i used to try

This week I discovered (and Catherine and Alex confirmed) that one of my eyes is bigger than the other. This is causing me a lot of psychological distress.

I have the best end-of-the-semester tradition, let me tell you. After classes are over, I walk down to the bookstore beyond Granville and sell my textbooks back. Then I go and spend almost all of the money I get back on used books from the The Bookshop. The lovely Sarah H. joined me today and we had a grand time. I walked away with seven gems: Three Lives (Gertrude Stein), C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce and Reflections on the Psalms, joined by Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy, Kafka's Metamorphosis, and two Chekhov collections (7 Short Novels and Collected Short Stories). I am going to save these fresh seven for spring semester, most likely. Winter break reading plan: finish Beloved and The Four Loves and then check out Atonement and Eat, Pray, Love from the library and consume those too. (I'm so excited.)

T.S. Eliot gives me shivers and makes me shriek with amazement and I fully expect him to have the same effect on others. I read "The Hollow Men" to Alex yesterday in the quad while the fat black birds swam through the air. When I finished and it hit that perfect, perfect crescendo
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 with a whimper
and I started waving my hands excitedly and exclaiming unintelligble things and he just looked at me and said, "Stop being so emo." Way to kill the poetic fervor, snarky Brit.

Best song of the week: "Only At Christmas Time"-Sufjan Stevens

Deep communion with God in prayer works wonders for spiritual dryness. He does meet you when you are trying to find Him. I usually don't try hard enough. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls...

I have two exams on Friday and so I get to laze around and enjoy this quasi-spring weather all week. It's very leisurely and strange but also a little lonely since everyone else is holed up in the bowels of Davis. At least I have things to do--like enjoy Toni Morrison and my music and play guitar and write haphazard letters and eat chocolate. I have productive and highly self-indulgent fits of solitude.

I decided this morning that I don't like grad students. Or, rather, I formed a prejudice based on overheard conversations outside The Daily Grind. Could you be just a bit more sopping in pretention? because I don't think you've used enough five-syllable words in that sentence. Remind me again why you are smarter than your parents and all of your professors and Carl Jung and John Stuart Mill, because I'm not sure I caught the jist of it the first six times. The part where I almost laughed out loud was when Grad Student A, who kept saying he wrote this great blog that one of his advisors praised "consistently," ended the conversation with Grad Student B this way: "Yes, it was good to see you, too. If you want to keep up with me, you should visit my blog. I'm sure you'd enjoy reading it. I do my best thinking there. My professor said he was impressed with some of the concepts I've been generating lately, but I'm just spilling out my thoughts... although I suppose they have the tendency to turn into manifestos and theoretical homilies! Haha. Yes... well, shall I write down the URL for you? Do you have some paper?" "Oh... um, why don't you email it to me?" Grad Student B says unenthusiastically. "Yes, capital idea. I will do that. And," he pats him on the back, "I expect a comment from you!" Wry chuckle, limp half-laugh in response. Uuuugh. I'm choking in smarm.