a walk of flame

just returned from a walk. i watched the sun's last flames fade out of the treetops. i felt, more than saw, the dusk settle under the trees, in the folds of the hills, and out over the flat blue water. the air chilled quietly as i walked, the bugs swarmed sporadically, and the day folded over itself as it lay down to rest.

i saw a frog, a tiny brown frog, only as long as the last joint of my pinky finger. almost 2mm long, and less wide. i have never before seen a frog that small, that brown, that delicate. i caught it, held it in my hand, watched it in the increasing dimness, and it didn't leave until i put my finger right next to it; then it jumped down to the brown ground, where it blended it almost perfectly. somehow seeing and holding that frog refreshed me. it reduces the feeling of living trapped in civilization, surrounded by busy people and white walls. i touched life today. i need to do that more often, but life cannot be conjured out of thin air. i must walk in ways where it lives, then hope that in my stillness and calmness it will allow itself to be noticed and perhaps even caught. wildness is something wonderful. it helps restore perspective; it calms, soothes and heals; it teaches and corrects.

oh, how much men praise civilization! and how they destroy wildness when they can! but a pinch of the wild is necessary to maintain tameness; a thing has no comparative value unless it is compared, unless the other alternatives are known. if a person sees, hears, knows no hint of wildness, they won't even be able to properly appreciate tameness, much less understand why or how it is important. i don't know what i'm talking about, really. but give me a touch of the wild - or more than a touch, a bucketful - give this to me in everything. don't hand me something completely tame; wildness gives the wonder, the excitement. nothing truly beautiful is thoroughly tame. that wildness co-existing with the tame is part of what makes it so wondrous. after all, there is nothing spectacular about tameness co-existing with tameness, is there? but wild and tame, crazy and sane... beauty is wild.

my soul is smiling, i think.

another weekend, another day, another pile of thoughts and feelings to coalesce into me. i'm at school this weekend - no visiting. a group of people from my dorm went to lynch park today. it's right on the ocean, so i had a chance to let waves wash over my feet and splash my legs. i walked through sand. i closed my eyes and let ocean seep into my nose and roar in my ears. it was good. there's also a sunken garden - mostly roses - enclosed by a fancy brick wall. it looked like something out of shakespeare, something i've never seen before except in books and movies and my imagination. we were there for a few hours, and the sun shone without roasting, the grass cooled without freezing, and we had smores and games (and homework) and fun. i'm very glad i went. seeing the ocean again made it worthwhile. all the other stuff just made it better.

then i had a good long phone conversation with my very own Mango, ate dinner (pizza again. sadness.), did homework, played ping-pong, walked through the halls (which were very empty and quiet. one problem with people living nearby is that they sometimes just aren't here for the weekend. it confuses me.), then cleaned some of my room. now it is getting late. but i accomplished much today - i worked, i played, i smiled and laughed, and the sun shone with a blessing. happiness in the little things.

classics...mmm

thus ends my first real weekend here. the majority of it was spent sleeping, reading, or watching stargate sg-1. i absolutely love the fact that my homework involves reading things that i would read for fun. then, today, was a meeting. and not just any meeting. it was the first meeting, ever, of the classical studies club. which is going to be awesome. it was so crazy, listening to people talk about classical studies, about latin conjugations, what the proper plural form of "toga" is and all kinds of other random things. in some ways, it reminded me of Olin. it's a group of people intensely interested and incredibly knowledgeable in an area of study that actually takes brains to understand. these are people who know latin, and greek, maybe hebrew; who study philosophy, history, literature; who are interested in anything pertaining the "classics"; anything ancient; anything that is the foundation on which our culture is built. this is stuff that i've never had an opportunity to learn, but have always been curious about. this is stuff that, the more i see, the more i want to know, to learn, to study. we're going to read some of ovid's metamorphosis every week at our meeting. and these people are cool. there's nothing like a small group of crazily interested and intelligent people in one place to make one feel at home. yum. this pleases me. hurrah for people who care about improving thought! being gadflies. i think i would really enjoy being a gadfly... at least now people aren't forced to drink hemlock.

wow it's late

and i really ought to be asleep. but i'm not. just had a very long phone conversation with my sister, and am currently waiting for my aspirin to kill my headache (while staring at a computer screen. really smart, i know. the perfect way to remove headache.). i am entering my first real weekend here, and my roommate is at a retreat. so i am by myself, with a french test to study for, and nothing else to do. come for a visit, anyone?

and life is good. got my cell phone - finally i'm up to date - and so far i've been taking pictures of monkeys. yes, monkeys. i like monkeys. and i like sleep. so why am i still awake? i'm not sure. i'm really not sure. i think i felt like typing something that the whole world could read: something insubstantial and pointless, that will benefit nobody, and possibly make no sense whatsoever.

you know what? someone needs to invent an IQ radar. that way i could tell who was smart and who wasn't, so i could find the "intellectuals" with minimum effort and social embarrassment... although it would be awkward to go up to someone and say "hi, my IQRADAR says you're a brainiac. may i be your friend?" that sounds sketchy. but it might be nice to find those smart people. there're just too many people here! i'm overwhelmed, lost in a sea of faces, and i'm not good at starting conversations. such is the story of my life. that and monkeys. and batman. and movies in which people die. and tea with honey and biscotti. and sleep. yes, sleep sounds like a good idea. when i start equating faces and monkeys and tea and death, i need sleep. so off i go... into the wild blue yonder, quoting songs i partially know...

i thank you all

thank you, Olin people! thank you for giving me an entertaining weekend, for sharing your lives with me, for welcoming me with open arms, for being so ridiculously smart, and for making me laugh. i enjoyed my weekend with you. i enjoyed the movies, discussions, meetings, construction, and general feeling of "life is insane but that's ok." you'll have to come visit me sometime. and let me know if anything extra-cool is happening that i ought to attend... (expresso? as long as it's not on a wednesday...)

life is definitely ok now. no, that's wrong. it's better than ok. it's good. i'm not even sure why; it's not that everything's great. there are annoyances, things that bother me, times i feel very alone and vulnerable. but there are also amazing moments when i feel loved absolutely, when an idea hits that is just so cool, moments when something totally random makes me smile or burst out laughing. it truly is the small things that make life good and worth living.

so thank you, Olin, for contributing to my moments of wonder and joy and laughter and randomness. thank you for loving me.

weekend fun

i sit on a couch looking out the window at olin's back parking lot. i'm here for the weekend. arrived last night. it is good to see people, and to be confused at where they're living, and to not be able to get in any buildings without someone else, and to play fuseball on a good table, and to just be here again. funny, it feels so familiar. different, yes, since many familiar faces are gone - replaced by new ones. but still familiar.

greeting people, talking with them, and mingling here, i realize that i'm not here anymore. not really. it's been long enough that i feel slightly out of place, disjointed, awkward. and some people of whom i saw a great deal while i was here i have not spoken to for months. it's like a severing, a chasm exists; two things drawn apart by the mere force of time. the only way to eliminate that gap is to fill it in by conversation, work, anything done together. so when communication is cut, a canyon grows. and now it is strange, stilted, almost like the way it was when i first met people. i say almost, because it's not quite. it's almost worse, because there's the memory of what it was, next to the obviousness that it isn't. not anymore. it's not like the opening of an old wound; it's like the scratching of a scab. that first scratch makes it itch like mad, and it takes tremendous resistance to ignore that itch and let it continue to heal. why is it that one of the primary lessons i learn when i visit olin is how complicated runs life? olin makes things crazy.

is it bad to be drawn to insanity like this?