My Small Friend has Put me to Shame

My dear friend, Ariel, has been blogging beautiful things all year.  I could say that she has time to write while I have not, since she graduated last year, but the fact of her teaching job flattens that argument.  Suffice it to say that I am thoroughly ashamed of myself, and mean to be a better blogger in the future.

My friend's blog can be found here, and I highly recommend it.  Her last post features a sonnet she wrote for me (which I strive to be worthy of), and so here I will post the sonnet I wrote for her (which she surpasses) last year.  Cheating, yes, but it is still new to the blog, if not to me!

Ariel

My friend is small but Lion is her name.

Bright Lion Child; a queen of feyish height,

Come light with cheer for souls lost at mountain’s

Foot: gives them joy for joy and sword for fight.

My friend is sweet but keeps a sword sound-safe

In her pocket.  If parchment were the soil,

Then all the world whole would her small sword make,

And fairies dance where today goblins spoil.

My friend is quiet, but she laughs so to

Ignite the sky with sunset--drown the dry,

Loveless desert with blesséd water. Through
Sad eve’ning her glad voice good still supplies.
Run to my friend if a kind ear you seek,
Or, more still, hush and hear the Lion speak.


I wrote another sonnet last year, at the same time Ariel wrote this wonderful poem, and since I have just left my college without the promise of return in the fall, it feels as apt now as it did at the time of writing.

To the Year

In verse their faces venture I to catch;

With oil and water struggles brush to note

Their voices vibrant.  Stills, though, cannot match

The real.  Solely to thought one must not devote.

Now snap the photograph, write quick the quote:

Be still, be still for memory may not

This moment keep still.  Future none makes hote

His voice, her eyes, your laugh permanent wrought;

No yarn to fastly stitch, nor ink to blot.

While days and eve’nings rapidly move on:

Those songs, these dances, mem’ries which cannot

Again be made.  How glad we are that dawn

These days brings promised joy: wine, bread,

And love and comforts known if never said.

Train Ride to Encinitas

I'm on a train back to school.  High fog veils the sun, making delicate the way it spreads out over the water.  When the fog is high like this it makes the sun a drop of white-gold watercolor, seeping outward and melding into the clouds so that you know about where it is but not where exactly.  I'd like to paint that sun.  I'd like to paint the ocean.  I sit here sipping on tea and wondering how I will manage to paint the ocean.  The ocean is grey but it is the type of grey which is composed of a thousand shades of blue and ivory.  It's the ocean which reminds one not of summer and sandwiches but of seagulls and long skirts in the wind and holding hands.  I'm enjoying the tea but want to get off this train and run down to the water.  I want to call my friends and tell them to go to the water, because the day is beautiful and I'd like to give them a beautiful day.  I fell asleep at the station and dreamt that one of them traveled with me.  I almost wish he did, because he loves the sky and the water as much as I do.

Christmas Cups at Starbucks

I'm at a Starbucks in Encinitas right now, and I can't write too long because I'm supposed to be writing a story.  Funny how that's so difficult when there's a deadline (even a loose one) attached.

It used to annoy me when Christmas stuff popped up too early.  I always felt like it diminished my the excitement over decorations in late December when they'd been up since mid-October.  But today is the fourth of November, and my coffee is in one of those little red and white Starbucks cups.  When I saw the barista pick it up I wondered if stifling tears would be necessary.

Always I'm excited about Christmas.  For any of you who have seen the movie Prancer, Jessie's character all but IS me as a child.  I'm not rushing Christmas along this year; I hope it takes its time so I can celebrate it longer.  I don't even want to skip Thanksgiving.  I adore Thanksgiving--for some reason beginning to sing carols in November doesn't feel like it will damage Thanksgiving, like I always felt it would before.

Perhaps I'm more excited because home is rather far away and I'll be there come Christmas.  I do miss home, but not in a longing and sad sort of way.  I miss home in a way that makes me confident.  Home is right there.

There's a joke with my friends at school (specifically those who are over most every night) that we're all a family.  That's hardly a joke; the joke bit lies in our family name: Sheenerstapenkolousmansson. Obviously that's a fusion of our last names.  The 'ner' is me.  The friends who don't spend every single night at our house are the cousins with their own name which I can't remember perfectly at the moment.  I only got the other name by copying it out of a facebook conversation.  Needless to say, I've made some wonderful friends here.  I've only known them about two months and wonder if I'm forcing attachment, but I truly don't think so.  They're the type of friends I simply cannot imagine losing.  I pray I'm a good enough friend to never lose any of them, even through distance.  For any of you who remember this post, I definitely made the right choice.  I can't imagine being anywhere else.

Maybe I'm so excited about Christmas because we've never had a Christmas together.  Most of them have, but I haven't with any of them!

(Sidenote: suddenly I'm the only customer in this Starbucks.  It's kinda creeping me out.)

Whatever it is, I'm excited.  More than excited.  Have you ever gotten that weird feeling in your chest?  It's excited and almost euphoric, somehow both heavy and weightless, and even though you're so happy you almost feel a little unwell.  It nearly feels like being afraid.  It's the feeling you get when for a moment someone loves you.  It's the feeling you get when walking with a friend through cold weather, but your friend isn't cold because he's wearing a scarf you made him.    

Sonnet

Hello!  I'm a loser blogger, right?  Yeah.  Sorry.  But I just wrote a sonnet for my British literature class
(sort of a student-commissioned assignment) and like how it came out.  Please let me know of any ways to make it better!  I would also advise you to check out the blog of Ariel Sheegog, my housemate and cool college friend.  It's at http://inaholeunderthehill.blogspot.com/.  Great blog title, right?  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the sonnet, and hopefully I'll have more to post before too long.

To See You Smile

You laugh sometimes and I cannot help but

Laugh alongside. Though ne’er have you shown tears,

Mere thoughts of your wet tears which must be cut

My soul--your weeping mine, and laugh my cheer.

Such eyes are yours, such eyes I see alone,

Bright without, dark within, such eyes which light

As if from desert to Neptune’s coast flown;

Or else darken, lost in the cold of night.

All do I chance for but a smile from you:

Sometime succeeding, sometime for naught my

Words gather great courage, your laugh to woo;

And through that laugh, even your heart to pry.   

    You love me not, my heart to yours futile--

    Yet, still, how I do love to see you smile.

So...There

I said I wasn't going to gum up this blog with story bits anymore.

But I haven't written a word all summer.

"A String" is definitely one of my favorite essays, but it has been up far too long.

I haven't even written any story-stuff this summer.  Not a word.  Sad, sad summer.

The excerpt I'm posting was written just before Evan and Caleb decided to shun me.  Little jerks.  I like the scene, though of course it needs plenty of revision.  At the moment it's all I've got.  So...there.

He was staring at something on the ground.  It wasn’t the ground itself because he faced me.   

“We should watch something tonight,” I said.

He nodded.

“Any ideas?”

“You’re the movie guy.”

“You know what I wish?”  He raised his eyebrows.  The thing following us on the ground held his eyes.  We walked through typical San Francisco fog.  I can’t say typical San Francisco weather because there is no such thing.  People think it’s fog but it’s only fog a half-hour before it’s sun again.  Then there’ll be fog six straight days at the Marina while downtown greets mini-skirted girls with eighty-degree sun.  They still dressed that way in the fog, except that they wore sweatshirts too.  I always find that funny.  When girls wear tiny shorts with sweatshirts.  Doesn’t make any sense.  “I wish I could’ve been around when all those movies were made.  Then we could go to the theater and see everything how it was really supposed to be seen.  It was all made for the big screen, you know.”

There was one, a girl with a sweatshirt.  It was an SF State sweatshirt.  The same as mine--that really hideous purple color with the letters in yellow outlined with white.  I’d chosen that one after much thought.  It would be hideous except that it was my college sweatshirt and I loved it all the more because it was really so hideous.  The girl wearing it was actually normal.  She had jeans on rather than something useless.  When she got cold she would be honestly cold.

“Did you see her?” I asked.  My friend shook his head.  He didn’t have to ask who I meant because he was looking down and hadn’t seen anyone.  The girl was pretty.  She was a bit short and had brown hair halfway down her back.  I think her eyes were brown too but I hadn’t met them and what I saw was seen in only an instant.  “That’s too bad.  She was cute.”

He didn’t even nod.  It would’ve been nice, saying something to her. ‘ Hey, I’m at SF State too.  Just finishing my junior year.  What year are you?  Do you like it?’  I could’ve asked about her major.  She looked smart but didn’t walk like she wanted to kill someone.  Not an engineering major, then.  She wasn’t in scrubs and so couldn’t have been nursing.  She wore tennis shoes but wasn’t kinesiology or anything like that, I don’t think.  There seemed to be so many of those.  She only wore tennis shoes because she was walking and smart.  Communications, maybe?  There aren’t many English majors.  If she were communications she probably would’ve thought English a cool major.  ‘There aren’t too many of us.  But it’s what I love, and what better to study than what I love?’  That would’ve been good.  It was true, anyway.  She’d be able to tell that it was true and that I wasn’t just being stupid.  ‘Half the city must have been at SF State at one time or another.’  Definitely communications.  She was textbook communications major.  Pretty, but not crazy.  Smart, but not evil.  I bet she wore glasses at home and liked to go walking early in the morning before the city woke.  Not running: walking.  ‘I had to say something, though, because I have the same sweatshirt you’re wearing.  Isn’t it almost hideous?  I think college sweatshirts should be.  That way you can wear something horrible but people won’t notice that it’s horrible but only that you went to a particular school.  They can gab about it to each other.  That’s a good school.  My grandson’s going there.  San Francisco--what a place to study!’         

Caleb sighed deeply.  I thought it  ironic, that he should sigh.  I would’ve spoken to that girl if he wasn’t with me.  He wouldn’t have had to do anything.  Just stand there and smile once in a while.  She probably would’ve been less likely to think me a creep because I wasn’t alone.  And I knew exactly what to say, too.  

“Seen anywhere to eat?” I asked.  That was mean because I knew he was staring at something on the ground and hadn’t seen anything.

“No.  Sorry.”

“Anything sound good?”  Of course not.  I don’t think he had a problem with food but with the physical act of eating.  For some reason I had to beg him before he would eat anything and even then he sometimes refused.  Why he couldn’t just act like a normal person was beyond me.  He knew I wanted him to eat but still made me beg.

“Whatever you’d like is fine.”

He wouldn’t even look up.  Usually I love the fog but today it annoyed me.  I didn’t want it to be foggy.  If the sun were out then I may not have noticed the pretty girl with my sweatshirt.  

“Ever been on a date, Caleb?”

“Me?  No.”

“Didn’t think so.  Do you even notice girls?”

“I notice.  Never can to talk to them, though.”

Still he watched the ground.  What could he possibly be looking at?  His stare was intense.  Upon this great something hinged his entire world.  I found it funny that he was so tall.  And when he got shy like this his shoulders bunched up to his ears and made him even taller.  He didn’t have to be so stiff like that.  There weren’t that many people around--normal city flow.  No one bumped into us.  “Do you really?  Tell me about one.”

He swallowed.  It was just me.  He didn’t have to get nervous around me. Hadn’t I proved that to him a thousand times?  Opening his mouth couldn’t be so incredibly difficult.  “The girl who brought your coffee--remember her, from a couple days ago?”

“Not really.”

“I guess you didn’t really see her.  She came from behind you.  She had those black-framed glasses without lenses that everyone wears, and had bleached her hair so that it was really, really light.  That’s not usually my favorite.  But she was really pretty anyway.  She bit her lip because your coffee almost spilled.  That was still behind you, though, so you didn’t see.  I remember that her mouth was really pretty and she didn’t have anything on it.”  He swallowed again.  I wondered why he didn’t close his eyes, if he couldn’t look up.  What was he watching?

“Sorry I missed her,” I said.

He nodded.  I looked around because I did want to lunch somewhere.  Being annoyed makes me hungry.  Especially when I start to realize what a jerk I’m being, so I’m still annoyed at whomever I’m annoyed at and also annoyed with myself.

My feet.  That was it.  Dear God--he was watching my feet.  I stopped walking and so did he.  

“Do you want to go home, Caleb?”

He looked into my face now but not into my eyes.  How had I not seen it?  The pain was so great that he couldn’t even look in my eyes.  But he still looked at me.  Looked hard at me.  He was frightened to death.  I put my hand on his arm and watched the slow way he blinked.

“Why don’t we go home.”

“You wanted to eat somewhere.”

“I changed my mind.  We’ll go home and just make something.”

“There isn’t much at home.”

“We’ll make a party out of it.  We’ll order pizza and watch movies.  We’ll watch some of that Marx Brothers set I just bought.”  He was sick.  He was sick all the time because he couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat and everything terrified him.

“But it’s our one free day.  All week you’ve wanted to go exploring.”

“I’m done with exploring.”  We turned back and started walking.  He watched my feet again.  “We’re going home.  I bet you’ve never even heard of the Marx Brothers.”

“We don’t have to, Evan.”

I took his hand, and when it shied away I held tighter.  He could watch my feet if he wanted, but I was going to hold his hand.  “I don’t want anymore argument.  We’re going home and watching A Night at the Opera.  And if you think you’re going to slip away with some girl wearing dark-rimmed glasses,” I held up our hands, “then you are terribly mistaken.”

I got a smile out of him with that.  His hand was cold but held warmly to mine, now.  Now he could close his eyes as we walked.

Blurb on Orthodoxy and Dissertation on my Own Awkwardness

This could actually be classified as one blurb, but it is two paragraphs with two main points, so I'll label it as two.  My singular/plural sense is having a fit right now.  The first paragraph is an attempt to concisely explain why I am Orthodox.  Often I say, "my church is amazing," but when people ask why I can never answer.  So  I now have attempted a bit of an answer.  The second paragraph is an attempt to explain why I want to attend a Christian university.  Just for the record, I applied to one Catholic school (University of San Francisco--see that essay here), two Protestant schools (Seattle Pacific University and Westmont College), and am finishing the application for an Orthodox school I only recently learned existed (St. Katherine College).  So far I've been admitted to USF!

I don't know where I'm going yet.  USF looks amazing but is the most expensive.  SPU is, obviously, in Seattle: an enormous plus and rather huge deterrent.  I visited Seattle and fell totally in love with it, but it's just so far away.  I tried this being independent thing once: a rather miserable six weeks.  I couldn't talk to Matthew on the phone because I'd cry uncontrollably.  From Seattle, the fastest way home is a plane from Seatac to LAX, then a three to four hour drive.  The train takes two days.  SPU is also the only university I've visited so far, and I wasn't blown away by it.  By the city I was blown away, and the school seemed great, but I have this thing about being an outsider.  My dearest hope is that I'll visit one of these schools and immediately feel like I fit in.  But that is highly unlikely.  It must be my own perception, because I never feel like I fit in.  With my closest friends I often feel/act on guard.  I don't know why.  I'm rather afraid to speak, so I talk about anything and everything in an attempt not to appear totally freaked out.  Someone will say, "I like your outfit," and instead of simply thanking her I'll go off on how I was just out with my mom and I picked four things to try on and she picked one for me and the one thing she picked was perfect and that the only problem is that it gets shorter every time it's washed and so when I wear it now all I can think about is how short it is and that it could catch on my backpack, which would be so not fun.  My friend DOES NOT CARE.  And I know she doesn't care.  She cares in that she cares about me, but, really, come on.  I don't even care.  I'm really not obsessed with clothes.  I couldn't care less about clothes.  Winter is wonderful, in part, because I can wear a full length coat all day and not spend two seconds thinking about clothes.  But when you're a girl they're important, and a safe topic.  I have wonderful, amazing friends--but rarely can I let my guard down even around them.  Which is just weird because I used to be insanely extroverted and abnormally self-ignorant, and couldn't squelch myself if I tried.

Obviously, though, I have no trouble whatsoever while writing!  I just hate being so trivial.  Words should not be wasted on useless discussion.  Light discussion is fun.  Useless discussion is what I blabber as I run away: I adore the person but can't really speak.

Seattle is far because I will probably never totally fit in anywhere.  I'm a bit awkward around my dad.  I can be awkward around my brother, but he always pulls me out.  I'm rarely awkward with my mom or nana: only when there's some contention building between us.  They call me on it, I bawl my eyes out, and then we're better.  Seattle is terribly far.

That's why I wonder about St. Katherine College.  I do feel awkward at church, but sometimes less so.  I went camping with the college group once and had an amazing time.  I even made an idiot of myself (We climbed up a steep, slippery hill and my shoes had negative traction.  One of the guys had to push me up.), and still I felt absolutely comfortable.  St. Katherine's is just outside of San Diego, which is unarguably south of SLO county.  Not the direction I want to go.  But an Orthodox school: maybe I would fit in a bit.  I worry that I'd be thought a heretic at a Protestant school.  Bad North County memories, I guess.

Then again, I have excellent friends, and am awkward with them.  There's no reason to be.  They're all amazing.

I like the idea of USF.  It's north.  It's in San Francisco, which my mom describes as the Seattle of her youth.  You know I've never actually explored San Francisco?  I've been to Chinatown and Giants' games twice, and to the Legion of Honor once.  Other than that I've only driven through.  
          
I grew up in a modest city on California’s Central Coast, so my family visited San Francisco at least once a year.  Often we merely drove through on the way to see relatives in Novato, but once in a while we’d bustle through Chinatown or attend a Giants’ game.

Evan and I have much in common. Although he clearly grew up in SLO, not Atascadero. If no one else, I'd have Evan and Caleb and Sabella and Anna in San Francisco.

Catholicism is closer to Orthodoxy than Protestantism. At least a little closer! Or maybe not? I don't know. We do watch quite a bit of EWTN (the Catholic station) in my household. We watch EWTN, PBS, and Turner Classic Movies. Didn't know how familiar everyone would be that last station! Did I ever mention that Evan is a big classic movie guy?

How about Westmont? I'm terrified of Westmont, but keep hearing that it is a highly intellectual school. By applying, though, my mother and I earn a day in Santa Barbara. Totally worth it.

Do you want to read my blurb(s) now? You better! Thanks for suffering through all that.

 

My family was Chrismated into the Orthodox Church just over two years ago.  Before that we were Protestants, but rather odd Protestants.  We never quite fit in.  We jumped from church to church, desperate for a place where God was the focus, not us.  All is empty without God.  How empty, how utterly empty, is all the world when faithful gather at the cross’s very foot, and yet still look only at their own faces.  As we began attendance at the Orthodox Church it grew ever clearer that we were in the right place.  To friends I describe our Orthodox family as being the way Christians always describe themselves, except that they never breathe a word of themselves.  

I grew up in a Christian elementary, middle, and high school, but then progressed to the local community college.  My beliefs are solid enough to remain unmoved when a biology teacher attacks “those religious people” or an English professor rolls eyes at a poet’s obvious faith.  But dearly, dearly do I miss the assumptions.  My faith is never irrelevant to the subject at hand.  Even if Christianity is discussed in neither the religious nor the non-religious classroom during a given lecture, the unspoken assumptions make all the difference.  If the assumptions do not correlate with my faith, then every word must be questioned.  Always must I be on guard.  Is this true?  Can I believe this?  We are taught to question all we learn anyway, but when the assumptions acknowledge God at the center of every answer, then the questions actually get us somewhere.

Two Letters -- Enlightenment Essay

The periods of literature embody man’s continual search for that which is real.  During the Enlightenment, real things were factual things.  Things which could be spelled out and enumerated; things which held strong through testing and sharpening.  Here there are two letters: Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal and Mary Robinson’s A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of mental Subordination.  Both letters represent core Enlightenment ideas while concurrently mocking the Enlightenment movement and concept.  These pieces, which both advocate the time’s possibilities and scorn its shortcomings, embody the heart of the Enlightenment.

A Modest Proposal satirizes the Enlightenment tendency to discount morality as a viable source of knowledge.  “It is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon cruelty” (Lawall 344).  There was virtually no probability of locating one person in the year 1729, in England, who would ever consider marketing children as a food delicacy.  But why not?  If morals are utterly disregarded, all Swift’s arguments make absolute sense.  At the end of the letter he specifically enumerates seven advantages of his proposal.  For the good of our country, for the good of our stomachs, for the good of our religion, for the good of the ‘breeder’ parents, for the good of the children themselves: put into action this modest proposal.  At the same time as he screams against the boorish nature of so-called enlightened truth, though, he epitomizes the Enlightenment virtue of thoughtfully considering all ideas.  Even if a respected mind claims support from other respected minds, one must not accept any teaching without close scrutiny.

  Mary Robinson’s letter mocks the thin quality of two Enlightenment jewels: natural rights and justice.  She writes that “woman is denied the first privilege of nature, the power of SELF-DEFENSE,” and, “Man is not to be deprived...but WOMAN is to be robbed” (Lawall 285).  Enlightened thinkers battle for the natural, born, innate rights of every human being, but seem not to consider women as whole human beings.  Men run high and fast with the call for justice, but would crush a woman underfoot without one warble of the voice.  “She is expected to act like a philosopher, though she is not allowed to think like one.  If she pleads the weakness of her sex, her plea is not admitted; if she professes an equal portion of mental strength with man, she is condemned for arrogance” (Lawall 287).  Robinson attacks Enlightenment scholars on the audacity of this incredible double standard.  Yet the ideas she urges are clearly of the Enlightenment: women as equals with men was a radical, counter-history thought if ever one existed.  If truth can only be found through the careful testing of every idea, then even the notion of equal mental capabilities between the sexes must be considered.                

“But, as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal; which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real” (Lawall 346).  Here Swift mocks the Enlightenment’s rejection of the old.  Though the rejection is not absolute.  Scholars form and foster new ideas, but cling to the old ways which benefit them.  Man has innate natural rights: a new idea.  Although, throughout history, only landlords were treated fully as men, so it seems only they are privileged to these natural rights.  Swifts connects the poor to the rich exactly as Robinson connects women to men: you say ‘truth for all humanity,’ but who is all humanity?  The new initiated by the Enlightenment was a good new, but much of the old’s worst easily stayed firm in society.

The final apex of good rarely sees daylight, because it poses threat to those in power.  Strange how those with bounty are so loathe not only to part with some bounty, but even to permit others’ pursuit of decent quality of life.  Swift states, “let no man talk to me of these and like expedients, till he hath at least some glimpse of hope that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempts to put them in practice” (Lawall 346).  Robinson more directly reveals this assumed threat: “Man says, ‘you shall be initiated in all the arts of pleasing; but you shall, in vain, hope that we will contribute to your happiness one iota beyond the principle which constitutes our own’” (Lawall 288).
These are the true Enlightenment thinkers: those who wrote against mediocre enlightenment.  When someone puts a cap on ideas and who can have them, then that someone loses credence as any kind of scholar.  Swift and Robinson, through attacking what claimed itself enlightened,  proved themselves authentically enlightened.  That is why they are still around.  That is why they are still read.

Application!!!

I'm rather wretched at adhering to essay topics.  Always I think I'm adhering, but often, at least in the eyes of normal people, I am not.  Here is the question on the "Common Application," sent out to University of San Francisco, Seattle Pacific University, and Westmont College.  St. Katherine's College has a different application.


Please provide a statement (appr. 250-500 words) that addresses your reasons for transferring and the objectives you hope to achieve.


Here's my essay (!):

All I ever want to do is write.  I guess that’s not entirely true: I also love to read, scratch on my violin, talk with friends, walk aimlessly about some place I have never been or never veritably noticed.  Still, give me the option of spending an entire day with only a cappuccino and a pen, and I will be at my happiest.  

Then again, to write about the world, I must know a little something of it.  I must learn the way we were and the way we are and the way we are becoming.  I must learn what in the world is good and write of it.  I must learn what in the world is wrong and write to heal it.  I must learn to truly see, and hear, and touch the world.  I must learn to climb up--to reach out my hand, and grasp those reaching for mine so that we may climb up together.

My most obvious reason for transferring is to further my education.  I hope eventually to earn a master’s degree in English, and perhaps even a doctorate in English.  My mother taught English to junior high students and, even though I resisted it for years, I did inherit her need to share the wonder of stories made and stories to be made with anyone I meet.  When I begin an essay with a quotation, it is not because we are supposed to begin essays with quotations.  It is because my mind swirls with what I want to say and those who, having allowed me to commune with them in the great realm of ideas, have said it better than I ever could.  So, then, I do hope to follow my mother and become a teacher.

I hope to achieve immense learning at University.  But I do not mean for my learning to be solely in books, though I clearly am all too eager to immerse myself in the writings of yesterday and today and tomorrow.  I hope to learn about the people in the world from the people themselves.  I hope to learn about their needs and learn how to meet them.  I hope to learn where I fall short and learn how to be pulled up by another.  I hope to learn the problems which need solving and learn how to solve them.
All I want to do is write.  I want to write what I know.  I want to write my questions.  I want to write of friends.  I want to write of strangers.  I want to write that which springs from my own soul and that which I do not understand.  I want to write of the old, and of the new, and of that existing only in turning minds and low whispers.  I want step into the world with clear eyes and moving feet and open hands and bleeding pen.  This is why I want to attend University.