Once The Dinner Bell Rings

8O We actually read a book for class this week that I found genuinely interesting! After Dark by Haruki Murakami. Like, with past books, I could be like "yeah I guess I am slightly interested in the ideas in here or whatever," but I would always check to see how many pages until the next chapter and the like. With this one, I opened it up last night because I figured I should get a little reading done so it wasn't all last minute, then suddenly whoa hey I'm on page 142 when the heck did that happen.

Also yesterday my friend invited me to go forest exploring, there's a pretty great chunk of forest around the school, and a path that you can follow to the beach a bit off, but more fun is exploring the less well-traveled areas and feeling like you're in some post-apocolyptic fantasy world where nature took over. Also I almost sank into a bog at one point which made me really glad I had decided to wear boots. There were a few moments that showed off my friend is much more coordinated than I but the pain my muscles now feel will make me mightier ( ._.)9

It's weird when, all of a sudden, college makes you realize you're not smart.

I've never had all that much trouble writing papers, aside from procrastinating like nuts on them, but once I sit down and make myself do it--usually just a few nights before it's due, derp--it's fairly easy for me to figure out what I want to say, how to get the point across and find examples from the text.

But it turns out I've met my match. For class, we have to read The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima. I'm about halfway through it, right now, and it's by no means a bad book--it's really pretty interesting. But I cannot understand the mindset of the main character. He's obviously designed to have a very different mentality than most people, I think, seeing as the basic point of the book is describing the thought process of a man who is essentially a terrorist. But usually I really enjoy psychoanalyzing and viewing things from another viewpoint. It's usually fun, and not all that hard for me. I don't know if it's the way his thought process is described, or the manner in which the book was translated, or what, but I honestly cannot follow what this guy is getting at.

That on its own would not be a problem for me. I could read it through and not really get the character without minding too much, it's still a good book. But today our teacher told us we have to write a paper on this thing, too. Only 2-4 pages, not much, but I am now officially worried. There's a difference between BSing a point to draw it out, and having absolutely no idea what to say. When I make a thesis, I at least have to know what I'm saying. And I honestly don't know what to write about this book.

My hope is that seminaring on this thing tomorrow will generate SOMEthing, but... ugh. It's really weird, realizing that I've hit a complete wall with this thing. It's a little disorienting.