Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Interlude

With all the short posts 'round these parts, I worry that this blog is in danger of becoming a glorified tumblr. Fortunately, I like to live pretty dangerously. A real post is brewing, but in the interim I've had this sentence rattling around in my head for the past few weeks, courtesy of high modernism's first lady of semicolons:

"With intermittent shocks, sudden as the springs of a tiger, life emerges heaving its dark crest from the sea. It is to this we are attached; it is to this we are bound, as bodies to wild horses." -Virginia Woolf, The Waves


Downright haunting in its execution, sort of thrilling in its suggestion, I've been thinking about Woolf's sentence alongside Kerrigan and Lowdermilk's "How to Return Home" (or, really, the entirety of their Tales from the Bad Years, links here and here). They strike some really useful intellectual dissonances in the way they frame my emergent twenties (and probably thirties and forties). Also, lately I find myself totally unmotivated to do any serious literary study without a good soundtrack. Grad schools, consider yourselves warned.


Bootleg performed by Krysta Rodriguez, who is vastly underrated, even if she is much older than I thought. Give K&L a few listens, give The Waves another read, and mull it over with me.

2 comments:

  1. Will Danger!

    Wow, it's been a long time. I lurk on your blog a lot, but thought I'd actually out myself and comment. I'm doing the exact same thing you're doing right now: taking this year to apply to PhD and MA programs for next fall. Yeah, I'd say you're right in that it is a bureaucracy-laden process. And very intense. How are you faring?

    I just submitted by final application a few days after Christmas, so I'm contending with the strange, uncomfortable reality that this process is over and now I have to find a way to get back in the cash and fill my days. Where are you in it all? And what are you doing with yourself once you're done? Just looking for inspiration here :)

    Hope you enjoyed the holidays :)

    Sarah/College Kid Yoga

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  2. It's great to hear from you, Sarah! I'll admit to doing some lurking on your blog as well. With the exception of a few logistic things (making sure everyone has my gre scores/transcripts), I just finished my apps too. As to what we should do now that we're finished, I have no idea. I've been coping by blogging, reading, and drinking heavily. Also some job apps, but that doesn't really seem to be going anywhere. I thought I'd be so relieved when the process was over (and I was, for a few days), but now I don't really know what to do with myself. The real world is still a work in progress around here.

    Are you coping any better than I am?

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