"too busy living..."

"A poem may be the residue of an inner urgency, one through which the self wishes to register itself, write itself into being, and, finally, to charm another self, the reader, into belief. It may also be something equally elusive - the ghost within every experience that wishes it could be seen or felt, acknowledged as a kind of meaning.

It could be a truth so forgiving that it offers up, a humanness in which we are able to imagine ourselves. A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what it is like to be. It allows us to have the life we are denied because we are too busy living. Even more paradoxically, a poem permits us to live in ourselves as if we were just out of reach of ourselves."

- On Becoming a Poet, by Mark Strand, from The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Strand and Boland

The life we are denied because we are too busy living. That's a thought I've been thinking and expressing to many people recently. Though of course I didn't put it that elegantly.

Life at Wheaton is so fast-paced, so full, that I don't have time to think. I encounter so many fascinating ideas in the classroom, but instead of being able to savor those thoughts, I head straight for the homework, which yields good grades. honestly the homework doesn't take me that much time, but then what time I have left I spend on practicing.

Or perhaps the problem is that I don't have good time management in my thoughts. There's a notion. When my mind is free to think, like when I'm walking to and from class by myself, or when I'm showering, what do I think of?

Thoughts Serfy Thinks When She Has Spare Thoughts
1. When and what will I eat next?

2. What should I wear tomorrow?

3. I wish I weren't walking by myself.

4. My schedule sucks.

5. My friends don't understand how hard music majors have to work.

6. some OPSEC Encampment problem

7. I need to walk faster to get to class on time.

Self-centered? yeah...

I should work on time management in my thoughts. plus, thinking idle thoughts leads to sin.

I don't think about God at all. This needs to change.