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I just finished Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and have been set into a thoroughly odd state of mind by it. Not that my state of mind has been especially normal over the last few days… but in that vein of thought, Nakobov the far and away the most talented linguist I have ever read. And beyond that? Lolita was masterfully crafted. The prose was rich and at times powerful and poetic. The characters were despairingly believable. I’ll not put on airs as being able to provide any sort of “review” of the book– hardly. I don’t think I can even provide you with a taste of the book. Read it? Sure. After you finish the 1,000 other things that you want to read. Or: if reading isn’t your thing, then don’t sweat it.

So.

The whole of my post-Bozeman existence has been dominated by sleeping and eating. I’ve slept an obscene amount, and yet, despite my relative inactivity, I still find myself exhasted. I didn’t leave the house today. I didn’t even step outside. The last time this happened was exactly a year ago, following my unfortunate encounter with a semi-truck. But what else is there to do when it’s May 11th and snowing outside? When there’s nothing outside any more intruiging than my books and piano? …

I took Chester for a walk… not last night, but the night before. We left my house just as the sun was setting, and Chester had gone a mile or more before we even made it out of the driveway. The first half-hour was marked by the t-t-t-t-p! of the retractable leash going out (usually accented by an “ug” on my part as my arm was partially pulled from its socket) and the v-v-v-v-t of the leash retracting as Chester chased across again to the other side of the road in front of me. Sometimes I ran and tried to keep up but… keep up with a 1-year-old English Setter? Hardly. And so we went. We re-approached the house in semidarkness, and I fully appreciated the sweatshirt I had brought.

God damn these blogs… how could I ever begin to convey the emotion and full reality of walking, alone with my puppy, across the darkening Wyoming plains, lost in thought and wonder and regret? And what’s the purpose? Even if I were somehow able to capture just one moment from our hour-and-a-half walk and share it here with the rest of the world, to what avail? Would you know me better? Would you have a better understanding of who Mark is? Would you in any way be able to share the immense humanity of the moment I captured? Would you gain anything by it?

Or would you have just read my blog?

God, such angst.

But enough of that. Let’s keep to the superficial– the rest is a waste of time.

I saw Kingdom of Heaven last night. I very much enjoyed it, although from a critical standpoint it’s probably not more than a three star film (of five). Regardless, I have no doubt that it will receive a Best-Picture nomination. From my perspective, however, it was amazing. I love Ridley Scott and his eye for visually spectacular overwhelming film, and I very much appreciated the film’s subject matter. I would certainly recommend the film to anyone who 1) enjoyed Gladiator or 2) is interested in the subjects of the crusades, God, middle-age warfare, or “what makes a man.”

And so, once again, it’s snowing outside. Nope, actually it’s not. It stopped snowing about four hours ago. Now it’s just 28 degrees and dark.

Semester 2 GPA: 3.86

Cumulative GPA: 3.73

HIST 109D Modern Asia: A

HIST 319 History Ancient Rome: A

MTA 218D Internatl Film & Television: B+

UH 202 Texts & Critics: A

UH 210 Mentoring Gifted Children: A

This semester should have been a 4.0, but I didn’t properly invest myself into my film class. Meh.

It’s been a few crazy and full (and computerless, to boot!) days since my last. This is the first of what I anticipate to be a deluge of posts.

Some of you may remember how, when I moved to Bozeman last fall, I had planned on leaving Wednesday morning, but Wednesday became Thursday and Thursday became Friday before I eventually left. Ssimilarly, I was expecting to be packed and moved out by 5:00PM on Friday. Well, it turned out to be 4:00AM Saturday morning before I was ready to go, and so at 10:30AM on Saturday I left.

Since then I passed a wonderful Mother’s Day with my family (my sister came over from Laramie for the day, which helped make things extra special) and ate enough good food today that I probably won’t need to eat again until next Wednesday!

I’m halfway through the process of unpacking, and I’m most excited by the realization that, for the first time in nine months, I have absolutely nothing else that I should be doing right now. There’s no homework I’m behind on, nor is there reading that I need to do. As a matter of fact, looking at my planner for the next week, the only scheduled event is Sagar’s b-day next Sunday. And you know what? It’s a great feeling. So I’m going to take some time, post a little, read a little, work on the blog some, sleep a lot, and enjoy these few precious days while I’m responsibility and obligation free.

This post is dedicated to Quad E’s favorite resident, Little Ben! Without further ado, let me give you a few hints on interacting with other human beings in a graceful and appropriate manner (since, your parents seem to have failed to instill these skills):

1) When you take a shower in the morning, make sure you do the following: 1) Flush the toilet after you use it (you’re getting better at this– keep it up!) 2) turn on the ceiling fan (that’s what it’s there for, and it stops the bathroom from becoming a sauna!) 3) close the shower curtain behind you (did you not see the sign posted next to the shower?).

2) When you encounter another human being, it is often appropriate to exchange greetings. For example, in the morning, if another human being approaches you and, in his own language, bids you “good morning,” the appropriate response is to counter “good morning,” and perhaps inquire as to his/her state of being with a “how are you?” Unfortunately, “Yup” simply isn’t an appropriate or adequate response when someone bids you a good morning.

I don’t mean for this to be especially mean-spirited, but rather an encouraging exhortation to try to interact with those given the distinct pleasure of sharing your resident hall in such a way that you are well received and liked.

For something random, I thought I’d post a bit of my evening.

I found this image on Deviantart a while back, and I’m not sure why, but I love it (presumably for its title):

The Burden of Imagination

That aside, I’ve been taking a break from my studying, and meanwhile have been listening to Cake, and this song specifically:

CakeJolene.mp3

I would very much like to share the coffee I just brewed with you as well… but I guess I’ll just have to leave you with a descriptor: it’s my favorite blend– a rich, full flavored Columbian roast, accented with the earthy, and distinct flavor of west African beans. The air is still filled with the aroma of the freshly ground beans, and the water was purified and refrigerated before being used…

And that’s my evening. We finished the puzzle this afternoon, and I still have yet to start on my “Giftedness” paper that was due today.

Tomorrow is the last day of my Freshman year of college.

1. This is the second consecutive morning that I have been up until 4:00AM working on the silly puzzle. Fortunately, it’s getting close to completion– it will likely be finished sometime tomorrow!

2. I set up a shorter line, and made it all but the last two steps accross (twice). I consider it a moral victory. =)

1. I made it most of the way accross my slackline today. I had a long line up, and I’m sure that next time, when I put up a shorter line, I’ll be able to go all the way accross.

2. My piano is slowly but surely improving. I recognize that I’m not an especially talented player, but at least my songs are starting to sound like like songs these days– I’m so terribly excited to get to play on my mom’s baby grand this summer!

3. Meekyung’s Puzz(le). Mr. Ben and I devised a new system that divides the pieces up into 16 groups based on their orientation, and the number of pieces to check decreases exponentially with each side that we know. Via this method, we probably finished as much of the puzzle tonight as has been accomplished in the previous three months combined. Right. That doesn’t make much sense, but don’t sweat it. The point is that the puzzle may very well be completed by the end of the semester.

I’m somehow excited to be going home. Listening to the radio tonight, I found myself estatic at the thought of listening to 99.9 again…

Sagar typed up a pretty accurate review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie. You can read it here: http://www.uzbeck.com/blog.php and see my thoughts in the comments section.

I never wore a watch–I never needed one to know the days were too short. Home from school at 4:00, drop the backpack, grab my boots, off into the snow, and then home again by 6:00 for dinner. Dark was easy to tell. 6:00 was not. So: home by dark. It’s hard to say how we passed those days on winter’s cold and windy plains. Days in the wintertime are much shorter, and last only as long as the free time between school and dinner. Nevertheless, we filled them. Snowball fights. Bumper pool in Brent’s basement. Super Nintendo in Nic’s. Hot chocolate. Other culinary disasters. Compared to the long, languid days of summer, winter days were never long enough. Not that we cared; I had my excuses down well: “we were outside, Dad, and didn’t have a clock,” or “we were inside, Mom, and I couldn’t see that it was getting dark.” They seldom worked.

In the dead of winter, however, dark only meant “6:00 is coming;” that’s when I got trouble. “Be home at 6:00,” they said, and when I came home they said “It’s 6:15, It’s 6:25, It’s 6:40.” “You’re grounded, grounded, grounded.” But how could parents understand that, for a boy of eleven years, there is no 6:00– only daylight and dark, and the timeless ecstasy of being eleven–an ecstasy that doesn’t understand “be home by 6:00.”

Brent had a motorcycle–an orange, 50cc Rockwell. His dad had brought home the summer before, to our incomparable elation. It had a two-Stroke engine, (25:1 gas/oil ratio) and the three of us loved it infinitely when it ran and hated it infinitely when it refused; I owe that bike everything I know about carburetors and spark plugs and transmissions and mufflers and… but I digress.
It was one of those rare times in Cheyenne when snow covered the ground in the very sort of manner that is perfect sledding. My neighborhood was short on sled-worthy hills, but we didn’t care. Who needs a hill when you have a motorbike? By the time we had coaxed the little engine into sputtering to life, it was already dark. But we didn’t care. Who needs the sun when you have halogen porch lights? So, by the light of two motion-activated flood lights, I found myself sitting in a sled tied to the back of Brent’s motorcycle. And we were off. Oh, what a rush! Brent drove first; I hunkered down in the little orange sled as the snow-covered ground went shooting by underneath. Going straight was easy enough until you hit a big bump, but to stay in the sled … that was quite a trick. I was suffused in the cloud of snow following the bike; I couldn’t see anything. But I didn’t care! Sooner than I wanted, it was Brent’s turn, and I took over as driver. And then it was my turn again. Then Brent’s.

I knew that it must be getting near 6:00. We took our last rides, and pushed the motorcycle, sled still attached, into the shed. I walked back–across Brent’s dark field, across my dark field–and in my back door. Time operates differently when filled with new discovery and excitement, and when I walked in the door (in from the dark) 6:00 had long come and gone. Maybe it was 6:15 or 6:45–the clock on the wall said “you’re grounded.” But something stopped Mr. & Mrs. You’re Grounded from their typical pronouncement. Instead, they just looked at me wonderingly, and asked “what happened to you?” After pulling my boots off, I was sent to the bathroom. In the mirror, I found myself covered with little spots of black, head to toe.

Since Brent’s motorcycle had a two-stroke engine, we would ineptly mix the gas and oil ourselves (guess work at the very best). The oil-rich mixture resulted in plumes of oily, black smoke spewing from the back of the little motorbike wherever we rode it, not that we cared. I doubt it ever crossed our minds that we were using too much oil. What I discovered, while looking at myself in the mirror, was that not all of the extra oil burned. As a matter of fact, a lot of the oil was shot straight out the back of the tailpipe, onto whatever was behind it. And what had been behind it for the last two hours? A rope attached to a boy-filled sled, quickly becoming human canvases of a masterpiece of modern art.

Amused with this discovery, I cleaned myself up. My mother fussed over my oil-stained coat. I learned my lesson, though. When Brent and excitedly pulled the bike out of the shed, we found for ourselves a new, and much longer rope. Did it stop us from getting covered in oil? No. But did we care? Of course not.

I’m in an odd place. I found out today that rather than leaving for Bangkok at the end of August, I’ll be leaving on August 1st. This discovery has been unsettling and, to a lesser or greater extent, unpleasant. I had planned on having a full summer in the States before I left. A full summer in Cheyenne before I left. My greatest concern is simply being able to earn enough money this summer to bail myself out of the financial straights I’ve put myself in, but I had also intended to spending some extra time with those people I won’t be seeing for the following nine months. It’s certainly not the end of the world; I just need to adjust and shuffle my summer plans.

I’m in an odd place. As I look out my window, the rain outside is gradually turning to snow. *insert something clever about believing that “my winter” was over* According to the forcast, the rest of the week will be bleak and cold. Right now, I’m having great difficulty writing the essays that I need to for my international film history class, and I’m afraid that I won’t get to sleep tonight.

I’m in an odd place. I realize that I’ve lost my love of film– sure, I still enjoy it, but I have no passion for it. I’m sure this is partially due to being outside a community of film-buffs for so long, but I think it’s more to do with me being unable to find a place or purpose for film in my future. I guess it’s like gaming– something I love and enjoy, but ultimately have no place or time for.

I’m tired, and in more than just a physical sense. I just want to go to bed and sleep until I’ve slept my fill, and then to wake up without obligations. I know that this is the “last leg of the marathon,” and I recognize that it’s imperative that I “finish out strong,” but none of that helps me feel any less physically, mentally or emotionally exhausted.

I’m in an odd place. “Home” seems like an abstract and foreign concept. I know I’m not the only one. I struggle to think of a relationship I have that seems more than a tenuous and loose connection. I struggle to think of why that matters.

I’m in an odd place. I realize that I’ve lost my belief in a deity. Were you to ask me three years ago if there was a god, I would have resoundingly answered that “yes, there is, and I can help you to get to know him if you’d like.” If you were to ask me one year ago if there was a god, I would have easily replied that “I’m very much convinced that the Christian god does not exist, but I’m equally convinced that there’s some higher power.” But now? Tonight I’ve come to the realization that I’m no longer convinced of the existence of a “higher power”. I find that we’re ultimately alone in the universe– left to our own devices– and that there is nothing greater than humanity. We’re the byproduct of the random process of evolution, placed here without purpose or direction. We’ve invented god and given him human traits to try to console ourselves– but some, like me, are now utterly unable to take consolation. It’s despairing and it’s inspiring. But right now it’s just raining outside.