I'm just tired. I'm telling myself that. But I *am* really struggling to feel the Advent anticipation this year; I am mired in a "nothing is ever going to improve or even change" loop right now.
I did a bunch of grading today. And yeah, okay, my ecology students' presentations WERE excellent and that makes me feel good. But everything else.
The UNLV shooting. I guess campus shootings start up again after a brief pause during the pandemic (when many people were home). And the wars and rumors of war, and terrible people failing upward (being thrown out of one job, becoming an "online personality" and making more money than they did before). And me being asked by every charity I ever gave to to give more, because the need is great
and yeah, I know it is. But I could literally bankrupt myself and the help it would provide would be so small.
Anyway, two moods for today, one musical, the other poetical.
First: I know some people consider this among the "worst Christmas songs" and it is rather bald social commentary. But it also reminds me that things always were thus, and were I teaching botany in the early 70s I would probably feel much the same, as I watch the news from Vietnam on my little black and white tv:
And then this poem, which I've always liked but feel more strongly now, by Edward Arlington Robinson:
A Christmas Sonnet
For One in Doubt
By Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
While you that in your sorrow disavow
Service and hope, see love and brotherhood
Far off as ever, it will do no good
For you to wear his thorns upon your brow
For doubt of him. And should you question how
To serve him best, he might say, if he could
“Whether or not the cross was made of wood
Where on you mailed me, is no matter now.”
Though other saviors have in older lore
A Legend, and for older gods have died –
Though death may wear the crown it always wore
And ignorance be still the sword of pride –
Something is here that was not here before,
And strangely has not yet been crucified.
Maybe tomorrow will be better. I still have to eat dinner and do some piano practice and call my mom and maybe try to get some more grading done. I just want to be able to relax and try to enjoy Christmas before it's over for another 12 long months (and who knows if any of us will still be here this time next year). But there's just so many things that must be done, and I am all alone to do them.
1 comment:
My father bought THAT ALBUM for THAT SONG. The only problem I had with the song is that it says there were NINE student nurses killed when there were EIGHT killed; one hid under a bed and survived. I'm old enough to remember the details of the shooter on the Texas tower, the Boston strangler, etc when these were gross aberations of the norm.
Now it's ONLY X dead in mass shooting #500 when 6X died in shooting #495 (or whatever).
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