"your hair was long when we first met"

I do love J-term.

Maybe I've said that already, a lot of times. But you know -- maybe it's bitter cold, and maybe the weather has been freakish this year, and maybe I feel like hibernating, but I still love J-term. I get up at a reasonable time of the morning, I work, I go to class, I work some more, I make and eat a leisurely dinner, I socialize, I do some homework, I go to sleep. It sounds so simple. I still spend 9 or 10 hours working a day. But work that I dislike is kept to a minimum, I'm much more focused, and all around much happier.

I feel like part of the reason I haven't been posting as much of actual note lately is because probably a good 50% of my social life involves Greg, and he doesn't like being mentioned in my blog. Nor do I want to be that girl, who talks about her boy all the time to the detriment of her communication with the rest of the world. I understand that the rest of the world is not as enthusiastic about him as I am, nor are they interested in my surprise at having dated him almost a year now. I also understand that the rest of the world is not enthused about the weird proofreading mistake I found the other day while I was at work, or about how much I love the smell of the pine wood I'm carving! In other words, my attempts to keep this from being simply navel gazing make me feel inadquate when I sit down to write! I feel so vehement about these points that I must utilize more exclamation points!

Although I did get this hilarious alumni announcement yesterday. It foretold the end of the world, that J.F.K. would come back as the antichrist, that the next pope would be a false prophet, and that Bush is apparently this rigteous man who will be taken out of the way as it is written in the end times. I laughed, and then I was disturbed. Very disturbed.

I leave you with a Rilke poem which I utterly adore. My new theory is that when Rilke says "a word that grows ripe in silence" (a concept he utilizes frequently), he has a very specific word in mind. As for what that word is -- well, that's part of the mystery, I suppose. But I think, at least in his divine poems, it has something to do with love.

ENTRANCE

Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the far-off:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let it go. . .