Broken-Tail-Squirrel

There is a philosophy paper I should be writing write now, or even a japanese paper that needs to get done by Friday, but I've already written a third of the philosophy paper tonight and don't have mind enough to continue.

Instead, I want to write about my favorite squirrel. Simply because.

My favorite squirrel on all of campus is Broken-tail-squirrel. I met him last year, or rather I cam across him repeatedly as he schizophrenically did whatever it is squirrels do with their time midwinter with two feet of snow on the ground. He was scrawny, very thin. Thin enough that I wondered if he had enough fat to survive the rest of winter, and February here is no were close to the end of winter. We had flurries in April last year, and it took well over a month for the two feet of snow that fell on Valetine's day to dissipate. I saw Broken-tail-squirrel shortly after this large snow, he was digging about in the snow, and like his name implies, his tail was broken in two. That latter half swung back and forth as he hopped around. It seems to have snapped clearly, but remained attached so that the tail arched as usual up to the break, then the rest of it hung vertically and dragged on the ground.

I'd never seen such an injury in an animal before. I wondered if there was an open wound that might get infected, or if the bit of tail dragging behind him might impede his survival. He was so tiny, I was sure I would never see him again.

Yet the next day I saw him, as active as any of the other squirrels, his tail dragging behind him. When I saw him, which was at least three or four times a week, I would comment to whoever was with me at the time, "Oh look, its Broken-tail-squirrel." Around mid-March I stopped seeing him. Slightly disheartened I figured he had finally fallen ill, or starved or been killed.

It wasn't until after all the snow had melted in late April and the temperatures had finally begun to rise that I saw him again.

On South Campus, in the same general area where I used to come across Broken-tail-squirrel, a squirrel darted in front of me on the side walk and up a nearby tree. He stopped around my head's height on the trunk and observed the surroundings. I glanced at him, as is my habit of following the activities of the squirrels around me and giggling at their antics, and found that he had an abnormally short tail. It was only about half the length of the tails of its peers. I had noted that some squirrels did have very short tails, but there was something odd about this one. The tip didn't taper off as most squirrel tails do. It just stopped.

Not thinking any more of it, I continued about my day. I don't recall if it was before seeing this particular squirrel or shortly after, but my room mate and I came across a soggy piece of fur on the sidewalk on the way to lunch on day. Looking at it I commented that it looked like a squirrel tail. It was the same grey fur with white over fur that most squirrels of this area have, the exception being the large and somewhat creepy brown squirrels. The bit of flesh was stuck to the sidewalk and the ragged fur blew in the wind. My room mate said it was disgusting. It didnt particularly bother me.

That is until I thought of Broken-tail-squirrel! I thought, what if the broken half had fallen off? How many squirrels are missing large portions of their tails on this small campus? Not many! Broken-tail-squirrel must have still been around, and here was his broken tail!

When I next saw the peculiar squirrel with the abnormally short tail I observed the tail. It cut off abruptly with the long fur from earlier on in the tail hanging loose where there was nothing underneathe it. This was Broken-tail-squirrel! He had survived the winter, and though he still looked very small, he was healthy and vibrant.

When I returned to school in the fall I found him again, he is still around, though now his tail seems to have round out where fur has grown over what was likely bare skin before. I look out for him when I am outside, just to make sure my favorite hardy little squirrel is still around.

Other people's issues

Lay your worries down on me,
My shoulders are strong,
and I have long since learned the art
of shrugging off the harm.
So lay you worries off on me
so I can shrug my shoulders clean,
Then when I take my leave of thee
We will both end up free.

As of late, I have noticed that I have become somewhat of the person to go to (even to those I hardly speak to) to spill all their problems. They bitch and complain and spill their worries, I nod sympathetically and offer what advice I can, tell them I understand. Then they say, "I'm sorry, I just laid all my worries on you/ just told you my life story," to which I reply, "That's okay, I'm a good listener, it doesn't bother me."

I wonder, have I always been this way?

At my boredest...

It turns out I'm at my boredest in Philosophy....who'd have thought. I mean, its not like I've mentioned it at all before and complained about the class....yeah.

I tend to spill out poetry when bored and already two things have been created in philosphy, one complete and the other just a jumble of thought.

Completed:
Philosophy just might be
The most backward subject
I’ve studied.
Round and round
The argument goes
And still a conclusion
We forego.
This is this,
But this is not.
We are brains!
We are minds!
And while we argue
What are functional and natural kinds
I watch the bee fly
Into the ceiling light.

and the jumble of thoughts....

What if when I saw red, I saw what you saw when you saw green? and I always described it the same way as you because I was always taught to describe it that way too. So when saw a fire burning bright red and described it as such to you, you imagined it like you see red, but I saw and imagined it like you saw green! We would never know we saw different things!

Philosophy

Philosophy sucks. Philosophers are idiots. They ask all the wrong questions and answer them all incorrectly. The subject as a whole seems totally useless since there is no practical application for their studies. I'm taking a class on Philosophy of the Mind and its place in nature. The class started with the professor claiming that philosophers wanted to know more about the mind so that they might come to know whether or not the mind can live on after the body dies.

We started with Cartesian Dualism. There were some obvious issues with Dualism, like the fact that mind and body are completely different substances, so people argue about how then can the mind control the body, or the body affect the mind. So then we look at Identity theory and Functionalism and blah blah blah. In Functionalism they basically argue that the mind and brain are a computer......wow. And computers can live on in the after life, I'm sure.

We continue on about what is the science of the mind? Is it psychology? Neuroscience? Either way, it seems that they constantly argue that the mind is somehow related to the brain and is just physical. The way I understand it, we could be robots!

I personally think psychologist are full of shit. If they cannot explain the crazy dreams I have, I think they are missing something then. And neuroscience? What about individuals? If things are all just brain functions, then so much for personality. It would be nicer to think we are more than just moving sacks of flesh.

I guess the base of my qualm with philosophy of the mind is how they went into this wondering if we can exist in some way after death, yet they toss aside any idea that recommends a description of the mind in which we are more than robots.

I am not a religious person. However, I know for a fact that I am more than my brain functions. I refuse to accept these idiotic simplifications of humanity and all life in general. If that is faith, then so be it.

Back from tutoring

I just got back from tutoring at the nearby elementary school. I tutor two fourth grade girls in math. It went well, though one is just plain wild.

I'll be alone for alot of this evening, my roommate is meeting up with her boyfriend and his friends from a neighboring college to go see the Iron and Wine concert in Cleveland tonight. Therefore my currnet dilemna is whether or not I want to go eat dinner in the dining hall or save my meal for later in the week and just eat something else tonight. I am rather feeling like cooked food (however bad it might be ) over microwave mac and cheese rigt now.

Outside, two people just walked by. I couldn't hear them. You would think I shouldnt be able to hear them, however, in the evenings there is often some loud mouth talking that I can hear clearly despite them being three stories below me.

I just noticed there is a peculiar fruit haning from the tree just outside my window. They look somewhat like small bananas, but light brown in color. I would say they are seed pods, but they look so big to be so.

We're having a bit of a drought here. All of the students couldn't be happier about it, cause who wants rain when they can be plyin ultimate frisbee or study outside rather than in? I, being the lover of late Autumn and Winter that I am, am wishing for rain and a significant drop in the daily temperature. I need cool temperatures to be comfortable. I need cool temperatures to sleep well. Currently I havent been sleeping too well because it is too warm at night. The temperatures are only just beginnging to cool enough at night that I actually turn off the fan by the window, though this is mostly out of pity for my skinny room mate who doesnt have enough fat on her body to preserve sufficient body heat to survive the winter without praying for spring after the first chill. I, on the other hand, anxiously await the first snow.

I've always loved something about winter. I love the pristine snow covered environment after the first big blizzard, I love seeing my breathe when I exhale, I love having a reason to snuggle into the deepest depths of my blanket. The first day of Autumn has passed, yesterday was it? Now I just need to have patience for the temperature to drop and the first frozen precipitation to fall, hiding the hideous filth with which we cover everything so for a moment before we clear th roads and salkt the sidewalks, everything is clean.... and everything is beautiful.

Finally,

Okay, I have finally finished my Japanese homework, there was more than I thought there was. The last thing I needed to do was fill out a worksheet about the reading we had been doing. The last question asked us to translate the last four lines from Souseki's "夢十夜：第一夜", or " Ten Nights of Dreams: the First Night", or something like that.

The whole story is about a woman dieing an a man coming to terms with it. When the woman dies she tells the man, "Wait for me by my grave for one hundred years, then I will come to you". At the end of the story, the man has been sitting on a rock by the woman's grave for one hundred years, but she has yet to come. The final line is along the lines of, " At that moment he felt (thought?), 'One hundred years have passed'". And that's it, the story ends. Its rather sad, he waits all those years so that he may see the woman again, but she doesn't come.

Such a depressing dream... I have my share of those. I'll share them with you at a later time, but now seems like a good a time as any to hit the hay. Good night.

Boredom: the first day

This isn't really the first day of anything, unless you count the first day of this blog. I was just reading my past post in my Japanese blog and noted that I had no comments whatsoever. I have many friends taking Japanese, however they are all too lazy to take the time to read my journal in another language. So on a whim I started a second blog, this time is English which will probably closely mirror my Japanese blog, except in a language more easily read by my peers. I'll have to put this down for a little while, I kind of still have Japanese homework to do before I can goof off like this. Until then...また後でね？