Italy 5/18

Engulfing one ball of mozzarella per day and a bottle of red wine. Fat and happy.

College, in retrospect.

My year ended Thursday. I can describe it as a flurry of crinkled memories, like some iridescent snowstorm that just gushed and blew me into May. Honestly, I look back on the year only to remember snippets of conversation and images like film stills, and the classrooms and where I sat. It was great, actually, that I spent time with friends, strangers and myself.

My education has reached great capacities, yet in the most unexpected way. I came to college wanting to absorb everything, to soak up some rich broth like a sea sponge yet left knowing that I absolutely knew nothing at all, that nothing of this world is absolute and everything is on the verge of achieving a balance between some two dramatic dichotomies.

I guess I left college with goals toward improving myself and my image of myself. These ballooned about during my final week, during finals week. I remember distinctively, after spending days and nights in the commotion of the library, amidst the highlighters, note cards, and subdued conversation, I came home one night to an absolute and alluring silence that seemingly fed my soul. My head was swimming with facts and figures and percentages as I crawled until the covers. Yet under the dim yellow light, I stared at the coolness and solitude and finally understood the importance of being alone, even for brief moments of time.

That time created this great synthesis which amounted to a general questioning of myself and my actions and the frailty of life. I discovered that academic success does not, in any way, guarantee happiness, that I could honestly die tomorrow, and then what would my life have been? Would I even consider it significant- would my name be etched in some little corner of some desk or even on a piece of gravel?

I was recently recommended Tolstoy's A Confession in which Tolstoy dissects the general basis of his life and living- the ultimate, universal questions. In the questioning of his purpose, he attempts to encompass the infinite, which is absurd in both the philosophical and general sense. He questions why man is not dead yet, why we continue living if answers of science were acceptable enough. If we all know we are going to die and that mankind holds mere seconds of the universe's attention, why not die already? Why are we resilient and so stubborn?

An answer can be for the existence of God. That we live with this inherent notion, perhaps subconsciously, that we are to dedicate our entire beings to mapping the stars of the unknown and of an all-powerful being or energy. If this were true, then we are all on specific journeys of worship. On my first day of religion class, my professor offered a definition of religion as an "ultimate concern"- a concern regarding the end of time. Yet perhaps this answer cannot be so neatly classified into a religion, but a faith. To be faithful, I've come to know, is one of the most difficult actions in the world because it follows no path and offers no conclusive evidence of its existence except our interpretations. Yet to have it sealed with wax in our hearts is a deeply treasured essence connecting us, human nature and the world.

Tolstoy's questions are addicting and intoxicating and I cannot escape them. But I must go on living and questioning and observing as I continue my college education.

After a rejection

you should just die, explode or wither in the sun or flick off with an automatic switch. Yet why can't we?

Convincing enough.

here.