The blog post that has been twice postponed is finally flowing into your eyes, carried from my keyboard to your screen by a lahar of tea and fruit snacks. My summer was far too busy for me to write about the entire thing in one post so I'll just cover my summer classes and save the rest for a later post.
I returned from my grandmother's house -- bustling with friends and family stopping by with cards, condolences, and hot dish -- to an empty house but for the one remaining cat of the two that had made the long, hot journey out to Washington and the last and oldest of the three original cats I grew up with. It was hard those first few days being back: to still find Frisky's hair on everything; to not hear her at 6:00 in the morning, saying, "feed me." But Midnight -- my brother's cat -- was there to fill the six o'clock silence.
After learning to close my door at night, I woke up around 7:00 most every day. I would feed the cat before I poured myself a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats; most mornings I barely had time to pour the milk before Midnight had inhaled her canned food. After showering, I would do a few chores around the house: watering the flowers, picking lettuce for my lunch or sweeping the kitchen floor. At 8:41 I would load up my backpack and head out the door to drive the 28.4 miles to school for my 10:00 class. Why leave over an hour early to get someplace that takes 40 minutes,max to get to? because I'm the type of person that expects to be delayed by traffic driving through one of the least densely populated areas west of the Cascades and east of Puget Sound; I'm the type of person that thinks it'll take twenty minutes to walk from the parking lot to my classroom; I'm the type of person that has to be 20 minutes early anyway. Somehow I managed to make it to class on time. When my classes were done for the day I'd drive the 28.4 miles back home, do my homework, fry myself an egg or make half a box of Kraft Mac 'N' Cheese, proceed to eat it all in one sitting and then sit in a fake-cheese induced stupor watching television or YouTube until I went to bed around 11:00.
I found that having an entire house to myself suited me. Apart from the freedom it imparted, it was good to know that I'm capable of taking care of myself for an extended period of time. For the first time in my life, I had to go to the grocery store and get my own groceries -- not just the snacky stuff I keep in my dorm room for when I'm too lazy to go to the dining hall -- actual groceries. By no means did I go crazy with the pots and pans but I experimented with a few cornerstones of cooking. For instance, I'd never cooked my own eggs -- let alone Eggs in a Basket -- but by the time my mother returned home I could fry or scramble eggs with the best of the mediocrities. It's a great feeling knowing you can go without your mother or a dining hall for a month and not DIE. In addition to providing myself with the basic necessities of life, my time alone provided an opportunity to gauge how well I manage my own time. There wasn't anyone to remind me to do my homework or take out the trash; I must be okay at the whole time management thing, though, because the pile of Snickers wrappers never got over four inches high and I didn't fail any of my classes.
By far my favorite class from summer quarter was "Tolkien's Imaginary Languages." In addition to learning to read, write, and speak Elvish, the morphology of Dwarvish, and a few Black Speech words, I learned (almost) the entire history of Middle Earth. Not only was it a language, linguistics, and history class but also an art and literature appreciation class. This fusion of everything I'm interested in made it the best class I've ever taken, made better by the brilliant professor that taught it. Of course, I already knew how brilliant he is because he was my professor for "Intro to Russian Civilization" -- the prerequisite class I took in the Spring. In our stuides of Tolkien and his universe we covered everything from the origin of orcs to the unknown origin of hobbits; from Gandalf's real name to Saruman's Orcish one; from Beowulf to the Kalevala; from Tolkien's illustrations to his personal life; from the Creation of Middle Earth to the current Age of Man. It was on the Creation of Middle Earth that I did my final project. Middle Earth and the wider world of Arda were brought into existence through song; I decided to compose that song using Tolkien's "Ainulindalë" from The Silmarillion as a guide. I would never use GarageBand again largely because of it's uncooperativeness when it comes to details like 16th note triplets, instrumentation, or sound levels but it was nice (to begin with) for someone like me that had never composed a piece of music before because I could just mess around and listen for what sounded good. I will probably never compose another piece of music -- that's probably a good thing -- but it was a fun experience and I got an "A" for it so BAM!
My professor for the Tolkien course also taught the Morphology class I took. While I think much of that class went in one ear and out the other, the material must have hung around long enough for me to do well on the tests. Irregardless (that's a Morphology joke, by the way), it was a fascinating class and I am very glad to have taken it.
The other Linguistics class I took -- Sociolinguistics -- was far less interesting. Sociolinguistics is an intriguing subject but the professor failed to improve his performance from when I had him for "Intro to Linguistics" during spring quarter. He's the nicest little old man you'll ever meet but he is incapable of teaching a class. He's one of those professors where you think the class might be better if he didn't rely so heavily on videos but you're not sure so you're glad he does because you don't want to listen to any more of his mind-numbingly boring lectures. The best part about that class was his eclectic wardrobe; I never knew if he would show up to class wearing the tweed suit and clip-on bow tie he wears during the regular school year or a tie-die t-shirt, ripped khakis, one of those jackets with the leather strips hanging from the sleeves, and an old bandana to top it all off. Some days it felt like I'd missed the memo about "hippy day."
As a "for fun" class I also took "Beginning Windsurfing." I may revisit windsurfing in a later post but I don't want to spend too much time on it right now because this post has gone on long enough; I'll just say this: holy crap was it a workout.
Current NaNoWriMo word count: 32,010 words
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know this is a poetry blog but I'm changing things up a bit; instead of a sonnet, I've posted the final project I did for my Tolkien class. After all, music is but a more pure form of poetry. Keep in mind that I used GarageBand (aka the crappiest software for composition ever), that this was my first attempt at composing ANYTHING, and that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. You have been warned.
I must also mention that some parts may sound familiar. I borrowed bits from the movie soundtracks partly because I was running out of time but mostly because I wanted a recognizable song associated with a certain character or scene to represent the creation of a particular race of beings (elves, men, hobbits, etc.).
Before you follow the link to my project please PLEASE read at least the first section (up to page three, paragraph 2 in the link I've provided) of Tolkien's Ainulindalë; if you do, my composition should make a little more sense and not seem as bad as it is.
READ THIS BEFORE FOLLOWING THE LINK BELOW!! ---> Tolkien's Ainulindalë Text
Sound Cloud: Tolkien Final Project -- Ainulindalë
I hope you enjoyed this week's post. I'll be back next week with -- I hope -- the rest of my summer and maybe even a brand new sonnet. Until then, have a great week! -NLD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liked this post? Didn't like it?
Leave some feedback and let me know why! I'm always seeking to improve.
Thanks for reading!
Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre
No comments:
Post a Comment