I shut down socially when I am processing emotions. The last few weeks have taken all of my emotional energy, and so I have not been very extraverted of late. I have stayed in the familiar and known to compensate for all the unknown. Now, coming out of a lot of non-verbal emotional processing I eventually hit the thinking mode, which is very much so a social thing in me. I am beginning to hit the thinking mode, so get ready for some blogging folks. I have absorbed a lot since I’ve been back.
First observation for my forth semester at Covenant: I have to pay attention in class again. The only core class I am taking is Pauline Epistles with Dr. MacDougall, which is fascinating. Dr. MacDougall’s teaching method is very engaging.
My favorite class this semester is definitely going to be Poetry with Dr. Barker. I have been reading through the assigned material for that class which is a collection of Pulitzer Prize winning author Mary Oliver. She mentions Ohio a lot throughout her poetry which has endeared her to me. My mother was born in Ohio, as was her mother and her mother’s mother. The maternal side of my family has very thick roots in the north east side of Ohio, the beautiful seemingly less seen side of the state. Oliver uses it as a term of comfort and safety.
I moved to Michigan when I was three months shy of ten. None of my family wanted to leave our precious home on West Park Boulevard, but my father had been unemployed for about a year and a half and felt God was clearly calling him to start a new PCA church in Midland, Michigan. Many of the people at my new church made fun of me for referring to Ohio as home which alienated me from any real welcome they tried to convey. The distance is still there eleven and a half years later. We don’t even go to the same church now. Those whose welcome was so bitter originally turned out to be true betrayers of the help we tried to bring. We left the church under very bad circumstances and at the same time I was suffering from the worst of my Lymes Disease. Ohio, while becoming further developed in area’s, stayed the same. From the welcoming smells in the air to the hugs of my extended family, Ohio was my safe place, my home. I still have dreams where my family moves back to our house at 321 West Park Boulevard. I had one this week. I know it would not be this significant to me if I hadn’t moved, but it still was a magical place.
I love it here in Georgia because I chose this place. Michigan was forced on me and I have never forgiven her, but Georgia is like a friend that I am falling deeper and deeper in love with. I am going to stay here this summer and am looking forward to my time to explore the places I have not had time to see yet.
Favorite new activity for the semester is a movie club of sorts. It’s really more of a Netflix sort of family. We have watched what seems like tons of movies so far. Already my scope of filmdom has been transformed; I have fallen in love with Andrei Tarkovsky. I have only seen Solaris and The Mirror, but I have already decided he is one of my all time favorite directors. Go out and watch the Mirror, get really confused, and then go to this web site and try to figure it out. We also watched Heaven, by one of my other favorite directors Tom Tykwer. Heaven is worth watching just on the merits of it being the last screenplay by Krzysztof Kieslowski, the writer and director of the acclaimed Blue, White, and Red movies (an abstract cultural and political commentary on modern France). Heaven is good, but takes itself a bit too seriously by the end and gets silly; beautiful, but silly. We are going to watch Winter Sleepers at some point soon, and hopefully that will be a bit better.
Anywho, this is all I have for now.
it's good to see you got rid of the long going-off-the-screen text thing with which your blog was heretofore plauged. Nice.
Posted by: linnea at February 6, 2004 09:08 AM