One year later

So. It's been over a year since my last post. I'm not sure anyone reads this. I lost touch over last summer. I guess I was busy. My computer died and I lost my links to many of my favorite websites. These are my excuses.

Why am I writing this blog if no one is reading it? And why am I posting it online if I don't really want anyone to read it but me? And why would I presume that my words are worth someone else's time?

Well, regardless of these thoughts, I guess I am kind of back. I had kind of forgotten that I even had a blog here.

Graduation

Exam verdict: passed.

PhD acceptance: affirmative.

Graduation date: tomorrow, 3 p.m.

Although I am graduating, it seems a bit anticlamactic in a way. First of all, it was only 2 years ago that I last marched down the aisle. Second, this seems more like the beginning--not the end. I am not changing schools or moving on to somewhere else. I will be back in the fall to start all over again.

Not that that's a bad thing.

I don't have a job for the summer yet, but Greg and I will be moving into a new place in June/July, which we are both really excited about. We will be here for most of the summer, with the exception of a few trips to Chicago area for weddings and family visits and a few possible weekend trips we are thinking of taking to visit friends or just to get away for a while. I'm looking forward to having some relaxation time with just Greg and I.

Happy summer!

I can't say it better in my own words so...

Carmen Martín Gaite, El cuarto de atrás (The Back Room):

"In times of scarcity one must make what one has last, and just as no one throws a toy away or leaves a cake half eaten, so it would not occur to anyone to consume a song quickly, because a song is not a luxury that comes one's way every day, but a fundamental item necessary for survival. One takes good care of it, thinks about it, extracts all its juice."

Substitute another word for a song -- poetry, writing, friendship, love. How much do we take for granted? How many small--but important--joys and freedoms to we take as a given? Does it take a time of scarcity to really make us treat these things as vital to our lives? Are they luxuries or necessities? And when do we start seeing the difference between the two?

count down

MA Exam date: 5 and a half days and counting. By this time next week, I will be DONE with my exam. At this point, I just want to take it and be done. I know what I know. And what I don't know, I won't know.

evening, countryside:

Tunes for driving through rolling hills just before sunset when the sun is a powerful solid orange semi-cirlce along the horizon and the trees, leaveless, are black outlines against the fading light, fanning their long arms and delicate fingers towards the sky: Neon Bible by the Arcade Fire; Springtime Can Kill You by Jolie Holland. If you want to have faith again, if you want to think, consider, contemplate, or quite simply, just see.

poppies in the windowsill

Hard to believe that it has been almost two years since I left my little house by the river in Illinois. Almost two years since I played music in a live concert. Almost two years since I have heard peacocks crying in my backyard. Almost two years since I decided I would leave the river and live among the corn.

Time to take stock. What has changed? What has stayed the same? Am I the person I wanted to be two years ago? Then again, is that even a fair question? How can we know what the future brings or who we would be able to be, who we would want to be in two years time?

Strangely, when I think back to my time at college, I don't see me living in the house I rented senior year, or the dormroom I shared for about 9 months with two other people. I see myself in the room I was in for the shortest amount of time, only about 3 months: the tiny single in the farthest corner of the first floor, so small I couldn't unloft the bed, so tiny that I only had one chair and nowhere else to sit. No tv, no couch, a used cd player, nothing much except my desk, my computer, a continuous pile of books, always a stack of cds waiting to be listened to, a dirty tea mug waiting to be washed. And 3 big windows so I could hear the spring thunderstorms, smell the rain. A big tree right outside and I tried to grow poppies in the windowsill.

Valor, agravio y mujer

I am reading/devouring novels/plays/poetry/criticism. The time has come.

I think I would like to read some more US American literature from the first half of the 20th century or the second half of the 19th century. I would like to know more about the Civil War, the Great Depression, the pioneers. I would like to read Dickens and some good Russian novels. I would like to learn more about the Spanish Civil War and make time for a few more works of Shakespeare. I would like to immerse myself in some French naturalism (Zoile, perhaps).

There are so many possibilities.

I would like to travel, see America--and beyond. Go on a long road trip: New England in the dog days of summer, the Southwest in the early spring, even all the way down into Mexico at some point. Maybe camp along the way. To spend a few days in a forest would be nice. Or out on the ocean. Or on a beach somewhere warm but not hot, maybe a large, cool lake. I would like to stay here and not travel at all, but simply walk everywhere I need. I want to have a big cookout, maybe with a keg of beer on the side, play softball and sweat. I want to sit and talk and laugh until there are tears in my eyes with good friends, new or old or both. I want to go where I don't know the language at all, taste a new taste that I had never known existed. Is that possible? I think it is, still. I would like to be mixed in a crowd of faces I have never seen before nor will ever see again, just for a few hours, perhaps. And I want to be surrounded by faces that I have known in every light, faces that I know better than my own.

I want to do everything and nothing, both at the same time. Because life is so short. And beautiful. And everything in between.

And why should I have to choose?

I choose to contradict myself.