Sunday, October 14, 2007

Sunday, October 14, 2007

 A water-jeweled wonderland of fallen leaves and dew-berries.  

I ache. My knees are crackling, my hamstrings are burning, and my lower back is complaining about having to arch over books for hours on end. My eyes are bleary and my mind is swimming in spirals. Strange spotted fungi pop in and out of my peripheral vision. Ingenious knights fall from their horses, crashing onto the floor above me. Inanimate objects smile at me, and the eggs I will have for breakfast tomorrow throw linguistic riddles at me today. The time has come to acknowledge that I am “raving mad after all” (Alice’s Adventures, 67). And all this because of a silly little children’s book.  

 So, Life, where shall we go next? “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to” (Alice’s Adventures, 65). “I don’t much care where… so long as I get somewhere” (Alice’s Adventures, 65) and so long as that somewhere is a place I care about. I am thankful to have a four-year wonderland to explore where I can study all the “Mystery” (Alice’s Adventures, 98) I like. I arrived without much knowing where I wanted to go. Plan II is way for the traveler who is looking to get exactly, well, somewhere. But my direction is solidifying. I am tying together loose threads that only dangled limply this past summer. Sanity (and clearly there are whole worlds of people who function just fine without sanity) in college follows from the answer to the college question, “Who are you?” (Alice’s Adventures, 48). Revisiting my role model and writing about my pursuit of a life embodying traits he exemplifies has driven me forward. I have something ahead of me. I have connections to make, little stepping-stones to take, and much to grow if I only eat a little cake.

 That looking-glass glow is before our very eyes, if we only know to look for it. (The Blanton) 

In college you must learn to “take care of yourself” (Looking-Glass, 265). And whether you like it or not college is going to change you. New people, new perspectives, a new life out on your own – “something’s going to happen” (Looking-Glass, 265). There really is no other option than to jump into college. I have been forced to confront living on my own. Right now, I do not feel like I have a home. I miss home in Houston, but that is no longer where I truly belong. My dorm is merely rented space, like a cheap hotel room that the cleaning service has neglected for far too long. I miss the safety of being curled up by the fire like Alice and her innocent kitten. The craze of Alice’s dream wanderings contrast that security. I feel that contrast in my current life. This little storybook made me yearn for bedtime stories, baking Christmas cookies, holiday festivities, my house, being little, and all the coziness and glow of these memories.  

I have been challenged this semester. Professors demand that we grow, “but unlike Alice, we have the fortune of growing--and sometimes shrinking--in a university large enough to house our growth” (Crystal Law). Unfortunately reasons our classes are called lessons is not “because they lessen from day to day” (Alice’s Adventures, 99). In fact, I think it would be much more appropriate to name the Plan II program not a series of lessons, but a curriculum of morons. The battle cries of various professors hammer my brain day and night. "Feed your Head Feed your Head!" (Jefferson Airplane, 689) “I told them once, I told them twice: They would not listen…” (Looking-Glass, 217). “Have you tried listening?” (Prof Bump). Unfortunately Plan II students don’t take well to following directions, for they are “very stiff and proud” (Looking-Glass, 218). I am learning the balance between following directions and taking power of my own situation, bending the rules to create what I want. It is important to learn to strain the limitations of the system, to use the system for what it’s worth and to let it propel you forward rather than impede. I think the college professor motto should be, “I told them once, I told them twice: They should not listen to advice,” which is indeed contradictory advice. Learn how to take instruction, follow important guidelines, and how not to thoughtlessly imbibe and regurgitate everything your professors and classmates tell you.

 A veritable wonderland of coppers -600,000 of them- at the Blanton. 

 Rambling, scrambling, cantering, rumbling, tumbling… the words are all gobbledygook now, and nothing is as it seems. Painting my own wonderland in my mind is soothing the aches and pains in my body. Falling down the college rabbit hole, it sure is reassuring to remember (backwards I suppose) “Oh, the places you’ll go!” (Seuss). I am loving my morons, but I wait eagerly for a time of respite when I can laze by the hearth, gaze out the living room window at our Christmas lights, and, if I so choose, reminisce about wonders of my future.