Beeeeeeeed
I HAVE SURVIVED THE CRISIS OF INFINITE FINALS
Never ever ever again am I allowed to have four finals on the same day. That was seriously manic. Like, I can't even - I stayed up the entire night, studying and not-studying and playing Dungeons and Dragons because I am a moron of epic proportions. Dragged myself out the door at a barbaric 8am to sit my anthro final, which was luckily the easiest exam of the day - half multiple choice, open note, all stuff covered in lecture and on the review.
Ran home as soon as I finished the exam to get back to work writing my take-home exam for sci fi, which was about the construction of cyborg and android families in Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell and how internet communities are extinguishing our sense of concrete identity. Neat ideas, if the execution was a struggle. But I got 5 pages typed and emailed to my TA only a little bit late, so I can't feel terribly bad about it.
As soon as I finished that I started revising poetry for my final portfolio and reviewing Middle English poetry for my literature exam, which was 100% quotation IDs from the readings. That exam was at 7 and I am cautiously optimistic - I felt confident about most of the quotes I identified, and a few I couldn't remember I sussed out by rhyme pattern and style. So we'll see.
Then ran back to the dorm again to revise more poetry so I could get my portfolio finished and emailed to the prof by midnight. Revising poetry is not as easy as it sounds. I hate it. Passionately. But I like my end results, so...
I don't even know how I feel right now. I am too exhausted to think straight. And tomorrow I have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn to get to the airport to catch my flight home, which I'm not looking forward to in the least bit because airplanes are the devil. But for now I'm just trying to happy it's over and I'm still alive. So, in celebration, here's an Arthurian villanelle!
Guinevere at Amesbury
Guinevere is standing by the window, still,
Below her the sea turns stone to sand
While she watches for the coming of a knight who never will.
Dreaming of that night he kept her bed until
The candle guttered in a pool of wax, and kissed her hand
As he left her standing by the window, still
As the sound of skin on silk. Or when he rode past her window sill,
Gleaming in steel, his arm bound round with her sleeve and strands
Of her once-red hair. She dreams of his coming, but he never will.
She does penance when she wakes, whispers rosaries for blood spilled
In her name, and the names of the dead, but the silence expands
To fill the years and Guinevere is pacing by the window still,
cursing her fading hair, and the mirror tipped up to fill
with sky, and the finger where she wore her wedding band
and a knight who isn’t coming. She hopes he never will.
The road is overgrown with brambles where it curves along the hill
The cloister walls crumble into sand.
Guinevere is standing by the window still,
And watching for the coming of a knight who never will.
Never ever ever again am I allowed to have four finals on the same day. That was seriously manic. Like, I can't even - I stayed up the entire night, studying and not-studying and playing Dungeons and Dragons because I am a moron of epic proportions. Dragged myself out the door at a barbaric 8am to sit my anthro final, which was luckily the easiest exam of the day - half multiple choice, open note, all stuff covered in lecture and on the review.
Ran home as soon as I finished the exam to get back to work writing my take-home exam for sci fi, which was about the construction of cyborg and android families in Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell and how internet communities are extinguishing our sense of concrete identity. Neat ideas, if the execution was a struggle. But I got 5 pages typed and emailed to my TA only a little bit late, so I can't feel terribly bad about it.
As soon as I finished that I started revising poetry for my final portfolio and reviewing Middle English poetry for my literature exam, which was 100% quotation IDs from the readings. That exam was at 7 and I am cautiously optimistic - I felt confident about most of the quotes I identified, and a few I couldn't remember I sussed out by rhyme pattern and style. So we'll see.
Then ran back to the dorm again to revise more poetry so I could get my portfolio finished and emailed to the prof by midnight. Revising poetry is not as easy as it sounds. I hate it. Passionately. But I like my end results, so...
I don't even know how I feel right now. I am too exhausted to think straight. And tomorrow I have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn to get to the airport to catch my flight home, which I'm not looking forward to in the least bit because airplanes are the devil. But for now I'm just trying to happy it's over and I'm still alive. So, in celebration, here's an Arthurian villanelle!
Guinevere at Amesbury
Guinevere is standing by the window, still,
Below her the sea turns stone to sand
While she watches for the coming of a knight who never will.
Dreaming of that night he kept her bed until
The candle guttered in a pool of wax, and kissed her hand
As he left her standing by the window, still
As the sound of skin on silk. Or when he rode past her window sill,
Gleaming in steel, his arm bound round with her sleeve and strands
Of her once-red hair. She dreams of his coming, but he never will.
She does penance when she wakes, whispers rosaries for blood spilled
In her name, and the names of the dead, but the silence expands
To fill the years and Guinevere is pacing by the window still,
cursing her fading hair, and the mirror tipped up to fill
with sky, and the finger where she wore her wedding band
and a knight who isn’t coming. She hopes he never will.
The road is overgrown with brambles where it curves along the hill
The cloister walls crumble into sand.
Guinevere is standing by the window still,
And watching for the coming of a knight who never will.