Testament to change.

I'm starting to like Melville. This development in my personal taste has come as a shock even to myself. I nearly invented an imaginary friend simply to tell him about it.

Not sure I can muster enough willpower to plow through Moby Dick, but I've really enjoyed his Piazza Tales, which are surprisingly deeper than I had expected. I can tell that he wrote intentionally, with the idea that his works should and would be subject to scrutiny and analysis. The way he constructs his narrative always seems to toy with different modes-- poetry, prose, charts, graphs, etc.-- that he weaves together like clues for the reader to follow. I like that. It appeals to the English major inside of me.

As if I needed a way of marking college's profound affect on my life, here is yet another marker. Touche, university, touche.

Back to the grind.

Oh, how I wish tomorrow would not arrive. I don't want to go back to school, I don't want to go back to night after night with little sleep as I slave over papers and projects, I don't want to shower in a cubby, and I don't want to have to marshal piles of quarters simply to do a load of laundry. I've had a great break, I really have, and I feel that it was just starting to get going by the time it reached its end.

Alas, I suppose that's the stuff of life. But anyway, I'm not all sad about returning to school; I don't even mind the work so much as I mind the means by which it must get done. Less than three weeks from now, I'll be right back here in my room, ready to celebrate Christmas with my family. Carly will have arrived from her stint overseas, and I'll be bristling with excitement as I prepare to head over for my own time abroad. So I suppose I shouldn't complain-- a full plate is certainly preferable to no plate at all.

Now, to sleep...

Tchaikovsky and coffee.

I'm having one of those days where I wake up scatter-brained, and attempt for a few hours to focus on my work, but then fail because I can't remember what I needed to get done or why it was important in the first place and then I realize I lack any sense of urgency but for some reason am restless and then I don't know what to do with myself. I also write egregious run-on sentences.

I cannot express how much I need a break. I mean, I pulled SIX all-nighters in the month of October alone. If we're sticking with statistics here, that's two more times than I had pulled them in my entire life up to that point. So, aside from being physically exhausted, I'm running out of intellectual energy as well. Unfortunately, this last problem has embodied itself in my two major research papers that I have been writing-- both of which have not turned out well.

As I've said before, I've got some really great news to share in the upcoming weeks. More on those things as they occur...

I think I'm on to something...

This will be quick and hastily written.

Well, I know I promised that gigantic life-update of a blog, and have certainly failed at delivering it. Yet the reason isn't neglect, but that so much keeps happening in my life that the blog keeps growing larger and larger. Thus, I propose a change in format-- instead of penning one post to rule them all, I will just shoot some quick announcements via this blog as I have the time, as my presence on here needs to grow along with the great happenings of my life.

First announcement, then: I am definitely, totally, for sure going to be studying at the University of York next semester! Naturally, I'm looking forward to it; spending six months steeping in Medieval and Early Renaissance sites while soaking up all of the UK I can... seriously? What's not to like about that.

Second announcement: I continue to waffle on my vocational plans. Part of my hope for my time in England is that I can spend some time reflecting on this, as one of them (BIG ANNOUNCEMENT HERE) has me going to graduate school not for my M.A., but for an M.Div with the intention of taking Holy Orders and entering the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. Been going through the discernment process for this, working closely with Fr. Alan Herbst here in Champaign, who has been a wonderful mentor to me during this time of transition and decision-making. Still want to get my PhD though... and not in Theology.

Third announcement: I've really been stepping up my involvement with Interfaith in Action here on campus. As Facebook will tell you, I had the opportunity to attend an IFYC leadership conference hosted by the White House at Georgetown University. Made loads of new friends, lost my voice for two weeks, and bought a Hoyas t-shirt. Look for some great things happening before the first of the year (some pretty awesome things are afoot).

Where am I, you ask?

I know that this post will go largely unnoticed, especially since whatever limited readership this blog carried disappeared once I stopped posting regularly. However, once my busy schedule lets up a bit, I will finish putting together what will be the most mind-blowing (both in size and content) pieces I have ever put on the internet. It will attempt to update everyone on some very important aspects of my life that I have kept quite private until recently. For now, I leave you with this meager update:

This semester has proven incredibly taxing. My workload is double that of last year, and I spend the majority of my time sloughing through Latin translations and short papers on the American Gothic as a literary form. Yet I have still managed to enjoy this semester more than almost any before it. I maintain an active schedule, serving in leadership positions in two organizations on campus, InterVarsity and InterFaith (not related, despite the shared "Inter" prefix.) Through my involvement with them, I have made many new and wonderful friendships. My Fighting Illini are actually playing some football this year, which has made going to games a lot more enjoyable. I have devoted more time to writing this year than last, despite my full schedule, and have also spent a lot more time reading for pleasure and intellectual enrichment (isn't that what school is supposed to do?) which has played a significant part in reclaiming my writing.

And, perhaps best of all, I turn 21 in less than two weeks.

Disillusioned by disillusionment.

This morning I read through a book by art historian Francoise Barbe-Gall entitled  How to Talk to Children About Art. Its description from the blurb on the back cover: "... this guide anticipates how kids will react to paintings by artists as diverse as Botticelli, Vermeer, Degas, Chagall, and Pollock. Questions and answers about 30 famous paintings provide historical background, explain genres such as still life and portrait, and demystify religious and mythological themes." These "questions and answers" are broken into three color-coded sections per painting-- one for 5-7 yrs, one for 8-10 yrs, and one for 11-13+ yrs. To be fair, this book actually did manage to untangle basic queries children (or anyone) have about art while also providing a nice bit of historical context, which, in the end, amounted to a very accessible resource for those wishing to explore the basics of art appreciation. However, I'm not so sure she always did the best job "anticipating" the various questions children will ask, especially when it came to the 11-13+ age bracket.

For instance, when discussing Jackson Pollock's No. 3, Tiger, she anticipates the 13 yr. old to ask, "Is the painting really supposed to mean something?" This I think to be a perfectly sensible question. Her response:

At the time when Pollock was working, around World War II, the painting styles then current no longer had any meaning for him. Nothing would have been able to give the feeling of disarray, collapse, with the kind of force he wanted to convey. He couldn't paint actual things breaking down and disappearing because he felt lost in a world where he could no longer recognize anything. But he kept on searching. The painting does not represent ruins: it actually is chaos itself. Everything seems thrown into confusion, lifted here, there, everywhere, without any respite, by the inexhaustible energy of the painting.

Okay, fair enough. But wouldn't a 13 yr old ask Why? Why didn't the current styles hold any meaning for him? Why couldn't he paint things breaking down? Why did he feel lost? Why couldn't he recognize anything? (And what does that mean, exactly?) What did he "[keep] on searching" for? Did he find it?

Instead of answering these questions-- or "anticipating" them-- the page is left blank. Our author moves on to Yves Klein's Untitled Blue Monochrome, an equally enigmatic piece, though in its simplicity rather than its complexity (it is just a solid blue rectangle), and leaves Pollock alone. This lack of explanation has come to characterize for me the language of modernity (and of its over-used progeny, post-modernism). Everyone is disillusioned, thrown into chaos, unstable, etc. etc., though no one in any of my English classes (the source of most of my encounters with both movements) has told me why. I can understand someone who has endured the horrors of a World War (as Pollock had) could become bleak in their outlook toward humanity's future, but often no explanation is given for this notion of the world, which turns the very concept into an abstraction itself. I was once told that the reason TS Eliot wrote The Wasteland was because he was "disillusioned with the growth of cities, and with city life in general" because there were so many people and none of them knew one another. No more was said about it, though we spent a great deal of time discussing how Eliot masterfully plays with form, language, and symbolism to drive home this idea of "disillusionment." And I am left to wonder about this characterization of an age. Did everyone feel this way? Did hearing German spoken in a London cafe really have such a profound effect on people? Does it today?

I know the world is complex. I know it is depressing. I know we have (oftentimes severe) issues and problems. I know nuclear holocaust is possible. It has been a reality since the day I entered the earth from the warmth of my mother's womb. But I must ask: Am I disillusioned because I don't understand disillusionment? I know it comes across as being uncultured to admit that one doesn't "get it," but I'm truly curious. I appreciate modern art, I enjoyed Ms. Barbe-Gall's book, and I think The Wasteland is a work of pure brilliance. But sometimes my mind goes on tangents like this one...

There is no time for updating when life is going on.

Though my absence from this blog may suggest otherwise, I actually have much to tell. More has happened in these past weeks than (arguably) at any other time in my life; I have plumbed the depths of disbelief and relished the surest faith, I have contemplated and considered, I have run there and back, I have asked and answered, and in so doing have come to a wonderful understanding of the powerful implications held in the word "vocation." It is this last bit which has transformed me most. Yet it is also this last bit which I feel least comfortable divulging within this blog (at least, not yet).

I will say only this: I was both right and wrong when it came to my stubborn insistence regarding my career. It has become both more and less.

I know that being cryptic is irritating, so I will stop. Just know that what has taken place these past weeks has changed me forever, and is perhaps the culmination of a journey that began 7 July 2007 at a very late hour in my pool in Franklin. I will divulge more as I feel it appropriate.