"Must be Lonely Out in Paris if You Talk Like That." Non, il est vrai que j'ai retrouve.

It is hard to explain all of the things that I feel being here in Virginia. I think that for this post I may revert back to that god-awful, hodge-podge style of writing I did back in (I think) September during first semester when I was in the thick of Ulysses. I told someone at work today that my life, in time, is measured by semesters. And there it is again. But I thought immediately of the “inexplicability topos” when I wrote that first sentence. I really don’t know how to explain it all, even a little bit, if I don’t write this way.

I read an article tonight that talked about the change in cultural, disciplinary terminology between high school and college. It had to do specifically with writing instruction, which I guess what I’m about to say does, too, in a way. But who the fuck has ever heard of a topos before they get to graduate school? Not me anyway. And I’m not going to spend the time right now trying to explain it. Number 1, because it is 4:00 in the morning and I have been waiting all day to sit down and write something for me. All the writing I do is for me, really. The writing I did about that article was. I was so damn happy when I submitted it. I also submitted an essay about a teaching observation I did. That was also for me. Also found out that I have to submit the notes I took during the observation when I submit the final paper. I hope my professor is ready for random notes that sound like they’re written by someone seeing the inside of a classroom for the first time. I don’t mean pedagogically, those notes were normal and, if I may, pretty good. But I mean, I was writing stuff about “Encourage student engagement! Kids are so fun!” simply because I was so damn happy to be there. Number 2, I feel like I am in that stretch of the week where I stayed up too late two nights prior, it caught up with me today, but now here I am again up late because I worked and didn’t have time to do anything for school or write until the wee hours of the morning. I’m also hungry as fuck. And I’m hot. And the tiredness is making it so that I can feel my pulse in my limbs. So, no topos.

Every day I am here, I am overcome with feelings of humility, gratitude, and love. Today I was walking home from class and my heart felt like it was swelling when I walked past all of the student engagement booths around The Lawn. The trees are in bloom and there was a girl walking in front of me with really pretty traditional tattoos. I was watching her walk, not in a weird way I mean she was in front of me for almost a half mile, and I started crying watching her legs. How her hips met with her thighs met with her knees met with her feet. Her legs just carrying her wherever she was going in her denim shorts, brown tank top, and traditional tattoos. All of her muscles working in concert. That doesn’t really tell you about my feelings of gratitude or humility, but maybe it tells you about my love.  

I am so humbled to think of all of the people who have walked these grounds before me. The big people like Thomas Jefferson, Edgar Allen Poe, and Woodrow Wilson, but also the small people like me. The small people like me who have been made to feel so big by the invaluable knowledge – academic and experiential – that flows within, from, and around UVA. There I go again sounding like I’m blowing smoke up the ass of this university, just like my observation notes, but that’s because I am. That’s because that is what Charlottesville is. That’s what the University of Virginia is. To me, anyway. It is who I am, not in the sense that when I leave here I will be lost, but it is me. And I am here. And someday I will not be here, but I will still be that, and it will still be with me.

I get why Joyce wrote how he did. I get why Virginia Woolf wrote the way she did. Maybe I’m a Modernist rather than an Early Modernist. (I know I’m not an Early Modernist.) But I think that I never would have understood why Joyce wrote the way he did, in the way that I understand it, if I wasn’t here. I’ve never been in a state of perpetual cognitive overload to where I felt like the only way to write was that. But I feel that now. I feel that because graduate school has made parts of my brain light up that I didn’t even know were combustive. But it’s combustion. Graduate school is prolonged combustion. Life, happy and variable in your mid 20’s is prolonged, sometimes intermittent combustion. I feel so lucky to be here, and I am so in love with everything.

xx

Olivia