Words of Innocence and Experience

Where’s the confusion?
A vision of what life is like
–James “Born of Frustration”

It was my first time to spend the weekend at the my rented room, vacillating between having the air-conditioner on or off. I’d tried to use little electricity, though. I left for the school early in the morning to enjoy free air-conditioning in the computer center and the library.

The department sent all students in our TESOL program two papers since the author is giving a speech at Tsing Hua some time in September. Anyway, I finally made my first contact with papers on English teaching.

I perused one of the two in the library. The content of the paper is fairly comprehensible, fortunately, discussing the function of discourse markers (i.e. fillers like and, so, all right, OK, well, now) in lectures. To my dismay, there is nothing exciting or inspiring about the paper, which is composed exactly the way how “normal” papers are written–citing past researches, criticizing them, and then introducing new ideas or results. I dozed off amid my reading and lay prone on the desk for half an hour. Ugh, I’ve never slept for so long in the library!

After waking up, I continued my reading. To disperse the boredom, I took a book about English love poetry and fliped through it whenever the paper bugged me.

It’s funny how unexciting TESOL papers are to me. Neverthelss, I also found that it might not be difficult to me to compose one, as long as I come up with ideas about a stupid experiment which other scholars haven’t tried. Perhaps it is possible for me to finish my studies early once again.

I haven’t thought about my future plans these days. I haven’t forgotten them, merely feeling that immersed in uncertainty and depression is useless. Besides, it is so much more pleasant to remember the way Dave’s luscious lips curve into his trademark wicked smile, the magical moments when he’d shout “oh yeah” in concerts, the way Martin’s head nods with the rhythm of the music, how Martin’s blond curls floats in the air when he dances, how D. H. Lawrence’s words burn with painfully vivid pictures of memory and desire.