Once upon a White Board

Para el que se gradúa en mayo:

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.
-Antonio Machado

y mi traducción:

Wanderer, the path is made
of your footprints, nothing more;
Wanderer, there is no path,
the path is made as you walk.
As you walk the path is made,
and turning to look behind
one sees the steps that never
can be tread again.
Wanderer, there is no path
only wakes upon the ocean.

Eh, it's only a sketch of a translation, but take from it what you can.
E.O.

-------------------------
Epilogue (from December 6th):

It is as I knew it would be.
Each day the memory of you hurts a little less, and I wonder a little more, why you mattered so much before.
Eventually I'll read your letter and see, not an intimate, but a stranger I once knew.
'Cause y'know, that's the way it always goes.
I hope it is going the same, but faster, with you.
Bonne chance.

Overbooking

You know, I never used to understand people who complained "I just can't say no to stuff, so I end up insanely busy"
Now... now I am starting to. Where has all my european calm got off to?? I've strenuously overbooked myself tomorrow, not to mention that I have to, at some point this week:
- write and upload a resume to the school website, so the school will hire me next year.
- call the person in charge of interviews for being a tutor
- talk to a professor about pleasepleasePLEASE letting me be in her class next semester, even though it's technically full, because this is my only chance
- talk to another professor about pleasepleaseplease letting me do a directed study with her because she's going on sabbatical and not teaching that class I am desperately fascinated by until after I graduate and/or letting me work in her lab
- find/apply for a summer job as anything EXCEPT a babysitter
All of which has to happen within the parameters of my normal work/school/study/swim schedule, plus you know, staying friends with people (aka, hang out time).

oh, and tomorrow? let's see, tomorrow I have a test that I'm rather underprepared for (which is why I'm writing this post, by the way, to avoid studying for it. yuck.), three hours of mind-numbing work with old books to complete, and two dinner engagements- don't ask me how it happened, i'm not entirely sure, but my small group is attending a passover seder, and the ahem, romantic interest discussed in an earlier post (which is coming along quite nicely, by the way) has a dinner with friends slated for about 2h before said seder. I am well and truly in a pickle. Why did I do this? Because I felt that, for numerous long and slightly complicated and probably ridiculous reasons, that I couldn't say no. Yes, folks, I've said it. That phrase was just typed by my very own fingers. When did my respect for people's feelings/opinions of me develop such strength?? I wish I could muster the courage to cancel one of them.... T.T
It'll be a great day though (well, after the test) if I can manage to just enjoy the moments and not worry about where I'm going next. =)
just slightly stressed, but still yours truly,
E.O.

P.S.: I got to see alllll of my family yesterday. But almost I wish I hadn't gotten to see & talk to my mother- it made me realize just how much I miss her.

On my pictures II

Compulsive uploading to facebook.
Yep. I do. Whenever I attend an event, and take pictures, I immediately upload them to good ol' fcb as soon as I get home. And now I'm wondering... why? Usually, it's because I want other people to get the same joy out of that captured moment as I do, but lately I'm realizing... most people don't. Most people don't actually care about the pictures I've taken very much, let alone to the extent that I do. So then the question is, do my pictures have any purpose if people don't care to see them & take joy in them?
I'm having an identity crisis, folks. xD Why do I bother taking pictures? Seriously, I had to clean out my hard drive from last year's pictures, 'cause they were taking up all the space on my computer. People used to value photos. We still value old photos, because they are rare. Sometimes I wonder what the generation after ours will think about our pictures. Will they value the ten pictures of their mom climbing a tree with a dress on as much as the one picture of their great grandmother posing formally for her class photo in 1953? They'll be able to see the whole progress of their parents' growing up, from baby to twenty-three, as opposed to our generation, who (depending on who your parents are, of course) only gets to see glimpses of their parents' childhood: one snapshot from when your mom was 10, and her hair was all the way down her back; one photo of her when she was in Germany on a college study-abroad program; and one of when she was out-to-here with your older sister. Will it matter that our generations' photos aren't printed?
Anyway... just something I'm pondering at the moment. I'm not gonna stop taking pictures because honestly, despite the sheer volume of them, I do take them for memory's sake: a visual record of the places I've been and the people I've known. One day I'll print some of 'em out and put 'em in a book I'll make (from scratch, holla! :D).
over 'n out.
E.O.

Romantic Redirect

Over the past month or so, I've been gradually realizing that there's a guy on campus who's interested in me. We went on the same spring break service trip, and started talking there - quite in-depth talking, I might add. Afterward, he waited two days before contacting me to see if I wanted to hang out, which I did. And then, by accidents of when we decided to hang out and campus events, I ended up seeing him every day for four days in a row. Mind you, spring break was only a week ago. We also had plans to hang out again today, in the park.
So my question is this - is it awful that I'm glad it's raining? :P
He's a fascinating guy and all, and I like him a lot, it's just... I feel like we need to at least build some anticipation for the next time we hang out. New people don't usually come into your life that fast, that much! I know this week would have been a middle/high school girl's dream, but I am past that age, and though this is my first reciprocal romance, I need a breather.
over 'n out.
E.O.

On my pictures

Y'all... I'm so very honored when people make my pictures their profile pictures. Seriously. It makes my day. 'Cause it means that, of all the pictures of them that there are in the world, at the moment, that one is their favorite. It means that somehow I managed to capture the part of themselves that they like, their essence.
Today I'm happy three times over.
Of course, I'm happy for other reasons too. I just got back from Chicago Urban Program (www.cupivcf.org, if you want to check them out on the web). It was a really awesome week, full of wonderful fellowship and a message from God that I really needed to hear.
Ladies and Gentlemen, by the grace and kindness of God, I have begun to be healed. Not physically, but spiritually. It's really beautiful to watch.
Anyway, I won't blather on about the details here. =)
It's time to get some sleep - I have swimming in the morning, and I've got to get rid of this cold by then!
over 'n out.
E.O.

Shoutout to....

Aiden, Katherine, Sarah, and little Emma!
My new favorite people. =)
There's nothing like kids to restore a sense of fun and exuberance to a mind exhausted by the day-to-day drudgery of midterms.

Job

So today I was at work, holding a 200 year-old pamphlet about the French Revolution- and going at it with a knife.
Now, before you get all upset, no, I wasn't damaging it. I was taking the animal glue off of the outside, so that it could be sewn into a protective covering. But still.
I spend at least ten hours a week gluing miniscule (and I mean MINISCULE) bits of paper onto other bits of paper, fixing rips and holes, trying to "stablilize" the decay that old paper experiences. What's amazing to me is that the tiny little bits of woven-together-fibers that I attach to these pamphlets keeps the things together. Who knew a couple plant fibers had so much strength?
And truly, it surprises me every day that the papers I'm working with are as strong as they are- not brittle, not moldy, not so thin you can see through them, not moth-eaten, not bug ridden. They're two-hundred years old! How can paper be so sturdy? Sometimes I imagine where they must have started out... first, printed on that new-fangled contraption, the printing press, then hastily bound and sold on a street corner... carried in some revolutionary's pocket, read... maybe re-read, and then abandoned somewhere. Or maybe kept in loving memory of someone. Who knows? Of course, the ones I get can't have been the ones that men carried faithfully in their pockets as they went about their revolutionary business. Those were probably destroyed ages ago.
But mostly it's the most uneventful thing in the world to hold History in your hands and glue a bit of paper to it, and promptly move on to the next bit of History - until you start going at it with a knife and realize what you're doing.
E.O.