry
Gaddis – The Cold War: A New History
Garcia-Marquez – Love in the Time of Cholera (Grossman)
Hardy – Jude the Obscure
Havel – Temptation (?)
Homer – The Iliad (Butler)
Homer – The Odyssey (Butler)
Ionesco – Les Chaises
Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meany
Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go
Jones – Mister Pip
Joyce – Dubliners
Kincaid – Autobiography of My Mother
Kotlowitz – There Are No Children Here
L’Engle – The Arm of the Starfish
LeGuin – Lavinia
Levitt/Dubner – Freakonomics
Li – The Vagrants
Lynch – Catching the Big Fish
Marks – Cortés
Morrison – A Mercy
Nafisi – Things I Have Been Silent About
Niffenegger – The Time Traveler’s Wife
O’Brien – The Things They Carried
Paolini – Brisingr
Paolini – Eldest
Paolini – Eragon
Picoult – Harvesting the Heart
Ragland-Sullivan/Bracher – Lacan and the Subject of Language
Ramazani – The Dance of the Rose and the Nightingale
Rivers – Leota’s Garden
Rodley – Lynch on Lynch
Roose – The Unlikely Disciple
Roy – The God of Small Things
Rushdie – Midnight’s Children
Said – Orientalism
Shakespeare – As You Like It
Shakespeare – Henry IV, p. 2
Shakespeare – Henry VI, p. 1
Shakespeare – Henry VI, p. 2
Shakespeare – Henry VI, p. 3
Shakespeare – Henry VIII
Shakespeare – King John
Shakespeare – Richard II
Shakespeare – Venus and Adonis
Shaw – Pygmalion
Shusterman – Unwind
Stoker – Dracula
Tolan – The Lemon Tree
Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Valette/Morgenroth – C’est de la prose
Walcott – Selected Poems
Weir – Eleanor of Aquitaine
Weir – The Six Wives of Henry VIII
Winter – Perfecting Ourselves to Death
Wood – East Lynne
Wrong – In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz

*Books in bold are the ones I especially liked.

*Names in parentheses are translators.

O Resolutions Mine

January 1, 2010

Happy New Year!!!

In celebration, I've decided to return to a tradition begun last year--that of the New Year's Un-Resolution, otherwise known as stating the obvious. :-)

In review: this year I did not resolve to watch Veggie Tales more regularly. I did not stop (permanently) writing for my blogs. I still trip on giant dust bunnies named Bob in my room. My snooze button is still fully functional. Chaotic Christmas letter--check. No relationship status on Facebook. Despair.com--check. Alliteration--all the time. Big words--indubitably. Serious resolutions? Ha.

So, as Miss Stacy so poetically put it--"tomorrow is another day." Or was that Annie? Ahem.

Un-Resolution number ONE

I will not become addicted to Facebook applications...unless I do.

Un-Resolution number TWO

I will probably still dance around my kitchen on a regular basis.

Un-Resolution number THREE

I will never cease to make fun of the Twilight craze, even if I eventually read the books.

Un-Resolution number FOUR

I will drink no more or less coffee than I will drink this year.

Un-Resolution number FIVE

My computers will have names, will protest loudly at every opportunity, and will probably with a high likelihood of chance "lose" a few important files each semester.

Un-Resolution number SIX

I will make an average of two random comments or non-transitionalized remarks containing an average of one made-up word every fifteen minutes of most of my interactions.

Un-Resolution number SEVEN

I will refuse to wear rubber rain boots on campus, purely on principle. Unless I give in.

Un-Resolution number EIGHT

I will not gain a substantially higher quantity of artistic talent extending beyond rhapsodies over the stairs I trip up and the occasional caffeine-induced 3 a.m. short story or song lyric that is never written down.

Un-Resolution number NINE

I will spend at least fifteen minutes griping about the fact that all dressy shoes sizes 9 and above have a three-inch heel, regardless of the actual facts, whatever they may be. I said regardless of the facts, so it doesn't really matter anyway.

Un-Resolution number TEN

I will most likely write another post very much like this one next year. Can't wait, can you?

...and...

Merry Christmas!!!

Today at the mall, doing my traditional Christmas Eve shopping and people-watching, a few things, as every year, caught my eye:

1) The number of adults leaning precariously over the railing to catch a glimpse of Santa on the floor below.
2) The men - props to you - sitting and waiting on the benches outside a store. Only one asleep, a few teens, many holding bags.
3) The men - the few, the brave - holding women's clothing items up to their own body in front of a mirror to figure out if the significant (female) other will like it.
4) The scarcity of Santa hats (one).
5) The beauty of a smile and a "Merry Christmas!"

Much as we like to pretend otherwise, there's a lot to be said for the small child in each of us who wants to giggle and finds it hard to go to sleep tonight...

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Rhyme and Strain and Song

Christmas Rhyme and Strain and Song

Morning - red, and green, and white
Morning - peace: try not to fight
Morning - music; seek the light

Daylight - gifts of second fear
Daylight - lonely rush of tears
Daylight - (distant) God is near

Evening - fire is glowing warm
Evening - sit close; watch the storm
Evening - pressure to perform

Starlight - bright, the first new flame
Starlight - darkness hides the shame
Starlight - promise: freed from blame.

Midnight - day is getting late
Midnight - expectation/hate
Midnight - ill-content to wait

Christmas - fear to laugh or mourn
Christmas - digging out the thorn
Christmas - seeds of hope still born.

The Twelve Days of Finals

In celebration of finishing the first semester of grad school, and in proper holiday spirits, I am proud to bring to you, for the first time in the history of this blog (wow, that sounded very pompous, didn't it?)...The Twelve Days of Finals (to be sung appropriately).

Enjoy!

The Twelve Days of Finals OR The Twelve Final Days

1. The last week of classes, I saw a long, long road
To freedom from Tribble Hall

2. The last Tuesday classes, an abstract due at ten
Write quickly now
Toward freedom from Tribble Hall

3. The last Wednesday classes, I saw the break ahead
Course evals
Write a little more
And then freedom from Tribble Hall.

4. On the penult day of classes, I had a paper due,
Send it on Blackboard,
Course evals
Write a little more
And freedom from Tribble Hall.

5. On the last day of classes, I thought my time was free
It's getting cold
Bluff a Latin quiz
Course evals
Write a little more
And then freedom from Tribble Hall. (right)

6. On the first day of reading, I saw the light ahead
Papers keep coming
It's getting cold
Gripe about the work
Find more books
Write a little more
Only six hours in Tribble Hall.

7. On the second day of reading, a Latin test ahead
-bo, -bis, -bit, -bimus
Papers keep coming
It's getting cold
Gripe about the work
Find more books
Write a little more
And eight hours in Tribble Hall.

8. On the first day of finals, three papers loom ahead
Conjugate "esse"
Time to check Facebook
Save every minute
It's getting cold
Gripe about the work
Find more books
Write a little more
Elev'n hours in Tribble Hall.

9. On the second day of finals, the caffeine level's high
Three papers queuing
Free food at midnight
Time to check Facebook
Save every minute
It's getting cold
Gripe about the work
Find more books
Write a little more
And twelve hours in Tribble Hall.

10. On the third day of finals, I felt the panic grow
Don't lose your outline
Three papers looming
Free food at midnight
Time to check Facebook
Save every minute
It's getting cold
Gripe about the work
Find more books
Write a little more
Thirteen hours in Tribble Hall.

11. On the fourth day of finals, no more excuses now
Panic at midnight
Don't lose your outline
Three paper deadlines
Free food at midnight
Time to check Facebook
Save every minute
It's getting cold
Gripe about the work
Find more books
Write a little more
Fifteen hours in Tribble Hall.

12. On the fifth day of finals, the end of all has come
Double the coffee
Panic all morning
Back up your finals
Three paper deadlines
Eight hours of writing
No time for Facebook
Save every minute
It's getting cold
Gripe about the work
Write last words
Let the papers go
And then freeeeedom from Triiiiibble Hall.

Merry Christmas in 7 Days!!!!