right now i have more half-written posts than i know what to do with, but all i can think about is the following excerpt from a book i read for a class:
"All things change according to the state we are in. Nothing is fixed. I lived once in the top of a house, in a little room, in Paris. I was a student. My place was a romance. It was a mansard room and it had a small square window that looked out over housetops, pink chimney pots. I could see l'Institut, the Pantheon, and the Tour Saint Jacques. The tiles of the floor were red and some of them were broken and got out of place. There was a little stove, a wash basin, a pitcher, piles of my studies. Some hung on the wall, others accumulated dust on their backs. My bed was a cot. It was a wonderful place. I cooked two meals and ate dinner outside. I used to keep the camembert out of the window on the mansard roof between meals, and I made fine coffee, and made much of eggs and macaroni. I studied and thought, made compositions, wrote letters home full of hope of some day being an artist.
It was wonderful. But days came when hopes looked black and my art student's paradise was turned into a dirty little room with broken tiles, ashes fell from the stove, it was all hopelessly poor, I was tired of camembert and eggs and macaroni, and there wasn't a shade of significance in those delicate little chimney pots, or the Pantheon, the Institut, or even the Tour Saint Jacques."
--Robert Henri, The Art Spirit--
i relate to this a lot.
sometimes when i'm walking around rexburg or sitting in class or listening to music in my room, i feel like i'm in my own little student's paradise.
but days come when my paradise turns into nothing but a swamp. rexburg is magically unveiled to be a dinky little town, my classes are suddenly full of pious people, and my apartment stays clean for maybe an hour tops.
but i feel like, after my time here is done, i'll remember more of the paradise and less of the swamp.
i want to remember the late-night ramirez runs,
the shows every weekend,
how every time i go to the library something funny happens,
bike rides to walmart in the warm summer evenings,
and
having true friends who know and understand me.
at least, i hope that's what happens after graduation.
