Less Angst, More Rain, Good Trade
Oct. 27th, 2003 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksWell, the dark pall of Doom, Despair, and Nothingness that hung over campus for most of last week, visible in the sheer number of people I know who were having an appalling time, may be lifting somewhat. At least, I personally feel a bit better, and so do at least some of the people I've talked with, though I haven't gotten around to everyone yet to see if it is a universal lightening of angst.
Man, last week sucked.
Anyway, things started to improve on this end with the trip to Longwood Gardens, at which there were monks. Monks making a sand mandala. I hadn't expected the sound of it... they put the sand in a long, narrow, corrugated metal funnel, which is so narrow that the sand can't come out the end of it then they stroke the funnel with a metal rod, and the vibrations cause the sand to lose cohesion and 'liquify' and come out the end of the funnel in a stream that can pretty much be controlled to the grain. The metal on metal makes a soft buzz or hum, somewhat like rice falling into a tin, somewhat like windchimes, somewhat like a sistrum; peaceful, harmonious, meditative. It was lovely.
Also among the good things: today was Edmonds' lecture on Greco-Roman astrology, which I have been looking forward to all semester, and it was just as informative as I had hoped. I need to be kept away from ephemerides (the tables that tell you what position stars and planets were in at various times), for I could see spending many, many pleasant hours procrastinating by drawing up horoscopes and seeing how differently I could make them come out according to the different systems and iterations (See, if the ascendant is calculated to the degree, here, then you should have dropped dead seven years ago, but if we factor in the Lot of Fortune, here, and its mollifying influence, then you should be married to a gay prostitute, unless we take into account that Saturn is trine with Venus, here, which means that you have already had seventeen children...). And of course being me I wouldn't be able to resist trying to actually do it *right*, which would mean all twelve Houses, all twelve Places, all thirty-six decans, correction for precession of the equinoxes and more spherical trigonometry than I have ever attempted in my life. Because I just want to know how it would turn out and if I could do it. So ephemerides go on the list of things that are *never, ever* to be allowed into my possession, like iunx-wheels (I even like the sound of it! Iunx iunx iunx! See?) or giant origami paper or the Cannes Film Festival, for fear that I would never do anything else useful again for as long as I live. This is known as the 'ooh, shiny' factor, or why I stay off eBay.
Speaking of usefulness, I really ought to be cleaning my room at the moment. I had kept it in shape up until right before Fall Break, but when I am stressed and hurried and packing and then depressed a couple of things happen: I stop having time to clean, and I develop denning instincts. These aid and abet one another, since the more stressed I am the more time I spend in my room trying to work and the less I get done, meaning that my room becomes less and less a human habitation and more and more the nest of some large and secretive and possibly carnivorous animal. It develops a protective and territorial layer of books and clothes and plushies and paperwork and sticks I dragged in from the woods and candle drippings and soda empties and pens and blankets in random positions, which I rearrange every so often when the mood strikes me, growling and snuffling and muttering to myself among the bones. And the blinds go down, permanently, and there are very few lights, so that I turn into an entirely nocturnal creature even when it is light out. When I've really spent too long in my room, I find myself losing the distinction between 'bed' and 'floor' as places to sleep, since they have about the same heterogeneous mixture of stuff on them and are about as comfortable as each other anyway.
There are several obvious difficulties with this state of affairs, but the most pertinent is that it is self-perpetuating, since when my room has achieved the perfect balance of chaos to clutter to order I tend to decide that there is no reason for me ever to leave my room again, except to seek out classes and new reading material. Then I get really territorial and start locking myself in and ignoring people. For some reason I mostly do this whole process in fall; I really do think I am preparing to hibernate, or at least to sleep through as much of winter as bloody well possible.
So I've decided I had better clean the place, even though it is currently at an absolutely delightful state of *my burrow*-ness, especially since my mother is coming next weekend and there keep being people who come to sit in here and be social.
Astonishing how long one can procrastinate by talking about what one ought to be doing.
I shall go and actually do it now.
Man, last week sucked.
Anyway, things started to improve on this end with the trip to Longwood Gardens, at which there were monks. Monks making a sand mandala. I hadn't expected the sound of it... they put the sand in a long, narrow, corrugated metal funnel, which is so narrow that the sand can't come out the end of it then they stroke the funnel with a metal rod, and the vibrations cause the sand to lose cohesion and 'liquify' and come out the end of the funnel in a stream that can pretty much be controlled to the grain. The metal on metal makes a soft buzz or hum, somewhat like rice falling into a tin, somewhat like windchimes, somewhat like a sistrum; peaceful, harmonious, meditative. It was lovely.
Also among the good things: today was Edmonds' lecture on Greco-Roman astrology, which I have been looking forward to all semester, and it was just as informative as I had hoped. I need to be kept away from ephemerides (the tables that tell you what position stars and planets were in at various times), for I could see spending many, many pleasant hours procrastinating by drawing up horoscopes and seeing how differently I could make them come out according to the different systems and iterations (See, if the ascendant is calculated to the degree, here, then you should have dropped dead seven years ago, but if we factor in the Lot of Fortune, here, and its mollifying influence, then you should be married to a gay prostitute, unless we take into account that Saturn is trine with Venus, here, which means that you have already had seventeen children...). And of course being me I wouldn't be able to resist trying to actually do it *right*, which would mean all twelve Houses, all twelve Places, all thirty-six decans, correction for precession of the equinoxes and more spherical trigonometry than I have ever attempted in my life. Because I just want to know how it would turn out and if I could do it. So ephemerides go on the list of things that are *never, ever* to be allowed into my possession, like iunx-wheels (I even like the sound of it! Iunx iunx iunx! See?) or giant origami paper or the Cannes Film Festival, for fear that I would never do anything else useful again for as long as I live. This is known as the 'ooh, shiny' factor, or why I stay off eBay.
Speaking of usefulness, I really ought to be cleaning my room at the moment. I had kept it in shape up until right before Fall Break, but when I am stressed and hurried and packing and then depressed a couple of things happen: I stop having time to clean, and I develop denning instincts. These aid and abet one another, since the more stressed I am the more time I spend in my room trying to work and the less I get done, meaning that my room becomes less and less a human habitation and more and more the nest of some large and secretive and possibly carnivorous animal. It develops a protective and territorial layer of books and clothes and plushies and paperwork and sticks I dragged in from the woods and candle drippings and soda empties and pens and blankets in random positions, which I rearrange every so often when the mood strikes me, growling and snuffling and muttering to myself among the bones. And the blinds go down, permanently, and there are very few lights, so that I turn into an entirely nocturnal creature even when it is light out. When I've really spent too long in my room, I find myself losing the distinction between 'bed' and 'floor' as places to sleep, since they have about the same heterogeneous mixture of stuff on them and are about as comfortable as each other anyway.
There are several obvious difficulties with this state of affairs, but the most pertinent is that it is self-perpetuating, since when my room has achieved the perfect balance of chaos to clutter to order I tend to decide that there is no reason for me ever to leave my room again, except to seek out classes and new reading material. Then I get really territorial and start locking myself in and ignoring people. For some reason I mostly do this whole process in fall; I really do think I am preparing to hibernate, or at least to sleep through as much of winter as bloody well possible.
So I've decided I had better clean the place, even though it is currently at an absolutely delightful state of *my burrow*-ness, especially since my mother is coming next weekend and there keep being people who come to sit in here and be social.
Astonishing how long one can procrastinate by talking about what one ought to be doing.
I shall go and actually do it now.
