Thoughts on Samurai Jack (Season Two)

Today I sat down and watched Season Two of Samurai Jack. Needless to say, it definitely delivers. It not only keeps the intensity of the fight scenes, but also keeps the balance between action and quiet, keeps the overarching storyline, and contains some of my favorite episodes so far: Episode XIX, Episode XX, Episode XXIV, and Episode XXV. I will go over these four episodes in particular, explaining why I consider them my favorites (so far).

Episode XIX: "Jack Remembers the Past"

In his travels, Jack comes across the ruins of his former village. He wanders through it, seeing all the broken, worn-down buildings, and reminisces about his life as a child, before Aku spread his evil over the land. He remembers his first kiss, from a girl who was chasing locusts through a field with him. He remembers his father teaching him about fighting for what's his and what he believes in. He remembers his mother's embrace and the cherry blossoms falling gently in the spring wind. He remembers the grandness of the Imperial Palace.

Yet he is far in the future, and everything there has been deserted for years. Nothing remains except the hollow structures themselves. All Jack's friends and family are gone. The skies are overcast, the land is foggy and dark. All the happiness which his childhood memories brought him was taken from him in a single day, the day when Aku appeared. It's a poignant episode that reminds me of the Buddhist notion of impermanence. That is, everything passes away: people, animals, buildings, villages, emperors, cherry blossoms--they all pass away, sometimes in the blink of an eye. It reminded me of a well-known haiku by Issa:

In this world
we walk on the roof of hell
gazing at flowers.

That is, even though we see beauty all around us, we are still capable of losing it to imminent destruction; we gaze at the flowers in bloom, but we still stand on the roof of the underworld regardless. Impermanence is around us. Jack grasps this when he sees his village in total shambles, uninhabited and forlorn. He can't restore it, so he must soldier on and continue in his quest, constant in a world of impermanence and flux.

Episode XX: "Jack and the Monks"

In this episode, Jack meets three mysterious mountain-dwelling monks after telling himself that his quest to destroy Aku is impossible. He is at his lowest point so far. He has given up, he sees no point left in continuing his quest. However, he follows the three mysterious monks whom he met on the road. He tries to keep clearing a path for them, but they find their own way across the body of a steep, steep cliff. They end up in snow-capped mountains, where Jack can barely go on. This scene is what makes the episode a favorite of mine. Picture our hero, the seasoned swordsman, defeated, half his robe torn from his body, his hat gone, his body beaten and bloodied, lying in the snow. He shuts his eyes, ready to accept defeat and death. Then, a voice comes into his head:

Will you abandon their hope? Can you not feel their desperation? Will evil forever rule the world? Have you forgotten?

Suddenly it comes flooding back to Jack: the happiness of his old village, the people he has helped along the way, and his mother and father and fellow villagers slaving away in Aku's mines, building idols to the master of darkness. Will Jack let all the world be overrun by Aku's evil? Can he allow such things to pass? Never! Heaven forbid it. Jack picks himself up, despite the beating his body has taken, and he travels up the rest of the mountain, making it to the peak, where according to the monks there lies truth, and he cries to the winds that he will find Aku and destroy his darkness once and for all. This is a beautiful scene because it is archetypal. This is what a hero does when he is at his lowest; a true hero lets himself be reminded of why he is on a quest in the first place. Yes, he may hurt, and he may have strayed from the path, but his is still a noble goal, and his are still noble precepts. Discipline, resilience, dedication, control--these are the markings of a true hero. Jack picks himself up and climbs the mountain, ready at the end of the episode to live another day, to find Aku and purge the world of his darkness forever.

Episode XXIV: "Jack is Naked"

In contrast to the previous two episodes, which were more meditative and heroic in their themes, this episode is more of a frolicky one. Jack is bathing in a spring when a mysterious white rabbit steals his clothes. He follows the rabbit into a Wonderland full of weird-looking characters and wanders through their topsy-turvy city in search of the thief who stole his clothes. The key thing to remember is that Jack is totally nude for a substantial portion of this episode. Therefore, he has to find ways to conceal himself from the townspeople. He steals a cat burglar's outfit (and his bag of cats), wanders into a stage play dressed as a princess, and runs through town in a torn blue loincloth until he finds his clothes and sword.

While I enjoyed the previous two episodes for their more serious themes and atmosphere, I enjoyed this one for its surreal and comical premise. A seasoned samurai must chase a white rabbit while totally naked in order to get back his clothes and his sword. Seeing Jack try to hide his (admittedly handsome) body is fun, honestly. It's a classic nudity gag that you see in a lot of cartoons but with a twist on the nude character himself. A modest, stern samurai having to chase a white rabbit around Wonderland is certainly something to laugh at.

Episode XXV: "Jack and the Spartans"

This episode is more akin to the first two in this list. The story is narrated by the aged King of the Spartans, and details how Jack encountered a force of 300 men fighting mechanical minotaurs. The Spartans' kingdom is guarded by a narrow passage in the mountains which the minotaurs cannot cross (Thermopylae all but in name). Each day these robots attack the Spartan phalanxes, the phalanxes fend them off, and the robots pick their shattered comrades up, piece them together, and come back the next day. This has been going on for years and years. Jack tells the Spartans that there is another passage by which they could attack the minotaurs. The King decides to bring fifty of his best men with him and Jack as they go round that way, while the rest (including the King's son) stay at Thermopylae. The next day, the battle begins, and the phalanxes march boldly forward in rigorous Spartan form, launching small missiles from the ends of their spears (which I thought was a nice touch). Jack, the King, and the fifty men go round the other passage and assault the robots there. Jack and the King fight the robot's central complex and cause all the machines to shut down in a great explosion. The King and his men survive, but it seems that Jack does not. The final scene is of the aged King on his deathbed, telling all gathered around him of the "300 + 1", and how he believes that the one survived and is still out there.

This episode was special to me because I've always had a love of classical Greek culture, be it the myths, the history, the literature, the arts, etc. I always found the story of Thermopylae inspiring. These men died to protect the freedom and prosperity of their whole city-state, to prevent their state (and the other Greek poleis) from becoming subsumed and subjugated by the massive Persian Empire. To see a samurai help out the Spartans against their seemingly impossible foe in a fight ostensibly to the death made me, well, kind of geek out, in a way. My eyes were glued to the action the entire time. (Note: a neat effect that Tartakovsky does during his fight scenes is to change the animation's ratio to get a close-up, so that you view it in widescreen rather than full screen. It adds to the intensity of the scene, and I wish more animators did something like it.) The fight choreography was smooth and quick (as always, Tartakovsky's animation cuts through the viewer's field of vision like a katana cuts through a silken handkerchief). I highly recommend the entire show, this season, and these episodes in particular, as an examplar of truly great animation and storytelling!

Thoughts on "Samurai Jack" (Season One)

This morning I sat down and began watching Samurai Jack. I had only seen the show in excerpts and episodes out of context, and had very little prior knowledge aside from hearing about how awesome it was.

I can safely say that Samurai Jack (or at least its first season) is in fact quite awesome. Genndy Tartakovsky, the series's creator, is the uniquest animator working in the Western animation industry, in my view. His artstyle is suited to samurai material, with its bright, contrasting colors, shapes reminiscent of both kabuki and ukiyo-e, and the crispness of animation that he uses to choreograph action scenes.

The story, for those unacquainted, concerns a noble samurai--the son of an Emperor--whose land was besieged by an immense dark force, the wicked Aku (Mako Iwamatsu). This samurai was trained for years by various tutors around the world until he was ready as a young man to face Aku. Before he could triumph, however, Aku opened a portal in time, and flung the young samurai far into a future where Aku reigns supreme over all. Now, accompanied by his magic sword, the samurai--now calling himself Samurai Jack--must fight and overcome all manner of enemies and hardships in order to find and finally destroy Aku. Each episode details Jack overcoming an obstacle of some kind, usually in the form of Aku's minions, and he often helps others out as a result.

This story of a seasoned swordsman cast into an unfamiliar, gloomy future, a future full of hostile enemies and evils, is not a one-trick pony sort of affair. Each episode maintains my interest, because despite how skilled Jack is with the sword, there always exists an antagonist or obstacle that stops him from immediately gaining the upper hand and going on with his quest. His wits are tested, his strengths are stretched, his body and sword are beaten and battered. He is not let off easy. This is a problem I notice with action-oriented protagonists: either they are almighty right off the bat, or they are often made too powerful over time, and power creeps upon them (the most famous example perhaps being Dragon Ball, as well as other shounen series). The former is what I call a Mary Sue/Gary Stu; the latter--the power creep--is rather lazy, (because why write in difficulties and obstacles when you can arbitrarily power up your heroes and the crisis evaporates?). Regardless, to watch Jack struggle and earn success by his wits and his strength (and his sword) is rewarding.

I mentioned earlier that Tartakovsky's style is unique and reminiscent of Japanese art forms. The sharp, crisp animation and character designs really do remind me of both kabuki characters and the fantastic landscapes and monsters found in ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Jack's stern demeanor and Aku's malevolent grin seem to have leapt out of a kabuki performance or an Edo-period print by Kunisada. The choreography in the action scenes is also praiseworthy: it flows quick and smooth, giving the viewer multiple angles of the same action for solid effect, enhancing the intensity of the scene and pumping up the stakes.

I wholeheartedly recommend Samurai Jack so far. This season was a 10/10 broadly speaking, and I hope Season Two delivers consistent quality!

Something Silly

As an apology for the lack of a blog post yesterday, I present to you a funny little commercial featuring the one and only Vincent Price...as a polar bear...advertising wine coolers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVMXkj9DvMk

Perhaps it's the nostalgia talking, but I'm a bit enamored of these old commercials, and old TV in general. My high school radio and broadcasting teacher shared my love of retro media. When he cleared out his old office during my senior year, everyone in the class got to sort through all his records and take home whatever we wanted. I took home a Hall and Oates album as well as a collection of Paul Lynde's zingers from Hollywood Squares, among others.

People say that mass media has declined in the past couple decades. I think it might be a bit of nostalgia coming through in our collective attitudes. We want new movies, shows, music, and comics, to be the same as the movies, shows, music, and comics that we remember from our younger years. Sed tempora muntantur nos et mutamur in illis. That is, times change and we are changed with them. We like to see things from our childhoods as good or pleasant because we don't know how to judge the future.

(I wasn't sure where to go with that paragraph. This is just something that popped into my head as I was typing.)

Enjoy the commercial! :-)

Poem: "Equinox"

"Equinox"

Each morning in September, I wake up
and darkness lingers, just a little longer;
a shadow of passion from last night
that fears its own canopy of starlight so much
it never leaves unless pushed out
by an overbearing sun.

Yet sometimes the darkness,
with its celestial tenderness,
its willingness to open itself up
so man can see the endless starry portal
and re-evaluate his size,
sometimes these things make pre-dawn more welcome
than those first softly-jagged
rays of pink and blue
I try to chase as I get up for work.

Some mornings,
I'll shut off my alarm and lie in bed,
resisting Sleep's invitation
and Death's intimation,
fearing what might happen to the soul
when I've closed my eyes.
Will this be the last time my eyes are shut?
Will they open again to a deeper blackness,
to Sheol or Paradise,
Elysium or Purgatory?

I look out the window at the stars--
what few I can recognize--
and thinking about the chaos
which Hubble paints for spirits bound in earth,
and how it is only a recollection
of what may have already coalesced
or given way to newer forms
of retold myths, or myth unexplored.

Gazing up, immutability and mutation,
structure and dissolution,
erasure and creation,
time's flux and one moment
fall into place, into a dance
whose footsteps echo down the ages,
but now remain untrodden:
Waltz without meter,
Ballroom without dancers,
Paralyzed dancing,
Union annulled,
Silence where we must have music,
Galleries where we must have painting,
Altars and rites with no celebrant.

And when I look up
at the retreating starlight
and the fading Venus,
and that little inkling of the cosmic order,
I feel myself moving slowly towards the door,
and I say to myself,
"I'll go for a walk."

Possible Novel Ideas

For a long time I've considered writing a novel. Most of my writing has been poetic, but I've also wanted to write a proper story. Not that I've grown tired of writing poems, but I want to dip my toes into storytelling. In particular, I've thought about two different story ideas that I'll detail below:

1. Romance of the Seven Planets. A science-fantasy adventure tale inspired by the manga/anime Seiho Bukyo Outlaw Star and set in a universe where the cultures of Imperial China and Victorian Britain lasted into the Space Age. The protagonist (name to be determined) is a young man, first son of a prominent tea merchant fallen on hard time, has his eyes set on the cosmos. When his father's business is shut down by the Heavenly Emperor's army, the young man steals his father's tea trade secrets and stows away aboard a renegade British space pirate vessel, the Prometheus. This vessel, once the flagship of the Royal Space Navy, is headed by a mysterious cyborg captain who almost never shows his face to his crew. Our youthful protagonist finds out that his new home is bound for a semi-legendary pirate hangout on Charon, the outermost planetary settlement that mankind has settled prior to entering interstellar space.

This is just a rough story idea. Pirate-themed stories along the lines of Treasure Island fascinated me as a kid. I'll draw up a more complete draft of this story, whose title may also change (it was originally a reference to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, as the story was originally more akin to a wuxia or Chinese-themed novel).

2. In the Hall of the Sapphire King. A medieval-fantasy adventure featuring anthropomorphic animals. Inspired by various anthro-themed media--Redwall, The Secret of NIMH, and The Great Mouse Detective, to name a few--and originally starring a mouse character created by an internet friend of mine as well as my own character/fursona, Tybalt, Sixth Baron Boulderpaw. However, I am considering making Tybalt the main character, and creating friends and fellow-travelers who can go with him on a journey. The main idea is a typical quest story, this time in search of the mysterious Sapphire King. The Sapphire King is a mysterious blue wizard, a sorcerer who lives in a land of permanent ice and snow far to the North, a place from which no man has returned alive. He is rumored to possess supreme alchemical knowledge as well as riches beyond any mortal's wildest dreams. It is said his palace is made of pure sapphire and his body is tinged with blue as well. Tybalt, the young and adventurous Sixth Baron of Boulderpaw, is totally determined to acquire the alchemical knowledge which this mysterious entity is rumored to possess. His grandfather, the Fourth Baron, passed a secret on to Tybalt as he lay dying: his secret journals, full of legends and notes on spells, contain a putative map to the Sapphire King's icy lair.

This story is one I've given more thought to, especially after I finished the first Redwall novel and began reading The Fellowship of the Ring. I'll go through and give this idea a more complete draft as well. In fact, I've already handwritten a couple opening chapters. If I revise those, I'll be sure to post them here and ask for criticism and suggestions. I'm always open to comments and the like. Let me know in the comments on this post what you think of these two ideas. :-)

Silent Meditation

On Wednesday I watched a video by a YouTuber whom I enjoy, TheBurgerkrieg. It's a guided meditation video to help overcome panic/anxiety attacks. As someone who has consumptive panic and anxiety from time to time--when it happens it feels like I'm shutting down and can't think straight--I decided to listen along with it. 

In the end, I found it very, very soothing. In particular, the focus on breathing and the sensations of inhaling and exhaling felt stabilizing. It felt like I could anchor myself by focusing on the breath. Even when thoughts intruded into my head and distracted me, it was ok. Everyone has those thoughts, and they will pass. "Let them be there."

I decided today to try silent meditation on my own. I set a timer for ten minutes, took off my glasses, shut off the lights in my room, closed my eyes, and focused on breathing. In, out. In, out. In, out. I just kept focusing on the breath, kept breathing in and breathing out, until the timer went off.

Now, I don't have any dramatic, third eye-opening account of enlightenment to relate here. It was nothing like that. There was no satori--no sudden moment of enlightenment or ascendance into a plane of higher being, or anything like what you hear from the average New Ageist. However, when I did wake, it felt for a moment like I had a very foreign feeling. Everything felt different. Perhaps it was because of the evening getting darker, but I felt like I had stepped into a new world. I felt completely at ease. Nothing about me felt perturbed or tired. It felt as though I had undergone a bit of spiritual tidying up, a reset that allowed me to calm myself and unburden the little stresses that I accumulate over time.

I have a feeling that ten minutes of silent meditation will help me become more aware of myself--my body, my thoughts, and the external stimuli to which mind and body respond--and so I plan to do it daily. I consider it a mental/spiritual exercise, a complement to my physical exercises. 

Mens sana in corpore sano.

Boredom and how I'm staving it off

Being honest here, the past few days have been getting increasingly boring. The weather has been cold and wet where I am, so it's not as if I could go outdoors for a walk or bike ride. Especially with all the social and physical distancing going on, everyone is isolating themselves either on government orders or out of fear of potential contagion. The only other person I share this house with is my grandma, and she's not a very active person.

In short, I'm beginning to feel more and more bored. I don't have much to do outside of sit around, sleep in, drink tea, and rinse-repeat. In light of this, however, I am adding more things to my routine that I can do.

1. Working out
At my school there was a gym with weights, and I was doing a 5x5 weight lifting routine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Since my campus shut down, all of that is caput. Not being one to let myself atrophy, however, I have decided to keep working out with a new regimen. Before, I was doing 5 sets of 5 reps of squats, bench press/overhead press, and barbell row/deadlift. Now, I'm doing the same 5x5 pattern, but with squats, sit-ups, and push-ups. These are good body weight exercises to work with, don't require too much space, and can still help me lose my excess belly fat and build more muscle. The goal I've set is to be able to do 100 of each exercise. I'll probably stick to the Mon-Wed-Fri schedule, and jog or ride my bike or do some other exercises on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday/Sunday. I downloaded a PDF from r/bodyweightfitness that has a bunch of exercises you can do that don't require equipment at all. In general, I'm getting back into shape to kill time.

2. Reading more
Most of my time in school was occupied by reading for school. It hit me recently that I didn't read for pleasure as much as I'd like to. Now that I have all this free time on my hands, I can read much more for pleasure than I was formerly able. A few days ago I read excerpts from a medieval Japanese work (my thoughts on it are up for all to read), and currently in my sights I have Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain. Really looking forward to completing it and many other books in my ever-expanding collection (including LotR, which I told myself I would finish before seeing the movies).

3. Writing more
As with reading for pleasure, my school assignments didn't give me much time for leisure writing. Now that I've got hours and days to myself, I can do a lot more writing on my own. Mostly it's been diary entries that have taken this spot. I like writing in my diary and putting bits of it on this blog from time to time. The diary is a great place for rough drafts and quick sketches of ideas that I can refine and post here. I've done it already with thoughts on Hojoki and plan to follow that post up with some thoughts on the concept of "impermanence" that was a major theme in that work. In addition, I'll be posting more poems, and will probably finish a story if I can focus and put my nose to the grindstone with regards to actually writing it.

These are just a few things I've come up with to pass time in isolation. Let me know what you think. :-)

Poem: "When Will It Come?"

Everyone has an autumn,
a twilight of their life,
before their souls slip
delicately away into
fields of asphodel,
pits of Tartarus,
blessed islands of Elysium,
whatever afterlife may be,
where souls walk
and the others there are made of cardboard.

When, I wonder, will it come for me?
Will it announce itself like a bear
prowling through winter woods,
woken roughly from its drunken sleep,
by a hunter's gunshots
echoing between the dead pines?

Or will it sneak upon me
not more than a year from now?
Will it come for me as it came for Schubert?
So hopeful in the latest bloom
of his juvenility, his heart
burning with piano trios, a great symphony,
and song after song after song after song,
each melody like a shattered piece of shell,
all of them washed up on the blank beach of sheet music
like a mosaic of harmonies
a mosaic of exuberance,
unperturbed even by the possibility of death,
inevitability be damned!

Or will that afterlife
come in, neither sneaking nor parading,
but will it just come in,
perhaps landing delicately from the ash-grey skies,
to the tune of some hallucinatory choir
mistaken, in this vast forest, for songbirds?
Perhaps there are angels in the wintry woods,
singing, whispering to themselves, looking at me
with a mixture of laughter and appreciation
that I am walking naked in this place,
skinny-dipping in the Styx,
pondering the aftermath,
asking if I will meet my heroes
while the snow gently falls from the grey sky.

The trees whisper with the wind.
They are not talking to me, but I can still hear them.
It is a kind of half-answer, only revealed when needed.
Perhaps the bear will stay asleep forever,
perhaps Schubert will stay entombed forever
in silence, no further music to scribble down
on a napkin in a Viennese cafe.

And perhaps there's nothing. What of that?
At least I spent some time pondering.
some time walking in the woods is healthy, after all,
because one walk is never like another, you know,
where the environment changes even at the
microcosmic level.

And, at the very least, I killed time.

Thoughts on "Hojoki"

Today I read excerpts from Hojoki, or "An Account of My Hut", by Medieval Japanese author Kamo no Chomei (1153-1216). It was in an anthology of Japanese literature, and I figured that I would read all the excerpts in one go (it wasn't very long).

I found it interesting. It begins with a rumination on the temporary, ephemeral nature of man's existence:

"The flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same. The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration: so in the world are man and his dwellings."

That first sentence brought to my mind the famous proverb of Heraclitus, "Everything flows," and the second sentence is so characteristically Buddhist in its metaphor and meaning. These two sentences encapsulate perfectly what Kamo no Chomei sets out to discuss: the impermanence of man's life, his world, and his accomplishments; and how they all can be swept away as though they were a speck of dust in a whirlwind.

Speaking of whirlwinds, the work goes on to give an account of the natural disasters and famines that swept through Japan in the late Heian era.

Chomei describes a great fire that burnt down a third of the capital city, Heian-kyo in Kyoto, in the year 1177. Many, many houses were lost to the blaze (including sixteen noble mansions), and several thousand people died in the fire. "Of all the follies of the human endeavor, none is more pointless than expending treasures and spirit to build houses in so dangerous a place as the capital." 

Chomei describes a great whirlwind which came about in 1180, and which destroyed house after house as it moved. "Even so must be the blasts of Hell, I thought." 

Chomei mentions the moving of the capital from Kyoto to Fukuhara-kyo, also in 1180, where it remained so for six months. It had been several centuries since the capital had been fixed at Kyoto, so this move caused a disturbance among the imperial court. The city itself was cramped, the environment inhospitable, and the nobles who should have worn elegant robes and held cultivated airs and manners now went about in simpler attire and with manners "like those of rustic soldiers."

Chomei then describes the great famine which swept across the land starting in 1181. It lasted two years, and people in the city became desperate for food and resources when the countryside on which they relied failed to produce sufficient food. More and more people began to beg on the side of the road and died of starvation. Some people began stealing from temples and shrines to provide for themselves. "It was because I was born into a world of foulness and evil that I was forced to witness such heartbreaking sights."

Chomei describes an earthquake of exceptional severity that took place in 1185 which utterly demolished temples, houses, shrines. Every structure that could be broken was torn asunder. "Of the four great elements, water, fire, and wind are continually causing disasters, but the earth does not normally afflict man."

After all these tragedies, and after considering the hardships of life in this world, Chomei makes up his mind to renounce the world, in true Buddhist fashion. He becomes a Pure Land priest and resolves to live out the remainder of his life in solitude. "For over thirty years I had tormented myself by putting up with all the things of this unhappy world." He had no family ties or stipend at the imperial court--what had he to lose?

He built a hut "ten feet square" and essentially lived a simple lifestyle. He enjoyed the simple pleasures of music, poetry, and admiring the natural beauty which the seasons brought to him in time, all the while meditating on the suffering of the material world. "Only in a hut built for the moment can one live without fears...The hermit crab chooses to live in little shells because it well knows the size of its body...Knowing myself and the world, I have no ambitions and do not mix in the world. I seek only tranquility; I rejoice in the absence of grief."

Yet, despite his affection for his hut, he is reminded of the Buddhist teachings of impermanence and non-attachment: "The essence of the Buddha's teaching to man is that we must not have attachment for any object. It is a sin for me now to love my little hut, and my attachment to its solitude may also be a hindrance to salvation...I told myself that I had fled the world to live in a mountain forest in order to discipline my mind and practice the Way. 'And yet, in spite of your monk's appearance, your heart is stained with impurity. If your low estate is a retribution for the sins of a previous existence, is it right that you afflict yourself over it? Or should you permit delusion to come and disturb you?' To these questions my mind could offer no reply."

These writings posed an interesting query to me. Do I think about impermanence enough? There are so many ways in which my life could come crashing down; indeed, it has come undone in a few ways in the course of my years. What can I do to prevent my life from crashing down, or can I even do anything? My house, my family, my education, my hobbies--is that all just foam on a river that is formed in the morning and gone by the evening?

Re: Coronavirus and What I'll Be Doing Now

The coronavirus pandemic has gotten more out of hand than anyone could have imagined. As of today, my campus has effectively shut down and sent all students home. I am at my own home with my grandmother, having arrived with all my possessions yesterday. For the next week and half the school is on spring break, and the spring term which would normally take place in May has been cancelled. Classes will resume online, and I intend to work hard and finish my assignments to the best of my ability, as I had been doing before.

That update aside, what shall I do with all the extra time on my hands? I outline what I'm planning to accomplish in my diary. Here's an excerpt:

The world outside may be turbulent and chaotic, but I can make some sense of things with what is laid out directly before me. I have decided I will plant potatoes in the field out behind my house. There is enough room, and my grandmother will be planting tomatoes and squash, as she does every year.

I'm looking forward to a far simpler life. Perhaps in trying to make the most of unusual circumstances I'm being overly-Romantic, but I've wanted to do this for a while now. Something like gardening would be fantastic, a practice to which I could devote all my energies and physical faculties. Growing potatoes, maybe corn, or even turnips or carrots or cabbage would be a great way to use all the extra time I now have. Granted, I still have work to do (my school assignments will now be online), but with the extra time I can do other things, and that way I'll stave off boredom and excess worry and depression.

I'll also be able to regularly update my blog (quod erat demonstrandum), which is usually silent due to schoolwork draining much of my time and energy (and spirit, to be truthful). Really, this pandemic has somewhat of a bright side; it only needs to be found by careful, calm thinking and planning. To quote one sage:

"Let not your heart run away from you, lest your mind grow legs and follow it." --Patrick Star, Spongebob Squarepants.

I've also decided to devote much more time to reading and exercise. I no longer have access to a gym, and the gyms around me are probably closed, so I'll be looking into regimens I can do sans weights and racks.

I've also got some literature suited to the current situation: The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, The Golden Sayings and Enchiridion by Epictetus, An Account of My Hut by Kamo no Chomei, and Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. The former two are prime examples of Stoic wisdom meant to help the reader endure, and the latter two are "recluse literature", in that they both pertain to isolated living and the spiritual reflections of the individual who undertakes such a life. I'm very much looking forward to these books. 

I will make absolutely certain to update this blog every day, posting my thoughts, the state of things, progress on my potato garden once it's planted, and maybe more poems and those stories that I may at last complete. I will end this post with a small poem, a free-verse haiku which ended today's diary entry:

Last day of winter:

in the dying tree

are some robin's eggs hatching.