Happy news
This morning I received a letter of acceptance from the literary translation MA program at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. I have hated and loved and struggled with these five years, but I have to say (as cheesy as it may sound) that "everything has its time" (Ecclesiastes 3). Looking back, it is obvious to me why I had to live through and learn to love these difficult experiences. I am 30 and feel as if my life were just beginning.I'll be leaving Santa Marta next September and will return in August to begin planning our wedding in earnest--hopefully for fall 2009.
There are no words...so I turn to Rilke:
"It is breathtaking simply to be here. Girls, even you
knew, who seemed so deprived, so reduced, who became
sewers yourselves, festering in the awful alleys of the city.
For each of you had an hour, perhaps a bit less,
at worst a scarcely measurable span between while and while,
when you wholly were. Had all. Were bursting with Being.
But we easily forget what our laughing neighbor
neither confirms nor envies. We want to show it off,
yet the most apparent joy reveals itself only after
it has been transformed, when it rises within us.
My love, the world exists nowhere but within us.
Withinwarding is everything. The outer world
dwindles, and day fades from day. Where once
a solid house was, soon some invented structure
perversely suggests itself, as at ease among ideas
as if it still stood in the brain."
~ from "The Seventh Elegy" in Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies, translated by William Gass
posted by amcorrea @ 12/11/2007 01:37:00 PM
6 Comments:
Wonderful. That was your top choice, right? Enjoy grad school. I'm in finals right now and can't say it's all it's cracked up to be.
All the best.
Congratulations, Ana Maria, I can already see you there! Um, did you say something about "planning our wedding?" I scrolled back through the entries, but I feel as though I've missed something...
Yes, Chelsey. The other programs were in translation studies--this one is for literary translation. (W.G. Sebald was a professor there and there's also a translation centre, which he founded.) So Merry Christmas to me! :) Hope all went well for you in your finals!
Missy, it's true. I haven't mentioned any of this stuff on the internet at all--but we've been together since May 2006 and are hoping to get married after the MA.
Who's "we"?
I echo Missy - it's so easy to see you there. Rilke is, as usual, a perfect narrator to the emotions below the surface. I'm so very, very happy for you. And being a little further away from finals than Chelsey, can say grad school really was everything I hoped. Ah, the joyous blurriness of hindsight!
So exciting! Congrats on all of the above. And hey, since your (and my) undergrad degree may soon be worthless, extra diplomas are always good. ;)
Hi Ana Maria! Congrats!! I'm running into the same problem Jill had with being recongnized in the blog...can you send me an invitation to join the blog and see if that works? Thanks. carrita79@yahoo.com
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