. . . What have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment's surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms. . .

T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

-

These lines get me every time. I find it difficult to write about them. You either feel it and know it to be true, and poignant, and awful, or you simply consider these lines to be no better nor worse than the convoluted poem in which they appear. The moments of poignancy, the little scraps of your undoing (or making) that are your life, will never be read about by others skimming the daily newspaper with morbid fascination. They exist only in that second of surrender and then are gone. Only their consequences remain.

So here's to Eliot, may his words be read for many years to come...

***

Ha! I'm finally updating this. School usually sends a guilt trip when I do something frivolous, such as tending a blog. Oh well. Astronomy is interesting; the prof is trying to teach it without the Physics, which means that after every class we stumble away with our brains broken. Some things just don't make sense in words, they need to be explained with numbers. Yuck. So far all that I've really absorbed from the class is various reasons why we can't do what they do in Star Trek. Hopefully I'll be able to find a use for the information some time in the future, perhaps if I'm attempting to seduce a geek.

Biology is okay. The exams are pretty easy, though I seem to have lost all of my dissecting ability. Trying to open up a preserved grasshopper with a dull scalpel just makes a squishy mess. Speaking (typing?) of which, we've watched a few rather, interesting, videos in my Hindu Studies course. Mostly of the "I didn't know you could do that with that" nature.

My Drugs and Behaviour course is freaking awesome. Sure it's Psych, but it's taught from a neuroscience perspective. The textbook is all pharmacology. I'm so in love. Perhaps that's my calling, although medicine does seem more interesting.

I got... Books in the mail!

Raven Kaldera's Wyrdwalkers: Techniques of Northern-Tradition Shamanism

Kveldulf Gundarsson's Elves, Wights, and Trolls: Studies Towards the Practice of Germanic Heathenry: vol. 1

Diane Paxson's Taking Up the Runes

Galina Krasskova's Whisperings of Woden: Nine Nights of Devotional Practice

I'm also now in love with Storm Constantine and all Wraeththu-related goodness. I've only found 2 of the books so far (the 3rd of the 1st series and the 2nd of the Histories) but androgynous beings in post-Apocalyptic occulty sci-fi are just too hard to pass up. And she's writing non-fiction chaos-magic-style grimoires that involve the Wraethtu mythos! *drools*

Cheers