Excerpts from the Peanut Gallery

From Tennyson's Ulysses:
...Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breath were life.
Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought...

Free hearts, free foreheads- you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Ok, so i know this poem is supposed to be from a man nearing the end of his life, and i- to the best of my knowledge - am not nearing the end of mine, nor am i a man (of that i am sure). but for the last 24 hours i have been at a lost as to what to write on here- a first this week! Tonight is my last night in Ottawa and as i was wandering past Rideau Hall and through the great residences of Rockcliff, i thought of that line "all experience is an arch wherethro' gleams..." and it just gave me some thoughts on things coming to an end. But Ulysses pushes on to the very end and goes out not with a whimper- but a bang. So here's to an awesome set of months, here is to all i have learned and to my teachers, here's to a million memories which would only make sense to a few, and here is to those few, who've shared this house, the LLC - its a good place. I am so blessed, how did i get this way? Only by grace. I guess all this to say, i am so thankful for this time here, and while i am sad to leave, i know that this experience is only pointing all of us here forward; there is so much hope in going out from here.

posted by Kiki @ 2:34 p.m.