Three down

zero to go.


I'm going to play in the snow.


: )

I am in love

with Sufjan Stevens.

This man is a brilliant poet and a musical genius. He has composed a beautiful lyric about the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr. His song titles alone often stand as self-contained verse. My personal favorite of this ilk is "Out of Egypt, Into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals As I Run", though "To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and It Involves an Inner Tube, Bath Mats, and 21 Able-bodied Men" has its merit as well. He plays the banjo, musically, without twang. He also plays the oboe, and well. He paints intricately beautiful musical landscapes ranging from a delightfully cacophonous hometown marching band to a pleasantly chaotic swirling flurry of delicate snowflakes on a magically bright winter day. And as if that weren't enough, here is a direct quote extracted from his recently-released Christmas album: "your mom's goin' to the country."

"Twenty minutes late is early,"

I remarked several months ago, in all seriousness, after turning in a term paper which I had not quite finished by the "deadline." (When attached to "line", "dead" for me carries more the meaning of "guide". It is a venomous creed.) It has stuck, more or less, as my more or less (un)official motto.

Just under five hours is practically the same as twenty minutes.

...right?

(2 down, 1 to go)

When I am stressed,

I inhale marshmallows.

I am stressed.

Because I am sure you are dying to know...

...and I want to brag about a minor accomplishment which is actually not so minor for me, and which should not be celebrated but I really want it to be, I give you an update on the paper status:

Papers due in the next 5 days, one of which must be submitted within the next 25 hours: still 0.5 down, 1.5 to go

Papers due eight months ago, which taunted me constantly during that entire period: ZERO!!!!!!

It was by far the longest paper I have ever written, so long that the staple didn't go through all the pages. Maybe I just have a weak stapler, I don't know. Anyway, it is really nice to no longer have that hanging over my head. I mean, you get a lot of weird looks when there is an as-yet-formless-term-paper-sort-of-in-progress-but-mostly-just-ignored-and-avoided floating above your head wherever you go. I think I might kind of miss its reflection in the mirror, though. Meh, I'll get over it. Three cheers for a girl who is (not entirely) powerless in the face of a paper without a due date. Now on to the papers which do have due dates, which are very soon. Maybe once I am done with those I will write a real post. This one is fake.

Update

Papers that were due this week which are now due next week: 0 down, 1 to go

Papers still due this week, though one day later: 0.5 down, 0.5 to go

Papers due eight months ago, but still acceptable: 0.5 down, 0.5 to go


Unfortunately, 0.5 + 0.5 here does not equal a single (1) completed paper.
But my chances of surviving the week have skyrocketed. (I'll get out the parachute just in case. I have been reading Altazor...)

Keeping in mind...

...that everything I do (especially school-related tasks) tends to take me at least twice as long as I anticipate, do I:

a) schedule twice as much time as my first instinct tells me to plan for, or

b) try to beat the system by scheduling half as much (or less!?) time to complete the same activities

?

holiday greens

Tonight Cupido stopped by after work. He smelled like pine trees. I love that smell.

When he came in, he handed me something in a plastic sandwich bag. Naiad and I had been watching a movie, so the lights were off and I couldn't see what it was. I soon determined that it was a plant specimen and, remembering that he had promised to bring me flowers, removed it from the bag and, though thinking that this wasn't exactly what I expected, searched in vain for a blossom or a bud. I couldn't quite make sense of it.

Honestly, I cannot remember ever seeing real mistletoe before.

That probably didn't go exactly how he had planned.

as a side note...

...and a shameless plagiarization,

Papers due next week: 0.5 down, 1.5 to go

Papers due eight months ago: 0.1 down, 0.9 to go

a special trilingual post

During my recent foray into the K'iche' Maya language and culture, I came across Humberto Ak'abal (not personally, just literarily), a Guatemalan poet who publishes in both Maya K'iche' and Spanish. Here is the Spanish version of one of my favorites:

¡Ay!
quién pudiera ser alondra.

Ella sólo volando puede cantar;
cuanto más alto es su vuelo,
más bello su canto.


I am long out of practice in literary translation, but I'll give it a shot:

Oh!
who could be the skylark?

Only flying can she sing;
the higher her flight,
the prettier her song.


and just for fun, an even worse translation into German:

Ach!
wer könnte Feldlerche sein?

Nur fliegend kann sie singen;
je höher ihr Flug,
desto schöner ihr Lied.

Things I want to remember...

...about this little corner of the world I have called home for the last couple of years. Not that I am planning on leaving any time soon (not until I finish my coursework, anyway), but all this talk by my roommates lately about graduating and moving on to bigger and better things and more, shall we say, luscious places, makes me realize that pretty soon this little world of mine is going to change a lot. When that happens, I can replay the following scenes in my head, a sort of vignette recalling this will-be-by-gone epoch. In no particular order (I tend to prefer chaotic aesthetics in the visual arts), and with no pretensions of being an all-inclusive list:

- eating Costa salads and perusing bridal magazines with Naiad and PRincess.

- relief society in the singles' ward: sitting in the back corner of the room, singing the men's parts to the hymns, and finding something to color.

- afternoon naps (and the occasional overnight slumber) on the windowseat.

- inordinate amounts of caffeine and chocolate (often in brownie form) in the middle of the night while Naiad and/or I try to write a term paper in one night (this happens several times a semester).

- making a ridiculous amount of cinnamon rolls with Naiad and Saule. consuming the leftovers (there was still a ton even after half the ward showed up) with Naiad at four in the morning, laughing hysterically about cuckoo birds and buttons and omelettes. don't ask.

- OC marathons with Naiad and Banana.

- evening crossword puzzling with Naiad and PRincess and PRince.

- gchatting with Naiad and PRincess... while we were all in the same room.

- grocery shopping with Naiad. waiting in the checkout line while she wanders off to look at something shiny.

- the time that Naiad and yarjka and Cupido and I went to dinner together and acted like we were about 13.

- that time PRincess vacuumed the floor at 2:30 in the morning just to piss off the neighbors, who had already named their wireless network in honor of their less-than-savory sentiments toward us.

- last Valentine's day, when Naiad and I went to dinner at Sam Hawk's and read poetry aloud while we waited for our food, taking note of all the weird looks we got from the couples at the other tables.

- crepe party (aka creep party) for the cast of the Spanish play. that story about Pollock in earth tones.

- the joys of living with Coconut Creme: idiolectical curiosities, coconut sticky rice with mango, feeling conspicuously white, and never a dull moment.

- the heteroglossia in which I have basqued: ancient Greek, Latin, Spanish, German, Arabic, Thai, Maya K'iche', and sometimes English. if we count the music we listen to and the movies we watch, add French, Portuguese, modern Greek, Gaelic, Gallego, Yukatek Maya, Italian, Icelandic, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, and who knows what else to the list.

Happy blogiversary to me!

Today marks exactly one year since I started this blog.

I was just looking through all my previous entries, which didn't take too long considering how terribly s p a r s e they have been during the last oh, seven of those twelve months, and it was interesting to revisit some of the experiences and themes governing the last year of my life. I guess the recorded history is pretty much limited to last winter semester, since I have been so negligent since then. Sometimes it seems like those days of struggling to get to Latin in the mornings and enthusiastically attending K'iche' in the evenings, of becoming enamored of and drawing inspiration from B's puer senex eyes, of making new friends and exploring new avenues and getting interested in not-typically-skylark things, were so long ago. And yet it is a little difficult to believe that all that happened almost a year ago.

Some things have not really changed. I still struggle with heavy loads of schoolwork and chronic procrastination and the occasional (though less frequent now) consequence of feeling like a spectator in my classes. I still find it somewhat difficult to get to my daily 9am class, though not quite so difficult since it is a living language (German instead of Latin) and there is added incentive that even gets me there ten minutes early if I can manage it. I still find beauty and inspiration in the sky and temporary solace in chocolate.

Other things have changed quite a bit. I am still very young in many ways, but I feel that I have grown up a lot during the past year, more than in previous years. Like a spiritual growth spurt, maybe. I still have a long way to go, and some days I feel like the final destination is entirely uncertain, but I think that I am getting closer to whatever it is. I have learned a lot about who I am and where I am going and what is going to help me get there. I am older (another birthday came and went in Mexico) and wiser (says my college diploma) and constantly striving toward bigger and better things and getting closer to uncharted territory. I am trying to figure out this grad school game and preparing to be a teacher and an editor and uncovering a myriad fears and anxieties. I am constantly trying to plan for an uncertain future and occasionally wanderlusting. I cherish my relationships with family and friends and I am making conscious, though maybe not consistent, efforts to strengthen and preserve them, particularly the former.

And I am in love.

More on that, and other topics, in future installments of soareyes. Let this be my new blogyear's resolution to make up for those long blogless epochs of the last several months and maybe give someone a reason to stop by every so often. To a more prolific year...