Autumnal brooding
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mothwingTo Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
-- John Keats, of course, 1819.
It's autumn!
The last days have been warm and everything outside was painfully beautiful, mushrooms and fallen acorns everywhere and the pretty, colourful, dying leaves. It's lovely outside, the air is cool, but not too cold, and fresh and smells of decaying nature. Whenever I go to uni I feel like collecting chestnuts, although nowadays I would not know what to do with them. Not too long ago, though, I would have collected as many as possible just to touch them, to keep them in my hand and admire the pretty colours, half intending to do something with them, to turn them into stick-figure tooth-pick-legged horses or people, and never doing, putting them into a bowl at home instead where they would quietly decompose until they were rediscovered and thrown away a few days before Christmas.
I wish this would go on for ever and that the cold, mistly mornings that never seem to light up at all, the light caught outside the white sky, would never come at all. I can never get my moods up in that weather and become unnecessarily broody and whiny. Right now, the sky is white outside my window, and its only too clear that soon enough, it will stay that way all day. The first minor chord of my winter blues...
What makes me broody at the moment, however, is not the weather. Today, I called our dearest advisors again and they told me a number of very unpleasant things about my plans to become a teacher. I can only apply this semester - well, I knew that - or else. The number of places is very, very limited, I think they have ten places per subject. To apply, I need to complete two courses I am doing this semester, and the application has to be handed in before the courses actually end. Of course, complications. I'll have to go and talk to my professors about handing in the paper early to get the Schein by February 15th. I hate this kind of thing!
I'll also need a certificate that shows my language abilites are up to the standards of the university, that either means I'll have to do another TOEFL test or that someone in my faculty signs me a sheet of paper saying that yes, I can indeed speak English.
It's all so much of a hassle, and it may come to nothing if there are tons of external applicants who are better than I am. Who's better and more suitable is decided by the marks received on the intermediate exam.
To receive our intermediate certificate, we do not get a mark, because we do not actually have to pass an exam to obtain it - we just have to pass all the courses necessary and we get it. To apply, I have to include two of those intermediate exams - which are not marked, so external applicants who have been marked are automatically better off than me. It's so unfair I could scream. I would have wanted to complete a marked exam, only that my university does not provide the possibility, so now my chances at this university may be worse than they could be because of the misgivings of the same university.
Keep your fingers crossed, it looks as though I really, really need it. If this application fails, all left to do would be changing the uni (for Hannover), leaving behind my examiners and costing me a few semester to catch up with the courses the other university without a doubt wants me to complete in addition to the ones I've done here, and costing my parents nerves and money we do not have.
Everything is just awesome.
Another possibility, the one I do not even dare to think of, would be to complete my Magister's degree and go back to Glasgow to do a Postgrad course to become a teacher... In Scotland, the state would even pay my fees. That would not clear up the funding problem one bit as it'd still mean I'd have to move out, but at least I'd know when I'd finish. It would mean parting with Crocky, but it would mean I'd be able to go back to Glasgow.
I miss the city, every day.
Mistle Thrush
The sycamore is weeping leaves of fire;
a maple stands in its own flaming lake;
shy birches isolate in yellow puddles.
You'd half expect these young trees to kick
their fallen skirts away. Bride? Bullfighter?
Dervish dancer rapt in a swirling cape?
When I went out an hour ago to muddle
through the leafdrift at my door, a flock
of mistle thrush descended - a deputation
froom the wingéd world with urgent and with fatal news:
Dying is simple. You breathe in, you breathe out, you breathe in,
You breathe out and you don't breathe in again.
They acted like it this was cause for celebration
- the first minor chord of my winter blues.
-- Paula Meehan, 2000
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
-- John Keats, of course, 1819.
It's autumn!
The last days have been warm and everything outside was painfully beautiful, mushrooms and fallen acorns everywhere and the pretty, colourful, dying leaves. It's lovely outside, the air is cool, but not too cold, and fresh and smells of decaying nature. Whenever I go to uni I feel like collecting chestnuts, although nowadays I would not know what to do with them. Not too long ago, though, I would have collected as many as possible just to touch them, to keep them in my hand and admire the pretty colours, half intending to do something with them, to turn them into stick-figure tooth-pick-legged horses or people, and never doing, putting them into a bowl at home instead where they would quietly decompose until they were rediscovered and thrown away a few days before Christmas.
I wish this would go on for ever and that the cold, mistly mornings that never seem to light up at all, the light caught outside the white sky, would never come at all. I can never get my moods up in that weather and become unnecessarily broody and whiny. Right now, the sky is white outside my window, and its only too clear that soon enough, it will stay that way all day. The first minor chord of my winter blues...
What makes me broody at the moment, however, is not the weather. Today, I called our dearest advisors again and they told me a number of very unpleasant things about my plans to become a teacher. I can only apply this semester - well, I knew that - or else. The number of places is very, very limited, I think they have ten places per subject. To apply, I need to complete two courses I am doing this semester, and the application has to be handed in before the courses actually end. Of course, complications. I'll have to go and talk to my professors about handing in the paper early to get the Schein by February 15th. I hate this kind of thing!
I'll also need a certificate that shows my language abilites are up to the standards of the university, that either means I'll have to do another TOEFL test or that someone in my faculty signs me a sheet of paper saying that yes, I can indeed speak English.
It's all so much of a hassle, and it may come to nothing if there are tons of external applicants who are better than I am. Who's better and more suitable is decided by the marks received on the intermediate exam.
To receive our intermediate certificate, we do not get a mark, because we do not actually have to pass an exam to obtain it - we just have to pass all the courses necessary and we get it. To apply, I have to include two of those intermediate exams - which are not marked, so external applicants who have been marked are automatically better off than me. It's so unfair I could scream. I would have wanted to complete a marked exam, only that my university does not provide the possibility, so now my chances at this university may be worse than they could be because of the misgivings of the same university.
Keep your fingers crossed, it looks as though I really, really need it. If this application fails, all left to do would be changing the uni (for Hannover), leaving behind my examiners and costing me a few semester to catch up with the courses the other university without a doubt wants me to complete in addition to the ones I've done here, and costing my parents nerves and money we do not have.
Everything is just awesome.
Another possibility, the one I do not even dare to think of, would be to complete my Magister's degree and go back to Glasgow to do a Postgrad course to become a teacher... In Scotland, the state would even pay my fees. That would not clear up the funding problem one bit as it'd still mean I'd have to move out, but at least I'd know when I'd finish. It would mean parting with Crocky, but it would mean I'd be able to go back to Glasgow.
I miss the city, every day.
Mistle Thrush
The sycamore is weeping leaves of fire;
a maple stands in its own flaming lake;
shy birches isolate in yellow puddles.
You'd half expect these young trees to kick
their fallen skirts away. Bride? Bullfighter?
Dervish dancer rapt in a swirling cape?
When I went out an hour ago to muddle
through the leafdrift at my door, a flock
of mistle thrush descended - a deputation
froom the wingéd world with urgent and with fatal news:
Dying is simple. You breathe in, you breathe out, you breathe in,
You breathe out and you don't breathe in again.
They acted like it this was cause for celebration
- the first minor chord of my winter blues.
-- Paula Meehan, 2000
