I am Master

I have been a little tired as of late. After church and dinner, I came back and crashed on my bed for a few moments. It was like catching my breath. I realize that I have so very far from where I was two years ago. However, I still have a very long way to go in accomplishing my goals.

But I'm figuring out how to play this game. I might be a late bloomer, but I'm figuring it out.

It puts me in mind of William Ernest Henley's last couplet of "Invictus":

"I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul."

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

--William Carlos Williams


These lines, these mere fragments, bring me to my knees.

'Twas A Night Not Unlike This...

That I sat at the head of my kitchen table, searching for something to do this summer. I remember guffawing at a media/"publishing" internship that I had found on some internship search engine - it was in Madrid, Spain. It was late at night, it felt like I had been searching and applying all day for internships. My mother was at the other end of the table, and I told her I was going to apply to this internship for kicks and giggles. She encouraged me; it was a long shot, there was no way I was going to get it, and I was mildly intoxicated with the idea of merely applying for something so exotic and foreign.

Little did I know...

So that's the beginning of how I ended up in Spain last summer. There were a few emails and an interview and lots of nervous expectations. Perhaps this is also the beginning of next summer's story. I'm sitting at the kitchen table again, by myself (obviously blogging, which means I'm not working on/sending out my resume). I have a pretty strong feeling that I found last summer's internship on a Tuesday - of Spring Break, no less. Lo and behold, it is the Tuesday of Spring Break.

Subconsciously, I hope I will find a place to intern at this summer, but because I have articulated such a desire and pointed out the happenings and their timings, the universe will not work out that way. Perhaps it (and by "it," I really mean God) has something even better planned for me.

If not, all of these companies should know what they're missing out on - someone who is pretty spectacular, who is a worker, a good worker, a hard worker.

Photo from roy.tabulas.com.

You'd Think This Were a Tumble Blog IV

"But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do." -- C.S. Lewis


It may not be finals, but it is internship-searching time. The levels of pain both of these processes induce is comparable.

"Settling Back Into the Egyptian Night..."

At the beginning of the semester, I had so much energy and was thrilled about everything. But now, the magic of Scotland and being back on my home campus has faded, and I'm left with work and obligations and fatigue. This week must have really tuckered me out. The social skills that I thought I had gained are receding as my hermit-nature begins to reassert itself. I am still happy, just not incandescently so.

It is late. Life is still very, very good - I wandered about the campuses tonight with two friends of mine. We paused at the Skyspace for a little bit, and it was so peaceful. 

Nothing very exciting to report tonight, other than that I was able to upload a picture. (That's really the reason for this blog post. I had nothing much to say, which is why it is so fluffy.) It's by one of my favorite photographers, Robert ParkeHarrison. Sadly, I do not know the title. If you can learn to take photographs like him, mimic how calming and yet unsettling he can make them, then you will have my respect. Look at the way the tree branches reach over to the sitting man, intersecting the planes of the doors. And the door is opening into a greener, revitalizing world. It is hopeful - not too hopeful, but just enough to keep on going.

Robert ParkeHarrison

It makes me feel dimly like crying, like an arcane feeling welling up inside of me. I used to cry so easily.