I have to apologize that I have not updated my blog for such a long time. College life keeps me busy. According to the statistics I calculated, in the past two weeks, the average time I spent in sleeping everyday is five hours; the average time I spent in the library everyday is 5 hours; and the average time I spent in the room 202 lab in Chamberlin (Science Hall) is 3 hours…That is my life in the past two weeks, crazy, busy, but meaningful. To tell the truth, I even can’t believe that I have survived, and got through all the challenges in these two weeks—four papers and two exams in the first week, and three papers, one poster, one presentation, and two exams in the second week. Maybe that is the meaning of the college life—try to calm yourself down when you find you are besieged by millions of challenges that you think you will never overcome, look for hopes when you feel desperate, and enjoy the realizations of these hopes.

This afternoon, I stayed in the spiritual room for an hour, doing meditation, and talking with Bill, my meditation advisor, and three other students who are also doing meditation in the room. In my meditation, I felt purely relaxed. I introspected myself, recalled the targets I achieved and things I spoiled. At that time, I no longer felt chagrined at the stupid mistakes I made in the economics test on Wednesday; and I no longer felt proud of the high grades I got for the papers I finished in the last two weeks. All I felt is just peaceful, and a pure silence in my heart. I felt it was necessary for me to push myself backward a little bit and pull myself out from the things I had been involved with for two weeks, and look at these things from a different angle. Don’t judge these things because they are the things that have past, but try to analyze them logically. Don’t be nervous about the necessities of getting a conclusion based on the analysis, but try to use your peaceful mind to feel the process of your decision-making. Suddenly, in that small room, where I could feel gentle cold breeze passing through my hair, I found out what I should do at the beginning of the coming fall break—to calm down myself, maybe by reading books for fun, or by watching old French and Italian films, or by listening to Jazz and classical music, or by permitting me to “waste” some time in sitting in a cozy couch with no thoughts flowing through my mind and listening to the conversations of people passing back and forth……

A Poem

Mad Girl's Love Song

By Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

I can't forget the ending of Sylvia (the film), where a flourishing tree appears on the screen, joggling its beautiful tender branches, verdant leaves, and ripe red fruits as the gentle breeze passes it. At the ending, I saw vigor and the steady, calm, introvertive love of life under Sylvia Plath's endless strong passion for love throughout her life. My mind has been obsessing over the film Sylvia since I watched it this time last year due to Gwyneth Paltrow's excellent acting, and the beautiful mind and the tragic life of Sylvia Plath, one of my favourite poets. Everytime I read her poems, the scenes of the film would show up from an unknown part of my mind, like a visitor coming from somewhere far far away in geography, but so close in my heart.

When I found Sylvia Plath Collected Poems at the libarary, I saw, and felt the existence of that tree again. I felt as if I was sitting underneath its crown, meditating. Few seconds in my life are more touching than that moment. I turned over the first page, witnessing, and feeling, this passionate love that originated in a dance at the dreaming spires of Oxford. I saw them sitting on the wooden boat randomly floating on the Avon River where they read poems to the cows eating grass on the bank, in a brick-red chapel of Smith College where she ate battercake she made together with him, in her small apartment in England where she ended her life on a gloomy London morning...

After a journey across the ocean, I finally found a real Sylvia, yet I could only feel her by touching her poems gently with my fingers, and reading loudly with my full heart. This time, the feeling is more real, more vivid, closer and stronger. At this moment I am enjoying the realization of a dream.

The Origin of life

Last week, all new students of Beloit College went to downtown Chicago for the exploration of The Devil in The White City, which is about the World Columbian Exposition in 1893, to feel the influence of the buildings of the exposition on the current constructions of downtown, and Chicago’s Millennium Park, where I took this picture. The origin of life is water, and that is the idea I want to show through this picture, in which there is a little girl swinging in the rain. She was intoxicated in the water, swinging in the rain, stepping forth and back on the water, enjoying her close touch with the origin of herself. Her body is relaxed, and full of vitality. I was deeply touched.