Six Months From Now...

Six months from now, I’ll be doing English papers on Shakespeare, and taking courses in Greek mythology, ethics, logic and religion.

Six months from now, I’ll be supporting myself by working part time.

Six months from now I’ll be learning how to draw better.

Six months from now, I’ll have an active blog, instead of month-long dead spaces.

Six months from now, I’ll be taking care of myself, doing what I love to do: which is writing and learning about the literature that has defined our culture, its beauty and depth.

Six months from now, I’ll be in the same place physically, but older, more mature, more joyous than right now.

In six months, I’ll be happy to make supper regularly with my roommate

In six months, my money (not anybody else’s!) will be budgeted to the dollar.

In six months, I’ll be seeing more plays than I’ve seen in the last three years

Sometime in six months, I’ll be playing video games, socially, healthily, and without guilt.

In six months, I’d have been a leader at camp, and an active part of that community.

In six months, I’ll be a catch.

In six months, I’ll be running 10k without stopping.

In six months, I’ll be closer to God, and to reality.

Six months from now, I’ll be fit, and able to beat my roommate in squash, like I once did.

Sometime in six months, I’ll either know how to blow glass, make glass sculptures, or learn how to work a forge.

In six months, my imagination will be expanded.

In six months I will be able to (and will) handle more responsibility.

Six months from now, my heart will not cry out in pain from hopes and dreams deferred.

Six months from now, I’ll be walking a path that I’ve should have walked three years ago.

The Truth About This Last Semeser

And nothing but.

So, there was a time, early in this academic year, when I was enthusiastic about being a science student. I thought that it was my “calling” to be a doctor, and I worked towards that. In my arrogance, or my misunderstanding, I thought that it was what God wanted for me too.

I pushed myself into this world that has been difficult for me to succeed in, this world of science and biology. I thought that my difficulty lay in discipline, or study habits (and to some degree it did), but I didn’t examine what lay at heart. I went into school with the hopes and expectations of other people on my shoulders. My hopes and expectations too. I tried the hardest I could in my first semester. I changed tactics, study habits, environments, schedules just to get that better grade.

I barely passed.

My world imploded when I got my marks back from last semester. My parents were understandably disappointed as well. They helped pay for that semester with my tuition. I took a lot of time trying to understand what went wrong. I made an “action plan,” I analyzed to the finest detail where I needed to improve.

And indeed I thought I was improving for this last semester. Right up to midterms, I thought I was in good stead. I thought I would be able to pass. I thought I could jack up my GPA.

I barely passed my midterms.

My world imploded a little bit more. I struggled with some recovery stuff around that time as well. I got depressed. I made some poor choices. I got burnt out. I stopped going to some of my classes.

I was heartsick with what I had put myself through school. I consistently did poorer than my expectations; I did poorer than the sheer amount of effort I put into school should have placed me. My roommates can attest to the work I put into school in that first semester, and up to my midterms.

So. I withdrew from two courses. I finished one final. And then, as I began to study for the last course and hardest of the courses for this semester, I realized that in one week I could not study nor make up for the classes missed in a month. I realized that my choices had left me high and dry. So, I tried to withdraw, and found out to my dismay that I had passed the deadline. Suddenly, I was put into a despairing situation. Halfway through this week, I had to sit down with my roommate and work through what was up. I had to tell someone. I had two evils to choose from: go to the final. Stress out. Embarrass myself. Fail. Or not go to the final. Fail. Wake up the next day and look at myself in the mirror.

I chose the latter. It ain’t pretty. It ain’t my proudest moment. I put myself into this position. It was a product of a month’s worth of choices. It was a product of not one moment but several.

I’m writing all that because I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I’m writing because I am sick and tired of pandering to other people’s expectations about my life and ignoring my heart and what it’s telling me. I’m sick and tired of not living a life that I choose. It’s time for me to grow up, and not merely grow up, but become who I am supposed to be, as cliché as it sounds. I’m tired of half-measures; I’m tired of doubting myself.

I’m looking at the semester, and realizing that I need to manage my time better. I’m looking at my semester and realizing that I need to do things that I can care about. I’m looking at my semester and realize I need to be in courses, in a program that I can give a damn about, instead of waiting for it to be over and done with. I’m tired of ignoring what’s inside me, what’s crying out to be unleashed; I’m tired of caging it.

I’m tired of lying to myself about being something other than what I am.

I am not a science student. I am not a business student. I am interested in the humanities, in culture, philosophy, literature, and religion. I’m interested in people, in conversation and debate and dialogue. I’m interested in ideas, I’m interested in books. I’m interested in how it all comes together. I’m interested in writing; it’s how I express myself the best. I’m interested in flights of fantasy, in dreams, in poetry, in story and narrative, in justice and mercy, in fighting for what’s right, in saving the lost.

I’m tired of building castle walls around it to keep it in, and other people out.

And that’s the truth about this last semester.

The Pipe: Worldline

The idea of a timestamp is a curious one. It locks in a word, a phrase, a sentence typed into the temporal ether. You chat, you text, write an email, or a letter, and those words, those ideas suddenly have a place, in all four dimensions. It is no longer floating free. It becomes concrete, solid. Real.

I came across the idea of a worldline, and it struck me as poetic. You could say Einstein, who came up with the notion, was the poet of physics, and indeed the way he interacted with science was with an artist's genius. It goes like this: a worldline is the sequential path of something through both time and space, from the moment it is created to the moment of it's non-existence. A worldline is the string that binds us to place in this universe, as we know and see and perceive it. Invisible to the naked eye, but as real as the touch of the keyboard beneath my fingertips.

When we are gone, when we no longer exist, our worldines ended in this place, that string remains. A record of ourselves is left behind in some form or fashion. In the gametic DNA that we pass on, in our letters, or in some book. We weave together, one string ravelling into another.

A ship's worldline is it's log. It must contain the date and the position, and you can see the course that it charted through the brine and spray. This is my log, as small and insignificant as it is. This is where I can stamp my mark and say: Phil was here.

Spring

Time passes and hope springs eternal
Leaves bud, ready to burst
There's a feeling in this cold, near-spring air
That brings back memories of summer's fragrance
And the promise of verdant warm days
The cusp of change approaches
And summer threatens to spill over
Heralding its journey with the bird's call
And sweet southern winds
That lie around one's neck
Like hearth-warmed mantle

A little something pastoral to change the mood, eh?

Mirage

Ah Love, I languish at the thought of thee
The ghost of your embrace haunts me
For I have never known your touch
Instead Your spectre follows me
And mocks me
Are you dead?
Or is the whisper I hear
But an echo on the wind,
A moment's idle imagination
Or the distant discourse of lovers
In some hidden glen
The like I have not known or seen
Or felt the soft crush of grass
And Your voice murmuring in my ear
Such like is not mine to have or share

Mix this with two parts angst and one part loneliness. Much inspired by Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther."

Compulsion

Desire's voice drives nails
Of madness into my head
That yearns only for rest
From this fearful enchanted slumber
To wake from this unholy consciousness
It does not stop, pushing me further
Into the valley of its longing
Like water spilling over the cliff
Of suicidal sickened love
It's empty whispers tell me tales
Of satisfaction and gratified wishes
Of hypnotizing dreams and fantasie
That one can wake to
Desire's mirage leads me
Stumbling to false oasis'
In this desert of my life
Thirsty for the springs of companionship
Its whispers turn to sand and dust
Widening the hollow inside my chest
And withering away the face of reason
Till I turn away from its chapped
And blistered visage
Into the wide maw of the howling gale

Solitaire

Love is absent
Mere glimmers of a fool's gold
Dreams rail, chained and pent
And my arms have nothing to hold