Today looks promising

In the past week, I have made two decisions that have released some stress from my life:


> I stepped out of life-group leading with Chi Alpha -- This is weird because I've had that responsibility for almost four years, and now it's just gone. Jenni brought it up because she knew I wouldn't quit since my commitment is through spring quarter. So I was left to decide which is better: leading and not having time or energy to do what's expected of me and not really being very effective OR quitting early and leaving Libby alone. So I told her that's how I saw it, and she said that she'd rearrange the groups so it's more efficient (I think that was Dane's word actually - gotta love econ majors!) and the effect wouldn't be anyone actually left alone. So that's what I decided to do. But one thing that is cool for me to see is that, even though it's not "required" of me to do anything now, I still want to. This reassures me that I'm not going to become a lazy bum when I'm not around a campus anymore with a cozy college ministry to push me along. It was weird not going to resource last night, though. I left the house because I didn't want to be in my room while it was happening across the hall. So I went to Ajantha's and got all of my portioned reading for the day done. I have quite a bit of reading this quarter, and, although I try to get some reading done before the quarter starts and succeeded in reading 50 pages of Wieland, I am never disciplined enough to do the reading until there's a deadline looking at me. I think I hit my all-time high for reading this weekend. I blew through All the King's Men in a week (This is impressive, you can "ooh" and "ahh" now).

All the King's Men was fantastic! I'm definitely now a fan of Robert Penn Warren. I learned in class yesterday that he's actually one of the original New Critics. This means he was one of the first people to teach by "close reading" - my most preferred way of analyzing poetry. Dr. Rudnicki told us the story of his grandmother having Warren for Shakespeare at LSU -- the good teacher was more of a performer and Warren (the guy you took if you couldn't get into the good class) made his students go line by line and analyze the dramas. He's a poet as well, and I had no idea. I haven't gotten a chance to look at much of his other work yet, but I'm sure I'll post something if I find it worthy. To add to my ever-growing list of books I want to read when I get time, I want to read a biography of Huey P. Long, so I can know what was fabricated in this novel and what was actual.

Dane actually wants to read this book too! When he takes an interest in my work and reading, it makes me so happy. I know literature is not really his thing, but I'm pretty sure he's learning to appreciate fiction in addition to his norm of non-fiction "that you can learn from." (Three cheers for learning for fictional characters as well! Where would we be without Hamlet or Holden Caulfield?)


> I decided not to graduate until Spring 2011 -- I had been planning on graduating in the winter. That means I'd need to finish my thesis proposal in a few weeks. Not happening. Dr. Martin told me that he was surprised that I wanted to do it so early because it would be really rushed, but I thought I could do it. Since I obviously can't due to the work load with classes, I'm going to just read extra when I can and write it in the summer. The catch here is that I can't turn a proposal in in the summer because who knows where the faculty will be. This means I have to write chapters in the summer (So I can, again, be ahead and not get caught with too little time) on a topic that hasn't been approved yet. But I guess if Dr. Martin says it's OK when I finish the proposal, then it should be fine.

I'm trying to work out how I feel about these two things. Right off, they make me feel like a failure. But I could also think of it as "being smart." I just can't help feeling like I'm taking the easy way out and being lazy. People lead life groups and have a ton of work all the time, right? I kind of feel like I'm just making excuses. But I honestly read ALL weekend. There wasn't time for anything else. And I have been praying about where I should be next year, if there's a particular place God wants me. And all I feel is that I need to move on. I've been involved with XA for 5 years now, and I feel like it's time for a change. I want to start living in the real world because I'm not going to do XA forever. I want to meet women who are working and have families who I can learn from before I try and do that myself. I'm just ready. About the thesis postponement, yeah, it makes me feel like I'm long-term procrastinating, but it's just one quarter, and I didn't know what I'd do during spring quarter anyway. I'm just glad it relieves a little more pressure right now.

I'm reading Invisible Man now. For my final paper in 20th century American fiction, I'm thinking about writing about identity and how it is formed by other people or if it's even really connected to others at all. The narrator of All the King's Men seems to have some contrasting views of this subject. One time he says that you are who you are, but you need others to help you find out who you are. This seems to imply that who you are doesn't change with others, but you need them in order to know who you are. Kind of makes me think, "If a tree falls in the forest but no one hears it, did it really fall?" (or my favorite variation from Kate and Leopold, "If a man unloads the dishwasher, but the woman doesn't see him do it, did he really do it?"). I don't know. I'm only a bit into Invisible Man right now, but there has been talk so far of how everyone's fates are intertwined, so I'm thinking this could work together nicely. I'm going to have to think about this a bit more.

On a side note, I'd like it to stop being cold in the morning. I want to lay out on my roof and read and ride my bike to campus.


I'll leave you with a favorite poem of mine:

Words
-Dana Gioia

The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other--
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper--
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always--
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.