it's been so long since i've written here, the main reason being that i still haven't finished my shakespeare paper. that fact i think has been making feel for the past two weeks that no time is my own and such things as a journal have gotten scrunched from my mind. however, as i finish up this paper without stress, increasingly calm and focused, i realize that scrunching is not the best way to deal with the feeling of time out of my control and unuseable. my mind was feeling very unfocused and jumpy and like i didn't want to be alone and do work after the dance concert and shabbat dinner when i wanted to do work. i went to the library looking for a movie to watch, thinking maybe they would have one that could apply to a poli sci paper. i ended up watching this movie 'the best of zen by alan watts'. i spotted it because one of the books i got in amherst over break was by watts and i've read snatches of it since then. the movie was all water, trees, ducks, and alan's voice talking about presence, listening and seeing without naming, life as change, and words and ideas as definitely not reality but ways we fill up our minds thinking about thoughts. it did help me clear myself, and i came back and wrote and slept.
this morning at breakfast i talked to this boy in my poli sci class who has such an active intellectual mind, and his eyes and hands remind me of a grown child, someone who i can so easily imagine back to a baby. he's from san diego where his mom's a domestic, immigrated from mexico, and he says he's known he'd go to college since a young age. his older brother went to cornell and he thought about harvey mudd. he said he hasn't been back to his mom's village since 6th grade and it was funny to him to see cars then. i guess he went to really good schools growing up. i'm thinking of writing on the zapatistas but i have to think of something to compare that uprising to.
posted by Liza 8.12.01