Are We Ennui? A Post of Three Parts (Just Like a Nucleotide!)

Part: The First: My English Nerd Self = On


"Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." 
-Benjamin Franklin
-Twelve Oaks Plantation Entrance (the Wilkes' plantation in Gone With the Wind)

squan·der/ˈskwändər/Verb

1. Waste (something, esp. money or time) in a reckless and foolish manner: "entrepreneurs squander their profits on expensive cars".

2. Allow (an opportunity) to pass or be lost

I squander time frequently. In other words, I allow material essence of life to pass or be lost. How can that not be depressing? And, what is to be done?

Read?

I have a short reading list this summer, because frankly, books are not people.  These are the books I have read:

1. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

2. Austenland by Shannon Hale

3. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

4. The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

5. The Crucible by Arthur Miller

6. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Here is my to-read list:

1. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin
2. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier 

3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

4. The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

5. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

6. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

7. Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska

It's a very female summer, frankly.

Part: The Second: My Intrinsic Humanity = On

I want to make something. Something of my own choosing and design, something that will be finish-able in the time that I have until school starts again, but will challenge me within that time frame. i don't know what it is yet, and I have been desperately trying to think of it for some time. 

I am open to suggestions. And by suggestions, I mean useful-yet-ambiguous guidance. Otherwise, it would cease to be my own, correct?

I've been thinking of writing something, or doing an art project, or a science project like making batteries out of potatoes, but I don't know.

Part: The Third: Basic Frustration = On

I hate formatting on blogger, and formatting on blogger hates me.

Pre Blessed

sat·ire

–noun

1.

the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing,denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

2.

a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human follyand vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

3.

a literary genre comprising such compositions.

It's the New Year, Step In Time!

re·solve

1.to come to a definite or earnest decision about; determine (to do something): I have resolved that I shall live to the full.

2.to separate into constituent or elementary parts; break up; cause or disintegrate (usually fol. by into ).

5.to reduce by mental analysis (often fol. by into ).

6.to settle, determine, or state formally in a vote or resolution, as of a deliberative assembly.

I love defining words. We refer to life as "chaptered," and chapters are composed of paragraphs, which are constituted of sentences, which are made of words. Ergo, understand words = understand life.

Resolve. A resolution is made by one who has resolved: and isn't it interesting how decisions and reductions are related in these definitions? As decisions are made, possibilities are eliminated. When you chose to go to a certain school, the possible other choices you had before resolving upon that decision no longer exist. When you chose X, you no longer will possibly chose Y or Z. Resolve. Reduce.

Life is no more than a series of resolutions: conscious or not, life is reduced until all options are up. That is when we die. What is to be done with the finite time we have on the Earth?

In these bodies we live, in these bodies we die.
Where you invest your love, you invest your life.
(Mumford and Sons, Awake My Soul)

Oftentimes, people make new-year's (is it a resolution owned by the new year (new year's) or a resolution made for new years to come (new years)? I don't know) resolutions: highly self-aware goals to be accomplished in the new year. It's rather postmodern, this self-awareness. I could talk about Lacanian mirrors right now, but I won't. A lot, I've discovered, have to do with health: I resolve to go on this diet, or I resolve to run a marathon this year, or I resolve to become a vegetarian. My mother is not eating candy this year (I'm doing it with her. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal until I realized that chocolate truffles are candy). We resolve to eat no candy.

What we resolve upon is performative. Resolutions design the character of a man. Who are you? What have you resolved upon? How have you simplified life: funneling it into chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words?

These are my words.