Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Tepid Tea.




A drizzly day in Fremont, and a steaming cup of green tea. Thoroughly moist and chilled, I duck into a coffee-shop and watch the passersby rush through the rain. My hair, already damp from the morning, now swathes my face in its mischievous tendrils. As jazzy tunes lazily play in the background, I subtly observe the customers who wait out of the rain. Two delivery men grab a quick drink and rush back out to their truck, parked illegally. A sullen young woman sits reading behind me, having just indignantly finished a phone call, which by her body language, went poorly. Nervously bouncing between laptop and textbook, a student bites her nails, anxious either about finals, or facebook (or both. Who knows?). A middle aged couple chatters loudly in their overstuffed armchairs, evidently reminiscing about things deep, things amusing, shared memories of days gone by. The rain has cleared, and the sun makes an effort to show itself. Appreciative, the pedestrians begin to reemerge from their places of refuge and continue on their way, slower now. You can almost see them savoring the sights, the smells, the sounds. Ever steady, the wind blows off the water, bringing in a peroxide blonde tourist and her luggage. The store greets her and her immense, rolling baggage with appraising glances. Embarrassed, she blushes a becoming shade of pink and posthaste, orders her drink and leaves. An elderly man in a baseball cap who carries himself (and admittedly, somewhat resembles a turtle) has been saying something to himself in sign language for some time. Now he sits still, an enormous grin on his face as he reads a battered looking piece of paper with large, round glasses. AH. The girl behind me is upset because she has to read several hundred pages of Tolstoy for class tomorrow. She has cheered up immensely with a phone call from a more sympathetic friend. (glances over at cup) Tepid tea. Time to head out to find adventure. 

Sunday, April 25, 2010


It's so hard to avoid hypocrisy. So often I know the right thing to do and don't do it. The mind is willing, but the body is weak...my heart is prone to wander and choose lesser joys over Joy. I can't change on my own. I can't just try harder. I need to surrender my heart and follow God's leading. Praise God for the Spirit's conviction and the grace to continue in sanctification.


Saturday, April 24, 2010

Summer reading list

So far, here's what I've got


-The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
-Lapsing Into a Comma, Bill Walsh
-Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
-Whatever I can find by Agatha Christie
Any suggestions?

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

A new friend...

I love plants. Part of it might be some minorly obsessive need to nurture something, a desire to have something that depends on me. Needless to say, when the border patrol decided to confiscate the harmless, healthy plants that have been my companions this last year at school, I was rather upset. I may have cried (I will neither confirm, nor deny that). So after settling in, we set out to go find me a mattress. As Ikea runs typically go, we found something else we couldn't live without: this lovely Phalaenopsis orchid. Since living in the Philippines and having them grow free on trees in the yard, I've wanted to learn to care for orchids. Now I can give it my relatively undivided attention. As plants, they're exceedingly intricate and elegant, yet remarkably simple to care for. It'll be nice to have something so dainty and feminine to remind me of living with 27 other girls, now that I'm back in my testosterone-filled home. 

Monday, April 19, 2010

Loading up the old, red backpack.



Packing up my life and moving again...admittedly, while my heart breaks at the thought of leaving Ambrose and all the friends I've made here, there is some excitement in leaving. Every time I leave, God does amazing things in my life, providing for me in ways I would never even have considered. My comfort zone is pushed and I learn to trust God more, relying on Him as the most stable, constant thing in my life. I don't want to leave, but God will provide. He is good, and he's never failed me yet.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Lit. Crit. Paper complete.

I can't help but feel a bit like Captain Kirk; I just wrote almost 12 pages on 10 lines of poetry. Mission accomplished. There is still work yet to be done, but the worst is over. 

Monday, April 12, 2010

Death by irony...



Ironically, I'm blogging to take a break from writing. The irony of writing such a long paper on intentionally short works of literature is killing me. ;)
I am tempted to leave this sentence in my paper, "Rather than utilizing unnecessary amounts of signifiers to beat a theme to death, a somewhat apt description of this essay, poets such as Pound carefully chose their words to have meaning". However, I have enough common sense left to know that would be an unwise move. Really, in the words of Bill Nye,“Humor is everywhere, in that there’s irony in about anything a human does". I wish other people realized that...I could speak my mind more often. I see humor everywhere all the time. It's not that I fail to see the seriousness of life, but so many times we make mountains out of molehills. In the grand scheme of things, this paper won't matter. It doesn't affect my eternal destiny. And I've been stressed out about it all semester, especially as the deadline inches ever closer. It's due tonight. It's not going to be done. But that's ok. I'll get docked some points, but turn in something that's actually complete. The dragon of stress cannot steal my joy. 

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Exerpt from another essay and eating


" Imagism’s minimalist style as a genre particularly epitomizes reader response, forcing the reader to think about what the laconic words invoke. Because these words carry significance that varies dramatically reader to reader, imagist poetry becomes a relatively simple way to illustrate these sometimes confusing post-structuralist concepts. 
As a literary genre, Imagism has its origins in early 20th century France and England. Desiring to rebel against the grandiloquent writing of the Victorians, poets like Ezra Pound sought to employ the imagination of the reader in their writing. By intentionally using what seems a bare minimum of words, the mind is invoked to step in and fill in the gaps in the writing. Rather than painting an intricate mental picture for the reader, the imagist writing presents the reader with a faint outline of a scene, inviting them to bring their own meaning and interpretation to the art. "

This is my favorite section from my longest essay, mainly because it's all my own writing rather than quoting and explaining  theorists.  It seems like this time of year, people on the floor are either working or sleeping. Personally, I wish I could combine them...then I might get more rest. But to stay true to my title: I am about to engage in the ancient collegial tradition of Ramen noodles (not even, these are the generic, mushroom-flavored "Mr. Noodles" brand). I find that with olive oil and herbs, even instant noodles taste alright. When I get back to Seattle, I'll have posts with thought again. For now, this is a place where my writing doesn't have to be entirely coherent.  
(P.S. click on the comic...it's trippy). 

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Writing about nothing.

People ask me, "Kelsey, why don't I see you around?". . .Here's some of what I've been up to:

Using comedy, Shakespeare devotes this play [Much Ado About Nothing] to the exploration of this concept of “nothing”. While the word nothing would seem to imply the play is a trifling affair, this “nothing” actually shapes our lives, for they are, for the most part, filled with ordinary occurrences, or nothingness (Goddard, 271). . .Indeed, the whole of Much Ado is a masterful “escalati[on]of recriminations based on purely a chimerical assumption that must eventually be deflated” (Bevington, 221). Claudio and Hero’s naive love, the bickering Beatrice and Benedick, and the people that interfere with their respective stories intentionally employ these very lies, or nothingness created in the character’s minds, to further their own ends. . .This theme of nothingness resonates deep within the reader or observer of Much Ado. William Shakespeare adeptly utilizes what Carl Gustav Jung would later call a “Literary Archetype”, or our “innate, apriori impulses to organize images and ideas; tendencies to produce form, relatable to instincts and representing ‘the precipitate of the psychic functioning of the whole ancestral line, the accumulated experiences of organic life in general, a million times repeated, and condensed into types’ ”(Carl Gustav Jung). Deep within our very being, notions of what should be or patterns of what we deem familiar emerge, categorized by our minds, though often not realized to be existent. Writers create characters using these forms, causing them to be comparable to the archetypes in the reader’s mind. The more one has read, the more archetypes one may recognize and patterns one may observe. While archetypes certainly appear any work, they are perhaps most obvious within the genre of comedy. 

Saturday, April 3, 2010

The Difference


While certainly stereotyped, there's truth in this...I probably would just live with the squirrel.