no time to ebb

12.10.14

A tiny gnat zigzags between me and the monitor and all the swatting and swinging with hands and books doesn’t deter.  Oh, but sir all living creatures even those that annoy you should be considered with meaning and compassion.  I will stop what I am doing and wait for this creature to tire out for what is the lifespan of a gnat, a mere 24 hours.  So fly, gnat, zig, gnat.  Whatever it is you’re looking for do it and I will not end your life prematurely. 

A third of my students requested to be absent for the evening classes because they have an IT mid-term tomorrow morning.  How can I say no.  The gnat zips back and forth in front of my eyes.  I waited a few minutes and in that time it went somewhere else.  Does the tiniest of God’s creatures have a message for me?  A mosquito comes through the open window.  This has no message.

In a few days the application I sent to Leuven will expire.  I still wait for the transcripts.  I didn’t do this right.  I’d like to just go there in February and submit everything at once.  Is that feasible?  There is no way come high drifting sands I am going to stay here for another year.  I can’t.  Other ideas return to my tired mind.

The Spiral Staircase started slow but now that Armstrong has found her purpose it is riveting and encouraging. 

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

T.S Eliot was onto something, wasn’t he?  Constantly turning one loop de do after another.  I am in that spiral whirl, lord I only hope I am going up, though most of the time the turns seem neither up or down just around, looking back, trying to look forward, time ebbs.  I can’t stay here. 

I wait for my colleague to finish with his class.  On Wednesday we go to Lulus to shop for food not available anywhere else in the city.  Foreign yogurt, plum cake, Dutch tomatoes, Clementine’s, potato salad, small precooked pizzas.  My quality of life improves, I guess, when I eat something different once in a while.

Tomorrow is an office kind of day, making quizzes, considering the final exam next month, our level meeting which we’ll discuss the mid-term exam briefly, I hope.  Fifty percent of my class passed.  It was, unfortunately kind of expected, though a half dozen who failed can pass if they do well on the final exam, which accounts for fifty percent of their grade.  And this midterm was worth thirty percent.  Does something sound odd in those numbers?  Hell yes. 

And I’ll spend perhaps far too much time on the internet because I lost the connection in the grotto a few days ago.  Well, what a bummer on the other hand I’ll finish my book that much sooner and begin a new one.  What’s next?  Well, it’s a short history of Islam by Bernard Lewis or this suspicious bio about the woman who edited Thoreau and Walden.  We shall see.