can you tell the sun was shining today?

I have found my Whitworth rhythm. Meetings start at 8am, and flamingo flocking ends at 11pm.

I write agendas, call people to remind them, go to class and do most of my readings.

and I am happy.

The last two days have been filled with thoughts on identity (individual and collective)

This is my time. I am here right now to ask all the questions that I need to ask, and respectfully listen for answers from people with life-wisdom. It is liberating.

I am so thankful for: Amowi, Esther, Doug, and Vic

because they take me seriously.

also: this boy who wrote me a 9 page letter

because he makes more sense than most of the world combined.

also: Laurie's classes

because she offers legitimacy to our experiences and perceptions. which is beautiful and also freeing.

also: WU trippers

because they are great, and because of ninja team names

and because of the dedication that the planning team has put into this crazy project.

. . .

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

. . .

RealLife > Whitworth

I feel more balanced and more concrete when I spend time off-campus in the RealWorld. I like to sit in a church that has families of all ages, and old people with hearing aides. I like to see the mall filled with people with RealLives. I love summer when I get to be home. I spend my days working at FIRM, where I am surrounded by a full community of all-ages and we all have symbiotic roles to play. I spend evenings with friends or family. My life is full, and I have meaning.
At Whitworth, my life is full, but I drown myself in depression and cynicism. There is a magic balance where I can still get everything done well and also not have a moment to stop to think. That is the only way I have learned to do Whitworth well. When I am off balance, I have to go somewhere new. It can be a meadow by the river behind my house. It can be a museum. It can be the mall. It can be a new coffeeshop, or a conversation on the bus. When I get back in contact with RealLife, I remember how RealLife works, and my tiny but important role in it all.
. . .
I was told last night that its presumptuous to say that OutThere is RealLife, and here is only pseudo-reality. I am presupposing that the nice people swarming this campus don't have some essential quality of life. Who am I to judge?
I contend that we pay good money to be isolated from the harshness of RealLife. We are a group of 2,500 people in the prime of our lives. We rarely die. We eat 2-3 (and more) meals a day without having to think about where our food comes from. Of course there are those who choose to skip meals to lose weight or spend their time elsewhere. I've been there, too. Our main concerns (outside of social interests which transcend any monetary barrier) are homework and "earning" letter grades, or at best, learning material written and taught by our elders.
It doesn't matter to me what the inner life of my fellow students is like. It isn't necessary because they have the luxury to be able to meditate on vocation and worldview and life purposes. If they choose not to take themselves seriously, its their loss. (I do take time to have coffee and get to know people who take their position seriously. I love people like this; they just aren't my passion)
Our isolation is also our loss. We lose out on the love of older people in our community. Kids lose our continual presence in their lives. Although many Whitworth students volunteer with various organizations, its just another time-block in a busy student schedule. We lose out on grocery store conversations. We miss out on demonstrations on corners, and seeing into the eyes of our city's homeless. We don't see kids walking home from the bus stop. Our lives consist of us. and our friends. and our computers. This isn't Real to me.
. . .
Connecting theory to practice is a major tenet of service-learning. What good does our education do us, if we can't connect to a complete community (not just one made up of our like-minded peers)? Furthermore, does this separation through education make a permanent break between us and our communities?
I feel like it does for me. I feel like the more and more educated I become, the less and less I have in common with most people from my home. I have more in common with educated people. I have less to talk about with former friends. I know too much, that even our grand conversations about big dreams for Fresno are filled with my obscure(in Fresno) references to dead Europeans who have already thought about these things for many years.
What is knowledge if I can't use it in community?
Although Whitworth has a very tight community on campus, the tightness is not as easily accessed from the outside. The culture has strong expectations for behavior, morality and vocabulary (and accent and skin-tone, although religious fervor can triumph both). I don't see our connection to Spokane. I don't see my connection to this community here, and I am seeing how thinly stretched my connection to my home community has become as well.
. . .
When I leave here, I will enter the RealWorld again. I will keep figuring out how to do my finances better. I will have a job, and will relax after work doing whatever. I know that my lovely depression and trust issues will persist, but I feel so much better about them when I am in the presence of a varied society that spends its time on mundane RealLife things.
I really am idealistic after all.

expectations for the next 103 days.

I'm having difficulties getting reacclimated to normal school sleeping/waking hours. I've been staying up too late, and sleeping in too late, and its hard to change those quickly.
This semester I am taking 3 English classes, 1 film class, 1 campus-based research class, and 2 polisci classes (international political economy and research methods).
I am going to Louisiana for Spring Break. I will pay for it somehow with Bonner. I need to be working 12+ hours a week for Bonner, and every day that I procrastinate on getting something set up means more hours later that I will need.
This semester I imagine that I will learn a lot about Voice and personal experience. Between Native American Literature and Women Writer's, I think that I will gain very different counter-hegemonic knowledge sets.
. . .
Quotes from my first days of classes
"I tell everyone this. Before you marry someone, first go on a roadtrip with them. Learn whether or not you can live with them before you make a final decision to get married" -Esther Louie who went motorcycling across Europe for 3 months with the man who became her husband.
"I learned how to live with intention. You have to wake up in the morning and decide what you are going to BE for" -Esther Louie
"What is it like to be the product of a culture that a more powerful and numerous people has attempted to extinguish?" -Vic Bobb
"I ask for your hometown, because I freak out if I don't know where you're from. how can I know anything about you ever if not where you come from?"
"I was not afraid. I lay in the quiet
and looked, and did the wordless thought.
my mind was getting its oxygen
direct, the rich mix by mouth.
I hated no one. I gazed and gazed,
and everything was interesting. I was
free, not yet in love. I did not
belong to anyone. I had drunk
no milk, yet - no one had
my heart. I was not very human. I did not
know there was anyone else. I lay
like a god, for an hour, then they came for me
and took me to my mother."
-Sharon Olds in 180 more extraordinary poems for every day by Billy Collins
...
observations:
Women Writers: overflowing with white women and a few men VS Native American Literature: empty seats scattered between multi-racial Americans of both genders
I talk too much in class
inter-sectionality in dominant/non-dominant identity groups