college

“Full many a glorious morning have I seen”

November 9, 2022Posted in poetryTagged aging, college, life, literature, melancholy, memories, music, nostalgia, photography, poems, poetry, psychology, relationships, ShakespeareLeave a comment

Northeastern University, Course Catalog (1986-87)

FULL many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
But, out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.

— Sonnet XXXIII

Eleventh Song

September 9, 2021Posted in poetryTagged college, life, literature, long distance relationships, love, memories, music, photography, poems, poetry, quotes, relationships, romanceLeave a comment

photograph by Jane Palash via Unsplash

WHO is it that this dark night,
Underneath my window plaineth?
It is one who from thy sight,
Being, ah! exiled; disdaineth
Every other vulgar light.

Why, alas! and are you he?
Be not yet those fancies changèd?
Dear! when you find change in me,
Though from me you be estrangèd;
Let my change to ruin be.

Well in absence this will die.
Leave to see! and leave to wonder!
Absence sure will help, if I
Can learn how myself to sunder
From what in my heart doth lie.

But time will these thoughts remove:
Time doth work what no man knoweth.
Time doth as the subject prove,
With time still th’affection groweth
In the faithful turtle dove.

— Sir Philip Sidney

Daisy Jane

“the first return since undergraduate days twelve years previously…”

November 8, 2018September 30, 2020Posted in digital artTagged aging, art, books, changes, collage, college, life, literature, memories, music, nostalgia, photography, psychology, Thoughts1 Comment

collage including video by Anatwell-Group via Pixabay (edited)

Another expedition took him to Cambridge, the first return since undergraduate days twelve years previously, where the young men all looked just the same in the university pubs and “the only alteration” was in himself…

— Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections

Linda Bruner, “Rainy Night In Georgia”

college epiphany (a true story)

August 22, 2018October 2, 2020Posted in poetryTagged college, education, life, literature, memories, music, philosophy, photoshop, poems, poetry, school, writer, writingLeave a comment

college epiphany (a true story)

at precisely 10 o’clock he
(a distinguished professor in the history department)
closed the door and walked briskly to the lectern

“There is one song…,”

he whirled on us
in an exaggeratedly sotto voce
stage whisper

“that changed…,”

he crouched forward dramatically
leaning into the first row of seats
then paced back and forth across the front of the classroom
like Holmes to our Watsons
his hands in a sweeping gesture across the entire spellbound auditorium

“…EVERYTHING!”

My Sharona was now receding into the dim, dark, distant past
quod erat demonstrandum!

— J.S.

Have You Never Been Mellow — Olivia Newton-John

Late Night Thoughts On Listening To Bob Mould

August 9, 2018October 4, 2020Posted in musicTagged aging, college, life, literature, memories, music, poetry, quotes, relationships, Shakespeare, the pastLeave a comment

cf. film via Prelinger Archives

I would forget her, but a fever she
Reigns in my blood and will remember’d be.

— Love’s Labour’s Lost

See A Little Light

He thought he kept the universe alone

July 23, 2018October 4, 2020Posted in poetryTagged college, isolation, life, literature, loneliness, love, memories, music, photography, poems, poetry, reading, relationshipsLeave a comment

Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1975-76

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried…

— Robert Frost, The Most Of It (excerpt)

Behind The Lines

For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me

July 22, 2018July 22, 2018Posted in booksTagged books, caesura, college, depression, illness, life, literature, melancholia, mental illness, psychiatry, psychology, sad, writingLeave a comment

cf. video by SlowMoJoe via Pixabay

The “morbid melancholy,” which was lurking in his constitution, and to which we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to regular life, which, at a very early period, marked his character, gathered such strength in his twentieth year, as to afflict him in a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful influence. He told Mr. Paradise that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.

— Boswell’s Life of Johnson

“simultaneity”

March 28, 2018May 30, 2019Posted in poetryTagged aging, college, life, memories, music, photo composition, photography, poems, poetry, relationships, woman, writer, writing1 Comment

cf. photograph by Tim Gouw via Unsplash and Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1980-82

simultaneity

kaleidoscope,
I see you
through
two
eyes
one
now
one
then

—J.S.

On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye

December 28, 2017January 18, 2018Posted in digital artTagged aging, art, collage, college, inspiration, life, literature, memories, music, photo composition, photography, photoshop, poems, poetryLeave a comment

cf. Provincial Archives of Alberta, “Vermilion Agricultural and Vocational College” (1970)

For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once…

—William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey…

“At The College Art Gallery, October, 1981”

October 21, 2017January 18, 2018Posted in poetryTagged college, education, finding yourself, identity, individuality, life, literature, memories, music, philosophy, poems, poetry, writers, writingLeave a comment

cf. Home Movie (1947)

at the college art gallery, october, 1981

the ultrablue sunset sky
radiated around the white church spire
I walked into the art gallery
because I was a romantic
fair creature of an hour
was looking at chippendale furniture
but I shall never look upon thee more
my footfalls echoed around decorative arts
down the passage which I did not take
another door was opening
into another rose-garden
this fire is now my quarry
vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore

—J.S.

“It seemed on one March afternoon that I had lost every single thing I wanted…”

July 23, 2017January 16, 2018Posted in literatureTagged art, books, change, college, digital art, inspiration, life, literature, loss, music, photography, photoshop, quotes, readingLeave a comment

cf. Erik Calonius, “…Subway Car” (1973)

The first time was twenty years ago, when I left Princeton in junior year with a complaint diagnosed as malaria. It transpired, through an X-ray taken a dozen years later, that it had been tuberculosis—a mild case, and after a few months of rest I went back to college… To me college would never be the same. There were to be no badges of pride, no medals, after all. It seemed on one March afternoon that I had lost every single thing I wanted… A man does not recover from such jolts—he becomes a different person, and, eventually, the new person finds new things to care about…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Pasting It Together”

“He sees days slipping from him that were the best for what they were.”

April 22, 2017January 15, 2018Posted in poetryTagged books, carpe diem, college, inspiration, life, literature, memories, music, photography, poems, school, vintage, youthLeave a comment

Northeastern University Bulletin, 1976-77

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

–Robert Frost, October

Life, so they say, is but a game
And they let it slip away…

The Folly Of Being Comforted

March 19, 2017January 15, 2018Posted in poetryTagged aging, college, first love, GIF, literature, love, memories, poems, reading, relationships, romance, video, vintage, womanLeave a comment

cf. Home Movie

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
“Your well beloved’s hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise,
Though now it’s hard, till trouble is at an end;
And so be patient, be wise and patient, friend.”
But heart, there is no comfort, not a grain;
Time can but make her beauty over again,
Because of that great nobleness of hers;
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways,
When all the wild Summer was in her gaze.
O heart! O heart! if she’d but turn her head,
You’d know the folly of being comforted.

–Yeats, The Folly of Being Comforted

October 3, 2016December 4, 2017Posted in literatureTagged biography, books, college, education, inspiration, life, literature, music, photography, photos, quotes, school, vintageLeave a comment

“Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, ‘was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicksome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life.’ But this is a striking proof of the fallacy of appearances, and how little any of us know of the real internal state even of those whom we see most frequently…”

—Boswell’s Life Of Johnson

T. M. Weaver, “Far From The Madding Crowd” (ca. 1911)

Aspens

July 24, 2016January 14, 2018Posted in literatureTagged books, college, education, inspiration, life, literature, music, people, photography, photos, poem, poems, poetry, portraitLeave a comment

Imagine a young man, alone, without anyone.
The moment a few raindrops streaked his glass
he began to scribble.
He lived in a tenement with mice for company.
I loved his bravery.

Someone else a few doors down
played Segovia records all day.
He never left his room, and no one could blame him.
At night he could hear the other’s
typewriter going, and feel comforted.

Literature and music.
Everyone dreaming of Spanish horsemen
and courtyards.
Processions. Ceremony, and
resplendence.

Aspen trees.
Days of rain and high water.
Leaves hammered into the ground finally.
In my heart, this plot of earth
that the storm lights.

–Raymond Carver, “Aspens” from All of Us: Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)

Northeastern University Course Catalog (1982-83)

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