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A Memory of Time

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m&ms487

:: 2008 30 June :: 8.26am

Today is the day they notify the recipients of the ten thousand dollar scholarship.

oh hell.

drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 25 June :: 12.47pm

It rained for a while earlier. It was wonderful to hear the droplets pound the cement and create little rivers in the growing grass.

I worked last night until 11, and I'm leaving for work in about an hour to do it again. I worked 38 hours last week and I have 37 and a half this week. I'm at work all the time, but I'm trying to increase my fringe hours (an average of how many hours you work per day for the entire year) so that I can actually get paid vacation and days off. My anniversary date is July 26, so I have to get my fringe up by then, thus I'm working my ass off, not taking lunches to get that extra half an hour on days where I'm not working a full eight, stuff like that.

But, it is leading some nice paychecks. Unfortunately, my first rent payment is due in a few days which all but depletes the savings I've stashed away the past few months. A day in the life...

I'm still waiting to hear on three scholarship opportunities. All should be announced within the next week or so. Although I'm financially set as far as financial aid, I would really like to refuse one or both of the loans that I was awarded if I got one or two of the scholarships. I would also like to not have to work next school year because of all the responsibilities I've taken on...but I doubt that'll happen.

The Inferno has gone by the wayside; now I'm purusing the Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Criticism while on breaks at work. It's quite informative, and since I'm taking a very prestigious class next semester with a very intelligent professor, I figure it will serve me well to know the difference between the meaning of classicism depending on the century, and all the different forms of Comedy, especially the Spanish ones.

drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 23 June :: 2.19pm

I made hummus today. It was yummy.

drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 21 June :: 6.46pm

Reading the text of Dante's Inferno with the original and translated text side by side makes me want to learn Italian.

And then I remember that I haven't even taken French 101 yet.

Why does language have to be so ambiguous and random!?!

2 memories made | drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 20 June :: 5.51pm

I just feel so tired. My day off, and I feel tired.

I guess that's what happens when...

whatever.

I'm analyzing the previous poem more in depth. It's quite depressing, and I feel like I'm missing something. I think Eliot's trying to say that he's an atheist, and if there is a god, we're really fucked.

Me too.

drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 18 June :: 11.47pm

Dear Student,

At this time the awarding of the Bulletin Scholarships has been completed. Unfortunately, you were not selected for a scholarship awarded by the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid (OSFA) for the 2008-2009 academic year. There were over 475 applicants this year and only 147 received a scholarship. We will keep your application on file and will consider you for additional scholarships that may become available. Please apply again in March 2009 if you are not graduating in May.

We wish you continued success as you pursue your educational goals.

Sincerely,

Judith Boyd
Assistant Director
Scholarships and Financial Aid



Okay, so if a 3.95 GPA can't get me any academic scholarships in this country, what am I suppose to do!?!

drops of time


fishyrere

:: 2008 17 June :: 9.20pm

Norman died.

*cries*

drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 15 June :: 10.28pm
:: Mood: complacent

It's late and I'm extremely exhausted; yet, I cannot, will not sleep. My body will not rest, so I am up, and writing. I am here.

I was reviewing some of my anthologies of literature as I often do upon trying to sleep. I flip through the pages and catch words, lines, sometimes whole stanzas or paragraphs of immortalized words and tonight I happened across one of the most depressing, yet insightful poems written in the modern period. It is T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."

It seems like this time in the world-this time in my life with which I can view the world-fits into this piece so well. It talks about the fall of man because of what mankind has become: weak cowards. Eliot likens men to scarecrows in the desert that have no eyes and can only whisper meaningless things; their only hope is death.


I.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
We shipser together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry glass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appera:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
IN the wind's singing
More distand and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III.
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, her they recive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.


Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.


1925


Eliot says "This is the dead land" because we aren't living, and as much as we want to repent and "[tremble] with tenderness," we are only forming "prayers to broken stone," the same stone Eliot reveals that only exist because of the "supplication" of mankind's hands. We worship what we make, but prayers don't help any when you worship false ideals and material wealth made in hopes of becoming whole again that were made by corrupt hands. The act of the prayer can't even be completed because it can only be formed by the lips of the dead man who cannot speak; prayer that is nothing more than whispers that are "quiet and meaningless."

The whole effect? The futility of life, the cowardice of man, the corruption of man, inability to speak or see, the only possibly redeption and hope in man's death or nonexistence, the "shadow" of corruption in which we ruin everything that is good and pure in the world, man's inability to end his world "not with a band but a whimper."

Many times I feel this. Many times I see this.

1 memories made | drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 15 June :: 8.10pm

There are so many journals that are suspended in time like a fly in an amulet of amber.

It seems like everyone leaves off on a high point in their lives, descibing good times with friends they probably don't talk to now; high school replaced by the doldrum of the working world, paying bills, realizing how disparate we all are from each other. Instead of writing about an unremarkable life they just all decided to inexorably stop at the climax.


Or maybe they're all off having such a good time they just forgot about woohu.

Or perhaps they're all indolent. Writing is an excerise of the mind. Sometimes it takes all the energy I have to come up with a complete transcribed thought; then again, I will never be able to completly transcribe my thoughts into words. Words are insufficient for the goings-ons of my mind.

drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 14 June :: 10.50pm

I punched out at 10:10pm from work. I'm in again in less than six hours. Woot for 6:45 am shifts. boo.

drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 12 June :: 9.51pm

I had an Andy sighting today. He was at Meijer with Clem and Jessa. Yes, folks, the great creator of woohu goes to Meijer.

On to other items:

I'm reading The Inferno by none other than Dante. I've always been curious about the whole hell thing for the simple fact that if it does exist, that's where you can mail your correspondences to me in the afterlife. I don't believe in God GOD...you know, He who smites and give powers to part seas and all that. I believe in a higher power, which I prefer to call fate.

So, it was my pleasure to start reading about where I could possibly spend eternity in some nicely translated verse. In all actuality, I would only be banished to the second circle, or the realm of the damned for having premarital relations. This entails constantly contorting while being thrown through "That hellish cyclone that can never rest" which "snatches the spirits up in its driving whirl/ [and] whisks them about and beats and buffets them." That is for people who commit adulterous affairs...so I'm not quite sure if I would fully fit in there.

If I don't, then I'll only be relegated to limbo, which isn't all that bad I guess. It would just be a bunch of people, like Virgil, Homer, Aristotle, and some unbaptized babies who "did not sin." People who "lived before the Christian faith, [but] did not give God homage as they ought" and the only bad thing is they are "hopeless, [and] live forever in desire."

Poetry just makes everything seem a little better. That's why I'm an English major. When I'm starving because food is too expensive and I have to pay back college loans, I'll have my poetry and the knowledge that I'll have a cyclone to one day call home.

2 memories made | drops of time


fishyrere

:: 2008 10 June :: 10.58am

I'm settling in. I think I like it here. It sucks because I'm so far away from most of you but I think this is really good for me. I'm moving on. I'm getting past everything thats happened to me. I feel more free.

9 memories made | drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 10 June :: 9.15am

He has evidence and a impecible argument for impeachment of Bush and no one cares. No one.

Just another crazy liberal spouting things off again.

I need to move to sweden.

5 memories made | drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 7 June :: 10.26am

I have work again, later today.

After the whole postal scandal, I'm not sure what's going to happen in the next two months. The only thing I know is that I won't have to work with that group of people after August, and I doubt I will ever work with them again.

I can't believe the shit I go through to make $7.50 an hour.

4 memories made | drops of time


m&ms487

:: 2008 1 June :: 8.43pm

I went to a baby shower this afternoon for the girlfriend of my parents' friends' son. It was long, but it made me very worried at myself. My body or my mind, I'm not sure which at this point, is telling me that it's time to have a baby; but my logical mind says "ohhh, no way, not yet."

And that's a good thing. I want to be prepared to have a child, even though you'll all tell me "you'll never be prepared," I mean that I want to be fairly financially secure, working in a good job, be settled in a semi-permanent apartment or house, and, of course, be married (eventhough I'm pratically already married).

I don't know...just seeing how happy she was made me want that. I want to be a mother someday...I don't even care if it's my biological child or not. I just want to be a mother.

...but, again, when I and Rueben are ready...even though I doubt he'll ever be ready.

oh, by the way, I almost passed out the other day because the temperature behind the service desk was at least 82 degrees. Hot.

drops of time

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