Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Some people, the good ones anyway, do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons.

Hard to know where to begin or pick up� yesterday proving no exception, at the end of every debate tournament, following the zen of cleaning, all I want is peace, quiet, to be solitary and a good cry is in order. Ethos achieved. An extended pause, rest. All in all, I think things went fine all weekend and what I could feasibly control fell into place. Had a wonderful closure-dinner with Dan and Jeremy last night, came home and went directly to bed � slept through until this afternoon and looked at the snow outside. Called Mom, called Krsitin, showered and moved myself to my favorite computer lab (where I wrote the bulk of my thesis) since my internet keeps blinking out and my instant messenger is wholly disagreeable. I brought books, coffee, grad school stuff, cds � I�ve come here for the long haul and I need to connect with myself after two selfless weeks of giving over myself to something greater, namely what in retrospect seems quite small: this tournament.

Now to wax poetic because I�ll probably want to remember this one day � running a debate tournament adds something positive to one�s existential experience. In the past two days, I completely lost track of time, didn�t check my email, no one called and I called no one � I yelled at my dearest friends to go places and do things quickly and didn�t listen when they talked to me, sent them hordes of strangers to sleep on their floors, but at the same time, although I don't remember having more than 3 sentences of dialogue with anyone shy of Dan, I don�t think I have ever felt more myself then I have sitting in the judges� room during a Middlebury debate tournament. Despite my skittishness and bossiness of having to have things my way, times like these remind me how many wonderful, talented, funny, patient, smart, and understanding people really care about me and by extension, what is important to me. People from every little corner of my life seeped in and helped me even if it couldn�t be further from what they like to do. That�s damn special, I am lucky, and I have to concur with Jeremy who finally exhaled around 8pm and all of the debaters were headed away, after the longest-24+ hours of his life, �I am going to miss this when it�s gone.�

I�ve probably never felt better about the status of our society than this past weekend. There were so many people running around sporting the lime green tshirts, smiles and high fives all around. I think Dan really stepped-up as heir apparent and proved to a lot of other people to be the absolutely great kid I�ve known for three years. All too often he was under-appreciated or lumped into the downgraded status of Andrew�s better half, but I think he�s really coming into his own, I just wish his friends treated him better and girls would take notice too. I am proud of him and feel confident to leave him in de facto charge when I have to take my leave in some 75 days. My novices were troopers and I only wish I could be around them a little longer � Mike and Darin (both �00) came up from Harvard law for the weekend and all I can say about that, excuse the triteness, that was really special too. Darin�s agreed to accept me into the �loser alumni society� and make the trek up for next year�s tournament.

So sigh, it�s over. I just want to sit and listen to Sigur Ros and maybe rent and watch Fellini's "8 1/2" in its entirity. It�s a damn big push toward that big picture thinking of what I need to give up when I leave this place and who I was when I was here, what occupied me, who and what filled the minutes. There�s a Fitzgerald line from Tender is the Night that I always default to when I feel like this, something to the effect of: �people never know how much space they take up in your life.� So thank you all, for putting up with me at my worst - because I sure as hell never say it or show it enough. Even when I haven't had a drop of alcohol, I'm a belligerent mess, when I have put a few away, I am louder, abusive, always that much more right, and more selfish. ah, you are noble, good friends.


one of the coolest websites ever gnod
posted by lmjasinski at 2:48 PM