Well said, Henry.
Speaking of which, I'm quitting the blog. At least for now. Keeping up with it (or the world) while I'm out here is counterproductive to my hopes and goals for the summer.
The obligations of a writer, as I see them, are twofold: first, to live well, and second, to translate that lived experience into the written word.
I am twenty-one years old, and for the moment, exclusively concerned with the former. Living well is already a full-time job.
I have nothing else to say.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
West.
"The closer you get to Canada, the more things'll eat your horse."
-The Missouri Breaks
-The Missouri Breaks
Well, Montana's pretty close.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
"If all mankind were to disappear,
the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."
-E.O. Wilson
-E.O. Wilson
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
A triune from C.S. Lewis...
Pun intended; get it?
"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."
"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
"You can't, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behavior of your genes."
"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."
"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
"You can't, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behavior of your genes."
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
I’m working as a farmhand out in Livingston, Montana with my girlfriend this summer.
I start the two-thousand mile drive out there as soon as I finish finals in a couple weeks. From there it's three months of five-AM wakeup calls and living in a camper without electricity.
I can’t wait.
Doing this has been a dream of mine for a long, long time. But whenever people ask me why I’m so anxious to give up creature-comforts in exchange for hard labor under a hot sun, I can’t seem to come up with a good, cogent answer. Instead, I offer them a series of vague platitudes about personal growth. I talk about the transformative power of the openness of the American West, and the freedom with which it has always been associated. I mention the need for solitude and quiet in any sort of genuine introspection, and the increasing difficulty of finding either solitude or quiet in a contemporary American society saturated with the intrusive clamor of social-media. I tell them the belief that money begets food, if you really think about it, is nothing more than an inducted superstition. I tell them that convenience is a cheap trick, and although we do less, we aren’t any happier; I say that everything not directly necessary for physical, intellectual, and emotional sustenance (i.e. food, and books, and love) is not only superfluous to life, but maybe even an active impediment to finding any meaning in this world.
But when I say these things, my voice runs thin and I can’t help but feel like a phony. Because that’s exactly what I am, regurgitating a bunch of half-chewed mush I’ve read, and heard, and felt, but never experienced; I’m like a coach who’s never played the game. I don’t actually know if any of the platitudes I offer are true—and when I say them, it’s clear that I don’t know, that I’m bullshitting, that I’m exactly the kind of person to whom most people don’t like to listen for very long.
Still, I speak because I have a hunch that my words hold at least some truth-- hell, I desperately hope that they do, because anxiety has always tipped the scales against meaning in this upwardly-mobile life I’ve been taught to live, and I don't see it getting any better without some sort of radical change. I suppose the possibility of finding truth in the spew of my words, even if it’s only a kernel, even if I’m going to need to look for the rest elsewhere, is why I’m willing to sacrifice comfort for three months of hard work. I also recognize that I imagine Montana as Arcadia, and I know that there are plenty of wake-up calls in store for me this summer. I’m sure that physical labor is largely miserable; I’m sure that solitude is both lonely and boring; I’m sure that simplicity is not only inconvenient, but unglamorous, too. But I don’t know these things, either. I don’t know what is true, and what isn’t, and that difference is exactly what I hope to sort out.
So, the best answer for why I feel the need go to Montana, an answer that thus far I’ve been unable to articulate, is that I want to go so I can answer that same question myself.
I can’t wait.
Doing this has been a dream of mine for a long, long time. But whenever people ask me why I’m so anxious to give up creature-comforts in exchange for hard labor under a hot sun, I can’t seem to come up with a good, cogent answer. Instead, I offer them a series of vague platitudes about personal growth. I talk about the transformative power of the openness of the American West, and the freedom with which it has always been associated. I mention the need for solitude and quiet in any sort of genuine introspection, and the increasing difficulty of finding either solitude or quiet in a contemporary American society saturated with the intrusive clamor of social-media. I tell them the belief that money begets food, if you really think about it, is nothing more than an inducted superstition. I tell them that convenience is a cheap trick, and although we do less, we aren’t any happier; I say that everything not directly necessary for physical, intellectual, and emotional sustenance (i.e. food, and books, and love) is not only superfluous to life, but maybe even an active impediment to finding any meaning in this world.
But when I say these things, my voice runs thin and I can’t help but feel like a phony. Because that’s exactly what I am, regurgitating a bunch of half-chewed mush I’ve read, and heard, and felt, but never experienced; I’m like a coach who’s never played the game. I don’t actually know if any of the platitudes I offer are true—and when I say them, it’s clear that I don’t know, that I’m bullshitting, that I’m exactly the kind of person to whom most people don’t like to listen for very long.
Still, I speak because I have a hunch that my words hold at least some truth-- hell, I desperately hope that they do, because anxiety has always tipped the scales against meaning in this upwardly-mobile life I’ve been taught to live, and I don't see it getting any better without some sort of radical change. I suppose the possibility of finding truth in the spew of my words, even if it’s only a kernel, even if I’m going to need to look for the rest elsewhere, is why I’m willing to sacrifice comfort for three months of hard work. I also recognize that I imagine Montana as Arcadia, and I know that there are plenty of wake-up calls in store for me this summer. I’m sure that physical labor is largely miserable; I’m sure that solitude is both lonely and boring; I’m sure that simplicity is not only inconvenient, but unglamorous, too. But I don’t know these things, either. I don’t know what is true, and what isn’t, and that difference is exactly what I hope to sort out.
So, the best answer for why I feel the need go to Montana, an answer that thus far I’ve been unable to articulate, is that I want to go so I can answer that same question myself.
Monday, April 16, 2012
You may have sensed in my previous post a certain cynicism surrounding the merit of American higher education.
Granted, my acridity may have been recently exacerbated by a string of late nights (early mornings, really) writing critical essays on 17th century metaphysical poets and memorizing the rules of predicate logic. I have a week to go until finals, and I am ready to be done. This is not to say that I don't like school-- I do. Or learning-- I do. What I do not like, however, is school, or learning, solely in the hopes of some reward: a grade, a GPA, a job. That said, I don't want to seem young, or self-righteous, or stereotypically liberal, because I probably am all those things. So, I'm going to hand the reigns over to Wendell Berry, who you'd be hard pressed to call any one of them:
“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.”
“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.”
Monday, April 2, 2012
Ladies, Gentlemen,
Wayward Gentry is officially up and running again. Thank you all so much for your patience. For a little while there, the requirements of a college degree caught up with me. I sincerely apologize. However, I would like to make it up to all of you: since Wayward Gentry was put on the back-burner in the interest of a certain piece of paper I hope to be handed by Chancellor Zeppos come next May, I'm going to let all of you, my readers, decide by popular vote what I do with my diploma. The options are as follows.
1. Make it into a paper airplane-- a perennial boyhood favorite. The simpler ones fly better.
2. Make it into a funny hat-- jaunty in style, preferably.
3. Burn it-- ostentatious, puerile, and not-quite metaphorical. This one reminds me of a trophy I snapped in half after I lost in the finals of a U12 tennis tournament... afterwards, I wished I hadn't.
4. Hang it on a wall-- hey, it's what all my professors have done with theirs! (pretension, horn-rimmed glasses, and accessorial mahogany furniture optional)
5. Doctor it-- white out the 'English', write in 'Engineering', or 'Economics', and set about making my parents' 200 grand back.
Suggestions are also, as always, welcome.
And Ladies, Gentlemen,
it's a pleasure to be back.
More to come soon.
-CL
1. Make it into a paper airplane-- a perennial boyhood favorite. The simpler ones fly better.
2. Make it into a funny hat-- jaunty in style, preferably.
3. Burn it-- ostentatious, puerile, and not-quite metaphorical. This one reminds me of a trophy I snapped in half after I lost in the finals of a U12 tennis tournament... afterwards, I wished I hadn't.
4. Hang it on a wall-- hey, it's what all my professors have done with theirs! (pretension, horn-rimmed glasses, and accessorial mahogany furniture optional)
5. Doctor it-- white out the 'English', write in 'Engineering', or 'Economics', and set about making my parents' 200 grand back.
Suggestions are also, as always, welcome.
And Ladies, Gentlemen,
it's a pleasure to be back.
More to come soon.
-CL
Sunday, January 22, 2012
George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946
Would you admit that the English language is in a bad way? Click here.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Kieran in Kyrgyzstan...
A dear friend of mine, Kieran, is currently abroad in Kyrgyzstan. Clearly, he is much more adventurous than I am. He also has a questionable mustache. That was not entirely pertinent or necessary but I thought some direct characterization was in order. I also wanted to make fun of his mustache. Anyways, he is both a wonderful writer and person and is currently experiencing a world that for most of is literally unimaginable. Here's his first post:
Pre-departure
It didn’t set in until I did the laundry the night before. Five months of clothing: three jackets, four pants, twelve shirts, five sweaters, fifteen underwear and socks, hiking boots, running shoes, casual shoes, dress shoes, a scarf, a beanie, and a pair of gloves. Oh, and a “comfort item”, as my handbook suggested. What can bring comfort to me in a third-world, post-Soviet, virtually unknown country? My best guess was a set of pictures and a necklace my girlfriend made me. And of course my books.
The morning of departure was full of frantic movement streaked with tears, like drops of rain on an airplane window. Except I’m not a precision-welded metal machine, I’m a fleshy, sensitive young man hurtling across the planet to what could be a twenty-first century gulag, for all I know.
Transit
Sleep is hard to come by for me on an airplane, even on what I was told were two very smooth flights. The first, from New York to Istanbul was 8 hours and they had a fully-stocked, if a little dated, in-flight entertainment system. There were scores of films and I settled on Moneyball. Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Billy Beane, the cocky yet conflicted GM of the Oakland A’s who played baseball by numbers and very nearly succeeded, was captivating enough to distract me during the lengthy periods of turbulence over a stormy Atlantic. With some deep breaths, I was able to calm my neuroses enough to reach what everyone else around me knew so well: the stillness of sleep.
Arrival
So it turns out Bishkek isn’t a gulag after all. Upon landing, we failed our first Russian signage test and turned the wrong way out of the plane, only to be pointed in the right direction by a local Kyrgyz man. The visa process went smoothly thanks to our program coordinator, and we retrieved our luggage. To get outside, we walked through a gauntlet of hired taxi drivers with their Russian hats and unsmiling faces out to the parking lot, where our hired taxi driver was. Dina, our coordinator and guide, had her bag lost in transit and so we were told to wait in the van while she checked on its status. Without any Russian to save us, we were alone, helpless yet joking. The joking was only to cover up the deep and almost dormant fear that had been present since we boarded at JFK and that I don’t expect to leave for some time. I am unsettled, closer now to the characters of Kafka and Dostoevsky than I ever have been. I am in a modernist crisis, and I’m blogging my way through it. Join me.
Me again everybody.
Best of luck Kieran. While you're over there try to change the 'y' to 'ie': an eponymous country would be a nice souvenir.
The rest of you can join me in keeping up with Kieran's travels and thoughts at: http://kiergyzstan.tumblr.com/
Best, CL.
Pre-departure
It didn’t set in until I did the laundry the night before. Five months of clothing: three jackets, four pants, twelve shirts, five sweaters, fifteen underwear and socks, hiking boots, running shoes, casual shoes, dress shoes, a scarf, a beanie, and a pair of gloves. Oh, and a “comfort item”, as my handbook suggested. What can bring comfort to me in a third-world, post-Soviet, virtually unknown country? My best guess was a set of pictures and a necklace my girlfriend made me. And of course my books.
The morning of departure was full of frantic movement streaked with tears, like drops of rain on an airplane window. Except I’m not a precision-welded metal machine, I’m a fleshy, sensitive young man hurtling across the planet to what could be a twenty-first century gulag, for all I know.
Transit
Sleep is hard to come by for me on an airplane, even on what I was told were two very smooth flights. The first, from New York to Istanbul was 8 hours and they had a fully-stocked, if a little dated, in-flight entertainment system. There were scores of films and I settled on Moneyball. Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Billy Beane, the cocky yet conflicted GM of the Oakland A’s who played baseball by numbers and very nearly succeeded, was captivating enough to distract me during the lengthy periods of turbulence over a stormy Atlantic. With some deep breaths, I was able to calm my neuroses enough to reach what everyone else around me knew so well: the stillness of sleep.
Arrival
So it turns out Bishkek isn’t a gulag after all. Upon landing, we failed our first Russian signage test and turned the wrong way out of the plane, only to be pointed in the right direction by a local Kyrgyz man. The visa process went smoothly thanks to our program coordinator, and we retrieved our luggage. To get outside, we walked through a gauntlet of hired taxi drivers with their Russian hats and unsmiling faces out to the parking lot, where our hired taxi driver was. Dina, our coordinator and guide, had her bag lost in transit and so we were told to wait in the van while she checked on its status. Without any Russian to save us, we were alone, helpless yet joking. The joking was only to cover up the deep and almost dormant fear that had been present since we boarded at JFK and that I don’t expect to leave for some time. I am unsettled, closer now to the characters of Kafka and Dostoevsky than I ever have been. I am in a modernist crisis, and I’m blogging my way through it. Join me.
Me again everybody.
Best of luck Kieran. While you're over there try to change the 'y' to 'ie': an eponymous country would be a nice souvenir.
The rest of you can join me in keeping up with Kieran's travels and thoughts at: http://kiergyzstan.tumblr.com/
Best, CL.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Dear Administrative Committee,
My name is Curtis Fincher, I am a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, and I hope to one day be a writer. I write to you now to petition to be allowed to take and receive credit for the graduate level course Literature and the Craft of Writing taught this semester by Professor Blank, the head of the creative writing department and my personal academic advisor. Typically, the College of Arts and Sciences reserves the privilege to enroll in graduate level courses exclusively for seniors, however I strongly believe that my situation merits your special consideration.
I have dreamed of being a writer ever since I was in high school and my sophomore year English teacher, Mrs. McManus, a small, funny, and stern Irish-American woman, wrote at the bottom of an essay four words in red ink that have since directed and consumed my life: “you should write books,” she said, and I still believe her. I am currently an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. I have a 4.0 within my major and I hope to enroll in the English Honors program this spring and write a creative dissertation next year. After college (those two words seem far too near, these days), I plan on applying to various, fully funded, Creative Writing MFA programs. Admission into such a program is the next step towards my dream of becoming a writer, and as you can imagine, is extremely competitive-- the acceptance rates of top schools generally hover around slightly less than half of a percent. While there are many factors considered by MFA admissions committees, the two most important criteria are professor recommendations and the applicant’s creative portfolio. With these, we have now arrived at the two principle reasons why I need to take Literature and the Craft of Writing this semester.
As I am sure you are aware, faculty notoriety matters when it comes to recommendations: you are more likely to trust the words of somebody whose name you recognize, and even more likely to trust the words of somebody who you personally know. As such, I was extremely lucky to have a professor as widely known as Professor Blank teach my freshman year creative writing workshop. I was even luckier to be able to cultivate a personal relationship with him outside the classroom through his office hours, and I took my second workshop with him last spring. This spring, I am enrolled in another one of his workshops, and I would love the opportunity to take Literature and the Craft of Writing with him as well.
I had the pleasure of attending the class on Wednesday and it is entirely different from any undergraduate Creative Writing course I have taken here at Vanderbilt. The class is small and intimate and most importantly, every other person in it wants to be an author just like I do. The undergraduate creative writing courses are filled with students who think it would be fun to write; the MFA students in Literature and the Craft of Writing need to write, and the class, at its core, is about how to make a living while doing so.
We are currently home to the most selective MFA program in the country, and the six students who I interacted with on Wednesday absolutely blew me away. I have so much to learn from them and I think that being in a class with people who read, write, and digest literature in the way that they do would be an absolutely invaluable experience for me. Additionally, to return to the importance of professor recommendations in the MFA application process, being in a class with six older students who are better and more experienced at both reading and writing will push me tremendously (an additional side note here: I am interning this semester with the Nashville Review, a Literary Magazine published by our MFA students, and my boss, Rebecca Alsoblank, is in the class with me— so it would be an added benefit to be able to further immerse myself into that community and world as well). I think it is a good, good thing that I will be the weakest link in the class. It will force me to work as hard as I know how, and this work ethic, in the end, will be reflected in both my verbal commentary and written products. I believe that Professor Blank witnessing this—my absolute limits as both a writer and a reader—will solidify and strengthen the MFA recommendation I hope he will one day write for me. Further, while the class is offered next year when I will be a senior, Professor Blank will not be teaching it either semester. Thus, this semester is my only opportunity to take the class with him.
Another reason why I think it is important that I take the class this semester as opposed to next year is that it will inevitably improve the creative portfolio that I will be submitting to MFA programs. My creative dissertation next year as an English Honors student will form the bulk of this portfolio (as it will be the most substantial work that I will have done to date) and to have already seen how the students in an MFA program write and think will do a great service for my own writing and my own thinking. This will in turn be reflected in my creative dissertation--i.e. a large part of my creative portfolio--which will increase my odds of being admitted to a top flight program amidst a very competitive application process. Also, in the English Honors Program graduate level courses serve for Honors credit, so Literature and the Craft of Writing will help me achieve the six hours of Honors credit I will need for the Honors Program in the most productive and beneficial manner possible.
It is worth noting, also, that I went to speak with Professor Blank yesterday. I asked him if there was anything in particular that I should write or mention in my petition to increase my chances of being admitted into his class. He said that he could not think of anything, although he did wish that there were a magic phrase or sentence he could tell me (unfortunately, no such phrase, outside of 1,250 words of candid pleading in elegant Garamond typeface, exists). One thing he did say, however, was to make sure I mentioned that I have his full and total support in taking the course. He thinks that I can not only handle the workload and depth of thought which the class will entail, but that having that kind of exposure to such talented MFA students will serve me well in my development as a writer.
I will not hear back from your committee until after the add/drop period is over. I am currently registered for twelve hours in hopes of having these four hours approved, and if they are not, I will have to take courses here this summer in order to graduate on time. However, I feel that my reasons for wanting to take the course this semester are compelling enough to merit the risk; I want to take this course badly enough to merit the risk. I cannot thank all of you enough for your time and I hope that whatever this petition has lacked in brevity it has compensated for with thoroughness. Please know that my reasons for writing you have been pure and good: I want to learn to write as well as I can and I believe this is the best manner for me to do so while completing the requirements of a Vanderbilt Undergraduate College Arts and Sciences degree. Once again, thank you so much for your time.
Sincerely,
Curtis Lee
I have dreamed of being a writer ever since I was in high school and my sophomore year English teacher, Mrs. McManus, a small, funny, and stern Irish-American woman, wrote at the bottom of an essay four words in red ink that have since directed and consumed my life: “you should write books,” she said, and I still believe her. I am currently an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. I have a 4.0 within my major and I hope to enroll in the English Honors program this spring and write a creative dissertation next year. After college (those two words seem far too near, these days), I plan on applying to various, fully funded, Creative Writing MFA programs. Admission into such a program is the next step towards my dream of becoming a writer, and as you can imagine, is extremely competitive-- the acceptance rates of top schools generally hover around slightly less than half of a percent. While there are many factors considered by MFA admissions committees, the two most important criteria are professor recommendations and the applicant’s creative portfolio. With these, we have now arrived at the two principle reasons why I need to take Literature and the Craft of Writing this semester.
As I am sure you are aware, faculty notoriety matters when it comes to recommendations: you are more likely to trust the words of somebody whose name you recognize, and even more likely to trust the words of somebody who you personally know. As such, I was extremely lucky to have a professor as widely known as Professor Blank teach my freshman year creative writing workshop. I was even luckier to be able to cultivate a personal relationship with him outside the classroom through his office hours, and I took my second workshop with him last spring. This spring, I am enrolled in another one of his workshops, and I would love the opportunity to take Literature and the Craft of Writing with him as well.
I had the pleasure of attending the class on Wednesday and it is entirely different from any undergraduate Creative Writing course I have taken here at Vanderbilt. The class is small and intimate and most importantly, every other person in it wants to be an author just like I do. The undergraduate creative writing courses are filled with students who think it would be fun to write; the MFA students in Literature and the Craft of Writing need to write, and the class, at its core, is about how to make a living while doing so.
We are currently home to the most selective MFA program in the country, and the six students who I interacted with on Wednesday absolutely blew me away. I have so much to learn from them and I think that being in a class with people who read, write, and digest literature in the way that they do would be an absolutely invaluable experience for me. Additionally, to return to the importance of professor recommendations in the MFA application process, being in a class with six older students who are better and more experienced at both reading and writing will push me tremendously (an additional side note here: I am interning this semester with the Nashville Review, a Literary Magazine published by our MFA students, and my boss, Rebecca Alsoblank, is in the class with me— so it would be an added benefit to be able to further immerse myself into that community and world as well). I think it is a good, good thing that I will be the weakest link in the class. It will force me to work as hard as I know how, and this work ethic, in the end, will be reflected in both my verbal commentary and written products. I believe that Professor Blank witnessing this—my absolute limits as both a writer and a reader—will solidify and strengthen the MFA recommendation I hope he will one day write for me. Further, while the class is offered next year when I will be a senior, Professor Blank will not be teaching it either semester. Thus, this semester is my only opportunity to take the class with him.
Another reason why I think it is important that I take the class this semester as opposed to next year is that it will inevitably improve the creative portfolio that I will be submitting to MFA programs. My creative dissertation next year as an English Honors student will form the bulk of this portfolio (as it will be the most substantial work that I will have done to date) and to have already seen how the students in an MFA program write and think will do a great service for my own writing and my own thinking. This will in turn be reflected in my creative dissertation--i.e. a large part of my creative portfolio--which will increase my odds of being admitted to a top flight program amidst a very competitive application process. Also, in the English Honors Program graduate level courses serve for Honors credit, so Literature and the Craft of Writing will help me achieve the six hours of Honors credit I will need for the Honors Program in the most productive and beneficial manner possible.
It is worth noting, also, that I went to speak with Professor Blank yesterday. I asked him if there was anything in particular that I should write or mention in my petition to increase my chances of being admitted into his class. He said that he could not think of anything, although he did wish that there were a magic phrase or sentence he could tell me (unfortunately, no such phrase, outside of 1,250 words of candid pleading in elegant Garamond typeface, exists). One thing he did say, however, was to make sure I mentioned that I have his full and total support in taking the course. He thinks that I can not only handle the workload and depth of thought which the class will entail, but that having that kind of exposure to such talented MFA students will serve me well in my development as a writer.
I will not hear back from your committee until after the add/drop period is over. I am currently registered for twelve hours in hopes of having these four hours approved, and if they are not, I will have to take courses here this summer in order to graduate on time. However, I feel that my reasons for wanting to take the course this semester are compelling enough to merit the risk; I want to take this course badly enough to merit the risk. I cannot thank all of you enough for your time and I hope that whatever this petition has lacked in brevity it has compensated for with thoroughness. Please know that my reasons for writing you have been pure and good: I want to learn to write as well as I can and I believe this is the best manner for me to do so while completing the requirements of a Vanderbilt Undergraduate College Arts and Sciences degree. Once again, thank you so much for your time.
Sincerely,
Curtis Lee
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Did you know that...
"If you watch 'Jaws' backwards, it's a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach"
From Highdeas, on film.
From Highdeas, on film.
I have been home for a little more than a week and it is about to be a new year.
Coming home has been an adjustment but it is nice to be back in America and feel like I truly belong again. Now I understand the word homeland. On Christmas Eve I couldn’t fall asleep. I lay in my bed, wide awake, feeling uneasy—like there was something I was forgetting. I got up, went downstairs, double checked that I had locked the door, poured myself a glass of water, and got back into bed: I still couldn't fall asleep. Everything was quiet both inside and outside the house. It seemed to me like I must have been the only person on my street awake. Then I realized that’s exactly what was wrong—- the quiet! After four months of falling asleep in Barcelona listening to dogs bark, drunks laugh, and my host mother’s sleeping-pill-induced snores, the true and perfect silence of two A.M. on a sleepy little Delaware street was eerie. When I arrived in Barcelona I used to put in ear plugs when I read; now I saw silence differently—as a morbid vacuum where noise should have been—and it creeped me out.
Provincial life does have its advantages, however. For one, it is beautiful. I missed nature while I was abroad. I went for a bike ride with my father the other day and it blew me away. I had forgotten how picturesque the area where I’m from is. It was as though I was pedaling through a Wyeth painting filled with gently rolling hills, barren of their wheat in the wintertime, and little gurgling creeks, still rimmed with early morning ice that the sun was busy thawing away. We rode past deer, squirrels and chipmunks, red tailed hawks, turkey vultures, and plenty of geese. Beyond the wooden fences lining the narrow back roads, horses with thermal blankets covering their flanks stood outside old stone farmhouses stomping and shaking off the cold; sheep grazed languidly on the thin grass that sprouted through farm ponds' muddy banks. And then, of course, there were the neighbors out walking their decidedly American dogs: happy Labradors and energetic golden retrievers with owners who said hello, wished you a happy new year, and smiled. We even biked past an elderly couple who had hitched up their ponies to a little covered wagon and were out for a ride in the brisk mid-morning air. They waved the most enthusiastically of them all.
But it wasn’t until today, shooting sporting clays with special edition red, white, and blue colored shotgun shells, that I was irrevocably convinced that my time in Barcelona is truly over and gone: tonight, when December ends and the fireworks go off, I’m going to pretend it's the fourth of July.
Provincial life does have its advantages, however. For one, it is beautiful. I missed nature while I was abroad. I went for a bike ride with my father the other day and it blew me away. I had forgotten how picturesque the area where I’m from is. It was as though I was pedaling through a Wyeth painting filled with gently rolling hills, barren of their wheat in the wintertime, and little gurgling creeks, still rimmed with early morning ice that the sun was busy thawing away. We rode past deer, squirrels and chipmunks, red tailed hawks, turkey vultures, and plenty of geese. Beyond the wooden fences lining the narrow back roads, horses with thermal blankets covering their flanks stood outside old stone farmhouses stomping and shaking off the cold; sheep grazed languidly on the thin grass that sprouted through farm ponds' muddy banks. And then, of course, there were the neighbors out walking their decidedly American dogs: happy Labradors and energetic golden retrievers with owners who said hello, wished you a happy new year, and smiled. We even biked past an elderly couple who had hitched up their ponies to a little covered wagon and were out for a ride in the brisk mid-morning air. They waved the most enthusiastically of them all.
But it wasn’t until today, shooting sporting clays with special edition red, white, and blue colored shotgun shells, that I was irrevocably convinced that my time in Barcelona is truly over and gone: tonight, when December ends and the fireworks go off, I’m going to pretend it's the fourth of July.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
A Bertrand Russell Quartet:
"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
"I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex."
"A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live."
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
"I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex."
"A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live."
Monday, December 26, 2011
“...I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me.'
'What do you mean, babe? You're a fine boy with a good education.'
'Employers sense in me a denial of their values.' He rolled over onto his back. 'They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe."
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
'Employers sense in me a denial of their values.' He rolled over onto his back. 'They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe."
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Friday, December 23, 2011
I didn’t understand how much I had in Barcelona until I had to leave it all.
Over my last supper, I told my host-mother that I had carried my lucky buckeye in my pocket every day since she had given it to me. She laughed and said it was obvious.
“Why?” I asked.
“Hombre,” she said, “because you’re very lucky.”
I asked why and she counted off four reasons on four stubby brown fingers.
1. “You’re always smiling.”
2. “You like what you study.”
3. “You got a chance to travel and see the world at an age when you were young enough for it to change you.”
4. “Your parents clearly love you a ton.”
I thought about it and realized that she was completely right, even if she had forgotten to mention my great friends and the fact that I'm damn good looking. I am very, very fortunate and in the most cliched sense, before living abroad I didn't take stock enough in what I had at home.
Then she asked me if I thought she was lucky. I had to think about it for a minute. She was widowed when both her children were young. Every day she visits her senile father in the retirement home she pays for by working overtime and he asks her how her deceased husband is doing. She is cynical and pessimistic when she watches the news; her son often tells her she needs to cheer up.
“Yeah,” I said, “you’re lucky.”
She waited.
“You have two great kids, you have a nice apartment, you like your job, and you still have your father.”
She cocked her head sideways and thought about it. “And I have a grandson,” she said, smiling.
As a goodbye present I gave Pol, her son, a bottle of rum and an alpaca wool hat I bought in Argentina that he had once told me he was jealous of. He was thrilled and tried it on in the bathroom mirror under his bright orange snowboarding goggles.
He opened the rum and poured three glasses. He called to his mom and we all went into the dining room. We looked down at the glasses and swirled our ice and didn’t speak: I was leaving in the morning. Paul shrugged.
“Salud,” he said, and we drank.
Luisa shuddered. “¡Que fuerte!”
Pol and I laughed but she was right, it was strong. After a while we got to winding down and saying bye and I thanked them both for everything they had done for me. Then Pol got to talking about the path of life: el camino de la vida.
“Every single person we meet,” he said, “makes us who we are.”
“I know,” I said.
Later, he came into my room with his FC Barcelona jersey and handed it to me.
“Now you have something from the best fútbol team in the world.”
I put it on and he smiled and so did I. I do not know what he was thinking but I was wondering if I would ever see him again.
“Merry Christmas, Curtis” he said.
“Feliz Navidad, tío.”
That night I stopped by the neighborhood bar, Marc's.
Marc put a beer and a plate of olives down in front of me before I had to ask.
When it came time to leave, “Marc, I go home tomorrow.”
He exhaled. “One last drink on the house?” he asked.
“One last drink,” I said.
He poured himself one, too.
Then I hiked up a mountain to an abandoned fort that is a good place to go if you want to impress a girl. She wore the right shoes this time. It was dark away from the lights of the city and we tripped on stones we couldn’t see as we walked up the broken path. When we got to the bunkers the only other people there were some Spanish teenagers smoking a joint—it was windy and cold and they were having trouble keeping it lit. The two of us sat down where we sat the last time, when the skyline was foreign and the city still unfamiliar. Our legs hung out over the concrete lip of the bunker and all of Barcelona was at our feet. I looked out towards the ocean I couldn’t see in the dark, past neon Christmas lights, and cars like ants with two lit eyes, and so many glowing windows with open blinds: each one the home of a person I would never meet or know but was nonetheless going through the exact same infinitely profound experience of being conscious and alive. I looked past the shadows of skyscrapers and hotels and the twisting spires of the Sagrada Familia. The lights twinkled and turned on the chilled air somewhere between their origin and my eye and everywhere I looked there was a memory. The moon was a crescent, like somebody had delicately carved out the rest.
Our hands were cold in each other’s.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
I looked out over the city one last time.
“I’ll miss you, too.”
Then we got up and left and stumbled down the unlit hills until we were among the lights, too.
The next morning, from the tarmac and through my little oval window, I watched dawn break. My view was of a muddy field and a chain link fence.
“Why?” I asked.
“Hombre,” she said, “because you’re very lucky.”
I asked why and she counted off four reasons on four stubby brown fingers.
1. “You’re always smiling.”
2. “You like what you study.”
3. “You got a chance to travel and see the world at an age when you were young enough for it to change you.”
4. “Your parents clearly love you a ton.”
I thought about it and realized that she was completely right, even if she had forgotten to mention my great friends and the fact that I'm damn good looking. I am very, very fortunate and in the most cliched sense, before living abroad I didn't take stock enough in what I had at home.
Then she asked me if I thought she was lucky. I had to think about it for a minute. She was widowed when both her children were young. Every day she visits her senile father in the retirement home she pays for by working overtime and he asks her how her deceased husband is doing. She is cynical and pessimistic when she watches the news; her son often tells her she needs to cheer up.
“Yeah,” I said, “you’re lucky.”
She waited.
“You have two great kids, you have a nice apartment, you like your job, and you still have your father.”
She cocked her head sideways and thought about it. “And I have a grandson,” she said, smiling.
As a goodbye present I gave Pol, her son, a bottle of rum and an alpaca wool hat I bought in Argentina that he had once told me he was jealous of. He was thrilled and tried it on in the bathroom mirror under his bright orange snowboarding goggles.
He opened the rum and poured three glasses. He called to his mom and we all went into the dining room. We looked down at the glasses and swirled our ice and didn’t speak: I was leaving in the morning. Paul shrugged.
“Salud,” he said, and we drank.
Luisa shuddered. “¡Que fuerte!”
Pol and I laughed but she was right, it was strong. After a while we got to winding down and saying bye and I thanked them both for everything they had done for me. Then Pol got to talking about the path of life: el camino de la vida.
“Every single person we meet,” he said, “makes us who we are.”
“I know,” I said.
Later, he came into my room with his FC Barcelona jersey and handed it to me.
“Now you have something from the best fútbol team in the world.”
I put it on and he smiled and so did I. I do not know what he was thinking but I was wondering if I would ever see him again.
“Merry Christmas, Curtis” he said.
“Feliz Navidad, tío.”
That night I stopped by the neighborhood bar, Marc's.
Marc put a beer and a plate of olives down in front of me before I had to ask.
When it came time to leave, “Marc, I go home tomorrow.”
He exhaled. “One last drink on the house?” he asked.
“One last drink,” I said.
He poured himself one, too.
Then I hiked up a mountain to an abandoned fort that is a good place to go if you want to impress a girl. She wore the right shoes this time. It was dark away from the lights of the city and we tripped on stones we couldn’t see as we walked up the broken path. When we got to the bunkers the only other people there were some Spanish teenagers smoking a joint—it was windy and cold and they were having trouble keeping it lit. The two of us sat down where we sat the last time, when the skyline was foreign and the city still unfamiliar. Our legs hung out over the concrete lip of the bunker and all of Barcelona was at our feet. I looked out towards the ocean I couldn’t see in the dark, past neon Christmas lights, and cars like ants with two lit eyes, and so many glowing windows with open blinds: each one the home of a person I would never meet or know but was nonetheless going through the exact same infinitely profound experience of being conscious and alive. I looked past the shadows of skyscrapers and hotels and the twisting spires of the Sagrada Familia. The lights twinkled and turned on the chilled air somewhere between their origin and my eye and everywhere I looked there was a memory. The moon was a crescent, like somebody had delicately carved out the rest.
Our hands were cold in each other’s.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
I looked out over the city one last time.
“I’ll miss you, too.”
Then we got up and left and stumbled down the unlit hills until we were among the lights, too.
The next morning, from the tarmac and through my little oval window, I watched dawn break. My view was of a muddy field and a chain link fence.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
A blog makes anybody an author.
Bildungsroman* is a literary genre which tells about the coming of age of a sensitive person who is looking for answers and experience. The genre evolved from folklore tales of a dunce or youngest son going out in the world to seek his fortune. Usually in the beginning of the story there is an emotional loss which makes the protagonist leave on his journey. In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty. The genre often features a main conflict between the main character and society. Typically, the values of society are gradually accepted by the protagonist and he is ultimately accepted into society – the protagonist's mistakes and disappointments are over.
*see also: Künstlerroman
*see also: Künstlerroman
"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true,
that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
I leave Barcelona in a week.
The city has turned cold and windy. Night falls early. The Mediterranean is not immune to winter, it seems.
The streets are lined with Christmas lights and the commuters leave work wearing balaclavas beneath their helmets and idle their mopeds at the corner traffic light, waiting for the incandescent red to turn an incandescent green. They are eager to get home and out of this cold.
I am eager to get home, too. But the thing is-- I don't want to leave here.
I went to a friend's house for dinner the other night. They live with a very pretty, sweet, divorced psychologist named Elena. Her eccentric, unemployed sister, Conchita, and Conchita's rustic, quiet, and wry husband, Miguel, came as well. Miguel had a heavy hand with the wine and then with the cava and before long Conchita and Elena were standing up to sing an ancient Andalusian gypsy ballad about a bull looking at his reflection in a stream by silver moonlight. Their voices were thin and tenuous and as they sang Miguel shut his eyes and tapped his dessert spoon against his champagne flute. It was beautiful in the strange, ephemeral way of all perfect moments that you know memory will inevitably blemish.
Or maybe the blemish is that memory makes them perfect. Maybe it was silly and maybe they were drunk and maybe their voices were neither thin nor tenuous but simply bad.
Then they were done singing and I was still clapping and laughing and smiling when they asked me to sing a folk song from my country.
But I didn't know any... oh, well, there was that one, but...
And my memory is strong. Strong enough that I will not remember a winter that came late to Spain: no, it was all warm sunny days on the beach, traveling Europe, and four months of a guiltily pleasurable utter lack of responsibility for which I will receive academic credit. But my memory is not strong enough to erase the two minutes it took my voice to crack through Take Me Out to the Ball Game while three Spaniards watched with the solemn respect they felt due of an anthem they couldn't understand.
And it never will be.
The streets are lined with Christmas lights and the commuters leave work wearing balaclavas beneath their helmets and idle their mopeds at the corner traffic light, waiting for the incandescent red to turn an incandescent green. They are eager to get home and out of this cold.
I am eager to get home, too. But the thing is-- I don't want to leave here.
I went to a friend's house for dinner the other night. They live with a very pretty, sweet, divorced psychologist named Elena. Her eccentric, unemployed sister, Conchita, and Conchita's rustic, quiet, and wry husband, Miguel, came as well. Miguel had a heavy hand with the wine and then with the cava and before long Conchita and Elena were standing up to sing an ancient Andalusian gypsy ballad about a bull looking at his reflection in a stream by silver moonlight. Their voices were thin and tenuous and as they sang Miguel shut his eyes and tapped his dessert spoon against his champagne flute. It was beautiful in the strange, ephemeral way of all perfect moments that you know memory will inevitably blemish.
Or maybe the blemish is that memory makes them perfect. Maybe it was silly and maybe they were drunk and maybe their voices were neither thin nor tenuous but simply bad.
Then they were done singing and I was still clapping and laughing and smiling when they asked me to sing a folk song from my country.
But I didn't know any... oh, well, there was that one, but...
And my memory is strong. Strong enough that I will not remember a winter that came late to Spain: no, it was all warm sunny days on the beach, traveling Europe, and four months of a guiltily pleasurable utter lack of responsibility for which I will receive academic credit. But my memory is not strong enough to erase the two minutes it took my voice to crack through Take Me Out to the Ball Game while three Spaniards watched with the solemn respect they felt due of an anthem they couldn't understand.
And it never will be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)