A semester later...at the same point

I realize I haven't utilized this blog since my class ended, and I'm not quite sure what to do with it. But I have some free time and would like to use this space to reflect on the end my semester. I have one more final, an English paper, but that's not due for a few days.
I thank God that I made it through this semester and managed to keep my grades relatively intact. Between my dad having a heart attack and some haunting personal demons popping back up, it's definitely been trying. I am exceeding grateful for the volunteer opportunities I have been given this semester. These have not only given me the chance the serve others, but they also gave me a non-frivolous study break. Of course, the Dead, Janis, and Symphony of Science (really glad I discovered that) have also been a major help to keeping me sane over the semester and especially the past week.
I am disgruntled that my final exams have stolen the first days of winter from me. I did not get to properly enjoy the first snows; the glass panes of the IC separated us. I am getting to enjoy the cold, though. The lake is beautiful, and the wind invigorating. Despite missing the snow, Nature showed it's grace to me in other ways. On my way to the library, I had to see the lake for just a minute before I locked myself away in the stacks. I know the construction of the IC is supposed to make it unobtrusive, but you can't really experience the lake unless you are standing next to it, hearing, smelling, feeling the wind and the water crash into and over each other, performing their ballet of power. Anyway, I was going to lake, passing by the chapel, and there was some sort of precipitation (snow/ice) hitting my face, surrounded by the wind swirling through the arches of the walkway, and all of a sudden....a rabbit darts by! It was absolutely amazing. It was such an awesome moment and reminded me of all the beautiful little things that happen every day. It took me out of my finals funk and brought me back to reality.
Now all I have to do is write this paper, meet the cat sitter, and go home. I go back to my job two days after I get back, and I can't wait. I'm ready to leave the finals stress mode behind and kick into retail work at Christmas time stress! It may still be stress, but it's different stress, and I'll take it. Just riding the wave of change.....

On a slightly more personal, and longer, note

At 1:39 this afternoon, I officially survived finals week! I usually spend most of my time in the library during the semester, but over the past week and a half I pitched a tent. I lived out of vending machines and the 7-11; I ingested caffeine in any form I could get my hands on. I accosted people for hot chocolate. I even pondered a cigarette a few times, despite having quit 2 years ago, while stumbling through the wreathing smoke lingering outside of the IC at 4 AM. I watched the sun rise over Lake Michigan from the IC twice. I listened to hours of Counting Crows, Jakob Dylan, and Iron & Wine to drown out the screaming, running, nervous breakdowns, and weeping that filled the IC. I fell down the rabbit-hole of ever increasing paranoia that I was going to miss a final, culminating with jumping out of bed at 7:58 this morning, convinced I had missed my 1:00 PM exam. But I’ve made it through! I’m done, and still have some sanity intact. That it itself is awesome enough, but the passing of this week also marks the passing of my first year at LUC. It’s reflecting on this fact that blows my mind.
I was worrying about my philosophy grade while studying for my statistics exam (I’m a multitasking obsessive). I will most likely get a B in my philosophy course, despite the fact that both times I watched the sun rise were related to that course. This bothers me because somehow I’ve managed to avoid getting a B yet. I really, really don’t want one. I like the streamlined appearance of As. They are nice and neat, while Bs are grotesque, bulging bobbles. Anyway, I was thinking about this grade, and I remembered how much of an accomplishment it even is for me to be at Loyola. When I dropped out of high school, I still planned to go to college. After I got my GED and the years started piling up, I tried to accept the fact that I was never going to make it. I was working two jobs to support myself and my family; there was no way I could go to college. I couldn’t quit my jobs, and I would probably just fail anyway. Two years later, I got the opportunity to go to community college. When it came time to transfer to a four-year college, I applied to Loyola on a whim. I never thought I would get in; and if I did, there was never any way I could afford it. I was accepted, and received five letters asking me to send my financial aid information. I never sent it because Loyola was my “lottery school”. If I won the lottery, I would go. Eventually, I sent it off for some reason or another, and they gave me most of the financial aid I needed. I packed up my life and my cat, got in a van with my parents and came to Chicago to see if I could get the last bit of funding I needed to attend Loyola. The meeting with the financial aid counselor would determine whether the van went home with me or without me. Amazingly, it all worked out. I haven’t fallen flat on my face. So yeah, I might get a B. I still don’t want one; but I think it’s pretty damn awesome that I even made it this far. Thank you, God. Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to do with myself for the next week!

Keats' Epistle

Hello, Ancient Marinere. This poetical letter opening reads like what the life of the wedding guest in Coleridge’s "Rime" would become. He has seen too far into the darkness of life, and that sorrow haunts him forever.

I completely understand this during the current state of affairs. Every day in the news, another horrible tragedy has occurred. People are killing their families, themselves, and their neighbors. I understand that tough economic crimes breed more crime and hopelessness, but this seems like a new level of violence. These are seemingly average people (like always) that appear to just snap. I know it’s like throwing your back out; hefting that laptop didn’t actually throw your back out, but it was the final straw on multiple strains. It’s still fairly distressing to realize that a father can get to the point where killing his entire family seems like a better option than losing the house, or a mother can become so angry at her husband that she decides to retaliate by killing their children. Why? What in our culture teaches people that death is better than poverty, or violence is an appropriate response to feeling powerless? Is it even a cultural issue, or a primitive trigger that gets tripped? As the poem illustrates, in nature, the more powerful prey on the less powerful. It’s the darker side of the ecosystem. However, as “higher” animals, we are supposed to have better control over these things. Yet, the cycle still exists, just in other terms. Instead of active violence towards the poor, the more powerful (i.e. wealthy) just prey on them through economic oppression. Then, in their powerlessness, the impoverished turn to violence against the only people they have power over: their families.

A blog of randomness

I’m studying Marx in my philosophy class. This is not my first exposure to Marx, as my father is a Marx fan, and we joke about me being a “red-diaper baby”. It is, however, my first time studying him in-depth. Hearing things like “man creates, through his labor, a world he experiences as his own” struck me as similar to the Romantic idea of humans “creating the world”. The fact that my English class immediately precedes my philosophy class also may be why these connections popped up in my head. In my curiosity, I ran across this quote from Marx at the Marx archive. I totally believe this, despite the fact that I occasionally experience Shelley as a loquacious, whiny ass. Occasionally.
Keats, on the other hand, is one of my favorite Romantic poets. He and Coleridge are in a close race. I especially enjoy "Ode to a Nightingale" because it seems to me like Keats turns the poem into a tomb. It has the overt references to death and dying, but also the gloom and the darkness of the surroundings envelop the speaker like a coffin. He even refers to the “embalmed darkness” which, while meaning perfumed, I don’t think is generally associated with anything other than burial/preservation preparations. There are also the purple violets and the purple wine, a color of death. Unlike Shelley’s skylark, in whose flight “the pale purple even/melts” or overcomes death, Keats’ bird lulls him into a sleep/dream/death-like state.
One last side note: I was reading through poetry and "Christabel" and "Lamia" gave me crazy dreams. Crazy, crazy dreams. It also made me think that these poems may have inspired the bit in the last Harry Potter book with the giant snake bursting forth from the old lady.

No vacancy

Watching the “Powers of Ten” and reading the last lines of Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” reminded me of an article I read about the Hubble Telescope discovering a new planet. The telescope snapped a picture of it 10 years ago, but it was hidden from view by the glare of the star in front of it. Scientists figured out a way to get around this and were able to see a gas giant, 3 times the size of Jupiter. I thought about this giant planet hurtling along an orbit somewhere, and the image of our own startlingly beautiful Milky Way, and it makes absolutely no sense that we could be the only beings in the universe. It would be a waste of matter and form. However, when we look to the stars, the vacuum of space can seem like only “silence and solitude” and therefore “vacancy”. This is somewhat like the old tree falling in the woods question. I think in the fast-paced modern world people are afraid of silence because it reminds them of death. It is as if life must be boisterous and loud and “in-your-face” to really be life. Your relaxation time must be just as filled as your work time, or else you’re wasting it. But life is waiting to be discovered in the vacancy of the moment. These are the flashes of stillness that allow you to hear your heartbeat; the seconds of solitude when you catch the faintest whisper of the breeze lazily sliding through the leaves, making them murmur to one another in voices just low enough to make it seem like an imagining. The silence can sometimes be the only reminder that you are alive, and not just an automaton, rushing, rushing, rushing, towards death.

On a Lark

I find the last lines of Shelley’s “Ode to a Skylark” to be slightly egotistical. He’s essentially saying “Give me the knowledge of your joy, and I will be a great poet that the world must hear”. It seems focused on what the poet can get out of the relationship with this unseen bird. It’s also kind of odd that he specifically says “Teach me” even just some of the happiness “thy brain must know”. These are words that describe thought and processes that can be learned, not emotion and feeling. This represents the human struggle between the dichotomy of the heart and the mind that the bird does not encounter. It knows and feels, equally, only joy. In earlier lines, the human emotion is besmirched by thought; the deepest joy is still affected by some long forgotten moment of sadness. Alternately, if we never felt pain, we still would not reach the heights of joy that the bird experiences. It has been my understanding in all things that if you have not felt the opposite experience, then your appreciation for the experience is not as acute. Someone who has never experienced the depths of despair has a different experience of euphoria than someone who has traversed through the darkness to emerge into the light. Overall, balance is necessary. Balance between joy and sadness, thought and emotion. Without balance, the “harmonious madness” is just madness, whether it’s someone becoming so focused on their misery that they harm others, or someone so caught up in chasing joy that they harm themselves.

"They wrote it all down to the progress of man"

I’ve always enjoyed Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” because of the vivid descriptions. He uses his words as paint to create an illustration within the mind. It gives hope to those of us that struggle to translate the images in our heads into something tangible to share with others. If I can’t paint it, I might be able to write it.
Beyond that, I like the message within the poem. The Mariner indiscriminately kills a bird, leading to a curse on him and the death of all his shipmates. The curse only begins to lift when he finds it in himself to rejoice in and bless the natural life around him. The poem also ends with this moral:
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small:
For the dear God, who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
I think this is pretty relevant in a time global warming and destruction. If you kill nature, you kill humanity. People are starting to decide that focusing on the human toll of climate change will force people to recognize the need for change; I say that if people don’t care about the toll it’s taking on animals, they cannot care about the toll it is taking on humans. As part of the same creation, if you lack the capacity to care about one, you lack the capacity to care about the other. Of course, not caring about other humans leads to things like wars fought for control of oil, which devastate both humans and the environment. The oil then contributes to climate change, furthering devastating humans and nature, until more is required, necessitating the start of another fraudulent war. It's a self-perpetuating cycle, but not fueled by hate. Instead, it's fueled by apathy and greed. The destruction is a side effect of greed, and the apathy allows it to be called progress.