Summer ... Soon

Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine--
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.


It is the last week of the semester, and Edgar Allan Poe is in my head.

Sounds morbid, I suppose, but I'm reading some of his works for my American lit class, which I have been horrifically procrastinating on. Alas, this can't happen anymore, since the semester is very nearly over.

Summer is getting closer. The campus is starting to brighten; slowly, slowly, students get to walk back into the sunlight. Haggard, sleep-deprived, hungry, and pale from the incessant glare of fluorescent lights, we are starting to see the end. Come Friday, things will get crazy; around here, finals week is a relief. Projects are over, papers are turned in, and there will be no more homework due. What's a couple of tests?

In my case, a few essays, too. Back to that procrastinating thing.

Summer. Blissful, hot, relaxing, 40-hours-a-week-of-work-but-homework-free summer. Time to get caught up on everything we've been missing. In my case, it's a reading list that got considerably longer since I started buying books at Borders. It's the opportunity to hike more (this past weekend renewed my need for the Hills), to sleep more (well, maybe not), to see all the people I haven't seen in the last few months (hopefully). It's time to re-evaluate and refresh.

Desperately needed, I might add. Most aspects of my life are currently in dry spells, and that's not good.

Ah, summer ...


And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams--
In what ethereal dances
By what eternal streams.

-Edgar Allan Poe, "To One in Paradise"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

?

The confusion continues. Tuesdays seem to be the days for odd discoveries. Hmmm ... Much stress. Big presentation for work tomorrow. I'm downright scared right now, but that's probably mostly due to the fact that I have NO IDEA what to expect. On the bright side, in 24 hours, it'll all be over. Thank goodness. Then there are just papers left, but papers I can handle. And a presentation for senior design, but that's a group thing. Ten days and it's just finals week. I like finals week. Things are oddly easier during finals week.
Read more

The Ashley Files: The Gerbil Story

I'm not totally sure what spurred this memory, but this is a story that needs to be told. Over the years, I've had a lot of random jobs. It started when I was young and glued pictures for bridge reports (my family's version of "working with the family business). I had a job at Subway one summer (easily my least-favorite job), was a bridge inspection field technician with the family business, worked in a church camp kitchen, and was a lab assistant. The summer I started this blog, I was working at the school's day care. It was my second summer there. The job was certainly not what I was hoping to do the rest of my life -- but for a nineteen-year-old it was decent money and okay hours. And hey, a couple times a week I got to hang out at the pool and get paid for it. Not a bad gig. [My dad also referred to it as the "world's best birth control" and he may have been right.] I don't remember a lot of the ins and outs of that summer -- most
Read more

2019 Year In Review

It was awful. Fine. It wasn’t all bad. I have a niece now. My job is pretty awesome. I like my residence fine. I … avoided all parking tickets? But wow, was there a lot of garbage in the meantime. An unexpected funeral for a friend who died decidedly too young. Family members in and out of (and back into) the hospital. And throughout the last third, the specter of cancer hanging over everything. While a part of me keeps saying, “There is no need to dwell on all the crap, Ashley,” the rest of me is almost too exhausted for optimism. 2020 has potential, yes. Buckets of potential. Oodles of it. 2020 is chaotic neutral staring us in the face. Switzerland with anger issues. Taunting us with its possibilities. RIP 2019. 2020... Please don't be a jerk.
Read more