Watching

This weekend my brother recommended that we watch Captain America and Real Steel. These were not my first choices, and I complained. But he was right: they're fun and refreshing. I'm glad I saw them. My only disappointment was that in both movies the lead woman's most crucial line was three words: "Go get 'em!"

Can you imagine a movie in which that was the lead man's main line?

It would be a little disappointing, wouldn't it?

***

I should add, though, that I'm glad those women supported their men; I just hope it was reciprocated. I've been lucky that way. My whole life I've been surrounded by men who were rooting for me: my brothers, my dad, my cousins, my professors, and now my philosopher. It's nice to have someone who'll tell me, "Go get 'em." Even though I realize that isn't their only, or even their most important, line.

Light rain 

How it rains, my dear,

and the drops stipple

sweet earth,

nature imitating Pointillism,

infusing luminescence

surreptitiously.

Biding time

What do you do when you have only four months left? I don't exactly mean four months left to live, more like four months left of sanity. Four months free of the inescapable guilt and exhausting pressure of research and writing. Four months in which my mind is own.

Lest you think I'm regretting my decision: I'm not. This is no precursor to cold feet. I will get on the plane and I will ship my books, and someday, when the time comes, I will get a new drivers license. But I know what comes after, and I know that the price of this choice, my life, is realizing afresh, every day, that you are very small and very mortal, and that the library is infinite.

So what do you do when there are four guilt-free months stretching languidly ahead?

I read novels (Moll Flanders) and Bernard Williams (Moral Luck). I persuade people to talk philosophy with me. I go to Sunday school. I plow through Greek, one verb system at a time.* I teach writing resolutely and try to remember that I too was here once, on the other side of those four years. And I arrange to learn as much Spanish as possible, given the circumstances.

I explore as widely as I can wherever I feel inclined to go, because right now, the impossible size of the library doesn't matter; the only thing that counts is that it is there at all.

*Ok. So this isn't exactly by choice: I'm prepping for an exam. 

"all in a rush / with richness"

This bright morning lacks hints of the promised late afternoon thunderstorm. It's all birdsong and dew on grass and small, pale clouds dodging the tops of trees. It's the rattle of bug legs unfolding and the staccato march of kitchen ants, and it's the uncertain crowing of a single rooster: is it spring or not?

If it is spring, then I turn things over to Hopkins, who says it better than I ever could:

Spring

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring --
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

House hunting

With a kind of insouciant guilelessness, I find and commit myself to an apartment in just three days. It's safe, though (I hope): the Skype tour suggests pleasant housemates and ample sunlight; the rent is reasonable; and I can walk or bus to campus, depending on weather and whim. My housemates this time will be German and Colombian, and one of them is an avid cultivator of indoor plants. I should emphasize the sun, which appears not only in pictures but also in live virtual tours of the place, excellent for growing plants. For once in my life, I am ferociously decisive: Send me the lease, I say. (And tell me where I can buy a bed.)

Mundane confusion

The truth is that there is not a lot to say now. My mind is buzzing, but with the humdrum and the mostly commonplace: the perpetual gloom of gray skies; the April rain christening unfolding tulips; the way my car creaks when I drive to school and the cost of the gas I'm not paying for; money--I think about money a lot and perhaps unreasonably much; the fact that I have a closet full of dresses that it's still too cold to wear; weddings and babies; and there, at the end, the prospect of another move to a part of the country that has always seemed, to my wide-ranging West Coast mind, to be small and squished together (so small and squished that I never bothered to note, until recently, that Boston is northeast of New York City).

Less humdrum than some commonplaces, I suppose, when I write it out. But hard to articulate except in fragments strung together with semicolons. Call it the part of the story where I try to remember that there is something like ordinary life, without airport security and planes or new horizons every few days; the part of the story where I sleep and rise and work, and also rest.

In sum

There was one meeting that began like this: "So did Toronto discover you? Or did you really become this good in just one year? Did we toss your application last time because we're snobs?"

And I was honest: "You know, I don't know which story is the right one."

But I do know this: last time I applied to six universities, only one of which was in the top-20, and I got five rejections and one wait-list (and that for a different program than the one for which I had originally applied). This time I applied to nine schools, seven of which were in the top-20, and I got six offers, two (extended) wait-list offers, and only one definitive rejection. 

Obviously, who you know and where you've studied matters. But so does a writing sample of an appropriate length and quality. I'd like to think my successes this time were due to a blend of both, hopefully more of the latter than the former. In the end though, the most important thing is that the system was flexible enough to give me a chance, because, as it turns out, that was all I needed. 

The end of the road

Today I picked up my MA diploma and the latest tax forms. I also sent an email accepting one of the grad program offers. Only one more degree to go (hopefully!) The school I accepted, after lengthy and agonizing deliberation, is pictured below; it's a beautiful place. It's also the last school I visited, and so this will be the end of the "on the road" series. I'm flying back to Oregon on Saturday and will be back to work on Monday. I would feel like real life can finally begin--except that moving day is only four months away. Funny how that works.

Repost: "The explosion of nothing into something"

Ulm Muenster (2008)

"Rejoice!"
from The Irrational Season, Madeleine L'Engle

Rejoice!
You have just given me the universe,
put it in my hands, held it to my lips,
oh, here on my knees have I been fed
the entire sum of all created matter,
the everything
that came from nothing.
Rejoice!
Who can doubt its power?
Did not this crumb of bread
this sip of wine
burst into life
that thundered across nothing
and became the cause of all our
celebrations?
Oh, the explosion of nothing into something,
into flaming, raging suns and shouting comets
and drops of dew and spiders' webs
into mountains bursting forth with brilliant volcanoes
valleys falling and rising
laughing with joy
earth's cracking, primordial rains flooding
a snowdrop's star, a baby's cry
oh, rejoice!
rejoice and celebrate
eyes to see and ears to hear
fingers to touch
to touch
the body's living warmth
hand stretched to hand
across nothing
making something
celebrate
lips to smile
to kiss
to take the bread and wine
rejoice
flowers grass pavements
gutters garbage cans
old people remembering
babies laughing
mothers singing
fathers celebrating
rejoice
around the table
hold hands
all round
like a ring circling a finger
placed there as a promise
holding the universe together
nothing into something
into joy and love
rejoice
and celebrate!

On the road (IV)

This photo is the reward I got for my 6am flight from Ithaca on Wednesday. It made getting up at 4.30am worthwhile.

I am at the airport on my way to Toronto, all done with campus visits, a decision all but made. I am only waiting a few days to let the data percolate.

I have met the most wonderful people all over the country in the last month, and I am exhausted but happy. It's good to be almost done. Especially because I have some serious language work to do in what remains of my year off.