Final Thoughts.

Well, the semester is just about over now. One more class and a final and we will be leaving for the summer. The other day in class, Prof. Sexson asked us to write a summative statement about the semester as the final post on our blogs. Here's mine.

I wanted to say that I absolutely enjoyed this class. Rare as it is to take a class in which one feels genuine enjoyment of discussions all the time, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I'll say it simply. We had fun! And we learned a lot as well.

At the start, I was shocked when Prof. Sexson learned everyone's names by the second day. That stunt, especially on a college campus, is practically unheard of. From the very beginning, the class felt personal to me, even though Sexson kept repeating that none of us were original and he'd met us all before. This wasn't just another core class where you can tell the professor honestly doesn't care if you really get it or not. Sexson actually knows about what he's talking about; hell, he quotes Shakespeare as if he's actually reading it!

As a class, I think we were more comfortable as well. Sexson didn't constantly split us up into awkward groups to talk about things, yet our class seemed more comfortable together. No one likes giving presentations in front of a whole group of people we feel are judging us every waking second. In spite of this, however, everyone got up there and spoke openly about what they'd been thinking about, what they'd experienced, what they actually felt. We staged group presentations that, from the audience, must have seemed like parties! We drew on the board, we volunteered to read, we marveled at things like Rio's famous pen.

We talked about the ancient tragedians or comedians and their abuse of the audience. I feel like we saw a little of that in the class, whether it be our classmates volunteering us to participate (against our will) or them throwing candy hard enough to injure someone. Or indeed, whether it be Prof. Sexson telling us we are stupid or, in my case while reading Lysistrata, "The person who will read this will have to be quite shameless. Christina! You look pretty shameless today!"

Now, as the semester draws to a close, we are looking back at a semester's worth of interaction. We remember being shocked at coincidences (that are never coincidences) whose odds of happening are (let's all say it now) one in three. We remember the smiles, the silly discussions that went on and on about philosophy and about Stewie Griffin or Groundhog Day. We remember the low points, the great tragedies of the past and our own great tragedies. We remember sacred rocks passed delicately from person to person as we learned to love the simplest things. We remember, when it is all over, how connected we are, not only to one another, but to the world as a whole, past and future. We remember not to be circumstantially bound, but rather to branch out beyond even ourselves. We remember.....all the things we have only forgotten.

As a fitting end to the journey, to our laughter and the tragedy, we conclude our class with revelry. Dancing and drinking (even if it is only cherry Kool-Aid) and laughing together, we leave all this behind. Until the day when we choose, once again, to remember.

Looking Back

Rather than making up for every post I may have missed, rather than begging for more points by posting over and over in the next few hours, I would look back on the semester and laugh at every seeming digression, every oddity, every singular moment of true joyfulness. I've been looking through my notes. Every time some phrase catches my ear or makes me laugh, I jot it down, right next to heady discussions on Plato or Euripedes. I'd like to post them here.

First, I'll post some drawings I made in my sketchbook during class or about something we said. There aren't many, but one in particular always makes me laugh (if i do say so myself). =D It's about "A tree. A rock. A cloud" (i think that title's right....)

This second one is just some quotes from Plato I jotted down with a few sketches I did in class:

Here are more random moments, quotes, etc. from the semester:

"There are no boring things, only boring people."

"It's the ordinary things that change our lives."

"I was there."

(music) "it is not some academic thing we study; it is the heart and soul of who we are"

"make mischief and make music!"

"Hermes lives. His name is now Stewie."

"that which is awesome is awful"

"we all share these things, and some of us have the scars to prove it"

"Here for a moment and then it's gone, fleeting like a light between the womb and the tomb, is life"

"We don't have problems anymore. We have issues!!"

"We need to transcend this kind of world to get to what's important"

"our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting"

"What did you do in classical literature today? ...We felt rocks."

"I know how to hover. I do it fairly well"

"We need to explain to stupid people that they're stupid."

"I've been teaching now for.....good God" =D

"that's cool!! Like dolphins!"

"ignorance is not bliss; it's oblivion. If you want oblivion, then be ignorant."

"We've stricken two questions from Jillian. Stricken? I was about to say stroked!"

"we don't have real tests in this class. So the answer is? Stag."

"it really is a horse of a different color! ..... where were we.....Oh, Aristotle!"

"there is no resolution. you never get your shit together. EVER."

"father may I sleep with you? If you incest! .....sorry."

"Jupiter says, 'Oh my god!' Wait, he can't say that. He is a god. He says, 'Oh my!!'"

"you're sort of......sorry about this, stupid."

"There are no people! There are only these machines that do these horrible things to you!"

"Would you get the door here? I fear there are people...listening in." =D

(And of course, from the group presentations the other day: "Nothing says love like a flaming toilet.")

Posting Furiously

Well, I have a feeling many of us will be posting furiously tonight in a mad dash to make up for past procrastinations in this class, desperately searching through their memories for any topic they may have forgotten to blog about then frantically putting it all into words. I will be honest and say I myself was sorely tempted to do this. I've never blogged for a class before, so I never really knew all semester what was expected of me. I simply wrote about things that moved me. Prof. Sexson would give us assignments like "have a bad day," and I would think about them a lot, but not always did I write about them because in many cases I had already worked it out in my head. If I was at peace with an idea or concept, I did not always feel the need to write about it. Writing...is for when you have something to say. Or something to discover in the words. This was when I wrote for this class.

I don't know if this blog will stand up to all the criteria Prof. Sexson gave us. I don't know if I have enough. Still, I would argue that, as in life, this is not about quantity, it is about quality. I believe that I have written with some level of analysis and introspection. I am proud of all my posts as I am proud of the thought behind each one. Honestly, I didn't think I'd like blogging much, but now, I definitely see the benefit (even if not many of us actually read the others' posts). I never thought I would have more than one of these...but now I have three. =D

Group One: A Modern Day Symposium

As requested, here are my thoughts on love as presented in our group presentation on Friday. I chose to approach this topic for our modern symposium by viewing the idea of love through the lens of the arts...and also my own belief that love is not, as this society professes so openly, a system of codependence fueled by past scars and barely concealed bitterness, nor is it something paltry and inconsequential. Rather, love is....more than all this....yet contained in everything we ever see.... We cannot think of it divorced somehow from who we are or from this world. We cannot think of it as existing with no connection whatsoever to our souls and our lives, the purpose of our existence.

"In the arts, love is a constant, beating energy as real as the canvas before us, the brush held in our hands. It feeds our every inspiration. Love of life, love of passion, love of truth. Every painting you have ever seen has something to do with some form of love in this life, or the absence thereof.


In my case, I am in love with life. I am in love with the light in a street puddle. I am in love with the bare branches of a dormant tree lit up by one lonely street lamp. I see my life, my art, my love, in every wistful cloud, every full and perfect morning, every single breath of air. In these moments, I am in love, perhaps not even with the sight itself, but with my ability to see it and with my heart for its ability to withstand such joy. Love is no passing compulsion; it is not a pastime or luxury. Love is life.


In one writer’s words, “It is with a sense of life that one falls in love—with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul—the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness” (Ayn Rand’s Romantic Manifesto). True love, then, is the quickening in the heart of this recognition, the meeting of souls as from a great distance.


Far too many speak of love as some sort of bondage. From the moment one feels its touch, they say one is taken prisoner. Love is a sickness. Love is blind. We have all heard these expressions. Love is none of these things. Love is freedom.


When we feel love, we feel the falling away of all fleeting ambitions, all preconceived notions, and every self-imposed boundary or limitation. While in its grasp, we are the fullest versions of ourselves that we can possibly be. And that thought terrifies us. No other force on earth reveals so fully or so truthfully exactly who we are. In our choice of partner we betray the secrets of our soul.


So, you see, love is not something of chains and imprisonment, nor of battered hearts besieged. The height of love is the height of true, absolute freedom. One writer put it most succinctly, “Love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance” (Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead).


We crave love in this life because we crave the fulfillment of our true selves. This does not come from another. It comes from ourselves in the presence of another, our equal.


As an artist, I have chosen to follow an ongoing tradition of those dedicated to their love. I hope thereby to find my freedom."