Final Blog Post

 Katie Roessel

 

21st Century Literature and Time

 

12/14/22

 

Time and How I See It

 

    When I read the prompt for this blog post, to tell any story about time, I began to reflect upon my recent past, how I perceived the passage of time, and the sequence of events that got me to where I am now. I don’t remember too much from when I was a young kid, perhaps deliberately; elementary school was pretty difficult for me, and middle school was torturous, as it is for most prepubescent 12-year-olds.

    I think I became the most aware of the passage of time once I got into high school. High school was when life picked up for me both in and out of school. I was becoming more and more dedicated to dance, I was working hard to get good grades to get into a good university when I graduate, and I was growing more into myself, into the person that I am today. During high school everything went so fast. One day, I was sitting in my freshman orientation, and the next it was my last celebration of Christmas at my school my senior year (The Mary Louis Academy had some pretty epic Christmas celebrations). High school went so fast, and senior year went even faster. I traveled overseas twice, once to Belfast and Southern England right before Halloween, and again in February of 2020 to Killarney, Ireland. By the time I returned for the second time, I was already accepted and committed to Loyola, and my classmates were talking about Prom. In that first week of March, I vividly remember thinking about how fast time flew by while I was in high school. Then COVID-19 happened.

    If I thought high school went fast, 17-year-old me would not even be able to begin to fathom how fast time will go afterwards. The third trimester of my senior year was completed on the couch, the Prom dress I picked out will never be bought, I’ll graduate on the street corner of my high school under a tent, and then suddenly I’m crying in bed when I found out that I wasn’t moving into school for my fall semester, something that I kept telling myself would happen to motivate myself to keep moving forward. In a time of such turmoil, uncertainty, and frustration, I would blink, and months would pass.

    Right now, I’m writing this sitting in the car home to New York with my parents in the front seat and all of my belongings in the trunk as I move home before I study abroad next semester, a dream that I have had since I was young. I’m now 20 years old, almost 21, and I’m in a relationship of over a year with someone who treats me with love and respect, something I never thought I would have. Time has been moving so fast, I’m growing up way faster than I want to, but the experiences I’ve had and the experiences I have before me are fulfilling the dreams of a young girl from a long time ago.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hamilton

  Will Pikus             Lin Manuel Miranda’s play “Hamilton” took Broadway by storm when it was released. Personally, I remember my parents looking into getting tickets for the show. We all realized it wasn’t worth it since tickets were over eight-hundred dollars per person. The play itself also struck me as kind of strange. I questioned why everyone was getting so excited over the ethnically swapped show. One character within the show was especially strange. King George is right where he was supposed to be the entire time. The tyrannical King is laughing maniacally after each of his songs about how “You’ll Be Back”. While this is likely an accurate depiction of King George, one big question comes to mind. Why is he still white?             As a student brought up last class, why was Hamilton’s story choses by Miranda? It’s one of the oldest whitest stories in th...
Read more

A Tale for the Time Being – "to live"

In the final third of Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being, old Jiko gives Nao and her father a seemingly simple – yet to them, a difficult – task: “to live” (362). While her final request to her descendants affects them deeply because of their suicidal ideations, it is also Jiko’s final comment on Zen Bhuddism. In the practice of Zen, one must be rather than think about being in order to truly be alive, so, Jiko’s request of Nao and Haruki #2 tells them to stop worrying, stop planning, stop thinking – just to live. Neither Nao or Haruki #2 actively lived in the moment before Jiko’s death, instead, they planned for the moment they would cease being. After her death, reporters, priests, and those who admired Jiko assumed that the meaning of her final writing, just the singular character for the phrase “to live,” was complex, deep, and mysterious. However, Nao and Haruki #2 are the only ones who understood the true intention of her final word. She simply tells them to be alive. By doing s...
Read more

Finale of A Tale for the Time Being

  Emma Straus    21 st Century Literature and Time    Final 3 rd of A Tale for the Time Being    September 2022        A Tale for the Time Being brings an ending that is hopeful with a touch of realism in only a way the novel itself could accomplish. It is filled with messages that are universal to the readers, as well as the characters, such as Ruth, in the novel. The ending encapsulates both mysteries and lessons to be learned.    At the end of the diary, Ruth finds herself confused and even a bit sad. The idea of “we’ll make magic together...” comes back, and Ruth is left to many questions. Of course, when the novel began, Nao’s and Ruth’s overlapping narratives were an essential part of the story. Throughout the story, Ozeki plants metaphors and plot points for readers to understand the way in which everything in itself is connected. The ending of the novel comes with the entanglement of the metafictions and met...
Read more