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About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
-- W.H. Auden
A lady I know quoted that about walking home from filing divorce papers, how the entire world seemed completely uncaring, going its mundane business, when her life is changing dramatically, and she is still buying a latte at Starbucks in a line of other people, none of whom show their inner tumult.
In the same way, there are times when enlightenment hit me at what may seem far too mundane a setting for it. Helen Keller describes the pump where she first understood the meaning of W-A-T-E-R; I can point to the corner of my elementary school upper-floor hallway where, as I walked from the washroom, it suddenly clicked how fractions worked and what they were and why the arcana of finding the lowest common denominator had to be performed; I can tell you that I had one of my most original novel ideas when fiddling with one of the compartments of my refrigerator, or how I wrote some of my best poetry biking down Bank Street's least picturesque section. Fiction may require appropriate storms or beautiful skies --- but pathetic fallacy does not happen when you want it, and you have to settle for the muse of inspiration coming out of the battered, well-worn, quotidian woodwork.
So it was over tidying up the kitchen table that it hit me that I will, indeed, apply to graduate school for linguistics, that it will, indeed, work out fine and that I do, indeed, deserve and will work hard for at least a master's in the subject, for what I could bring to the field (my flamboyant style of questioning and synthesis) and what the field can give me (some very fun story ideas, for one thing; more formally, a way to get money for the way I think anyway).
Speaking of money, that will work out somehow. If you truly know what you want, while being wise about it and not setting it on a pedestal and declaring you'll have nothing else, life will be glad to give it to you. If things do not actually work out, that will be fine; as I said, I do have other options. I've been thinking of linguistics since before I knew any other language but my first one, much less what linguistics itself was; I should have enough psychic coin (mana? What was the D&D term?) with the almighty Linguistics Gods for them to consider me a deserving acolyte.
As I said, there were many dreams in my life which shattered, and some that faded away almost without a whimper. But there are also many memories I have that are marked how my dreams made it out to be so difficult and it was much easier, and how some things where I did not invest too many high expectations turned out better than I could possibly imagine. As the Number Devil remarked, the devil is not as scary as he is painted. I went back through my notes to find the record of the first of long dark nights in the math office helping Iselen with her graphing calculator homework, and something Lady Gaussjordana said about failure:
Hope is not a course of action, no. It is not the roadway itself. But it IS a roadmap. And it IS fuel to power the car. I have done five years to magna cum laude level; being stupid is no longer an excuse either, although sometimes it makes you late for scholarship applications.
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
-- W.H. Auden
A lady I know quoted that about walking home from filing divorce papers, how the entire world seemed completely uncaring, going its mundane business, when her life is changing dramatically, and she is still buying a latte at Starbucks in a line of other people, none of whom show their inner tumult.
In the same way, there are times when enlightenment hit me at what may seem far too mundane a setting for it. Helen Keller describes the pump where she first understood the meaning of W-A-T-E-R; I can point to the corner of my elementary school upper-floor hallway where, as I walked from the washroom, it suddenly clicked how fractions worked and what they were and why the arcana of finding the lowest common denominator had to be performed; I can tell you that I had one of my most original novel ideas when fiddling with one of the compartments of my refrigerator, or how I wrote some of my best poetry biking down Bank Street's least picturesque section. Fiction may require appropriate storms or beautiful skies --- but pathetic fallacy does not happen when you want it, and you have to settle for the muse of inspiration coming out of the battered, well-worn, quotidian woodwork.
So it was over tidying up the kitchen table that it hit me that I will, indeed, apply to graduate school for linguistics, that it will, indeed, work out fine and that I do, indeed, deserve and will work hard for at least a master's in the subject, for what I could bring to the field (my flamboyant style of questioning and synthesis) and what the field can give me (some very fun story ideas, for one thing; more formally, a way to get money for the way I think anyway).
Speaking of money, that will work out somehow. If you truly know what you want, while being wise about it and not setting it on a pedestal and declaring you'll have nothing else, life will be glad to give it to you. If things do not actually work out, that will be fine; as I said, I do have other options. I've been thinking of linguistics since before I knew any other language but my first one, much less what linguistics itself was; I should have enough psychic coin (mana? What was the D&D term?) with the almighty Linguistics Gods for them to consider me a deserving acolyte.
As I said, there were many dreams in my life which shattered, and some that faded away almost without a whimper. But there are also many memories I have that are marked how my dreams made it out to be so difficult and it was much easier, and how some things where I did not invest too many high expectations turned out better than I could possibly imagine. As the Number Devil remarked, the devil is not as scary as he is painted. I went back through my notes to find the record of the first of long dark nights in the math office helping Iselen with her graphing calculator homework, and something Lady Gaussjordana said about failure:
( Read more... )
Hope is not a course of action, no. It is not the roadway itself. But it IS a roadmap. And it IS fuel to power the car. I have done five years to magna cum laude level; being stupid is no longer an excuse either, although sometimes it makes you late for scholarship applications.
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