The Web

It's back to school back to school. I woke up this morning to see about Animal Behavior, a lecture of about a hundred bleary eyed students. My professor was funny, joking about who- knows- what: giraffes mating, antelopes prancing, ants screaming for help. I found myself lost in the concepts, precise and scientific as they were (anthropomorphic blindness, anyone?). As a Writing Sems major, most of my days are spent in the poetic ambiguity of analyzing and creating writing. In my 'reading' class yesterday, a pretty renowned dude curled his mustache and spoke to us of Henry James and Cheever and Updike. We spent about twenty minutes over the phrase 'dirt pink road.' I couldn't help but ask myself..who the fuck cares. It's not that word choice isn't important or that I'm resistant to micro analysis. And yet, really does it matter? Sometimes it seems so useless, so futile to sit and look at other peoples creations and conceptions of the world. Shouldn't I be building a rocket to fly to Jupiter? Harvesting some strange vegetable that will inevitably make your home smell of vanilla and also release pheremones allowing one to breathe easier forever? Maybe. I love to write, and I love to put my thoughts down in a rambling, eccentric, totally personal way. On the other hand, I like the idea of concrete productivity, making and doing things to improve. My pseudo bio class this morning awakened me to the idea of webs of facts, of knowledge that isn't so disputed. Pink dirt road could have been green dirt road or red dirt road, and yes there was a reason for that decision. But the thing is, I could just go out and dig a pink dirt road in the time it takes to figure it out. Reflection and action in equal parts is how I'm trying to get down. Give me a pair of work boots and a tree to carve myself into. I'll be the next Thoreau, hungry for a little nature and true fact.