An honest man and a good citizen, he lived beloved by all who knew him and died in friendship with his God. May he rest in peace.
Jeremiah Donovan
Kinsule, County Cork, Ireland
d. February 22, 1861, at 63 years old
Buried in Augusta, Maine
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Fall Break 2012
November 2, 2012
I’m kicking myself because I know I should be in bed right now. I have to get up early for church tomorrow, and it’s already past 11. But maybe it’s worth staying up to write about this. We’ll see.
At any rate, I know it’s worth staying up to fold my laundry, because if I don’t my button-down shirts will get wrinkled. So that’s what I was doing, not too long ago, in the doorway of my dorm room. There’s nothing much to do when folding laundry, and I was just getting thoroughly bored when I noticed an unusual sound, as if someone nearby was boiling water. But no one was around to boil water. I wondered if someone had left a faucet on by mistake, so I stood up to go turn it off--but as soon as I crept into the hallway, the sound disappeared. All I could hear was the gentle roaring of the air filters. I was curious now, and unsure if my ears were hallucinating, so I padded softly toward the two rooms next to me. The door on the left was closed, but the one across from it wasn’t. That door stood enigmatically ajar; inside, the blinds were down, the lights were off, the TV was dead, and the beds were empty. But I could still hear something: a new noise this time, like a crude Stone Age wheel crunching clumsily around a maypole. It was eerie—standing at the edge of the bright hallway, listening to the air filters whirring and a perversely unidentifiable sound crawling from uninhabited gloom.
I bent down to listen, and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Aha--the clumsy wheel, if that’s what it was, must have been part of my wingmate’s refrigerator. I stepped out of the room and headed back down the hallway, only to hear the boiling water again as soon as I reached my own doorway. I put my ear to our refrigerator: the water was boiling, if that’s what it was doing, inside. Mystery solved. I finished folding my laundry.
Not too much later, I realized that I was only able to hear those sounds because the wing was so uncannily silent. As a matter of fact, the wing is still uncannily silent. It’s fall break, and most of the campus—including all but two of my wingmates—have flown off to campaign for Romney or to visit family, leaving their rooms vacant and their wings desolate. Both my roommates have gone: Stephen is campaigning in Indiana and Kevin is debating in Vermont. Rather than join them, I have stayed behind to study and rest. (Writing this, I think, falls under the category of resting, although right now, sleeping might be a more effective use of my time. But I can’t break off in the middle now that I’ve started.)
I do need the study time, I suppose—that was the primary argument I used against Stephen’s pleas for me to join a Student Action Team (which team, my roommate scolded, I should have joined if I really wanted to change the world, save the country, and support the causes I believe in). On second thought, I should phrase my words more firmly: I know that I need the study time. I have a Critical Dialogue paper due in class the day after break ends; I have my first research paper due one week after the break, and I only started the research this evening. I also told Stephen that my relatives would very likely invite me to spend the break with them, and at the time that was true. Aunt Alissa invited me to come up yesterday, the day before break started; however, I told her that I had contracted pinkeye and what with copious amounts of sleep (for recovery) and studying, it didn’t seem like this weekend was the best time to see them after all.
So, my fall break is turning out to be somewhat miserable. I’m stuck in an abandoned campus with mucus trickling out of my eye, working on a paper that I should have started a week sooner—and I’m alone. Of course, there are other people around, but it doesn’t feel right to sleep in an empty room with three beds, or walk through the empty hallway of an empty wing. I should be enjoying the solitude (I seek it often enough during the rest of the year) but instead I’m finding it discouraging. It adds to the weight of worry for my health and my schoolwork.
I have been seeking an antidote—some sort of spiritual solution that will buoy me over the crests of my autumn angst. Of course, I know the answers: God is in control, He will provide for me just as He has in the past, and He will give me the strength to be diligent. But somehow, the principles I’ve learned in the past never quite seem to apply to the present day. That’s why I sat down to write—why I’m still writing right now. When I started about an hour ago, I was hoping to find the antidote just by writing about the situation, to discover El Dorado in the clicking of the keyboard. And in some ways, that’s happened. The act of writing this short essay has encouraged me, though I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it’s because when I start writing, choosing the right words and stringing them together in careful sentences to best communicate my message, I have to acknowledge that God is doing much the same thing with the entire world. Mucus and loneliness are not exceptions.
But as soon as I get up from my computer, my El Dorado is going to crumble into digital dust and blow away with the breeze from my open window. I know this from experience. In reality, nothing much has changed: I still have pinkeye, I still have too much to do, and the wing is still empty. And on top of this, I’m now going to bed about an hour later than I wanted. So what now? Has writing this done me any good at all?
Nothing around me has changed, true. But now I know my task is to remember—to hold on and remember—that God has purposefully put me in this place for the next couple days, and if I pray, He will strengthen me to flourish in it. And if going to bed late is the price of that remembering, then somehow I think it’s worth it.
I’m kicking myself because I know I should be in bed right now. I have to get up early for church tomorrow, and it’s already past 11. But maybe it’s worth staying up to write about this. We’ll see.
At any rate, I know it’s worth staying up to fold my laundry, because if I don’t my button-down shirts will get wrinkled. So that’s what I was doing, not too long ago, in the doorway of my dorm room. There’s nothing much to do when folding laundry, and I was just getting thoroughly bored when I noticed an unusual sound, as if someone nearby was boiling water. But no one was around to boil water. I wondered if someone had left a faucet on by mistake, so I stood up to go turn it off--but as soon as I crept into the hallway, the sound disappeared. All I could hear was the gentle roaring of the air filters. I was curious now, and unsure if my ears were hallucinating, so I padded softly toward the two rooms next to me. The door on the left was closed, but the one across from it wasn’t. That door stood enigmatically ajar; inside, the blinds were down, the lights were off, the TV was dead, and the beds were empty. But I could still hear something: a new noise this time, like a crude Stone Age wheel crunching clumsily around a maypole. It was eerie—standing at the edge of the bright hallway, listening to the air filters whirring and a perversely unidentifiable sound crawling from uninhabited gloom.
I bent down to listen, and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Aha--the clumsy wheel, if that’s what it was, must have been part of my wingmate’s refrigerator. I stepped out of the room and headed back down the hallway, only to hear the boiling water again as soon as I reached my own doorway. I put my ear to our refrigerator: the water was boiling, if that’s what it was doing, inside. Mystery solved. I finished folding my laundry.
Not too much later, I realized that I was only able to hear those sounds because the wing was so uncannily silent. As a matter of fact, the wing is still uncannily silent. It’s fall break, and most of the campus—including all but two of my wingmates—have flown off to campaign for Romney or to visit family, leaving their rooms vacant and their wings desolate. Both my roommates have gone: Stephen is campaigning in Indiana and Kevin is debating in Vermont. Rather than join them, I have stayed behind to study and rest. (Writing this, I think, falls under the category of resting, although right now, sleeping might be a more effective use of my time. But I can’t break off in the middle now that I’ve started.)
I do need the study time, I suppose—that was the primary argument I used against Stephen’s pleas for me to join a Student Action Team (which team, my roommate scolded, I should have joined if I really wanted to change the world, save the country, and support the causes I believe in). On second thought, I should phrase my words more firmly: I know that I need the study time. I have a Critical Dialogue paper due in class the day after break ends; I have my first research paper due one week after the break, and I only started the research this evening. I also told Stephen that my relatives would very likely invite me to spend the break with them, and at the time that was true. Aunt Alissa invited me to come up yesterday, the day before break started; however, I told her that I had contracted pinkeye and what with copious amounts of sleep (for recovery) and studying, it didn’t seem like this weekend was the best time to see them after all.
So, my fall break is turning out to be somewhat miserable. I’m stuck in an abandoned campus with mucus trickling out of my eye, working on a paper that I should have started a week sooner—and I’m alone. Of course, there are other people around, but it doesn’t feel right to sleep in an empty room with three beds, or walk through the empty hallway of an empty wing. I should be enjoying the solitude (I seek it often enough during the rest of the year) but instead I’m finding it discouraging. It adds to the weight of worry for my health and my schoolwork.
I have been seeking an antidote—some sort of spiritual solution that will buoy me over the crests of my autumn angst. Of course, I know the answers: God is in control, He will provide for me just as He has in the past, and He will give me the strength to be diligent. But somehow, the principles I’ve learned in the past never quite seem to apply to the present day. That’s why I sat down to write—why I’m still writing right now. When I started about an hour ago, I was hoping to find the antidote just by writing about the situation, to discover El Dorado in the clicking of the keyboard. And in some ways, that’s happened. The act of writing this short essay has encouraged me, though I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it’s because when I start writing, choosing the right words and stringing them together in careful sentences to best communicate my message, I have to acknowledge that God is doing much the same thing with the entire world. Mucus and loneliness are not exceptions.
But as soon as I get up from my computer, my El Dorado is going to crumble into digital dust and blow away with the breeze from my open window. I know this from experience. In reality, nothing much has changed: I still have pinkeye, I still have too much to do, and the wing is still empty. And on top of this, I’m now going to bed about an hour later than I wanted. So what now? Has writing this done me any good at all?
Nothing around me has changed, true. But now I know my task is to remember—to hold on and remember—that God has purposefully put me in this place for the next couple days, and if I pray, He will strengthen me to flourish in it. And if going to bed late is the price of that remembering, then somehow I think it’s worth it.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Two Paragraphs
So, what do you all think of these paragraphs? I wrote them a while ago as the start of a story that I intended to be a reworking of the Faust legend in the context of college. I re-discovered them this afternoon and thought that you all might enjoy them.
-------
Unfortunately for Josiah, the hands of the clock remained stubbornly still. This particular course—Freshman Writing Seminar 101—was one of his least favorites so far, and he had desperately hoped that time would accommodatingly accelerate. Only five minutes? It felt more like an hour.
Professor Herthrab droned on. “Now, a subject always—and this rule has no exceptions—a subject is always followed by a verb.” The professor’s voice grated against Josiah’s ear like a saw cutting through Styrofoam. Josiah had been a competent writer in high school; now, listening to the professor dole out grammatical minutiae in painfully obvious increments, he began to wonder why the Inquisition had not realized more quickly the power of grammatical water boarding. He was not alone: his classmates slumped behind their desks, their faces as expressive as Neanderthal undertakers. Josiah began to wonder how he would survive the rest of the semester.
-------
Unfortunately for Josiah, the hands of the clock remained stubbornly still. This particular course—Freshman Writing Seminar 101—was one of his least favorites so far, and he had desperately hoped that time would accommodatingly accelerate. Only five minutes? It felt more like an hour.
Professor Herthrab droned on. “Now, a subject always—and this rule has no exceptions—a subject is always followed by a verb.” The professor’s voice grated against Josiah’s ear like a saw cutting through Styrofoam. Josiah had been a competent writer in high school; now, listening to the professor dole out grammatical minutiae in painfully obvious increments, he began to wonder why the Inquisition had not realized more quickly the power of grammatical water boarding. He was not alone: his classmates slumped behind their desks, their faces as expressive as Neanderthal undertakers. Josiah began to wonder how he would survive the rest of the semester.
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