The apocalypse
took all of us by surprise. It is not a mistake we are likely to make again.
But I’m getting
ahead of myself. Let me go back to the beginning:
13 DAYS BEFORE
Today, I
finally got to watch the DW finale with Cassidy, Emily, and Charmaine. It
started out good and scary, but ended up being kind of terrible. As in, poorly
written and annoying. But it was fun watching it with my friends anyway,
especially since Cassidy got all emotional and cried a bit and Charmaine
screamed at all of the scary parts and they all made fun of me when I insisted
that the creator was being self-referential and making allusions to Sherlock. They say I’m crazy and
obsessed (and this may be true), but the same guy writes both and, really, he
had to pick the year 221 B.C.?? (There were other moments
of similarity, too.) Besides, I was just using my newly obtained visual culture
training!
12 DAYS BEFORE
Started
one-point perspective in Drawing today. The lecture was fascinating and really
drove home to me how useful an understanding of the mechanics of creating art
can be to a thorough art historical understanding of artworks. We looked at
several churches and trompe-l'œil paintings that use one-point perspective to achieve their particular
visual effects. We also looked at the ways in which the perspective point of
the viewer (the one the artist has determined by their use of perspective, not
the actual vantage point of the viewer in gallery or museum) can have its own
powerful (and even controversial) meaning.
The drawing, on the other hand, was extremely difficult. One point perspective is the bane of my
existence.
11 DAYS BEFORE
Spent the
last several days working on homework. Not much to tell. The autumn is
beginning to be beautiful.
People seem
a bit stressed—saw some pale faces in the cafeteria today.
Discovered
that they’ve decorated the children’s section of the library with adorable wall
decals. This cheered me up significantly.
Spent
several hours talking to Clara today while swinging on the on-campus swing set.
We discussed the beauty and incredible depth of good children’s literature and
what it is that actually creates that divide between adult and children’s
stories. Felt like a fitting location to have this discussion—a child’s play
structure on a college campus.
When my
fingers began to feel slightly brittle with cold, I said farewell and went
inside to work on my charcoal drawing.
10 DAYS BEFORE
We had our
first group critique for drawing today. I was pretty terrified, I must admit,
but it went really well. It was actually helpful to have the other students
talk to us about our work and rather nice to get compliments for parts we’d
worked particularly hard on! Unfortunately, the critique also lasted all of
three hours, so by the end we were all drained and nearly monosyllabic. I think
the people whose works were looked at last got the short end of the stick
there.
My friends
mentioned that they needed a break, so in a possibly unconscious bid to escape
the first presidential debate, Keo, Emma, and I went on a quest for non-Café Mac
food. We ended up at this tiny Chinese restaurant which arguably had the nastiest
Chinese food in the entire world. Imagine the worst of stereotypical Midwestern
food attempting to disguise itself as Chinese. Yeah…
About
halfway through Emma was already suggesting we find desert elsewhere so that we
wouldn’t go hungry (although she was worried about time—she had lots of homework
to do). Our fortune cookies ultimately decided us along this course of action:
Keo’s said “be open to the suggestions of others,” Emma’s said “indulge in
relaxation time,” and mine said “small acts of charity can go a long way,”
which Emma and Keo naturally interpreted to mean that we should go find some
chocolate cake and I should buy it. And that is exactly what we did. On the way
to the cake, we discovered a community piano outside one of the shops, and Emma
played a little for us.
7 DAYS BEFORE
Finished up
the charcoal drawing of the pocket-watch and TARDIS mug. I think it turned out
pretty well, although I admit that I could have spent more time on the
perspective of that damn rectangular prism of a mug. Why did I pick something with such an obnoxious shape?
My peers
seem increasingly wan and fatigued.
I watched an
old Doctor Who episode with Charmaine and Emily tonight to make up for the fact
that the current season is on hiatus. Charmaine was very adorable watching it
for the first time and screamed at all the terrifying bits (and there are a lot in that episode). Afterwards we all
went to the poetry slam and watched Cassidy perform at the open mic. She was
pretty much amazing.
6 DAYS BEFORE
We had a
fascinating discussion in C18 (as I will refer to my 18th Century
British Literature class for the purposes of brevity) about (of all things)
reclaimed virgins and how this concept interacts with 18th century
understandings of personhood. It’s funny—our most invigorating discussions in
that class usually end up involving some sort of extremely modern concept:
superheroes, vampires, androids, etc.
I’m having
more trouble being engaged in my Harlem Renaissance class, unfortunately, and I’m
not entirely sure why. I think that partly I just think in a very different way
from the rest of my class, so my ideas don’t always feel like they fit in the
discussion.
5 DAYS BEFORE
Stayed up
very late working on my paper for C18 on the subject of Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard. Had a midnight snack
of tea [a drink] with jam and bread to lift my spirits and blood-sugar levels.
3 DAYS BEFORE
Had a guest
lecturer in Visual Culture today on GIS and geovisualization. I thought this
was a particularly brilliant idea on my professor’s part because I’d certainly never
made the connection between visual culture and cartography. I really enjoyed
looking at all of the examples she’d brought in, though, and discussing the
ways in which visual cues convey meaning. Now I’m planning on taking her class
for one of my social science requirements.
Spent the
last two days of Drawing working on my one-point perspective drawing in class.
We’re supposed to draw a scene inside either the Leonard Center (athletics) or
the library. I am drawing a view through the doorway of the children’s section
of the library. This should not come as a particular surprise to any of you.
My work was
accompanied by the lovely sounds of Pandora, which I recently rediscovered and
then downloaded as an app onto my phone. It is AWESOME even if the ads are
annoying (I’d much rather hear about the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur
Foundation every five minutes than Jack-in-the-Box once, but c’est la vie). It’s
been providing an appropriately collegiate indie rock soundtrack to my frantic
essay writing and library-drawing.
Spent the
afternoon working on my essay for Visual Culture, which is about the way
Jacques-Louis David’s painting of Napoleon’s coronation (entitled The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon and
the Crowning of Empress Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on December 2, 1804—seriously,
who gives a painting a title that is 20
words long??) acts as propaganda. I saw this painting in the Louvre when I
visited with my parents years and years ago, and was amused by its occasionally
dramatically ahistorical moments. I naturally remembered it when we were
assigned to pick a piece of propaganda and am thoroughly enjoying researching
it.
Read more Pope for C18 this evening. I have
come up with a new theory about Professor Chudgar (a man who demands to be
narrativized—so far I’ve speculated with classmates that the source of all of
his magic is his beard (he is bald on top and furry on his chin—one of those
philosopher-in-the wild-type beards) and with Clara that he is the adorably
codependent brother of the cheese shop man (because clearly similar taste in
hair style indicates genetic relationship)). I think that all of his classes are
actually an attempt at Pope-washing. I say this because he assigned two of Alexander
Pope’s poems for this class and three for Poetry last semester (and seems to
have significant portions of all of them memorized) and this time around I…I’m enjoying them. *shudder* I’m ashamed to
even type the words!
Really,
though, I’ve been having a lot of fun with Pope lately. I even doodled
poem-related cartoons in the margins of my Norton Anthology, although that
might simply indicate that I read the poem very late at night after working
nearly non-stop for sixteen hours and was therefore a bit loopy and excitable.
Who knows?
2 DAYS BEFORE
Macalester
is the kind of place where you might possibly happen upon a bagpiper serenading
your entrance into a building for no discernible reason. The mournful sound of
the lone bagpiper seemed a fit accompaniment to the grey morning and the tired
faces around me.
(I later
discovered that it was for the International Round Table, but this was NOT
clear at the outset.)
Also discovered
the most aesthetically pleasing way to display grapes. It was a momentous
occasion.
ONE DAY BEFORE
Campus
seemed oddly quiet today, although the parties tonight had an air of
desperation. I wonder if there’s some sort of bug going around.
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