Fresh Flowers

Last week, a friend of mine gave his girlfriend (and our mutual friend) a bouquet of tulips.  Because her heat wasn't working and she spends tons of time in my room anyways, she let them live in my room.  They died a couple of days ago, but I loved having fresh flowers in my room, so yesterday I went to Trader Joe's and got hydrangeas to replace them.  Unfortunately, the hydrangeas aren't doing too well, but it's nice having living things around - aside from the seven (I'm not kidding) potted plants in the room already.  Do you keep fresh flowers or houseplants?

(Van Gogh painting from here)

An Apology

On Wednesday for humanities we talked about the Apologia, which, while it was interesting and important and raised a ton of questions about what matters and what is just and when authority is important, also reminded me that I should apologise.
I've not been posting much at all this past week.  It's been the first week of classes, and I've been bogged down in work that I want to do - that I love.  It's my first time really properly choosing a class that isn't a requirement, and JS Bach is changing my life, step by step.  I'm even enjoying biology thanks to the incredible lecturer, and we're reading Maupassant in French.  Life is great - it's just a lot of work, and the university I attend requires a strong sense of discipline and a strong work ethic.  Reed makes you work - it makes you love to work and it makes you compete with your friends about who has the most to do, but I love it.  I go to classes I want to take more than anything, so this week I haven't really been posting because I'm not focused on anything in the future or onwards.  I'm focused on being present, on losing myself in music and in Plato and in French comedy.
I hope everyone's had a lovely week thus far.

Spring Semester

Today was the first day of classes of the spring semester.  I have eaten breakfast at the corner table in Commons, looking out at the bare trees covered in moss, I have compared Aristophanes to "The Daily Show," and I have watched a surrealist film on sea urchins for biology.  All in all, not a bad day, I must say - I am excited for the rest of the semester!  There will be lots of work and rainy days when I don't want to get out of bed, but there will be beautiful days and incredible lectures, and I can't wait to get into the thick of things.
Have a lovely Monday, everyone!

Wanderlust: Camping Edition

I'm not sure why, but on this morning, looking at the drizzle and the cold outside my bedroom window, I want to go camping.  Every year my family spends a week in Acadia National Park, camping in Mount Desert Campground, right on Somes Sound.  We bring our kayaks and explore the sound and the islands some afternoons, hang hammocks between the trees and lie out across the rocks and the sea, reading "One Hundred Years Of Solitude."  We bike the carriage roads and hike Mt Penobscot (every year!) and visit the Azalea Gardens.
This past year, I didn't get to go.  I was at college, but I missed it.  I missed waking up in cold Maine mornings to bacon and hot chocolate from Swiss Miss packets in plastic camping mugs.  I missed singing around the campfire with my family every night.  I missed that one restaurant in town with the toy trains circling the walls.  So on this rainy January weekend, right before I start my classes, I would like to go back to August, to kayaking and hikes and woodsmoke...
Happy weekend, everyone.

(photo from here)

Beautiful Portland Days

Yesterday was one of them.
My friends K and L brought back all of my plants (K, who stayed in PDX over the holiday, generously agreed to take care of them - I have lent her the espresso maker in return) and played cribbage with me and talked to me about music and piano and World War I.  I watched Castle with Willamae and conducted Beethoven's 5th Symphony in my bedroom.  I went to a party (appropriately called Nerdfest) and played Bananagrams and piano and talked to my friends.  I walked home in the snow that coated campus and changed the way the world looked that night.  I watched the ground become pure and clean and Eliot Hall looked hallowed and European.  My friends took a video of it that night...
I hope you all have a lovely day.

Bach Cello Suites

The Bach Cello Suites remind me of mornings in our kitchen at home.  My father did (and still does) play classical music through the house on weekend mornings when he's making breakfast, when my mother and brother are talking about an essay or a physics problem, when we congregate by the woodstove to attempt the crossword.
Listening to them now, on a morning by myself in Chittick, watching the snow outside the window and melt onto the green grass and soaking pavement, I miss my family.  Sometimes there are pieces that are so reminiscent of moments that it's hard to bear, and I didn't realise it five minutes ago when I put it on, but this is definitely one of them.
Family, I miss you.

Paideia

Hi guys!
I'm back at school just in time for Paideia, the week of independent classes taught by faculty and students at Reed.  Today I'm going to a conference on Infinite Jest, hanging out with my girlfriends, and just enjoying my Portland life as much as possible before schoolwork catches up with me.
What are you doing this Tuesday?

(flowers in Paris, from here)