T.S. Eliot

I wish I could spend a semester studying his works and only his works.

Well...

The past 24 hours have been interesting.

Stuff last night. Overslept this morning; woke up, and my first thought was in Spanish (wtf...I'm not even fluent, and I wasn't looking over it before bed); had a bad experience with coffee...who knew such a thing could happen. FYI, don't chug coffee.

My classes went from being decent to fun to wtf-worthy; studied for Econ all evening, and am still thoroughly confused; it looks like I'm abusing the semicolon tonight. Oh well. It gets overlooked too often in writing anyway.

Ani DiFranco is amazing. Go see her live. I took this video at the concert on Saturday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOpC2LsnITo). Her opening act, Toshi Reagon, was amazing as well. I was very impressed, and I'll definitely go see her next time she's in town.

While flipping thorough my assortment of quotes from literature, I stumbled on this one. It seems apt to end this blog with it (but I think really just want to use the block quote feature),

Every step she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to 'feed upon the opinion' when her own soul had invited her.

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Now playing: Toshi Reagon - One More Today
via FoxyTunes

"You know I never could say anything in 20 words or less."

I just realized that I still don't have a title for this thing. I hate titling; it's always the very last thing I do for papers. I think it's because I have issues summarizing. I feel like I'm belittling whatever it might be - a paper, a blog, or the name of my iPod - with a few measly words. Maybe I'm too wordy, or have too much to say, or a combination of both. I just titled this entry with a rather apt title. I should just start titling everything with that. Johnette Napolitano wouldn't mind too much.

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I watched Dead Poets Society for the first time the other night. Why did I just recently get around to watching it? "Set in 1959 at a conservative and aristocratic boys prep school, it tells the story of an English teacher who inspires his students to change their lives of conformity through his teaching of poetry and literature. The movie is a modern interpretation of the transcendentalist movement." This IS my life more or less. It's one of many reasons why I read; it's one of many reasons why I want to teach. I know it's just a movie, but things like this give me hope. Hope that maybe most people are better than I give them credit for (that's a topic for a whole other entry. I love people, no really, but I have a much harder time liking them, broadly speaking of course. When we get something right, we truly get it right; when we get something wrong, we can really fuck it up. But like I said, that deserves its own entry). And the movie's Transcendentalist motifs were amazing. I don't think I've heard Thoreau and Whitman quoted and talked about so much, save for in an English class.

First Entry

One of my New Year's resolutions is to start writing more, even if I hate it with a burning passion. I feel like I need to be writing more, so I started this blog in hopes that it’ll help me keep up with this resolution. Ironically, I decided to do my first entry when Google was mysteriously not working; I’m typing it in Word for now.

Speaking of New Year's resolutions, I’m actually going to try my best to do mine this year. I’ll post them here as well; I figure if I’m constantly forced to see them, then I’ll be more likely to keep up with them.

1. Start going to the gym at least twice a week (don't really have much of a choice on this one; gotta get my cholesterol down).

2. Read more.

3. Find a way to get my ass to NYE in Jersey with awesome people.

4. Be more green.

5. Get a job at the campus writing center.

6. Keep making all As.

7. See Tori Amos live again.

8. Write more, even if it never sees the light of day.

There ya are. I think they’re feasible. There are some more, more private ones, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be working towards those with or without a public list.

I’ve been working on a theory of mine regarding The Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. Like most of my creative writings (well, this one is more of an essay, but whatever), it has an amazing introduction, and that’s it. Nothing to follow up or expand on. My creative juices just stop after the introduction. I’m hoping that keeping this blog will remedy that. I really like my introduction, and I’m motivated this time to push through it. Does it need scriptural references? Yes. Am I going to do that in the foreseeable future? Probably not. Citing evidence is cool and all, but some things you just know on your own, without a text to back you up. I know having a text to back you up makes your argument more credible, but did Emerson need MLA citations to back-up his claims? Nope.

I just re-read the above paragraph, and my writing style for non-school assignments sounds so colloquial…and I make too much use of (rhetorical) questions and fragments. Oops. I promise, I can sound like a big girl in my writing.

I’m getting tired, so I suppose this will be the end of this entry.

http://motionlessgesture.blogspot.com/

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

    A penny for the Old Guy

    I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

    II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

    III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

    IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

    V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                              For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                              Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                              For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.