Sunday, January 29, 2012

Winter courses (and another Edinburgh pic)

Another Edinburgh picture, taken from the very tippy-top of the Walter Scott Monument.  I love the lighting in this picture.  It looks like I did something really cool on purpose.  That big building with the clock tower is a schnazzy hotel, the street is Prince's St., and the green bit is Calton Hill.  Beyond that--yes, that is the ocean.

Figured I'd ramble a bit more in this post.  I'm going to try to actively begin to remember funny things that happen throughout the day, the way I did when I was living abroad.  Just because I'm home, so to speak, doesn't mean I should let that whole looking-on-the-bright-side thing I was doing last year slack off.  (Even if it was way too easy last year.)

Anyway.  I'm actually enjoying my classes this quarter, sort of.  We're reading a bunch of religious books in one of them, and half the time it's fascinating.  The other half the time it bores me to tears.  I think it's a mentality thing--it's definitely easier to understand and care about The Baghavad Gita when I'm not rushing or worried about other stuff.

In another class I've set an extra goal for myself (of churning out one short story per week), and that part is marvelously enjoyable.  The half where we have to read/critique other peoples' in-progress works isn't generally so much fun.  It takes a lot of time to line-edit forty pages of writing, and I try to be meticulous (because I hope that's what others will do for my story). My American art history course is kind of awful.  I keep getting flashbacks to 10th grade humanities  (Thanks, Ms. Tanaka.  Really.)  I'd be in so far over my head without that class, but at the same time--I mean, I don't know anything about art.  And half the lectures just piss me off because the idiot men are so goddamn sexist. (EDIT: Not the men in the class.  The artists.)

I'm also taking a William Carlos Williams class.  I don't know how I feel about it yet.  Some of his poetry just... doesn't make sense.  At all.  And there's an essay (that I haven't yet started) on his poetry due next week.  But his short stories--well, my copy of the book is late, but the prof read two of them out loud in class this week, and they were wonderful.  Absolutely brilliant.  Can you imagine a bona-fide legitimate writer in the twenties writing about lesbianism?  And it's not porn.  It's a good story.


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