less media. more real.

in attempt to live more fully in the immediate present, i am deleting my facebook. if you need to get in contact with me, i will be keeping both my email and my blog, so you can check out what's going on there, or call, or come and find me. anyways, friends, keep it real.

quotes that i liked - stolen from my about-to-be-gone facebook

“All human wisdom is summed up in two words - wait and hope." - Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

"We live, as we dream - alone." - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

"We'll always have Paris." - Rick Blaine, Casablanca

"God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him." - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

"They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"Oh blush not so..." - John Keats, Sharing Eve's Apple

"Death is philosophy's only problem." - Albert Camus

"The leaden circles dissolve in the air." - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

"It is impossible to live without contradiction when you live without God." - G.K. Chesterton

"The heart has its reason that reason knows nothing of." - Blaise Pascal

"Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." - Immanuel Kant

"Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit." - Aristotle

"We're having a moment. Don't ruin it." - Raven, The Beast Within

"Goodnight, forever, goodnight, my darling." - Mars is the Tyrant

"Voldemort can't stop the rock." - Harry and the Potters

"College is full of awkward moments...it comes with the sleep deprivation and over priced textbooks." - Amanda Bartlett

"And now Harry, let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure." - Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"[to Albus Severus] You were named after two great Hogwarts headmasters, one was a Slytherin, and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew." - Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"Some things tie your life together,
slender threads and things to treasure.
Days like that should last and last and last;
but you've already lost." - Dashboard Confessional, Dusk and Summer

"I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain. It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
I am a rock, I am an island...
I have my books and my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock, I am an island." - Simon & Garfunkel, I am a Rock

"Tracy: When you can't run, you crawl ... and when you can't crawl, when you can't do that...
Zoe: 'You find someone to carry you.'" - Firefly, The Message

"Everything's dead but the tree." - Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

"Never judge a philosophy by its abuse." - Saint Augustine

"Stay close. It's about to get interesting." - The Doctor, Star Trek: Voyager

"Now the hour has come to part. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot the god only knows." - Socrates, Plato's Apology

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

"Apathy! The subjunctive is dying, and you shrug!" - Carol Miner

"To truly know something is to live it." - Ken Lippold

"And I have to speculate
That God himself did make us into
Corresponding shapes like puzzles pieces
From the clay.

True, it may seem like a stretch,
But it's thoughts like this
That catch my troubled head,
When you're away, when I am missing you to death." - The Postal Service, Such Great Heights

"Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, but still a man." - David Hume

"The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers." - Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

"Philosophy: an obsession with the verb to be." - Team Quote, Jeremy Heuslein and Bethany DeMasie

"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters." - Seneca

jeremy's plans.

remembering first of all that plans are tiny prayers to father time (what sarah said, deathcab for cutie), i would like to inform you all about what my prayers are.

if you do not know, i am a philosophy and ancient language double major, who dabbles in english. this being the case i am pursuing to study for a year as an oxford undergraduate. while in oxford, i would study philosophy primarily, taking classics as a secondary tutorial, and perhaps a seminar in english or one on philosophy supplementing the primary tutorial.

my reasons for this:

(1) the cost is near equivalent to wheaton (even less, depending on airfare and a few other contingents), but the education is superior. (2) it moves me beyond american culture and into the heart of some philosophical dialogues currently going on. (3) it moves me beyond america. (4) i would have the opportunity to write a short thesis at oxford, directed by an oxford tutor, which would be valuable on its own, but would be even more so, since may be transferrable to wheaton as an honor thesis. (5) it's oxford for goodness's sake. (6) i want to go there for graduate school, and if i develop relationships with the faculty, i might be able to get a few good recommendations within oxford for the application.

so, this is the plan, the prayer. it's lofty, it will be difficult, but i want to push myself. i want to find where i break (i know this sounds self-destructive, and perhaps it is), but life is all about knowing limits.

because of the preceeding, i was wondering if anyone knows german or french, or knows of a good way to learn them, since i will need to be studying primary sources in the original languages. thank you!

on hopper's nighthawks.

at first, it seems dangerous,
the city at night.
why would lonely men and couples
walk around, in and out of french cafes?
the old soda-jerk knows better.
he smiles at the newcomers' nervousness.
did you see the trash outside?
no, they say of course.
exactly, is his reply.

on a picture of my brothers and me at jamie's wedding.

it's wallet-worn and smudged,
but i still hear pachelbel's in D
and our common saturday-morning language.
four boys, wearing black tuxes and teal ties,
lean against the ceremony's stage -
one of them is adding a wife tonight.

we commemorate life so far -
why i am the story-teller?
the husband-sage replies,
so we can listen.

what effect does justification have in life? what role should it have?