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I'm still trying to adjust to the work-sleep-work cycle of 8 to 5. Dear Grad School Admissions People, have mercy on my poor soul. Admit me, please. Please. Please. Please. Please.
Being too stunned to think straight, I offer you this clip from an essay called "Against Joie de Vivre," by Phillip Lopate:
The argument of both the hedonist and the guru is that if we were but to open ourselves to the richness of the moment, to concentrate on the feast before us, we would be filled with bliss. I have lived in the present from time to time, and I can tell you that it is much overrated. Occasionally, as a holiday from stroking one's memories or brooding about future worries, I grant you, it can be a nice change of pace. But to "be here now," hour after hour, would never work. I don't even approve of stories written in the present tense. As for poets who never use a past participle, they deserve the eternity they are striving for.
Besides, the present has a way of intruding whether you like it or not. Why should I go out of my way to meet it? Let it splash on me from time to time, like a car going through a puddle, and I, on the sidewalk of my solitude, will salute it grimly like any other modern inconvenience.
Lopate's prose strikes me as incredibly Larkinesque. On the whole, I could neither agree nor disagree with the essay's premise and observations, and I enjoyed it because of that. It was an oddly refreshing experience.
I'm slowly working on my own essay for the 'Personal and Reflective Writing' class I'm taking this semester. It has something to do with Home as an idea, though I don't know exactly what yet. I was thinking about the tension between sentimental constructions of the idea and my own experience. I was thinking about how angry I felt last week when construction workers cut down several trees I've grown used to seeing on the riverbank. I was thinking about the gulf, for those of us who live in borrowed spaces, between what we own and what we grow accustomed to living with. I was thinking about the tragedies of ownership.
Is the weekend really gone already?
