"And beneath such unspoken words, while with her weak eyes she bent deeply to her mending, her generous and unreflective spirit was more deeply grieved than she could find thought for, and more resolute than any thought for resoluteness could have made it. How very swiftly life goes! she thought. She looked up from her mending into the silent light and shadow, and the kind of long and profound sighing of the heart flowed out of her which, excepting music, was her only way of yielding to sadness."
-Agee
It just never ends. See my new blog here.
3.7.11
20.6.11
on subways and larger abstractions
There is nothing like a New York City subway that reminds me of reading to love is to die (there is a story here, about a priest and an African American woman). What's more:
"...so long as there is fear there is no love; a mind ridden with sorrow will never know what love is.
Really to care is to care as you would for a tree or a plant, watering it, studying its needs, the best soil for it, looking after it with gentleness and tenderness...
[Love] is beyond the turmoil of thought. It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent. To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict."
But how can one not dance to this?
"...so long as there is fear there is no love; a mind ridden with sorrow will never know what love is.
Really to care is to care as you would for a tree or a plant, watering it, studying its needs, the best soil for it, looking after it with gentleness and tenderness...
[Love] is beyond the turmoil of thought. It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent. To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict."
But how can one not dance to this?
23.5.11
To Live and To Love
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
-Thoreau
“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”
-HVD
"What more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in heaven."
-Hugo
Benny Goodman can turn a mundane morning commute into a joy ride.
-Thoreau
“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”
-HVD
"What more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in heaven."
-Hugo
Benny Goodman can turn a mundane morning commute into a joy ride.
22.5.11
final night: adieu
Perhaps one day it will be pleasant to remember all of this.
Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. (Joyce)
Tonight is--dare I say it even?--my final evening as a Yale student. By noon tomorrow, I will have my degree conferred upon me and my diploma tangibly clasped in my hand. And, perhaps even more poignantly, the title of this blog will be obsolete. "Amy No Longer at Yale". So it must be. As the event draws nearer, the reality of finality is finally starting to become startlingly apparent.
As with most endings, there is an inescapable feeling of loss: loss of a home that I love, a community that has shaped me, a lifestyle to which I have grown accustomed, and a place that I share with so many people I love. Endings do intrinsically require bereavement. And yet, except for that final ending of life (beyond which we know nothing for certain), endings also entail beginnings. Commencements. There is newness, excitement, continual progress, even amidst the uncertainty. There is development even during transition. And there is ultimately continuation and growth of the love, friendship, and passions that I have pursued and nurtured.
If you cultivate fear it will become stronger, if you cultivate faith it will achieve master. (JP Jones)
Tom Hanks spoke this morning about the dichotomy of fear and faith. We can choose, in all of our life choices, to meet them with fear or with faith. This decision becomes particularly pressing during moments of instability. The best option is self-evident--to have faith--yet it is not often the easiest. I have experienced, in the past month, the difficulties in choosing faith over fear. It is easy to get wrapped up in the intricacies of worries and speculations: is this the right job? the right apartment? the right location? the right way to live? Questions proliferate, and answers are not black-and-white. Yet after exhausting myself with too many unanswerable thoughts, I remembered one of my favorite Rilke passages:
The sentiment is beautiful and elegant, yet a challenge. It is to choose faith--acceptance of uncertainty--over fear. It is to choose to live fully--relishing both the good and the bad, the joys and the pains--rather than anxiously. It is to choose to play, even when you are unsure of the notes, rather than to suppress the urge to make music. It is to choose to have faith in your own abilities, rather than fearing inadequacy.
For all of those whom I have loved during the past four years and for those who have shared their love with me, the depth of my gratitude is inexpressible. Living is rarely a solitary endeavor; it is nourished by the support and influence of others. Tomorrow is an ending, no doubt, but it is also a beginning. It is a beginning that I hope to embrace with the joy and happiness that I have been so blessed with during my time here, and with faith that all will be right in the end.
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
...
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-T.S. Eliot
Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. (Joyce)
Tonight is--dare I say it even?--my final evening as a Yale student. By noon tomorrow, I will have my degree conferred upon me and my diploma tangibly clasped in my hand. And, perhaps even more poignantly, the title of this blog will be obsolete. "Amy No Longer at Yale". So it must be. As the event draws nearer, the reality of finality is finally starting to become startlingly apparent.
As with most endings, there is an inescapable feeling of loss: loss of a home that I love, a community that has shaped me, a lifestyle to which I have grown accustomed, and a place that I share with so many people I love. Endings do intrinsically require bereavement. And yet, except for that final ending of life (beyond which we know nothing for certain), endings also entail beginnings. Commencements. There is newness, excitement, continual progress, even amidst the uncertainty. There is development even during transition. And there is ultimately continuation and growth of the love, friendship, and passions that I have pursued and nurtured.
If you cultivate fear it will become stronger, if you cultivate faith it will achieve master. (JP Jones)
Tom Hanks spoke this morning about the dichotomy of fear and faith. We can choose, in all of our life choices, to meet them with fear or with faith. This decision becomes particularly pressing during moments of instability. The best option is self-evident--to have faith--yet it is not often the easiest. I have experienced, in the past month, the difficulties in choosing faith over fear. It is easy to get wrapped up in the intricacies of worries and speculations: is this the right job? the right apartment? the right location? the right way to live? Questions proliferate, and answers are not black-and-white. Yet after exhausting myself with too many unanswerable thoughts, I remembered one of my favorite Rilke passages:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.
The sentiment is beautiful and elegant, yet a challenge. It is to choose faith--acceptance of uncertainty--over fear. It is to choose to live fully--relishing both the good and the bad, the joys and the pains--rather than anxiously. It is to choose to play, even when you are unsure of the notes, rather than to suppress the urge to make music. It is to choose to have faith in your own abilities, rather than fearing inadequacy.
For all of those whom I have loved during the past four years and for those who have shared their love with me, the depth of my gratitude is inexpressible. Living is rarely a solitary endeavor; it is nourished by the support and influence of others. Tomorrow is an ending, no doubt, but it is also a beginning. It is a beginning that I hope to embrace with the joy and happiness that I have been so blessed with during my time here, and with faith that all will be right in the end.
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
...
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-T.S. Eliot
13.5.11
Fridays
Flowers and sushi and sunshine!
Followed by the return to manic music-making. How strange, yet strangely beautiful (perhaps particularly to a mathematics major), to experience music in such a way:
A quote I liked from my morning reading:
"According to [Paula] Fox, the habit of passivity, by shutting the mouth, opens the eyes. The person's powers of observation become sharp. If, then, he is able to overcome the passivity, he achieves a heightened honesty with himself."
-New Yorker (May 16, 2011)
Followed by the return to manic music-making. How strange, yet strangely beautiful (perhaps particularly to a mathematics major), to experience music in such a way:
A quote I liked from my morning reading:
"According to [Paula] Fox, the habit of passivity, by shutting the mouth, opens the eyes. The person's powers of observation become sharp. If, then, he is able to overcome the passivity, he achieves a heightened honesty with himself."
-New Yorker (May 16, 2011)
9.5.11
unrestrained freedom
Today was my unofficial last day of being a Yale student. My dimples are sore and my face slightly freckled from abundant sunshine exposure. (What has happened to my effusiveness? Has Sweetwater stolen all of my exclamation points??!! Oh, I guess not!) I found it fitting that my last examination here should be a mathematics final. It was enjoyable, partially enhanced by the mere recognition that it was the final final. As with most things though (cf. Jonathan Haidt's progress principle), we rarely find as much enjoyment in the ultimate end than in the process of achieving a particular goal. Such is the case for this ending. Four years cannot be summed up, balled up, culminated in a mere day. As my dean wrote in his weekly email last night:
"Like us, I thought, at the high tide line of our year that, like the beach, seemed so distant and long a prospect from our viewpoint last September. Like the children we, too, have filled our pockets as we have gone along. And once we empty them at home, what we collected along the way seems so inadequately to show a year at Yale. A full pocket, no matter how large, cannot hold a year of being together and doing all we have done. As some say, “You had to have been there.”
And we were and we are. That and this are the show. The beach at its end does not seem enough beach, even as at first view it seemed so far. Collecting stones and shells belie our efforts to gather it all in. No list can capture what it has meant to be here this year; words and images, too, are partial. No matter. A day at the beach and a year at Yale must suffice. It’s about being, I think, which is about trying on the new, about trusting the natural course of things, about believing in ourselves and others, about taking a long walk on the day we rise to and go out from."
I went to watch the sun set over New Haven this evening, golden rays dazzling over the newly flourishing greenery. What beauty in the closing of a day! And what serenity in the dusk that follows!
"Like us, I thought, at the high tide line of our year that, like the beach, seemed so distant and long a prospect from our viewpoint last September. Like the children we, too, have filled our pockets as we have gone along. And once we empty them at home, what we collected along the way seems so inadequately to show a year at Yale. A full pocket, no matter how large, cannot hold a year of being together and doing all we have done. As some say, “You had to have been there.”
And we were and we are. That and this are the show. The beach at its end does not seem enough beach, even as at first view it seemed so far. Collecting stones and shells belie our efforts to gather it all in. No list can capture what it has meant to be here this year; words and images, too, are partial. No matter. A day at the beach and a year at Yale must suffice. It’s about being, I think, which is about trying on the new, about trusting the natural course of things, about believing in ourselves and others, about taking a long walk on the day we rise to and go out from."
I went to watch the sun set over New Haven this evening, golden rays dazzling over the newly flourishing greenery. What beauty in the closing of a day! And what serenity in the dusk that follows!
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