Current mood:	melancholy
Entry tags:	school/regrets

thoughts on education
a recognition of cheating one’s fondest love. cheating it by neglect, due to a pursuit of less noble (but pleasurable) activities. soon, school will be a memory. the thought settles while sitting in class allowing knowledge spill into the brain. there was a discussion about jazz, about dadaism, about fitzgerald and diamonds, about the beginning of motion pictures ("the 20th century god"). the eyes begin to bulge with interest, the ears perk up so as not to miss a moment, the tongue lashes out in an effort to express a reaction to what the senses are taking in. you begin to fall in love with the brains of the people surrounding you, even those that have little to offer at the moment. But you realize that if you were with these people in another time or place, they too would have SOMETHING to offer you.

You allow each person’s contradiction to take you over…

an elderly man who asks too many questions has a bitter, nonchalant, eternal humor in his every sentence

a beautiful homosexual artist who wears sandals and says "right on" way too much is also capable of reveling ancient secrets each week. all while maintaining the presence of genuine humanitarian, the likes of which you’ve never encountered in such a young person

a pretentious dave matthews band fan who thinks he is a better leader than you also writes the most exquisite, funny, poignant short stories of anyone you've ever met at school

a 33 year old republican woman who never considers any opinion other than her own reminds you that you should never do the same. So you listen to her and she shocks you with her extremely attentive and devoted reading and her ability to extract everything she can from that reading (even if she inevitably slants it toward her own purposes in the end)

of course there is also the woman heading the class... your own personal helen. as you grow older you being to see that she is ALSO imperfect, yet you will still launch ships in her honor any day of the week.

you love these people madly and intensely for a few hours each week. Eventually, however, they will slip away along with all of the magnificence surrounding the entire scene.

all this external awareness brings you to the realization that THESE are the years that you will remember on your death bed. the conversations, the arguments, the IV drip of knowledge that makes the blood in your veins pump faster and causes your ears to ring with the music of a choir

you feel guilt weighing you down as you are reminded of all the shortcuts you've taken, the half assed attempts you've made, the things you didn't extend your research on, the times you stayed quiet during a discussion, the times you DOODLED instead of listening to a discussion, every tiny diversion plagues you at this moment because it is never enough

you always need more
but for some reason you still cheat this love of yours
and worse... you can't hunt down the reason for doing so