Summer

[virescere]

Towery city and branchy between towers;

Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark-charmed, rook-racked, river-rounded;

The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did

Once encounter in, here coped and poised powers;

Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours

Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded

Rural rural keeping - folk, flocks and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release

He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what

He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veined unraveller; a not

Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;

Who fired France for Mary without spot.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Dun Scotus's Oxford"



It turns out that I miss Linux a lot. So I'm downloading the ISOs now, and I'll partition about half of my free space off for the latest openSUSE. This is what has driven me to update, for the first time since the snow: that I'm sitting, waiting for the download to finish with nothing much to do.



It also turns out that I do love mathematics, so I'll be pursuing it in formal education and beyond. Who would have thought? I emailed my professor about my change of heart, my crisis of vocation, and she was so pleased that I imagine I nearly sent her into an early labor (she was rather pregnant all semester). And this has really been the missing piece of the puzzle - my puzzle - because no other 'calling' matches up so well with my past tendencies toward consummative social awkwardness.



Actually, I don't really know why I'm waiting for the downloads: I don't believe I have blank CDs on hand which I can burn the installation files on.

Edit I: I went looking in my car for blank CDs. It wasn't easy because I haven't yet unpacked the car, then that fact frustrated me away from spending a substantial amount of time out in the humidity. No luck.
I'm a bit sad now because I've been very excited about using Linux again. The best thing about it for me is that it can turn the most rote computer/web tasks into learning situations. And, free software altogether engenders itself to entertaining Teilhardian ideas, which is what I want when it comes to computing. "Here I am thinking of those astonishing electronic machines (the starting-point and hope of the young science of cybernetics), by which our mental capacity to calculate and combine is reinforced and multiplied..." - Teilhard de Chardin, in 1949. "A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain," a 12 year old Wired article on the man.



All this Teilhard talk makes me think about the new chapel my university is planning on building, because it sounds like its design plan and conception aesthetically fits in what we (or I) make of his schema. From an alumni newsletter: "[Rick] Joy's goal is to create a space that is 'calming, serene and quiet, where a sensory ‘tuning in’ occurs.' To accomplish that, he is collaborating with an expert from Norway to integrate natural light into the building. He also plans to emphasize water - a poignant religious symbol - both inside and out. And he'll juxtapose the inner sanctuary with an outdoor one that includes quiet tree-covered nooks."

Here's a photo I found of Joy's Tucson studio: