Knowledge

The mental universe is a dark labyrinth.
Every field of study is a new corridor of the labyrinth.
When you learn, you light the way through these corridors with candles.
Most of the candles stay lit, and you can revisit the lit caves that you have illuminated before.
Sometimes, a candle will burn out, and you will have to restudy it -- relight the candle.

As with any adventure, the first candles you are given excite you, and you begin to look into many different corridors, back away, choose another, until you run out of candles and have to take a break.
But there will come a time when you know you have gone deeply enough into the labyrinth that you will have to decide once and for all which corridor to travel down.

Well, that was my analogy for the insurmountable obstacle that is choosing a major and a particular field of study in a time when you feel so curious about every area of knowledge that making a choice seems absurd.

Where I'm From

We had an assignment in English: to use the structure of a poem we were looking at to tell where we are from.

I'm from spiky oak leaves that stick in your heel.
From acorn and caterpillar season, from Robins in the redberry bush and daffodils we planted ourselves before we could spell, that bloom through earthquakes and bulldozers.
I'm from torn, springless, bucket-seat couches with tacky buttons and sinking orange foam.
I'm from Christmas trees reaching toward a twenty-five foot sloping ceiling, from mother's homemade centerpieces and cider, and  Grandma's sugar cookies.
My childhood hangs in the purple moon on the Christmas tree.
The rest of my childhood lurks under thin dusty films in prominent corners of my room and mind
    in the Tinker Toy orange stick that fell off of the back deck, in the soulless ceramic horses that wait in the shadows to be given life.
I am from abstract and impressionist paintings. The Monk Knocks Twice. From hand me down pianos, from the coffee table that holds pictures of faces lost to time and love letters in a feverish scrawl.
My heart lies in journals, sketchbooks, and Australian pop CDs,
   in doors of spiraling wood and Purple Passion comforters.
It is the reflection of a cat's eye in the dark and the patter of rain on a tent tarp. 
   the plaintive wail of a train and the setting of a vibrant sun.