Morning at the Window (T.S. Eliot)

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, 
And along the trampled edges of the street 
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids 
Sprouting despondently at area gates. 
The brown waves of fog toss up to me 
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, 
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts 
An aimless smile that hovers in the air 
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

***

The predominant themes in this poem are isolation and sadness about a society that once was, the loss of meaningful connections. You can say that about many things really, and I suppose that’s also applicable to my state of being at this point. There is a personal and social dimension, indeed but the personal side is put under the glare in a more heightened sense. There was never a time in my young adulthood when I was sure of where I was going. It was a back-and-forth between what I thought I wanted and what I could get at that specific moment. Most of the time, I just drifted, damned mighty lucky, some might say, if one were to look it from the future looking backward. But what is that life anyway and was I right to leave that behind? Have I not become Don Quixote, being reminded now almost every second by my internal Pancho that “if you build your life on dreams, you who have the moonlight in your hands, has nothing there at all”?

Snap back to reality. I am pondering a measly dissertation that could or could not finally usher me in into a new kind of life. It is essentially a piece of paper that supposedly mines mankind’s treasure trove of knowledge with the object of leaving it enriched than when I found it. I don’t really know about that part, the enrichment or enhancement part. But this is the life I chose for now. And so with all the kettlecorn popcorn, instant coffee mixes, savory stir-fries and pasta that can keep my brain running until the day I majestically hand it in for school approval, I will try my darnedest to roam this campus and leave a mark on it (or maybe inside the library) to make it as different as I can than when I first arrived in it. Maybe that’s not such a bad goal for now. Sooner or later, I will finish - “and half a prayer, half a song – thou has always been with me, though we have been always apart.” And then everything is illuminated.

Book I’m reading: Halfway through Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (1998 reprint)

Weekend musings

What would life be without deadlines? For the moment, I have several of them. Nothing earth-shattering really: two fellowship applications, i.e. I have to come up with a proposal to show my recommenders and a memo on some government consulting work that I am involved in, both of which are due this week, by Wednesday to be exact. On top of that, Spring term starts this Monday which means my Arabic classes start again, and I am likewise attending a graduate seminar on 20th century American thought. Good thing I no longer have any teaching responsibilities this term. The thing is, I have to  stop reading and start writing very soon too.

Book of the moment: Billias, American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World (2009)

Walking Along by Pablo Neruda

It happens that I am tired of being a man.
It happens that I go into the tailor's shops and the movies
all shrivelled up, impenetrable, like a felt swan
navigating on a water of origin and ash.

The smell of barber shops makes me sob out loud.
I want nothing but the repose either of stone or of wool.
I want to see no more establishments, no more gardens,
nor merchandise, nor glasses, nor elevators.

It happens that I am tired of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It happens that I am tired of being a man.

Just the same it would be delicious
to scare a notary with a cut lily
or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear.

It would be beautiful
to go through the streets with a green knife
shouting until I died of cold.

I do not want to go on being a root in the dark,
hesitating, stretched out, shivering with dreams,
downwards, in the wet tripe of the earth,
soaking it up and thinking, eating every day.

I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes.
I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb,
as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses,
stiff with cold, dying with pain.

For this reason Monday burns like oil
at the sight of me arriving with my jail-face,
and it howls in passing like a wounded wheel,
and its footsteps towards nightfall are filled with hot blood.

And it shoves me along to certain corners, to certain damp houses,
to hospitals where the bones come out of the windows,
to certain cobbler's shops smelling of vinegar,
to streets horrendous as crevices.

There are birds the colour of sulphur, and horrible intestines
hanging from the doors of the houses which I hate,
there are forgotten sets of teeth in a coffee-pot,
there are mirrors
which should have wept with shame and horror,
there are umbrellas all over the place, and poisons, and navels.

I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes,
with fury, with forgetfuless,
I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopaedic appliances,
and courtyards hung with clothes on wires,
underpants, towels and shirts which weep
slow dirty tears.

Pondering on a snowy day

It was one of those rare days that I allowed myself a few more hours of sleep without feeling guilty. My computer rang at around half past nine in the morning – it was my best friend Skyping from Manila. We ended up chatting for more than an hour or so. There were no big news. Just catching up on the latest philosophical musings of ours. Robert Frost was the big topic of the conversation, or rather, his famous poem was. In order to remind myself, that the universe is unfolding as it should, I am reproducing it here for the nth time. I sure hope, she’s right. Maybe it is indeed time for a new day.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference

Daily Dose of Poetry

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

(Excerpt from Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold, 1867)

Panic attack.

Maybe I should quit while I still haven’t lost much, time that is. I have no project. That’s it.

Between a cough and a cold

Instant noodles for brunch – 20 cents

Tall caramel macchiato – 3 dollars and 17 cents

First human contact at 4pm – priceless. 

***

The past few days I’ve been plagued with a bad cold and recurring coughs. In between book requests to the good folks at the HLS library and recurrent coughing, I miraculously managed to finish two books and an article about the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray. As a side note, Murray used to teach at my university around fifty years ago before he became an ordained Jesuit priest. Anyway, I still have quite a few deadlines coming up for fellowship applications in particular and I am quite at a loss how to make sense of the overwhelming task before me. Slowly but surely, I am settling down on the topic of one particular chapter, my second case study about American influence on the formation of international norms about church and state. For the time being, I am focusing on Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty or Dignitatis Humanae, i.e. it means John Courtney Murray or JCM from hereon will be my best friend for the long haul ahead. And I do mean long.

And I am also mulling over writing a post or submit an op-ed to the university newspaper about the vicissitudes of grad student life. I think the GSAS PhDs have it a bit better because they have all the institutional support that they can get. We, doctoral students in the professional schools on the other hand, being not under GSAS supervision, have only our schools to resort to. But HLS in particular isn’t so strong for this one. Though I suppose the grad student experience feature universal characteristics, chief of which is that it is a long and lonely marathon, I could use a bit more support from my institution. I feel like my social skills regress the longer I stay here. Is this what an academic future looks like?

Still recharging

I can’t seem to focus reading any one article, or any single material at all. And I still don’t know where to start. How do I begin?

Moving on?

It was good to finally have a real break for once. No books, no computers, nothing related to my Harvard life. For a little more than two weeks, it was as if I was in some alternate universe. Time stood still – I reconnected with old friends, and we went to our favorite places, did our favorite things to do every weekend and ate our favorite food. We remembered the good old days - back when we were broke but carefree nonetheless, when we smoked with our Jesuit friend just before mass, drank cheap coffee and ate cheap combo lunches and when the biggest worry of our simple lives was making sure we do well during the almost-daily Socratic torture, err, recitation routine in law school.

To be certain, there were questions to remind me of my current state. People asked them whenever they saw me this time. I reflected on these questions and turned to my old mentors for answers. But for once, even Fr. Bernas did not have any words of wisdom this time around. He made only one request, and even that, I couldn’t promise him. I left the Jesuit residence without any optimism for the first time in several years. I thought that place always had answers.

I was happy to stay home much longer but I knew that if I did I would be doing so as a matter of denial. It seems that everybody is moving or have moved on. Several friends are married, and a good number of them are now in jobs that they would actually like to retire in. I am still a student and I don’t even know if I can get a job at the end of it, and I’m not even remotely close to settling down anytime soon (but not that I want to just yet).

There were two things that I keep telling myself as I boarded the plane back to the United States. First, that this law professor job I am aspiring for better be worth it, that is, if I can even get one, and second, that I need to start living more. I don’t know, maybe this grad student bubble isn’t all what it’s hyped up to be. But in any case, I am now back in Cambridge and I will start working with a hopeful heart. For some unknown reason, I know the universe is unfolding as it should.