Winter Wander

Now, the second week of school is closing, and I have shifted to the pace of my classes. Now, after the glory of the holidays, everyone looks forward to summer. However, I revisited my fall professors, reliving the knowledge and conversing about the future.

Microeconomics has always been an interesting class. The concepts are diluted and simplified and lucid, yet the information still manages to drift away after some time. It is almost like Calculus, but can anything be compared to Calculus?

The root and breath of microeconomics lies in memorization; repetition and practice problems were the best methods to drink the chapters in.

Yes, it was surprising that I ranked top of the class, but what really surprised me was my professor's characterization of me as highly intelligent. This may seemingly parallel one another, but repetition and work does not guarantee intelligence. What are the study strategies but refined capabilities to understand terms in the full context?

I feel that the term "smart" is radically overused by peers. It has no substance for it is just a concept, approximations of how well particular abilities fit into individual rubrics. The undercurrent of my mind used to consistently meander through a personal classification. Was I able? What was my contribution to the world but a voice and two hands and scruffy feet?

I am questioning the substance of intelligence testing. Does it richly delve into the mind, or is it a wire trap meant to provoke falsities?

Is intelligence inherited? In which, then, evolution has created a natural hierarchy, a natural advantage which could lead to global caste system. Or is intelligence culturally constructed? Then, it would be arbitrary to society- an all too powerful decision to manipulate.

Or, even better, is it a combination to both ingredients?

I am taking a general psychology course this semester, and as I glaze over the sea of some 300 students, I recognize the intensity and great love of looking within. This science dives only into the individual. Vocabulary revolves around my breadth as human being...and I'm not so set on the idea.

The Washington monument has been targeted, pointed and probed by khaki-ed tourists with floppy sun hats. But one of my most missed moments of summer and home, besides the art museum, which always leaves me swimming, and crossing the avenues of Georgetown, which always leaves me exhilarated, is to go to the monument.

And sprawl across the wore stone benches amidst a whisper of a breeze due to the high altitude, and look up. Only then can the enormity of the world rise. And I realize the frivolity of concerns, worries, insecurities. We are fragments and shards and our deaths do not disturb the universe, but only awaken the endless cycle of life that is meant to happen anyway.

12/06/2011 lacking inspiration

Hi Guys! Guess what my fall semester classes are? Guess. You'll never guess.
They're an exciting bunch, overall, but a few are occasional party poopers.

The fantastico list with which I have each a final next week:

!Introduction to Microeconomics!: the chex mix, the salsa in a mexican fiesta, the maestro in an orchestra.

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology: To embrace my inner coffee-drinking, turtleneck-wearing self full of passions and ambitions to visit exotic places like the Gambia and the Amazon.

Introduction to Elementary Statistics: I didn't learn anything.

Fundamental Human Communications: I learned I am not an effective communicator.

Survey of English Literature: From Victorian to Modern: Semi-decent morning class. At least the windows faces the mountains. A little chilling though (and not just the classroom temperature).

So basically, this schedule looks like an introduction to nowhere in life. Can't wait for next semester.

Musee des Beaux Art

W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.


In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

A Hundred Visions and Revisions.

It's interesting how intense our visceral reactions are to profound poetry. My morning English class consisted of only T.S. Eliot and his lazy, dreary voice clouding the classroom with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. A hazy blanket hanged over the Shenandoah Valley as we analyzed speaker paralysis and life's continuous river.

The stream-of-consciousness  shown through his internal monologue evokes speaker empathy; we feel the trials and tribulations of a prudish, transfixed man caught in the daily routine of the mundane. Often, we can translate the literary into the literal and develop a higher sense of knowing, of enlightenment as we navigate through our own waters of life.

Certain times, however, we can interpret the literal into the figurative. Today, the valley welcomes rain, a ritual cleansing, a calm shower nurturing life.

It is difficult weaving through time recognizing all moments as a gift to be taken away so frivolously as it never ceases to amaze me the brilliance of the human mind and the fragility of the human body. As we all grieve in the death of another, try not to live everyday as if it is the last, only enveloped in personal aspirations, but aim to give kindness, joy, and comfort to others.

I look at my friends and I see an immense sense of friendship and dedication, a kindness that inspires me to continuously give this gift of warmth. I look back at the events of the last day and see a fusion of the community and wonder what life would be like if there was time for a hundred visions and revisions. Can we be more appreciative? More compassionate? How can we know, more than now, the hills where our lives rose and the sea where it goes?

The Thing about College.

There's something different about living with person or persons only known shortly. I'm not talking about the personal chore of changing and unchanging in some dark nook, or closing the door to the bathroom, but to exhibit the habitual aspect of yourself: the way in which you blow-dry your hair and wave your head upside down, or the way you arrange your roast beef sandwich or printing looseleaves.

There's an element of you in those everyday things, and I feel, in some way, you lose a part of your mystery, like some other force tearing into your embeddedness before Christmas.

I also think it's strange to sleep so close to someone, seeing one thousand sunrises and sunsets and waking up to only witness one. This most sacred and secretive time for dreams is shared. Perhaps I'm just a very private person in some respects, but I would reveal what I think about the most intimate topics before coming to terms with someone else seeing the most mundane, and that alone is what irritates me. 

Light flows our war of mocking words

 Today, we read Arnold in my English literature class. On this gray morning day, pouring rain, we choose to read Arnold, which heightens its melancholy nature. Hearing "The Buried Life" aloud gave me this distinctive physiological reaction, the way in which beauty makes you feel is indescribable. For me, it's not a tug or pull, but a gush of appreciation. Sometimes, I appear half-human, like in Microeconomics when we talk about the importance of capitalism and free trade, always, it's comforting to know that I am alive.


And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.

The language is gorgeous, and the theme is universal, the foundation of memorable poetry. Away from my parents, away from everything my world was, I have since taken time for myself. It is so so important to worship your needs and your desires. For me, what beauty arises from a coffee and a good book!

As I've finished all my assigned readings for this semester, there is room on the bookshelf for the art of pure enjoyment. I am perusing through Pablo Neruda, but am now faithful to Dorian Gray. If I feel depressingly enough, I'll start Wuthering Heights.

October Life.

So, now that I'm in college, I still don't feel anymore different.
I mean, I was expecting this drastic change, the comic cup to overflow with everything new and everything ingenious.
But so far, everything is mundane, beige.
Which, I really don't mind, but then I also don't mind not romanticizing anymore.
I like all my classes, and my professors are decent, and I enjoy the information I am learning.
But it's not anything earth shatteringly, deliciously good.
Sometimes, I still think I stand out on campus. Could it be my walk?

Well, anyways, I don't care. Nothing has changed, but oh, I do get very annoyed when my professors are late to class. I cut them some slack sometimes, but I am obviously paying them with time and money.

A Letter.

Dear boy in my Anthropology class,

I recognize that Anthropology is a lecture, meaning an endless sea of faces all facing away from one another. I recognize that you seem to have a friend in this class, because you try to sit by her everyday and you try to engage in conversation that seems to have more breadth than depth.

I don't know your name, or even  how tall you are. But I know that if I were a boy, I would want your hair.

The Comng of Autumn.

My darlings, time seems to fly so quickly when you're away from home! Just the other day, I felt a slight nip in the air and I know it won't be long before Autumn sweeps onto our doorsteps.

To be honest, I cannot wait for the thick bulk of my wool coats, the mountainous bulges my scarves create when tucked into my wool coats, the appearance of free flowing hair tucked into the streams of scarf fabric.

I cannot wait for boots the color of the leaves falling on the quad just outside my dorm room, and hot cider, and neatly lined pumpkins.

I could marvel about the subdued reds and oranges and yellows of the leaves gradually welcoming the changing of the seasons endlessly. But now, my only hope is to purchase another pumpkin spice latte from the library Starbucks where I will be calling home for the next week (hibernation for the exam week zombie).

The employees have already been acquainted with my name (sans correct spelling), so the hard part is out of the way.

My Favorites of FW of yet.

 

From Left- Clockwise: Prabal Gurung, Prabal Gurung, Prabal Gurung, Helmut Lang, Jill Stuart, Rag & Bone