A University, The Universe, and Being Universal

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Charlotte Bronte, college, Jane Eyre, literature

As I sat squeezed between my good friends, Sam and Jonathan, on a concrete ledge thing outside the Illinois state competition for competitive high school theater, I scrolled through my phone and read an acceptance letter from Boston University. Next year, I’m moving to Massachusetts. Which I don’t even know how to spell yet without help from Microsoft.

I’m ecstatic. I’m absolutely, extraordinarily, irrevocably, ardently, and [insert every other positive adverb here] happy. Next year, I’m going to be studying secondary English education at one of the best teaching schools in the country. I’ll be terrier.

Their mascot is the terrier. The Boston Terriers.  

Come on. How cool is that?

I just want to remind you, dear reader, that I live in Illinois. BU is exactly 1,001 miles from my home. And then you have to take into consideration where all my good friends are going to school. A handful are staying in Illinois but going south, one’s probably moving to Michigan, and then there’s another who’ll end up in California.

In deciding what book to bring this back to, I decided to pick Jane Eyre.

Now while my life isn’t a gothic masterpiece (yet), there is a part I can kind of relate to. It’s when she’s moving away from Lowood and taking up a job as governess to Mr. Rochester’s maybe-kinda love child. I like to think that Adele’s baby daddy is Rochester. It’s much more sassy and scandalous that way.

I’m a pretty quiet person. Granted, my most primary character traits tend to lead towards “sharp-tongued,” “forceful,” and my favorite of all the PC words for “bitch,” “opinionated.” Still, I like my tea and classic literature. Clearly. Moving to Boston is a pretty big leap for me. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana–all of those states in between my two homes are pretty significant.

Ok, all right, I realize that all of this is pretty basic in the realm of college topics. But wait, there’s more!

My best friend in the whole wide world read Jane Eyre a few months ago and told me, quite thoughtfully, that it’s like the Van Gogh of literature. I’m still trying to get over how fantastic that imagery is. Try to think of Charlotte’s phenomenal words spreading out and thickening into masses of vibrant color, each page like a Starry Night. The horrible English plains and storms dripping across the story of Jane.

That’s what college is doing to me. The complete novelty and significance is overwhelming. It’s an emotional occurence comparable to the artistic or sensory experience of books like Jane Eyre or paintings like Starry Night. I’ve been thrown into a glittering daze of heightened everything. I was riding the bus home from the afore-mentioned state tournament and looking at the two friends who had sat next to me and thought about how proud I am that we had all turned out so well. All of us growing and graduating seems so beautiful all of a sudden.

So, there. It isn’t the most magnificently articulated concept I’ve garbled out in a while, but the whole thing is certainly hogging a great deal of mind power right about now. Also, my newly planned significant move across the country should make for a much more interesting blog.

In my post-acceptance-letter-haze, I’ve been ordering BU garb, taking google earth tours, planning a real life tour for this Friday, looking up Boston real estate, checking the BU class of 2016 page obsessively, and generally rolling around in a pile of smiles.

Also, I’m learning the ukulele.

(I’m not completely sure that “Also, I’m learning the ukulele” is a sufficient closing sentence, but I’m kind of at a loss for how to finish this up).

Go Terriers!

And now, a Literary News Brief Brought to you by an Ambiguous Blogger

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As I Lay Dying, beloved by toni morrison, books, henry david thoreau, literature, William Faulkner, writing

All right, all right, it’s been a month and fourteen days. The problem is that I’ve been participating in a shockingly intensive school play.

It’s hard work, all right?

During my sabbatical, I’ve read the following books:

• More Fitzgerald short stories
• As I Lay Dying (expect a post on this one)
• The Fountainhead (which isn’t totally read yet but, come on, it’s 700 pages)
• Divergent
• Red (a play)

To be honest, it’s been more of a poetry month for me. I went out and bought quite an e.e. Cummings anthology and I’ve been obsessing further over my best friend, Emily Dickenson. By the way, my English teacher doesn’t like her. Shockingly.

AND I’m in the middle of Beloved by Toni Morrison. Which is, ahh, I can’t even talk. So good. Read it. READ IT!

AND (x2) I started writing a play.

So all in all, very fun and exciting literary stuff.

But I digress. Last night I was walking home after rehearsal because Chicago is absolutely, ecstatically beautiful. It’s important to understand that Chicago is never anything more than raw, frigid air that bites your face off or chokingly cruel humidity. Still, with a natural consistency that would give Henry David Thoreau a transcendentalist wet dream, we have a grace period of lovely once a year from winter to spring. I think I’ll probably miss that a lot next year.

Anyhow, it was lovely and we all felt lovely so a group of nicely dressed and academically successful theater kids plopped back to my house under an almost full moon.

Afterwards, I thought about the potential of finding significance in the fifteen or so minutes walking home. Almost full moon? Clearly, this is a symbol for the American dream and our inability to fully grasp a standard which crawls farther away as we reach for it. Clearly.

Literature is, of course, an extension of reality. There’s no water to any question of chicken versus egg. All that said, is there anything wrong with looking for significance or even plot in the foundations of real life?

When you’re done with a book you can say “William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying with the intention of saying this and this and this.”

When you’re done with a life you can say “Emily [insert last name here because I don’t want creepy internet guys finding me] did this and this and this during her life.”

I think it’s really cool that humanity itself was sort of plopped down and left to ponder over the before and after of existence itself for the rest of time. Awesome, no? But with books and poems there’s always a reason. The simplest way to exemplify this would be to bring up Hamlet prince of Themes but I have no intention of doing him the service. So, painfully, I bring you As I lay Dying (As I Die Reading, As I Regret my College Major, As I Contemplate Defacing William Faulkner’s Grave).

 

The book, more or less, has no plot. Well, it kind of has a plot but we’re not going to get into that. Anyway, there’s practically no action but some how you get to the end of the book and voila! A plot!

Like a life. Life is a series of events and more events and an event-a-palooza and then you get to the end and maybe, we can all leave around some semblance of significance. We can do this, guys.

Hop to it.