hiatus

i feel i must write because this blog has gone almost a whole month without my...comments.

it is week 10. finals week is next week and tomorrow is the last day of classes. everyone i know says that this quarter went by the fastest and i agree with them. i don't know what it is. maybe it seems shorter because last year i had madrigal dinner to worry about--extra rehearsals eight nights of performing, the day to put up the sets, the day to tear them down...i miss it. whether or not i deserve it, there is some chance that i may get a 4.0 this quarter. we'll just have to see. i didn't recount in here the terrible ordeal of midterms and the results thereof. let us just say that i am not so hopeless after all. i'm still not driven, but my mind is as sharp as ever.

last time i was here, i introduced my professors and my classes. now that i look back, i realize how differently i feel now. i have come to truly admire and appreciate my criticism professor. despite his non-P.C. comments and his bola ties and his theatrics, he's a very fierce, very intelligent, very opinionated, very compassionate man. and i've grown very fond of him. its such a shame that the quarter has ended so soon. the same with my epic and romance professor. i liked her from the start and it was a bittersweet last lecture today. my bio professor i do not care for at all. not at all. the TA for the class swings back and forth: at times i like her, at times she irritates me so badly that i call her names, which if you know me you know is a very rare occurrence. my french professor i have always liked and i hope to see him again someday. i cannot miss him because i'm sure our paths will cross again. and my writing teacher.

my writing class in general i will miss. i started the class feeling displaced, very aware of my lack of self-confidence. those younger than me were more comfotable expressing their opinions. but in those strange and unwitting ways that i have, i've somehow proven to them that i am intelligent and they began to treat my silence and my faltering ways with more compassion--i'd hope with more liking. and their reactions to my stories were also favorable. i have come to appreciate them, all of them, and i'd like to think that they've come to appreciate me, although i'm sure i require more of their patience than any of the other class members. and again its such a shame that the quarter ended so soon. through the weeks i've learned my writing professor and i like him so well that i will miss him most of all. at least, i say so now. but even if i don't miss him, i'll always remember him. i wish him luck and i hope to seem him again.
he mentioned something about guilt today: how guilt is a reaction to inaction. how guilt is based on a perception of the future and how it can determine what we choose to do or not do. some people would call guilt conscience. the strange thing is, guilt refers to both the past and the future. it has marvelous rapport with time. if a person knows they will feel guilty for not doing something, they will do whatever it is they were hesitant to do. in this way, guilt changes the future. if a person feels guilty for doing something after the fact, then guilt refers to a past action. however the guilt regarding this past action will most likely keep the person from repeating the same action/mistake. in this way, the guilt that refers to the past at the same time alters the future. a marvelous rapport. conscience, on the other hand, seems to refer only to the present. conscience is that thing that operates in the moment. it does not take into account how the person will feel in the future or how the person feels about past actions, it analyzes the situation at the present. and for typical representations of conscience, time seems to stop altogether while the person consults the angel on one side and the devil on the other.

people always talk about how unreliable memories are. they say that when we look back whatever we remember has been altered by bias. but nobody ever specifies whether or not pure memory exists. is it possible to really remember every detail? or are we just fooling ourselves and it wasn't like how we remember it at all? i ask, because lastnight i was remembering Paris. and while i was remembering Paris, my mother was remembering Firenze and asked me to take out my cameos so we could find a good chain for them. i haven't looked at my cameos since our last night in Rome. so when i took them out...it was with a unique sense of wonder. they were made in a place that i have only been to once. and as i revealed them once again, i found a set of italian mosaic earrings that i had gotten at the Vatican and completely forgotten about. and in a rush i remembered the sense of tension and defiance i felt when buying them: how i no longer had the funds to buy them but i decided to do so anyway because i was in Rome and when would i get another chance? i remembered the italian leather, the swedish clocks, the landscape from France, to Switzerland, to Rome. i don't write about the trip much. not here, not in any of the other records i keep. i also have not looked at my souvenirs since the night that we got back. it's a strange sort of silence i'm keeping, but keeping it is what i think is best.

next week is my last shot. i hope i get it right.