If there were a door,
Abyss of endless comfort in my mind,
My mind,
It -- would be as unfound by me, as you,
as me unfound by you.
Halve the distance, reciprocate,
Reciprocal in motion, function,
Tell me,
Can you feel the friction?
Can you feel the nearness, proximity to nothing?
You know there's only one thing,
I
Could never do,
The variable below the line prevents me,
I'm sorry,
Achilles, let the tortoise go.
I know.
In infinity's never ending swallow never hope
to touch,
I, Asymptote.
ASYMPTOTES ARE AWESOME!!!!!! I haven't been this excited about something since I discovered Heinrich Heine. I just can't get over the concept...! It has caused me to literally wax poetic. It has even made me want to learn Polynomial Long Division - which I'm getting better at, by the way. Variable in the Divisor? Pah! I can deal.
Next term will be the first in which I finally take some sort of English/Writing/Lit class, and will very likely prevent me from taking anymore math this year. AND I'M PISSED. I want to take Math 121, or Intro to Physics...! Last term I was upset because Math prevented me from taking English, and now I dread the lack of asymptotes come Spring. What hath taken place? Have I been stung by the maximum vertex of f(x)=|x|? The deadly yet addictive nectar of the origin flowing through my veins, screaming, yes, YES! n IS a positive integer! There ARE real zeroes! I shall dance, dance to the beat of the degree and leading term... all I need is my constant, my leading coefficient and I will know the end! ...Or at least the End Behavior.
And now some stupidity to balance out the Young with my Adult. This makes me laugh really hard. The context is entirely irrelevant. Feel free to stop it after minute 5.
93% on my first Calculus test, and I am pleased. I have more to say, naturally, but I am currently allllmost late for class. I shall return, with a decisively loquacious agenda.
The breakfast of a true college student - cold pizza and an energy drink. Oh yes, feel that inevitable warmth that envelops your entire being when coming in contact with a true stereotype; the fact that this 'breakfast' is being eaten at noon, is merely a bonus. To be honest, I have offset the pizza/redbull combo with two vitamin C chewables and an apple. So ha. I can have my stereotype and eat it too.
Throat feels a little better this morning - Called the college health clinic to schedule a strep-test but the soonest they could give me is Monday afternoon; the nice lady on the phone advised me to avoid breathing on people until then. And so I shall. As my mother has often told me, oxygen is for wusses. Though I do take care to note that my respiratory system so far seems unaffected by the bug, which is usually the biggest fear to rear its head whenever my immune system takes a dive - still, I have taken the usual precaution of temporarily going cold turkey on my smoking habit. Day three now, and I've yet to bite anyone's head off.
Though I admit I've become far too upset about the Stupak Amendment the Health Care Bill has acquired during its time in the house - an amendment that guarantees abortion will not in any case be covered by the Public Option. That is, the portion of the populace for whom the Public Option was in fact created for, the people who by definition cannot afford coverage, and therefore presumably anything remotely like acceptable education, hygiene, nutrition and emotional and spiritual support, in other words the people who are most likely to make the kinds of mistakes, or fall victim to the kind of violence this procedure invariably stems from, will not qualify for it. It will be denied them. Bart Stupak, a Democratic representative from Michigan, insists this is nothing but the application of the Hyde Amendment to Health Care Reform. Which I believe raises the question, 'where's the reform in that?'
I'd like to take a moment to mention that the allocating of government funds to sponsor abortion is still... well, it grates, doesn't it? Whether or not the moral issue appears to us as clear as day - the American democratic majority is still Pro Life, and the federal government is an extension of public opinion, not a guardian of morality. If we allow our conscience to take exceptional rule to the law, what's to stop anyone else, and specifically religious groups, doing the same thing? Aren't we then as bad as them? Morality is by definition a gray area, in my opinion at least, Right and Wrong change, or at least shift slightly from one individual to another. You know what doesn't change so easily? Legal and illegal. So the idea is to make Legal and Right, and Illegal and Wrong to coincide as much as possible, by making laws that are right. So thank you Bart Stupak, for thoroughly messing that up... But you know what the really sad thing is?
There is nobody even remotely in my age group to whom I can talk to about this without getting this reaction: The head inclines slightly to the side, a single or both eyebrows rise, and the mouth quirks sideways. Oh well.
THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPEH:
Lou Dobbs has retired, Iliana and I actually exchanged a high five in that regard; Iliana was born in Mexico, and I despise hate mongering, therefore we both benefit from a lack-o'-Lou.
Lemony Snicket's A Bad Beginning is now available online for free download; I strongly suggest you refrain from reading this horrible tale. If you don't believe me, please allow the man himself to dissuade you.
I have been reading in the Old Testament again. What a great book! Even more noteworthy than its contents is its presentation, where every word is as natural as a tree, a flower, the sea, the stars - as man himself. It sprouts, it flows, it sparkles, it smiles - we know not how or why; but it all seems quite natural. This is truly the word of God; other works are merely products of man's wit. In Homer, that other great book, the presentation is a product of art, and though the material itself, as is the case with the Bible, is taken from reality, it is cast into poetic form, transfused, as it were, within the crucible of the human mind. It has been refined by means of the spiritual process which we call art. In the Bible no trace of art is evident. Its style is that of a notebook in which the absolute spirit, seemingly without the assistance of any individual human being, has jotted down the events of the day, almost with the same factual accuracy with which we write our laundry list. One cannot pass judgment on that style. One can only observe its effect in our minds. the Greek grammarians were more than a little perplexed when they were supposed to define some striking beauties in the Bible in the terms of traditional aesthetic principles. Longinus speaks of sublimity. Recent aestheticians speak of naivete. Alas! As I have already said, there are no criteria for judging this book... the Bible is the word of God.
In only one other writer do I find anything that recalls this unmediated style of the Bible. That is Shakespeare. With him, too, the word sometimes appears in that imposing nakedness which awes and moves us. In the works of Shakespeare we sometimes see the living truth without the covering of art. But this occurs only in rare instances. The genius of art, conscious perhaps of its impotence, for a very brief space transferred its office to Nature, and then once more asserts its supremacy all the more zealously in the plastic shaping and the artful entanglement of the drama. Shakespeare is at once Jew and Greek; or rather, both elements, spiritualism and art, prevail and are reconciled in him, and unfold in higher unity. - Letter to Ludwig Börne from Hegoland, July 29 1830
Alright then. Time to get bundled up and off to math class.... The sun's finally come out, so that's something, though it's probably only going to last the length of time I spend inside getting dressed. Might take the time for an extra cup of tea.
Got my test back early because, I swear, the teacher has a soft spot for me. :D I handed in my test early, and two minutes later he called me over and handed it back. Bought an orange to celebrate.
Now I'm home, too tired to cook - we're gonna order a pizza. Throat hurts, but still riding on my 93% high, and listening to Johnny's CD. He's a guy from my Math class who plays the flute, mandolin, and guitar, and we exchanged CDs this morning. His band's name is ManOverBoard and they have a pirate theme, me and the girls are gonna go see them perform next month.
As the title of this blog suggests, I am attempting to weather the passage from the universally acknowledged categories(laid out so helpfully by waitresses throughout the ages) of 'Honey' to 'Ma'am'. I am now a 'ma'am'; I have been a legal adult for some years now, and unfortunately the world has finally taken notice.
My main reason for starting this new blog is a series of comments made by my wonderful grandfather in regards to my old online journals - they are admittedly quite immature and by definition inappropriate, being, as they are, meant for the eyes of other teenagers and young adults, as opposed to serious and ever so dowdy people such as my family. So yes, we are all serious and sophisticated people here, which is why I am writing this post instead of doing yet another practice test for my midterm tomorrow. Imaginary numbers are bleeding out my ears. Supposedly the square root of (-1) was given the name 'i' based on the sounds made by the people it was inflicted upon, e.g. "Ayayayayayayayay!!!".
Today is Veteran's Day, and the college is closed, so I have spent the entire day at the kitchen table, curled up in a warm bathrobe and doing practice test after practice test since 8 o'clock this morning. There has been improvement in my scores, but unfortunately the slightly sore throat I woke up with has deteriorated and acquired the companionship of a headache. 2 Vitamin supplements, three oranges and 5 cups of tea later, I am still sniffling and wincing when I swallow. Oh well.
Speaking of genius political commentators, I am almost at the end of my Heinrich Heine 'The Romantic School and Other Essays' book, and am trying to draw it out as much as possible. Here is a brilliant snippet fromLudwig Börne: A Memorial, a letter Heinrich Heine wrote his longtime friend from Helgoland on July 1 1830, in regards to where he would settle himself:
Or should I go to America, that monstrous prison of freedom, where the visible chains would oppress me even more heavily than the visible ones at home, and where the most repulsive of all tyrants, the populace, hold vulgar sway! You know well what I think of that accursed land, which I once loved, before I knew it well…. And yet I must publicly laud it, merely out of professional duty…. You dear German peasants! Go to America! There are no princes or nobles there; all men are equal – equal dolts…. With the exception, naturally, of a few million, who have black or brown skin, and who are treated like dogs! Actual slavery, which has been abolished in moth of the North American states, does not revolt me as much as the brutality with which the free blacks and the mulattoes are treated. Whoever is even in the slightest degree descended from Negroes, even if this is not betrayed in his color, but only in his facial features, is forced to suffer the most frightful humiliations, which we in Europe would scarcely believe. At the same time Americans make such a to-do about their Christianity and are zealous Church-goers. They have learned this hypocrisy from the English, who incidentally have bequeathed to them their worst characteristics. Worldly pursuits are their true religion, and money is their God, their only Almighty God. Of course, there may be many noble souls who in secret deprecate this universal self-seeking and injustice. But if they fight against it, they expose themselves to martyrdom, the like of which is inconceivable in Europe. I believe that it was in New York, where a Protestant minister became so upset about the mistreatment of the colored people that he, in defiance of this horrid prejudice, married his daughter to a Negro. As soon as this truly Christian deed became known, the people stormed the minister's house, and he was only able to escape death by flight; the house was demolished, and the minister's daughter, poor victim of the affair, was grabbed by the mob and had to endure its wrath. She was lynched, that is, she was stripped naked, coated with tar, rolled around in an open feather bed, and in this sticky feather covering dragged through the entire city in ridicule….
O Freedom! You are a bad dream!
And now, unfortunately, I must go back to doing practice tests and encouraging my immune system. More tea and unfortunately things that look like this:
Lou Dobbs has retired, Iliana and I actually exchanged a high five in that regard; Iliana was born in Mexico, and I despise hate mongering, therefore we both benefit from a lack-o'-Lou
