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| So many bookcases!! |
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| Confused tourists? |
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| No, my wonderful moving team |
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Movers and Shakers
It isn't every day while sitting in a hundred-plus-year-old building, that one experiences an earthquake. Frankly, my first impression was to laugh; after all a room looks funny jiggling like a bowl of jello-salad. Also, the bewildered looks on the faces of the teacher & student panel appointed to orient incoming grad-students momentarily gave me a perverse satisfaction to see them looking the way I had been feeling for the last two days.
The humor I found in the situation, unfortunately, was short lived as my campus went into a state of emergency. This emergency turned out to mean that all students and staff on campus had to join the grad students in our orientation auditorium. To make room for this large number of people, all our tables and chairs were packed away. Once our seating arrangements had been folded up and made inaccessible, our swelling numbers led the powers that be to decide it would help control the excitable atmosphere in the room if everyone sat down, and so we all had to sit on the ground. Had I known in the morning that an earthquake would have me sitting on the ground for 45 minutes, I wouldn't have worn a skirt today.
Today has been by far the most interesting day in DC, and the one which should have produced the most anxiety or emotion--afterall earthquakes are supposed to be disconcerting and leave you feeling vulnerable and out of control. For whatever reason, I experienced significantly more anxiety walking to the bus stop for the first time on Monday, than I did in the midst of a seismic wave. Perhaps after moving across the country and anticipating a demanding grad school experience has used up all my available reserves of worry. Or, more likely, an event so far out of my control that it cannot be anticipated, predicted or prepared for, cannot, therefore, be worried about.
In other news, I moved to Washington DC last week--well, no, not really. Technically I'm in the northern tip of Silver Spring, MD, a city just north of DC, but accessible by metro from the city. Mom, Dad, and bro Josh helped me get settled in last week. This is how it went: my dad and brother moved the heavy stuff and then toured my neighborhood, reporting back to me any places of interest. My mom was sociable and motherly towards my new roommate, Hannah, while unpacking my kitchen supplies, bathroom supplies, clothes, and bedding. And I wandered around in a daze, occasionally inserting myself into a conversation before returning to my comforting boxes and boxes of books that I had decided was my number one priority to unpack and organize on my bookshelves. Eliza, my cat, ran around alternating between getting in the way and trying to escape.
Somehow I mustered my courage on Monday to venture out of my new sanctuary and go for an early morning run before getting myself ready for day one of Orientation. I will not bore you, readers, with the details of orientation. Imagine a degree in pedagogy being completed in one and a half days and you'll have some idea of the task the orienteers are facing and the mixture of unnecessary and crucial information the orientees are subject to.
Eliza has suddenly become very interested in sitting top of my hands right now, as I'm trying to finish this post. So, to save myself from an unhappy cat, I'll end this post. Till next time...
The humor I found in the situation, unfortunately, was short lived as my campus went into a state of emergency. This emergency turned out to mean that all students and staff on campus had to join the grad students in our orientation auditorium. To make room for this large number of people, all our tables and chairs were packed away. Once our seating arrangements had been folded up and made inaccessible, our swelling numbers led the powers that be to decide it would help control the excitable atmosphere in the room if everyone sat down, and so we all had to sit on the ground. Had I known in the morning that an earthquake would have me sitting on the ground for 45 minutes, I wouldn't have worn a skirt today.
Today has been by far the most interesting day in DC, and the one which should have produced the most anxiety or emotion--afterall earthquakes are supposed to be disconcerting and leave you feeling vulnerable and out of control. For whatever reason, I experienced significantly more anxiety walking to the bus stop for the first time on Monday, than I did in the midst of a seismic wave. Perhaps after moving across the country and anticipating a demanding grad school experience has used up all my available reserves of worry. Or, more likely, an event so far out of my control that it cannot be anticipated, predicted or prepared for, cannot, therefore, be worried about.
In other news, I moved to Washington DC last week--well, no, not really. Technically I'm in the northern tip of Silver Spring, MD, a city just north of DC, but accessible by metro from the city. Mom, Dad, and bro Josh helped me get settled in last week. This is how it went: my dad and brother moved the heavy stuff and then toured my neighborhood, reporting back to me any places of interest. My mom was sociable and motherly towards my new roommate, Hannah, while unpacking my kitchen supplies, bathroom supplies, clothes, and bedding. And I wandered around in a daze, occasionally inserting myself into a conversation before returning to my comforting boxes and boxes of books that I had decided was my number one priority to unpack and organize on my bookshelves. Eliza, my cat, ran around alternating between getting in the way and trying to escape.
Somehow I mustered my courage on Monday to venture out of my new sanctuary and go for an early morning run before getting myself ready for day one of Orientation. I will not bore you, readers, with the details of orientation. Imagine a degree in pedagogy being completed in one and a half days and you'll have some idea of the task the orienteers are facing and the mixture of unnecessary and crucial information the orientees are subject to.
Eliza has suddenly become very interested in sitting top of my hands right now, as I'm trying to finish this post. So, to save myself from an unhappy cat, I'll end this post. Till next time...
Monday, August 15, 2011
In my end is my beginning
The circumstances were all too familiar: I was sitting at a table full of pulled-pork on buns and surrounded by well-wishing friends. Despite my best efforts to avoid the term "open-house" in all of the invitations to this gathering, the afternoon had begun to take on a distinctly post-highschool graduation feel. However, regardless of the red herrings: the beautiful buffet line-up of food, and the hubs of people gathered around picnic tables chatting cheerfully, I had invited no one to the park yesterday to celebrate a recent commencement achievement. Rather, I had asked that they be present so that I could say goodbye. In two days I plan to load my worldly belongings into a truck, peel the suction cup of my heart away from my loving community in West Michigan, and move to our nation's capital where I intend to spend the next half decade or so completing a masters and a doctorate in English Literature.
As I attempted to steer the conversation away from tear-inducing topics with a friend yesterday, she asked me how I planned on keeping everyone up-to-date on my comings and goings, adventures and misadventures, etc. And I said with some embarrassment that I hadn't really come up with a good plan. She advised me to start a blog for that very purpose. So, here I am, making my first post on a blog while morosely contemplating my impending departure, and wishing my spirit of adventure would switch on.
At the advice of another scholarly friend, I've been keeping TS Eliot's Four Quartets near me for the inspiration and cold comfort that they provide. Last night rereading "Little Gidding," the final section came at my mind again in full force, with the profundity of relevance to my current experiences:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
Eliot's concern with the circular connection of beginnings and endings and his insistence of the weightiness of the present moment climax in this final section. I especially appreciate his insistence on the possibilities of purposeful language: "every phrase and every sentence"functions as a microcosm of this world filled with beginnings and endings. Words connect and interweave with actions in his dance of timeless moments. Eliot walks a fine line between potential and reality, a line I will try to respect, but this template for language and the deliberate attitude toward life do fire me in the direction of excitement as I make my acquaintance with beginnings and endings:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will b to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
As I attempted to steer the conversation away from tear-inducing topics with a friend yesterday, she asked me how I planned on keeping everyone up-to-date on my comings and goings, adventures and misadventures, etc. And I said with some embarrassment that I hadn't really come up with a good plan. She advised me to start a blog for that very purpose. So, here I am, making my first post on a blog while morosely contemplating my impending departure, and wishing my spirit of adventure would switch on.
At the advice of another scholarly friend, I've been keeping TS Eliot's Four Quartets near me for the inspiration and cold comfort that they provide. Last night rereading "Little Gidding," the final section came at my mind again in full force, with the profundity of relevance to my current experiences:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
Eliot's concern with the circular connection of beginnings and endings and his insistence of the weightiness of the present moment climax in this final section. I especially appreciate his insistence on the possibilities of purposeful language: "every phrase and every sentence"functions as a microcosm of this world filled with beginnings and endings. Words connect and interweave with actions in his dance of timeless moments. Eliot walks a fine line between potential and reality, a line I will try to respect, but this template for language and the deliberate attitude toward life do fire me in the direction of excitement as I make my acquaintance with beginnings and endings:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will b to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
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