silva rerum

Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion

I won­der if I have some con­tempt for hope­less romantics or if I simply find overly emo­tional dis­plays of affec­tion abhor­rent. I am, as I have poin­ted out, a sin­gu­larly unemo­tional per­son. I think that emo­tions must threaten me, they occlude my already foggy per­cep­tion of the world. Since I was very young, I knew that any ink­lings of “romance” I thought I’d feel before I were 18 would simply be flights of fancy and, of course, I ask myself often, “where is fancy bred – in the heart or in the head?” And so as I round upon the turn into adult­hood, I won­der if I’ve been made heart­less or if there is some heart beat­ing beneath the ice and metal?

I know there must be some­thing that makes me feel empathy. I feel it every­day, when I look upon pain­ful images of need­lessly slaughtered chil­dren in Darfur, when I think about my life of sump­tu­ous con­sump­tion on the same planet where infants die daily from pre­vent­able dis­eases for lack of medi­cine or hos­pital care. It pains me to see the eld­erly struggle along in their eld­erly lives, for­got­ten and neg­lected, the detritus of an ever-​accelerating soci­ety. I won­der if I should grow old like them and slowly, slowly, surely, surely, draw to a leis­urely, unex­pec­ted, abrupt stop?

I woke up bright and early today, entirely unchar­ac­ter­istic for me at any time of year. I must be accli­mat­ized to the 8am classes – I think this is a good change. After eat­ing a brief break­fast with my fam­ily (dur­ing which I saw S! I won­der how fares his bio­tech­no­logy pro­gram? He’s always so busy.), I hopped aboard what I pre­sumed to be a 41 UBC bus. Of course, I had fallen asleep and we reached Dunbar and every­one hopped off the bus. I woke up and in my drowsy haze, I wondered why every­one was wait­ing out­side the bus…and I slowly made my way out to real­ise it was a 41 To Crown. How irrit­at­ing! Holiday sched­ule, I should have known.

And after fin­ish­ing some per­func­tory tasks at work, I real­ised that every food out­let within a walk­able radius had closed for Easter so I dragged myself to the Village to buy some food. I guess the walk­ing was good for me – I hate eat­ing at MacDonalds. The iced cof­fee was good though, so com­pli­ments to the line cook for that.

I’m only knee-​deep into my paper for ENGL 357 but I really should been up to my neck in research. On the bright side, I’ve brought home lots of research to sift through so I can rearrange them to form a cohes­ive paper. I’m so excited! I bet­ter do it quickly…and there’s the issue of the read­ing ques­tions! Agh!

Picked up my ENGL 348 paper from Dr. Sirluck’s house today. It was delight­ful! I would have lingered a little longer, told Dr. Sirluck that she is an amaz­ing pro­fessor and a magi­cian. That she has utterly impacted my philo­sophy of English lit­er­at­ure bey­ond former recog­ni­tion. And I did not. I politely took a brownie from the plate of pastries that she proffered, glanced at her curi­ous cat and uttered a few nervous pleas­ant­ries. I ran off rather quickly.

An A for my paper! Hurrah, I am cer­tainly excited for the rest of my exams now. I feel I can really take them on!

Back to study­ing and pre­par­ing for tutoring…