An Ode to the Death

Dearest Bertha, The Larger,

You will be sorely missed. Your death at 10:30PM on October 17th was sad, although not unexpected. Once in your life, your soared through Word, Powerpoint, and even the internets. You could burn a DVD like it was your business. You even replaced Mr.TV this year.

Yet Bertha, you were a big girl. Lugging you from Britain and back so many times permanantly hurt my back. I even remember when I first got you and thought that your weight was nothing. The need for typing in libraries quickly proved that wrong. Your weighed dragged you down, girl. And I think that (the coroner will agree) is what killed you in the end.

Yet I still love you and the memories we have formed. Stripping you of your keyboard, memory, DVD burner, wireless card, and fans was a low day in my life, but now you can live on through Susie Q, making her a faster machine.

Bertha was survived by her replacements, Susie Q (the smaller, thinner Dell) and Skippy (the Tablet HP). She will be missed

Short update

Dear all,

I am quite tired tonight and yet I have done absolutely nothing... it seems. Grad School
stuff has just got me down. How am I going to do it all? What if I fail??

On a lighter note, Enjoyed the afternoon by the duck pond on the mall. Nice weather. I miss studying in the beautiful grass.

Not to much to share this week.

Work Keeps me busy.

Love,

He oft finds present helpe, who does his griefe impart.

'Tis true that I have not written in quite sometime. What can I say...I am busy, and blogging is at the bottom of a very long to do list. But let's do a quick update on life.

1. Only taking 15 credit hours - yep! I did it...I am normal. Ha, yeah right.
2. GREs....end of this month...AHHH
3. Grad schools - let's not take about it....if I just close my eyes, it will all go away.
4. 2 Jobs - keeps me mad hott busy.

All in all, I have been busy. I miss Oxford a lot, still. I just miss having the free time to think, to ponder, to consider. I do not have that here, and it makes me angry. I am so busy running from one place to the next, it really makes me angry with the students here who can afford free time, and yet waste it meaninglessly. Few here truly understand what scholarship is and it just annoys me. I am tired of arguing about the useless...what about life? Death? Freewill? I need something more.

Ok on to something better...at least for me....
Here is my fav. stanza thus far from BII of the Faerie Queene:

But if the carelesse heuens (quoth she) despise
The doome of iust reuenge, and take delight
To see sad pageaunts of mens miseries,
As bownd by them to liue in liues despight,
Yet can they not warne death from wretched wright.
Come then, come soone, come sweetest death to me,
And take away this long lent loathed light:
Sharpe be thy wounds, but sweete the medicines be,
That long captiued soules from weary thraldome free.

II.i.36

I am not sure how to take in this passage. Naturally, it is quite morbid, but also I find it screaming with a certain suffering and pain that gives it a strange paradoxical life. In this portion of the Book, the hero has just come to a wood, where the woman quoted in the passage is about to kill herself. The reader does not know why. We later learn that she is a bit selfish, and is killing herself because her husband has died for his intemperance.

While the context provides some insights, the passage itself is philosophically problematic. Considering the pain inherent in this world, what if the heavens (presuming some autonomous power) truly do take join in the melodrama that is human life. Is our only freewill that of suicide (morally, emotionally, socially, physically, etc)? Can we only decided to fail, rather than succeed?

What is the role of chance in society? The role of will? Where do the two meet?

Back to the stanza, the alliteration of sharpe and sweete in the 8th line is quite beautiful and moving. In general, I truly respect Spenser's alliterative powers; he truly is a poetic genius.

Just some thoughts.

Love,
Chris