Today I spent the time after government class while Connor was in computer class to attend some of those delightful little details such as finding someone to talk to about financial aid and registering for a CLEP test.
One of the major problems in trying to communicate with human beings is that it's hard to know the right questions to ask. If that isn't bad enough, when you think of the questions, you have to get up the nerve to ask them. Then you have to deal with the change in brain waves depending on the answer you get, which you sometimes can anticipate and sometimes haven't the foggiest idea of. Communication is a beast, I'm telling you.
There, I'm sounding like Junie B. Jones. What can I say? I like third graders.
But-- communication. Whenever I go to the financial aid desk, I try to pull up the questions from the files in my brain. Right now the files are full of messy details of money and transportation and scheduling and tests and homework and other peoples' tests and homework that I am assigning them. The files are chronically unorganized so it's hard to pull up the right questions. And when I think them up ahead of time and write them down, I always leave something out.
Or I stroll up to the desk and ask a question, only to be confronted with another scenario that requires me to think up and ask more questions. And the ladies behind the desk are nice enough, but they aren't prepared to sit there doing nothing while I shuffle through the mental files (besides, seeing as I'm the only one who can see the files, it probably looks a little more "mental" than that).
The result of all this is that I have to visit the F. A. office frequently as I think of questions. But bit by bit, it's coming along.
Today I was also registering for a CLEP test for English, trying to add a few more credit hours without all the time and cost. More information, more mental memos to attend more little details. I am my personal secretary.
On the way out of the Student Center, a red and white magazine caught my eye outside the international student office. It said "Study Abroad" in catchy red font, and I immediately sat down on the bench to take a look. I glanced quickly over Argentina and Mexico and Peru and Spain, lingering longer over Brussels and then landing on Morocco, where I stopped to stay a while.
Ahh. Sometimes I just want to jump up and grab a backpack, catch a bus to the airport, and fly far, far away. Not because I don't like it here. Just for an adventure. And Morocco has always grabbed my interest. It seems obscure. Mysterious. Exotic. Not a popular cruise destination, not the top pick of exchange students. The kind of place that makes me think of my favorite shade of blue. The kind of place that, while flying home standing in an infernal customs line at 3:00 in the morning you would casually be chatting with the person behind you and they'd ask "Where were you?" and you would modestly swallow the grin that is attacking you and say, "Morocco." All casual-like, you know.
Yes, I do a great deal of fantasizing. Don't worry, there is plenty to keep me firmly anchored to the ground. All those previously mentioned "little details," for instance. What do I think I'm going to do with a semester of Arabic, anyway? Or "Conflict Resolution?" (Ok, well I might be able to put that to good use.) As far as I can see, people don't usually take a semester of college courses for fun. They usually need to count for something.
Well, I will give this some thought. I think for now, it's here for a year or two at least. And of course I'm glad. I would probably miss my Mommy in Morocco.
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7 comments:
I just think you're phenomenally brilliant. I don't know why college classes have to be for something. =( I'd love to just randomly pick out the ones I think are cool. People are so annoyingly practical.
A nice touch of alliterative mmmms there at the end - "miss my Mommy in Morocco." :)
You could always take a supply of M&Ms for comfort food...
Patricia St John was a missionary there for many years and her books have been a help to me over the years (Many more years than you have been alive :) ) Her biography is good, and available on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Patricia+St+john&x=0&y=0
Anonju
Interesting. I've read a few of her books and really liked them, particularly Treasures of the Snow.
Referring to Patricia St John I should have said autobiography, not biography.
Yep, Treasures of the Snow is good and a film was made of it as you may know.
Her books often made me cry, which for a boy could be a mite embarrassing :)
She died in 1993. I very much like her poem "The Alchemist".
My Master an elixir hath that turns
All base and worthless substances to gold.
From rubble stones He fashions palaces
Most beautiful and stately to behold.
He garners with a craftsman's skilful care
All that we break and weeping cast away.
His eyes see uncut opals in the rock
And shapely vessels in our trampled clay.
The sum of life's lost opportunities,
The broken friendships, and the wasted years,
These are His raw materials;
His hands rest on fragments, weld them with His tears.
A patient Alchemist! -- He bides His time,
Broods while the south winds breathe, the
North winds blow,
And weary self, at enmity with self,
Works out its own destruction, bitter slow,
Our gallant highways petered out in mire,
Our airy castles crumbled into dust,
Leaving us stripped of all save fierce desire,
He comes, with feet deliberate and slow,
Who counts a contrite heart His sacrifice.
(No other bidders rise to stake their claims,
He only on our ruins sets a price.)
And stooping very low engraves with care
His name, indelible, upon our dust;
And from the ashes of our self-despair
Kindles a flame of hope and humble trust.
He seeks no second site on which to build,
But on the old foundation, stone by stone,
Cementing sad experience with grace,
Fashions a stronger temple of His own.
[Thought I could just send an internet link, but Google search did not come up with the whole poem. The formatting here seems a bit messed up, but maybe you can make sense of it. She was a Brit, so she wrote skilful as skilful: it is not a typo]
Anonju
And here is another of her poems, also in her autobiography:
Rebuke.....By Patricia St.John
I have been very sinful, Lord, today:
Undisciplined, I walked my self-willed way
Unloving, I had given Thee no thought,
and all day long Thy face I had not sought.
Yet though my hardened heart would not repent
Thou led'st me to a twi-lit field of clover
I saw the hawthorn, white as souls forgiven,
and all the sunset colors of Thy heaven.
There was not other person there to see
And so I knew it was all for me
He whom I had neglected all the day,
And from whose loving voice had turned away,
Had borne with all my failure and defeat
And then had cast His beauty at my feet!
Anonju
Doh! And oops.
A line from "The Alchemist" is missing...
It should read:
Works out its own destruction, bitter slow.
Then when our dreams have dwindled into smoke,
Our gallant highways petered out in mire,
etc.....
I like the second poem best. And I think guys might feel better if they let themselves cry sometimes.
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