After the Shock, or I Am Going to College

Last week, Wednesday, I woke up earlier than usual, about 6:30 a.m. There would be Latin later at 10:30. For some reason I picked up my phone and — you know what, I'll stop with the narration; I feel terribly inauthentic. (If I were narrating this aloud, the story would be littered with "uh"s and "um"s.)

Anyway, I got accepted into my first choice college, Wheaton College! 

"Dear Yuri Ben, It is my deep pleasure to inform you of your selection for admission to Wheaton College as a new freshman." That was great news to wake up to, really the news I'd been hoping for all college-app-season long; and I breathed a heartfelt prayer of thanks to God. I had been getting ready to prepare for college in Manila or even Davao, but along came this.

My goodness, my face, how my face must have looked.

Probably like this. This is as ecstatic as it gets.
He whip his hair back and forth.

As it turns out, I was very nonchalant outwardly ("It later transpired that I had said none of this out loud." - Sherlock). Maybe a sotto voce kettle-like hiss, but nothing more.

But anyway — I, am, going, to, college.

(Hey, cool effect. Jose Garcia Villa, whom I have not read, is famous for sticking a comma in front of every word in some of his poems.

Anywaaaayy...)

It's unreal. The idea of college was previously stuck up in theoretical limbo, and I couldn't feel it in my gut. I simply walked around thinking — knowing, somewhat — that I would be going to college some time in the abstract future. Which when pondered on often dissipates into wisps, and the idea of the future floats imperceptibly away —  but what? no matter. Intangible facts are so much easier to deal with than those that are palpable.

But after the unreality comes, insolently hopping and skipping, the visceral reality. I cried once, realizing that I would have to leave the city I've called home for an on-and-off fourteen years. But that was in a dream (I do my utmost to not appear a sissy in waking life) and I couldn't resist my subconscious in my dream. Thanks for nothing, Freud. At least I will be going to a place just a few miles from another place I have called home. I went to the DFA and picked up a passport renewal form. I never knew a piece of badly photocopied paper could be so intimidating.

Beyond that, I will have to start taking care of stuff. See? Look at that. I call responsibilities "stuff", not some concrete moniker, like cooking, or washing clothes (thank You, Lord, for the staggering technological advancement brought about by the laundromat), or — I shudder — talking to strangers. Ugh. I will have to grow up.

And beyond that, I will have to wear multiple layers of clothing. Because Wheaton is situated in the cold, bleak, flat, and beautiful Midwest. Snow jacket and scarves and snow pants and snow boots.

Because summer avoids the Midwest like the plague, right?

yep

And yet beyond that, I will have to start taking GPA seriously. And the fact that there will nearby be a legit library means that I will have to exercise temperance, because yes, that poetry collection is very enticing but
YOU HAVE A CALCULUS ASSIGNMENT TO FINISH, YOU SHIFTY NON-STEM MAJOR!

I plan to study English at Wheaton, because on the campus lies a collection of Inklings, Sayers, and Chesterton memorabilia, including the selfsame desk on which Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, and because, based on what I've checked of the course offerings, there will be tons of opportunities to study some of the authors I've loved in high school. There's also a chance of me double majoring, and I think I hear Ancient Languages calling my name. There is also a smidgen of a possibility of triple majoring, but that would take a whole lot of work, prayer, and coffee. But that's all tentative. Switching academic plans is quite easy, unlike in the Philippines, where a student will be penalized both financially and in length of study for shifting courses.

.

.

The reality of college is overwhelming at the moment, but I will have to get going.

To close this rambling... thing, I quote the opening of one of e.e. cummings' most famous poems:

"i thank You God for most this amazing"

What started as an experiment in common meter

A mountain hurled onto a fly,
The fly surviving still —
Scarce more than a mere fly am I,
And overwhelmed by hill
                                     Am I.

The psalmist wondered who was he,
God of eternity,
That he of time should know of Thee —
Timeless fidelity
                       Of Thee.

How much less I, the little fly,
Who with not even half
Of David's pious fervency,
That I should ask of why

Why the mountain fell on me —
Who serves* You shamefully —
The mountain of such levity:
That under so heavy

A lightness I should be
Crushed —
               and being crushed, blessed.

_________________

*or treats (I couldn't decide on which)
_________________

I have just finished a collection of Emily Dickinson's poems, and was struck by the skill and ease with which she poetized in common meter. Common meter is one of the most common (duh) rhythm schemes for hymns ("Amazing Grace," for example), and I've been hearing it at least fifteen years now. But Emily Dickinson's made me view it in a refreshed way, and I felt the impulse to try my luck with it. I borrow more than one theme from her poetry. Of course, I cheat: the first two quatrains (or cinqtains, is that what you call them?) both have little addenda. The fourth quatrain doesn't maintain rhythmic consistency. The third has a general iambic beat (not really) but uses off-kilter rhyme. And let's not bother with the quasi-couplet at the end.

thoughts on college no. 5

bathed in the crepuscular beauty
of a lamp's lonely dying light

a boy at the piano
sits and sees the last notes on the page


morendo




morendo






morendo





it is the movement's end
but not the end of movement


it is the beginning of another movement
but movement has never ceased for one moment

crescendo






crescendo

not yet



crescend

no!


any louder the boy can
not




but it is the beginning of another movement
although before his eyes a final somber
dance macabre

and it is the beginning of another movement
and the next pages are written

but not yet for him
pages blank without blotches

he must enter the movement
begin the movement

and play
without knowing the blotched end

knowing the theme but not
the end

the beginning but not
the end


"at the still point"


but he must enter the movement
for movement never stops

not even in
stillness


he knows not
the end

but he sees
blotches

he knows not
the end

but he knows he must
begin

Auden's "As I walked out one evening"

Loki reading W.H. Auden's famous poem:

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   ‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on. 

Two poems

Thoughts on college no. 4

In the blinding daylight
Of gilded future,
A boy releases a bird –
Two birds, five birds, and another –

And sits and stares and bathes
In the undulations of the daylight,
Blank-eyed, bleak-eyed, dead-eyed;
And the daylight dims as vision vanishes.

And out! a whirlwind – and a bird
Bearing a branch half-withered,
And another a twig, and another the same,

And another a branch bearing buds –
Almost alive, as though struggling to be alive –
And another a branch which had atrophied
Suspended in purgatorial stagnation –

And a last bird (a dove were it not trite)
Bearing a branch, a bird that told of the
Quiet deluge, that the flood was nearly over,
And that there would soon be dry ground –
For the boy hung in empyreal daylight –

And that the boy must soon descend
And dig his toes into the earth,
And grasp his fear and toss it
As a handful of wet dust,

And taste the fruits of the kingdom
And realize that the kingdom is not yet,

And feel the limestone edifices
And feel the marble, holy columns,
And feel in his heart a half-satisfied longing,

And feel a hand come over his eyes
And feel the earth come into his eyes
And feel the deadness come out of his eyes,

And that he must See
Into the gilded future, and See
Inside the gilded future, and See
Beyond the gilded future –

That he must See
And become a man.
____________________

Why I read fiction

On deep blue bedsheets
I knock on the door of a paper house
And open it, unbidden,
For no one is inside to let me in;

And in I go.

Sometimes I knock
On the door of a house
Not of paper, but of pixels;
I knock –

And in I go –

To Spain, to the gothic South,
To be excited, to get depressed;
In I go
In order to be moved

Without moving.

Coping with my being wait listed

From here:

At super-selective schools, where there are many more qualified applicants than can be accommodated, applicants are wait listed as a consolation. Instead of being turned down for admission, they are put on the wait list, the implication being, “We wish we could have admitted you, but there wasn’t room.” Diplomacy lives.

Regina Spektor's Far

Far is hands down my current favorite album, displacing The Strokes' Is This It. A favorite is "The Genius Next Door," which contains a painful and sprawling examination of human existence, similar to but going beyond the bounds of (another track of Spektor's) "Hero". "Laughing With" would elicit a hearty chuckle from Chesterton.