These posts are related to my time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel (UNC), specifically the School of Library and Information and Science (SILS), where I graduated with a Master’s of Science in Information Science in 2004. I also received my Bachelor’s degree in linguistics at UNC in 2002.
so i’m at strong’s, sorta kinda doing some homework, and up comes a person i recognize from a creative writing class i took some years ago. and she asks me if i can remember a poem i brought in once (not by me) about being lost in the forest. of course i say, and i email her the poem.
now the amazing thing (to me) is that she remembered me, remembered that poem, remembered that i brought in that poem, and happened to bump into me at strong’s tonight. how does that happen? and why in the last several weeks have i described on separate occasions to different people my loss of faith in poetry?
Lost
by David Wagoner
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
by the weekend, i’ve reverted to a sleep till 1pm schedule, so getting to bed by 1230am for my 930am class monday morning is next to impossible. in an earlier life, i might be skipping that class on mondays, but I really really like the prof.
inevitably i sleep too little, go to class, get tea (a new pseudo-habit) and go to work. today i worked hard. in fact i’ve been working awfully hard to finish this kenya database, and i won’t stop until it does everything i want it to do (perfectly).
then class again at 2. did i mention mondays are hard? so i slog through another 2.5hrs of quasi-group discussion and decide: do i nap til 7 or break on through to the other side?
today the latter. i started work, then invited myself along on a “spirit-lifting grocery store adventure-cum-small feast” with dear melanie. this totally spontaneous feast consisted of: /the/ most tender seasoned roast pork loin with portobello mushrooms, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and a roma tomato, cucumber and avocado salad with balsamic vinaigrette.
this is me, with the meat
spent some time at strongs, merrily hacking my database and instant-messaging until the bass from players was unbearable. at last i ran…until…in mid-sprint on the final stretch my body prepared for a violent mass evacuation of stomach contents. it was close, but i held the pork down.
i got bit by a mosquito the other day and the bug bite has become a nipple in my right elbow pit. a red itchy nipple.
seriousness
had a strange day. exacerbated by the foolish combination of caffeine and alcohol tues night. sleep was a half-conscious affair. alarm at 830am, class at 930. an hour of MIPS assembly language instructions. an hour of decoding measure’s activity budgets over the last 5 years.
ok. so then i decide to head to campus to view the remains of the memorial events, and thankfully i bump into a few kids, including one happy to see me stephanie chang. dinner plans are made (to include steph and lydia and paymon), weekend plans are proposed. and i depart for bed and dream about a small scale muddy woodstock on campus.
eventually i wake, regain meager consciousness, get back to work. at dinner i have my first pork bbq sandwich as a UNC sanctified NC-resident. walk to weaver st so that i might cross paths with one carrie hamby who, it happens, knows everyone i know (and somehow remembers me when I was a freshman and she was still in highschool) and all this time we’ve managed to have several of the same friends without saying more than a word to each other. anyway, no more of that!
i spent the day’s remainder at strong’s with the diligent while i alternately read the heaven of mercury and chatted up some friends.
fate must be preparing to send me something very special because i have this gut feeling that things have been rather crappy lately. let me count the ways:
i came home tonight to find that the over-large, heavy miniblinds on my living room window had ripped out of the window frame and toppled several stacks of papers on my desk (narrowly missing my computer and sparing my diploma).
somehow i naively expected that i would be paid a full time salary while in grad school (this, thanks to phill, is now being repaired)
in the process of being informed that my salary situation had taken a turn for the worse, i wrote a snippy email about someone else to phill, who then mistakenly(?) sent a reply to me and the person who i was being snippy about. that person was a little unhappy about what I wrote, and i had the pride swallowing privilege of apologizing
the people who live in the apartment above me have come home from their summers, and for whatever reason, every footstep they make on their hardwood floors sounds like loud hammering. there also seems to be a dog living upstairs. i am starting to decide that i should begin to look for somewhere else to live.
i have begun waking up “naturally” after only 7ish hours of sleep, instead of my normal/excessive 8-10. could that be because of the loud thumping above my head, which neither earplugs nor pillows seem able to block?
the object of my lust remains squarely out of reach
i recently traveled 28 consecutive hours from almaty, kazakhstan to chapel hill, north carolina, 20 hours of which I spent sitting on a plane.
i decided to register for a class fully aware that it will be bad (unless *I* go way out of my way to make it meaningful)
i presently pay out-of-state tuition, at $8000/semester. if I was classified as in-state, my tuition would be paid for by my work, and my graduate eduation would be free.
while riding my bike to weaver street in order to pick up some chicken and vegetables for dinner, i was accosted by a fanatical mother who insisted that i “wear a helmet!”
and i haven’t had any sustained time to re-evaluate my philosophy of life. as a result, i am currently running on habit and comfort.
