A Single Layer

i'll be back...

merry christmas. http://www.asthmatickitty.com/mp3/sufjan_stevens_-_Peace_-_Sister_Winter.mp3

the semester is over, and i am doing what people generally refer to as 'chillin'.' it's quite enjoyable. on wednesday, i will be heading to roma. there, i will meet up with chaeli and st teresa. to begin the annals of my journey (which will all probably have to be recorded in retrospect, as i will ignore the internet as much as possible during my stay there), i have made reservations at the E & S hostel through bootsnall.com, a travel site suggested by reknowned traveler daniel white, whose own adventures can be found on his blog under the name danielwwhite.blogspot.com. a much more reasonable web address than my own. the hostel is just a bit east of the Colosseum, provides cheap private rooms (so we can pray without disturbing anyone), and ...well, that's really all i know about it. i have opened some of the gifts which i received from my mother and sister, and am now listening to the Blessed Sufjan Stevens May He Live Forever, thanks to Emily. i am also perusi...

Somewhere outside my window lives a playful pair of birds with the most striking coloring of white and black. They fly with the grace and swiftness of kingfishers, but they are not kingfishers. In fact, I may only be comparing them to that beautiful bird because I like the word--kingfisher. I wish I knew what kind of bird they are. The human instinct to Name nature was not left in the Garden.

Christmas at Jenners... ice skating and kitsch... at the German market... These photos are a bit late in coming, but papers tend to interrupt blogging in the same way that blogging interrupts papers.

can anyone explain subjectivity?

At long last, I have completed a paper as a postgraduate student. What was it about? Something to do with time and history in Walter Benjamin's 'Theses on the Philosophy of History,' posted left, and John Berger's novel G. It is a good paper in that I know what I'm talking about. It is a bad paper in that no one reading it will know what I'm talking about unless... well, unless they already know what I'm talking about. Now I can get down to the business of paper number two, alongside the final preparations for a Roman Christmas. Oh yes, and there is a Christmas party tonight, to which I am bringing bread. Of course, I made the dough just now with Liesl, and... it's not doing what it's supposed to do. At all. Like, not by a long shot. It is both too dense and too crumbly. What is together lets nothing else in. What is not together refuses to connect. And will it rise? I am having serious doubts. 10:30 will tell.

I do not want to be valued for what I do and do not know or what I have and have not done any more than I want to be valued for what I do or do not look like, sound like, walk like, or any number of impressions which are, essentially, superficial to myself. What I have done is not always in my own power—I did not choose to live in the suburbs any more than I chose to live in the jungle. And though I chose Edinburgh and this course, I did so in more ignorance than preference. Though I chose my clothes, I did not choose the money in the pocketbook which limits or allows what I buy. Though I have chosen my dinner, I did not choose the selection of the market. I did not choose this skin, though I enjoy its privileges and suffer under its shame. Who then am I, and why should I be loved or hated or held or pushed away?

readings and class meetings are over till January. two weeks of writing papers, one, on narrative ending the other on subject and subjection... or subjectivity also, reserving accomodations unearthing quotations browsing in the German market fighting wind and rain eating porridge drinking tea burrowing in the library with literary criticism and Marxist theory I could not get this song imbedded in my blog, and so I am going to post the link below and let you listen to it on your own. It has been in my head for days, and I think it strangely expresses all that i ever want to say... http://profile.imeem.com/3VODl/music/2qlxTYKC/from_a_shell/ , at least, for now. (also reminds me of driving with foggy windows 'round wheaton, windshield wipers keeping time, jacket to the chin.)