excitement

Riding home in the sunset with the moon out and the bright red leaves and yellows and greens along the river down below where you forget you're in a city for a minute and the air runs past and it's cold and fresh and you remember there's a world out there and it is good...that was my excitement for the day. It's finally, officially, wonderfully fall -- the leaves are changing and falling, that smell that seems to come all of a sudden one fine day every year has arrived, and the chill in the air that generally comes along with it has definitely hit. (I should probably close my window.) This makes me exceedingly happy. It means it will snow sometime in the not-too-distant future, and there will be cider and hot cocoa and cuddly sweatshirts and slippers, and Thanksgiving and then Christmas. And Christmas means I will have finished my seminar paper. And when I will have finished my seminar paper, my heart will be joyous and light and nimble as a young fawn leaping through a wood near a stream shaded by the rosy-blossomed shoots. (...I may have been reading too much Lyric lately...point is, I can't wait.)

Much as I'm enjoying most of my classes, the stress of this whole "coming up with something at least decent to write a 20 page paper on" thing is making me wonder if I want to devote myself to a life of perpetual self-doubt. You'd think I would have figured this out before starting grad school...but I guess I thought that being accepted and offered money would permanently dispel the self-doubt. Alas, I was young and foolish, and I have learned the error of my ways. Or some such. On the up side, though, Hebrew rocks my face off, Greek is still amazing, and I might get to go dig in the dirt this summer in some exotic far-off land...which would be pretty sweet. And this guy said "how do you do?" as I was walking up the stoop of my apartment building. Not a head-nod, not "howdy", but all out "how do you do?" I heart small pleasures.