When I want to remember why I like Modernism so much, I like to read Wallace Stevens...

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

...against Ezra Pound:

The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that’s quite your own.
Yet this is you.

So that's the first tidbit for today. Since last Ash Wednesday, I do not feel like I have made much progress toward learning to care and not to care (learning to sit still...). I have been reading (too much?) Joyce and Joyce criticism, where essayists like to describe the symbolic structures in terms of constellations, a word which I especially like when it is used outside of astronomical contexts. Next I have to learn everything I can about Ezra Pound and cobble together an essay of my own. It's going to be great, but I'm afraid that I'm going to be so awash in the hopelessness that is the Modern psyche that I might get a little (read: intolerably) morose. Finally, despite having more snow days than school days for the past two weeks, I am staying busy working ahead in work/class/life because apparently February is the month of Fun Things Happen All Weekend Every Weekend, and I want, nay, I need to be prepared. More updates as events warrant (read: see you in March).