An Unholy Sonnet

They tell me what we prioritize speaks volumes about what we care about. I guess that leaves me with sleep first, food second, and theater and school tied for a distant third. They also say that you can do only two of three things well in college: sleep, study, or party. It seems I have chosen the first two: a major in sleep with a minor in homework. It is very rewarding, but I wonder if I should add a double-major...?

As the semester (and my first year at college!!! AHHH!!!) winds to a close, I am a bit nervous. Nervous about finals. Nervous about summer school and what I'm doing with the rest of my summer. Nervous about what I'm doing with the rest of my life. You know, your normal Tuesday. When you talk about anxiety as a dull, throbbing nervousness that never quite goes away, what they are really referring to is the last three weeks of the semester. And I cannot even begin to imagine what the seniors must be going through right now. 

Batter my heart, three-person'd God

The storm of pillows
Slaughters innocent dreamings
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new
A night, unspent restless

Forks clash with knives
As the work around the left flank
Fried chicken valiantly dying before
Vegatables uncooked and untamed

The thunderous din drowns out the cries
Of warriors celebrating a week well-fought
With papers laid to waste
They pour libations to their liberation

Batter my heart, three-person'd God

Twenty Six

We stand mute, unmoving
On a corner in Boston
The whole world packed onto the sidewalk
Wanting to reach out
Wanting to help
Yet we remain trapped behind pixel walls
We keep looking at pictures. Trying to make it real.
But it isn't.

Yet there they go
Running on, into the fire
Those whose capacity to meet a challenge
May well be limitless.
There are still so many heroes.
Tears of joy and grief mix
For humanity torn and affirmed
In a single tragic moment

At moments like these
Words stand empty.
But love abounds

Oh God…"like these"
There can not be moments like these
We can not let them be so common place
So ordinary that they get "these"

At this moment
Words stand empty.
But love abounds

Sure on this Shinning Night

Sorry for the rather long dearth of posts recently. If you haven't guessed by now, whenever I'm working on a show everything else falls to the wayside. But, having just closed and struck Spring Awakening (which was amazing!!!!) this weekend, I can finally return to the glamorous world of actually getting my homework done. I've finished my Greek translation completely for the first time in a few weeks, written a exhibit proposal on eighteenth-century naval art, and am about to dive into some good ol' utilitarianism. Normally philosophy homework calls for Concerning Hobbits. Tonight, in celebration as it were, I've gone in search of something a bit 

different. 

 

 

Fontastic

The most annoying part about using writing that I didn't intend for the internet isn't editing for content or length, but it's the stupid fonts. For the life of me I can't get one consistent font. Oh well...life could be worse.

As Spring Awakening gets closer and Tech Week starts soon, I've been wrapping up my brief stint as dramaturg. (If you don't know what that is, that's okay. Wikipedia is helpful.) The final thing I needed to do was create a brief historical introduction to the show.

            Spring Awakening was adapted from a play by the same name written by the German playwright Frank Wedekind in 1891. Wedekind (1864-1918) led a storied life, having an affair and an illegitimate child and also working in the circus. He eventually entered the theater and became known for his satirical writings and performances. He served a nine-month prison term for “assaulting the dignity of the monarch.” The play wasn’t performed until 1906 and was banned or censored for indecent and subversive subject matter. It was first staged in English in New York City in 1917, but the Commissioner of Licenses claimed that the play was pornographic. It was only allowed one performance. The musical adaptation appeared off-Broadway in 2006 and subsequently moved to Broadway where is won 8 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It was adapted for television in 2008 and there is currently a movie adaptation being produced. Spring Awakening has been immensely popular since it’s premiere, especially among teenagers and college students.

            Taking place in a rural town in Imperial Germany during the early 1890’s, Spring Awakening is grounded in the culture of its time. School dominated the life of middle class boys during this period. The Gymnasium, a secondary school focused on the study of classical languages, was designed to prepare pupils for university entrance exams. Upon graduation they have the opportunity to apply for spaces at universities. Instruction was heavily dependent on memorization and public recitation and teachers were fully empowered to use corporal punishment in their classrooms. Secondary schools were exclusively for boys until the end of the century, when girls were granted some limited access to it. However, schools were strictly sex-segregated after elementary school.

            Any discussion of sexuality was strictly forbidden by the moral code of the day. Sex outside marriage was taboo, especially for women. The religious values of the day stressed prudence and temperance and the value of family honor. Premarital sex was considered a smear on that honor. However, it was far more common than the literature of the day let on. Because parents did not discuss such matters with their children, it was quite common for them to have to deal with a pregnancy on their own. Abortion was still illegal across Europe, so any procedures would have been performed by someone without formal medical training. The mortality rate for such procedures was very high.

             At the same time that religion was more strictly enforcing standards of morality, people were falling away from organized religion. Church attendance fell sharply and many younger people felt increasingly distant from the faith of their parents. There was a feeling that the spiritual emptiness was a new phenomenon, and as such was vilified by traditionalists and conservatives. Friedrich Nietzsche, a publically avowed atheist, wrote of this time, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

Lecture on Ethics

The world in silent stillness waits
As those few, those happy few
Sink deeper into pages and words
Images of things unlearned and unknown
Unthinking, they grasp lessons from the text
And scratch them onto paper.
Eyes droop closed
Only to snap back open,
The dream wasn't and you're still here.

Alternative Spring Break

       I thought that, just because the news coverage had stopped months ago, everything had been cleaned up. Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast at the end of October. We arrived in New York City in late February as part of Georgetown University Hurricane Emergency Relief Efforts (GU HERE), and much of the damage still remained. We spent our days clad in white Tyvek suits, respirators, and goggles to protect ourselves from the mold building up in the houses we were working in. Mold removal is a tedious process that involves scrubbing every visible surface with a special cleaning solution.

       Spending endless hours working on a house, only to be told that we weren’t anywhere close to finishing, gave me a profound understanding for the sheer amount of work required to rebuild after a disaster like Sandy. It’s work that is likely to continue for years and that is already being forgotten.

Edison's Wisdom

The floor sits empty by 5 am. Well, almost empty. Here and there a solitary figure slumps over a desk. Some are typing, one or two are packing up, but the vast majority of them have fallen asleep. As the sun starts to filter through the south wall, these last stragglers rise and shuffle out to class. Or to a resting place a bit more comfortable than their wooden cubicle.

Around 7 or 8 the flow reverses and those who had passed a night in bed take up their posts. Coffee and muffins mingle with readings and problem sets as the carts begin to roll. Slowly a days worth of words finds its way back to the shelves. By noon both the shelves and the tables stand full. And equilibrium sets in.

Those who stumbled out early this morning return after dinner, groggy and clutching their fourth espresso of the day. They search for their usual haunts and fall into now-familiar chairs. The floor begins to buzz. The sound leaks out gradually. It first reaches the rows of wooden cells in each corner, then crawls into the stairwell. By 10 pm the whole building is filled with an inescapable hum. People battle for seats and tables and even spots on the carpet, as long as they're near an outlet. The printers spit out page after page without ceasing.


By midnight the last of the night's visitors trickle in. They search in vain for an empty place before descending to the bowels of the building. A lucky one grabs the last desk, hidden in the far corner under the flickering light no one had bothered to fix yet. As she put down her bag and began unpacking the evening, now morning's work, she noticed speck of neon green just out of view. She looked up. And she alone smiled.

So...Lazy

A number takes the place of a moment

All that is left is to acknowledge

Only objects that stand alone

Powerless, you are carried onward by the current

Grief and sorrow mingle indiscriminately

Anguish

Heavy, weighed down by memories,

She lies, curled up with her blanket and book

A solitary figure

A man steps forward,

Knee deep in forgiveness,

And out into the sun 

Sometimes, when I want to write something but am far too lazy, I collect some lines from old pieces and stitch them together.