these really are strange times. three hundred square feet and three windows to myself in a dorm so small there's only one women's restroom in the whole building. not to mention the fact that the walls are adorned with crazy hippie paintings, relics of the school year's art and music students. my room is in one of the old frat houses, and the wooden paneling just screams logan hunter. bookshelves line all four walls, and i feel like--with the amount of books i've managed to gather during the past two years here--i could somewhat transform this space into the beauty and the beast library, evey bookworm's fantasy.
the grounds flanking the pond are positively alive. dandelions are scattered all over the place, and the willows with their dangling, bower-creating branches have finally returned! a bride and a groom wandered over to the banks with their photographer today, and i can't imagine wedding pictures more beautiful. weirdly though, the sunny, warm, breezy sky changed quickly--first a deep indigo blue, with streaks that made it look like watercolor, then a darker and colder dome. i just made it back to my room, barefoot with book and blanket in tow, when the most ferocious rain i've ever seen started. the wind lifted the rain drops back into the sky before they even reached the ground, and my room (windows open, of course) was suddenly wetter than i'd bargained for. i can already sense it's going to be a rainy summer night.
i have a friend on the way (to sleep in one of my THREE beds), and am ready for some human interaction. too much kimberly + nature time, perhaps.
not. leaving. maine. ever.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
the predilection of the knoll
one-thirty in the morning brought a fire drill and a thunderstorm. after half-awake, half-drunk college kids poured out of the building and filed back in, the rain intensified, and the sky pounded outside my open window--open to the night, absolutely. as always. come three a.m., i rested my head, two feet from the water and the wind. the sky finally cleared, and i craned my head back to see the moon in the maine night sky, shrouded by shredded clouds. bright white, ominous with tawny streaks throughout. six hours later, the drizzly spring day was blooming full force. i quietly rejoiced.
a walk behind and around heights surprised me perhaps more than last night's unexpected thunder. it turns out that i live on a grassy knoll if there ever were one, and my window is yards away from runnals hill; a forest of fresh mulch, damp pines, fanning leaves, and bright magenta fuchsia bushes. tiny wild flowers--purple and white--with minuscule yellow centers grow freely beneath shady bowers, and it's hard to tell where campus ends and wilderness begins...until campus begins again!
the sledding hills are covered in lush grass, and the ground is softer than i can ever remember it. sometimes, i think the ground is and always was frozen solid as linoleum, ungiving. i already miss the hard ground, but i'm glad it's no longer frozen. this summer will be full of late-afternoon naps (with deet galore--turns out the stuff promotes neurite growth??), books from the library by the dozen, dreams of winter, and fears of old.
intrnasal administration of rat mesenchymal stem cells to mouse models can wait for now. just for a few minutes while i think ahead to summer days when i'll be looking back to this very moment of expectancy.
a walk behind and around heights surprised me perhaps more than last night's unexpected thunder. it turns out that i live on a grassy knoll if there ever were one, and my window is yards away from runnals hill; a forest of fresh mulch, damp pines, fanning leaves, and bright magenta fuchsia bushes. tiny wild flowers--purple and white--with minuscule yellow centers grow freely beneath shady bowers, and it's hard to tell where campus ends and wilderness begins...until campus begins again!
the sledding hills are covered in lush grass, and the ground is softer than i can ever remember it. sometimes, i think the ground is and always was frozen solid as linoleum, ungiving. i already miss the hard ground, but i'm glad it's no longer frozen. this summer will be full of late-afternoon naps (with deet galore--turns out the stuff promotes neurite growth??), books from the library by the dozen, dreams of winter, and fears of old.
intrnasal administration of rat mesenchymal stem cells to mouse models can wait for now. just for a few minutes while i think ahead to summer days when i'll be looking back to this very moment of expectancy.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
woodstock
were anyone from the outside to set foot on campus now, he or she would think this was a place of free love, barbecues galore, bare feet, and live music twenty-four hours a day. the campus is covered in paint, girls run screaming in sundresses, and boys drag their sound equipment outside to share their music with all around. makeshift tents cover the lawns, and roped off areas house kegs abundant. children and toddlers dodge around long legs, and everyone--faculty and students alike--keep an eye out. no where have i ever seen babies and booze mix so well (or so freely).
somewhere else on campus, doors are shut, and private gatherings held. smoke fills rooms, and it's the seventies again. when the dancing is done and the paint (and kegs) have run dry, girls totter home on bare feet. it's two a.m., but it feels like eternity and a day, as we stumble into bed, fully clothed--keys in the door, windows wide open--vulnerable to the world, but feeling all the while entirely safe. because, after all, these are the days. we are invincible, and this is rural maine. better yet, this is ___ college, and we have every prerogative to bask in privilege.
come monday, campus will fall silent, and reading period will begin. the libraries will stay open later, and the rockstars and redbulls will vanish from the vending machines. kids will be crazy without the adderall they've managed to pawn for a few bucks a pill. papers are due at all hours of the night (this is college, and yes, they can do that), and exams (taken far too seriously by all) approach full throttle. so, there is work. so, there is stress. still, we are privileged. still, we are blessed. professors leave their families to serve us nachos at midnight. librarians bake for days to make sure the cookies don't run out. how can we possibly complain when, all things (the economy included) considered, we have the world at our feet. especially those of us not graduating. still growing, still discovering.
but alas--it is only saturday. night two of loudness continues. more booze. more pot. more woodstock madness for all (whether or not they choose it). as for me, i've had my fun and i'm trying to regain focus. onto intranasal delivery of cells to the brain. and then female contraception. and perhaps post-traumatic stress syndrome, if i have time. tomorrow holds the world in it, and i know it with all my heart. rich, preppy, white kids abound--and i find myself one of them, as much as i hate to be..because i am here. at colby college. and i am privileged. and the faculty, staff, and deans here really would give me the world (or at least the benefit of a doubt should i really screw up).
nowhere like college can you make mistakes of a lifetime and have them smoothed over so smoothly. when you represent an institution, you must have the appearance of succeeding. they'll sit you down, show you your options, and tell you never to apologize for yourself because you are deserving and worthy. so, why is it that in the end, the entitlement scares me and makes me sick?
somewhere else on campus, doors are shut, and private gatherings held. smoke fills rooms, and it's the seventies again. when the dancing is done and the paint (and kegs) have run dry, girls totter home on bare feet. it's two a.m., but it feels like eternity and a day, as we stumble into bed, fully clothed--keys in the door, windows wide open--vulnerable to the world, but feeling all the while entirely safe. because, after all, these are the days. we are invincible, and this is rural maine. better yet, this is ___ college, and we have every prerogative to bask in privilege.
come monday, campus will fall silent, and reading period will begin. the libraries will stay open later, and the rockstars and redbulls will vanish from the vending machines. kids will be crazy without the adderall they've managed to pawn for a few bucks a pill. papers are due at all hours of the night (this is college, and yes, they can do that), and exams (taken far too seriously by all) approach full throttle. so, there is work. so, there is stress. still, we are privileged. still, we are blessed. professors leave their families to serve us nachos at midnight. librarians bake for days to make sure the cookies don't run out. how can we possibly complain when, all things (the economy included) considered, we have the world at our feet. especially those of us not graduating. still growing, still discovering.
but alas--it is only saturday. night two of loudness continues. more booze. more pot. more woodstock madness for all (whether or not they choose it). as for me, i've had my fun and i'm trying to regain focus. onto intranasal delivery of cells to the brain. and then female contraception. and perhaps post-traumatic stress syndrome, if i have time. tomorrow holds the world in it, and i know it with all my heart. rich, preppy, white kids abound--and i find myself one of them, as much as i hate to be..because i am here. at colby college. and i am privileged. and the faculty, staff, and deans here really would give me the world (or at least the benefit of a doubt should i really screw up).
nowhere like college can you make mistakes of a lifetime and have them smoothed over so smoothly. when you represent an institution, you must have the appearance of succeeding. they'll sit you down, show you your options, and tell you never to apologize for yourself because you are deserving and worthy. so, why is it that in the end, the entitlement scares me and makes me sick?
Sunday, May 3, 2009
blueberry bogs await
mid-spring is here. the buds have burst into spurts of leaves, the daffodils are out, and the pink bushes where the snowdrifts used to be demand my attention from the corner of my eye. a chip-monk and a squirrel in one day, not to mention the choirs of not so melodious birds that sing all hours of the day and night--even they can't figure out where and WHEN they are. i step out of the library more often than i should, through the front doors that open onto the steps of the main quad. from there, i can see for miles--the horizon is layered in soft blues and reds, and the green leaves break the lines gently. ambiguity has once again arrived with the blurred divisions--the stark white snow is gone for good.
a little bistro on silver street. a six hundred dollar meal for ten. exorbitant? why yes, especially when i need half that for housing myself in maine this summer. charred steak and bailey's ice cream, topped by expresso. no jimmies (i still don't understand the way the people speak here sometimes). fern gully puts me to sleep, and i think of how much the deciduous forests of maine are not like those rainforests--and i tell myself that maine will remain forever and for always my little secret. that the rest of the world won't catch onto the beauty. that the urbanization won't spread, and those awful shopping complexes with the yogurt shops and the joanne's fabrics and the kohl's. my maine is beautiful, and the people here are quaint. they speak their own dialect, and i join in gleefully when i can.
i sit for hours at a computer in the library, researching and researching and researching globoid leukodystrophy--i hate knowing that all of maine is outside two sets of so very fling-able doors. and then i tell myself how selfish i am. thinking of how much krabbe's disease irks me, when there are babies out there dying of it, and i could actually be using my education to get myself somewhere where i could have a say in life or death. those matters aren't mine though. i will stick with my neuroscience (in the "wow, that's fascinating" sense) and my human development (yes, mother. it's called human development and it IS valid) and latin (eheu) minors...only because there is no room for three majors though.
i will go to bed tonight, knowing that my last chemistry lab report is written and that i have two weeks of academic hell before my first maine summer. it tastes like blueberries, i can already tell. a ten page literary analysis of pathetic fallacy and its implications for Arcadia in Vergil's (the NON-christianized spelling, thanks) Eclogues, a ten page neurodegenerative disease literature review, a who-knows-how-long exploration of childhood sexual abuse on adult mental health, a latin presentation, a muscle fatigue study and paper, a psychology ethics reaction paper, an advanced neurobiology figure presentation, a french exam, and then reading period. then six final exams. blessings, all of them. i try so hard to tell myself. thank you, god, for an able-ish mind. and a strong-ish body. and a kind-ish soul.
blueberry bogs await.
a little bistro on silver street. a six hundred dollar meal for ten. exorbitant? why yes, especially when i need half that for housing myself in maine this summer. charred steak and bailey's ice cream, topped by expresso. no jimmies (i still don't understand the way the people speak here sometimes). fern gully puts me to sleep, and i think of how much the deciduous forests of maine are not like those rainforests--and i tell myself that maine will remain forever and for always my little secret. that the rest of the world won't catch onto the beauty. that the urbanization won't spread, and those awful shopping complexes with the yogurt shops and the joanne's fabrics and the kohl's. my maine is beautiful, and the people here are quaint. they speak their own dialect, and i join in gleefully when i can.
i sit for hours at a computer in the library, researching and researching and researching globoid leukodystrophy--i hate knowing that all of maine is outside two sets of so very fling-able doors. and then i tell myself how selfish i am. thinking of how much krabbe's disease irks me, when there are babies out there dying of it, and i could actually be using my education to get myself somewhere where i could have a say in life or death. those matters aren't mine though. i will stick with my neuroscience (in the "wow, that's fascinating" sense) and my human development (yes, mother. it's called human development and it IS valid) and latin (eheu) minors...only because there is no room for three majors though.
i will go to bed tonight, knowing that my last chemistry lab report is written and that i have two weeks of academic hell before my first maine summer. it tastes like blueberries, i can already tell. a ten page literary analysis of pathetic fallacy and its implications for Arcadia in Vergil's (the NON-christianized spelling, thanks) Eclogues, a ten page neurodegenerative disease literature review, a who-knows-how-long exploration of childhood sexual abuse on adult mental health, a latin presentation, a muscle fatigue study and paper, a psychology ethics reaction paper, an advanced neurobiology figure presentation, a french exam, and then reading period. then six final exams. blessings, all of them. i try so hard to tell myself. thank you, god, for an able-ish mind. and a strong-ish body. and a kind-ish soul.
blueberry bogs await.
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