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Dec 06, 2005 04:25

Here I am again, 4:30 in the morning and not nearly enough work done. I'm pretty tuckered out, probably because I only got five hours of sleep last night and now I'm getting five hours less than that. I've got two paragraphs written out of the 5-7 page paper and the 12-15 page draft due tomorrow (today). Luke and I are camped out in Lunt, taking advantage of our managerial priveleges (something about this fucking cafe had better be useful) and the wireless internet. I am fucked. Here is the new list of things due before next Friday:
-a 5-7 page english paper due tomorrow (today)
-rough draft of a 12-15 page film paper due tomorrow (today)
-final draft of that paper due next tuesday
-chemistry final due next wednesday

and then due on Friday:
-take-home open-book religion final, which is probably going to be the equivalent of a 10-page paper or so
-6 page french final paper (which I'll probably end up writing at home on Thursday night)
-a reading journal on all the readings we've done in my english class, which I have not begun (also possibly done at home)
-half closed-book take-home english final

Should be a good time, eh? It's SNOWING here, real snow, big fat flakes; there's probably about 4 or 5 inches on the ground right now. Luke and I just took a study break to participate in a 3AM snowball fight on Founder's Green, with probably about 50 other kids. It was great. Our freshman friend Justin from Miami, who has never seen snow fall before, was learning the ropes of throwing snowballs; for a while he was just kind of standing around and idly tossing them at people, then sort of got the idea; I tackled Sarah Allard into the ground, which was great; I did a lot of running around; Carly and I did some memory making under a lamppost; I almost fell down several times; I did get lost in the INSC (that building[s] still confuses the heck out of me), and it was generally glorious. If I had my absolute druthers, right now I'd be out on featherbed or some similarly distant field enjoying the snow falling down through the dark and the absolute muffled silence, which is one of my most favorite things in the entire world. Ever since I can remember, during nighttime snowfalls, I've gone out in my backyard, all dressed in snow gear, and just laid there, staring up at the snow. Total inner peace.

Which brings me back to this fucking basement, and the reality of the paper I have not yet written. If only I had a clear idea of what I was writing about, or the motivation to write it.



The Alchemy of the Word

My turn now. The story of one of my insanities.

For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes-- and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.

What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, silly old songs, the naïve rhythms of country rimes.

I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents; I used to believe in every kind of magic.

I invented colors for the vowels! A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. I made rules for the form and movement of every consonant, and I boasted of inventing, with rhythms from within me, a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize. And I alone would be its translator.

I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

-Rimbaud
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