I woke up late today, not drastically late, but late enough to make me feel flustered. I really do have to forced myself to get up when I wake up, because if I don't, I'' just doze off again. We made it though, and arrived just in time for class - although since there are only six of us, and four of us took the tube together, I don't think class would start if we were a few minutes late! It was the Victorian Photography class today, and it was extremely thought-provoking.
When I use the term "thought-provoking", I don't mean to insinuate that all my classes at Yale haven't also been so. I simply mean that it is a new kind of thought that is rising to the surface of my mind, as if these new classes are new flies used by the trout fisherman called Education. Education is always there, day in, day out, fishing for some sort of reaction from the dark blue waters of my mind. He stands there, silent, immobile but for the flick of his arm over his head, swishing the line and his fly-for-the-moment out onto the surface of the water, my mind. The fly skims the cool expanse, touching down, and up, and down again, and eventually settling somewhere, for a moment. There are many species of trout in the water. Some of them take longer to come to the surface than others - maybe they are simply fussier, and require a specific type of fly: are they lazy, and just can't be bothered to investigate? Or are they uncertain, unsure which flies they are attracted to, which interest them, which they should be wary of, and which they should embrace.
The trout are protected, in my waters. Education is the only one to hold a fishing permit, and even he is prohibited from taking any trout home. He can try new flies, eternally; like Atlas he seems trapped: but self-trapped because he cannot leave his spot because he doesn't know which moment the trout might rise. My thoughts are the trout. Education sends out different lures to draw my thoughts up. Fortunately, I take from him in a way he can never take from me, because I learn something every time he goes fishing for thoughts.
My Directed Studies classes were one brand of fly, and once Education had caught enough of my thoughts with those, he threw them into the water, threw the content into my mind so that I would never forget what it felt like to know what he taught me, and so that I could always return to the flies and learn again, even if he left his spot on the river-bank. And these two classes I'm taking right now, about the British Empire and about Photography: they are a new type of fly, and they are luring new thoughts out into the open, thoughts that had previously darted about my mind, wild and unstructured, always eluding any attempt to order them.
But why the hysteria about organisation? I hope that these new and ancient trout retain some of their frankness and their nuances. I hope that these classes, these new flies, will introduce trout of the same kind, or of complimentary kinds, to each other. But I hope they don't lose their spontaneity. I don't think they will, because I don't think I know enough about the waters to ever understand the trouts' lifestyle - their habits, their anatomy, their haunts. And I don't know how many there are, or where they come from, or where they go once they've risen. There always seem to be new ones... Trout, thoughts. Maybe there are patterns which will be revealed to me, like the world of the stars to ancient astronomers. Who knows.
Most notable, right in this moment, is the vivid sense of trout gliding through my mind. They create a bright rainbow of glittering scales, sparkling in the light of day, and shimmering silver under the white moonlight. And when there's no light? I can still feel them swimming.
I went for a walk this evening and wandered into a pharmacy with a grand array of makeup. Another heaven. Heaven will have to be a gigantic place in order to fit in all the things I describe as "heaven"! Or maybe Heaven will be an eternal beam of light, blank but warm and large enough to contain everyone's thoughts of heaven, like a giant BFG jar of dreams, where the dreams are people's dreams of Heaven. I enjoyed my walk.
I returned to Costa, the coffee place, because everywhere else closes frustratingly early! I ordered a "coffee frestino", which is basically a coffee frappuccino with a fancy name, which is basically coffee and crushed ice with a fancy name! As I hope I have illustrated though the repetition in the previous sentence, a "coffee frestino" is coffee and ice. These people are such clever advertisers, and I, admittedly, am a marvelous customer, because I am taken in nearly every time by the subtler sorts of advertising. "Hey, look, it says gullible on the ceiling." Ha ha.
Today, I am tired; tonight, I will sleep.
Indeed, I have no need
for goats,
or for sheep.
I will watch them from a distance,
as stile over stile they leap -
for today, I am tired;
and tonight, I will sleep.
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