“the glove compartment is inaccurately named, and everybody knows it”
I may be among the few, but I love rainy days. The gray sky and encroaching fog highlights the contrasting transmutation of leaves from green to gold, crimson, and burning orange. The tree trunks stand dark and austere and still as leaves bend and twitch to rain drops’ dictation.
Also, it is simply entertaining to see students scurrying from building to building, mostly unprepared. Because who stops to look out the window as we’re stumbling from bed to class way too early for good mental health?
“Don’t forget about delight,” says Bruce Cockburn in one of my favorite songs. OK, Bruce. No problem. Not on a day like today when ideal conditions for napping, reading, and hot chocolate exist.
My roommates are pretty much amazing (I think this will be a frequent refrain of my life). Katie was up in the studio all night this week because she had a graphic design project due. So Elena took her a real Italian cappucino to help keep her awake. Pretty much they are very thoughtful people. Living with them is a little more complicated now that we are not in Italy, but it’s good, and I’m glad for whatever time I get to spend with them outside of class craziness.
Like last night. Art majors working on Halloween costumes are the best thing EVER (I say this, of course, without bias). Every year, the Art League (an organization for promoting crazy fun and community for anyone involved in art classes and led by an intrepid and mysterious figure known only as Captain Art Major) holds a Halloween party, usually at Daniel Finch’s house. This year I rue the fact that I will not be able to attend, because the costumes I see are colorful, brilliant, and hysterical. Trust me, photographs will follow. But only once the unveiling has taken place.
Happy Friday. Let its absurdity, its rain, and its delight usher you with a rush into the weekend.
Quotes of the day: “I don’t think he really thought that Jesus loved E-town,”
“D as in dog. . . arf arf!”
– my world views professor
“the unappeasable habit of the image”
– Robert Hass
Tuesday’s chapel made me laugh, kind of a lot. Usually I am all attention while we sing, since chapel worship is one of the few consistent worship times of my week. I sat with Tim on Tuesday, a music major who puts more energy into life than Three Mile Island produces in a year. We started chapel off by singing “Prince of Peace” — you know, men sing one line, women echo. On the chorus we both break off into our own harmonizing parts. It’s great to sit next to someone, like Tim, who actually sings in chapel. Well, as we began to sing the chorus the first time, I noticed a very strong falsetto voice singing the women’s part. I look over at Tim, and sure enough, he’s singing the women’s part with much gusto in a falsetto more in tune than most of the actual women sitting near us. Oh, Tim. That much enthusiasm and engagement with the music, particularly in such an unexpected way, made my chapel.
We’ve actually been having good chapels lately. Alochol Awareness Week, for example, which I expected to be boring, produced some very good speakers. One spoke about obeying Messiah’s no-alcohol policy as a matter of integrity, rather than a matter of what we actually believe about the appropriateness of alcohol consumption. I thought it was the best point I’ve ever heard about Messiah’s alcohol policy from someone in a position of leadership. We agreed to not drink while we’re enrolled here, so we ought to follow it. Plenty of students have sound arguments about why moderate alcohol consumption is alright, but the point remains: they all agreed to obey the policy.
Fall break was fantastic. I couldn’t go home (Alabama is just too far away), but I visited the Lebannon, Pa. area and got a lot of work done and ate good food and fell asleep early. Mmmm. Break is delicious. I haven’t been so relaxed all semester. And I totally can’t wait for Thanksgiving break now.
I read the most fascinating article for my poetry project the other day about images. One phrase, the eponymous phrase of this blog, summed up the art major for me. That’s what I’m doing — as an artist I’m cultivating the unappeasable habits of image: looking for images that supply something I lack, engaging with others’ images, and producing more images to provoke someone else to thought or emotion. I love it when readings apply to more than one of my disciplines.
The readings I am not excited about? Kierkegaard and Nietsche. Kierkegaard is just plain confusing, and Nietsche is incredibly depressing. My professor introduced our Nietsche discussion by wearing all-black and drawing the shades in our classroom so that we sat in physical gloom that mirrored Nietsche’s mental gloom. Funny, yes, but it didn’t lighten the substance of Nietsche!
Once I’m done with Nietsche, however, I have a good weekend to look forward to. One of our good friends from Orvieto is coming to visit! I hear, from students who went to Orvieto one semester before us (in all their infinite wisdom), that it doesn’t get any easier to separate oneself from that experience. And in my senior seminar class, I can tell! When we talk about certain Renaissance fresco cycles or the Capella di Scrovegni (a famous chapel where Giotto’s works are preserved), everyone who went to Orvieto for a semester gets a big, silly grin on their faces. I’m looking forward to seeing Jeff again, hearing how his semester back in the United States is going, and remember all the amazing times we had in Italy. Maybe we’ll even visit Dillsburg’s famous Farmer’s Fair. I’m devastated that they’ve discontinued ye olde pickle flinge! How can it be a real Farmer’s Fair without YE OLDE PICKLE FLINGE?! = )
Filed under general | Comment (1)a hodge-podge week
It’s been an eventful week. Sometimes it feels like I am Sisyphus, and every week I start again at the bottom of the hill. In the way that I am also pushing some really great things up the hill as well as a boulder. = )
I got the most amazing e-mail last week from an Italian high-school student I met while I studied in Orvieto. The contents of the e-mail were not so much amazing — it’s just the fact that I got it, and it was an honest-to-goodness e-mail from Italy. In the midst of re-adjusting to America, those little, unexpected connections make a delightful interruption.
We had a guest lecturer in our art seminar class last night, Brenton Good, a professor of both printmaking and art history. In the midst of his talk about artistic influences, in the midst of slides about his own work and artists who have enlarged his own work, he started talking about literature: Salman Rushdie, Kafka, Murikami. As an art and English double major, I’ve always wondered what normal art people do — how do they get all their ideas? I definitely am fed, intellectually, by what I read, much more than by other art that I see. I like the thought that literature can feed professional artists’ minds, too.
Also, I vote Yes for The Office. Campus-wide, students settle down on Thursday nights for delightful distractions, courtesy of The Office. I think I’m going to have to make Office parties a routine occurence. What could be a better break from studying? Clearly, better than studying is a hilarious glimpse into the work world (which, theoretically, we will all be joining soon).
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