Accurate Lines

"The college dreamed on--awake. He felt a nervous excitement that might have been the very throb of its slow heart. It was a stream where he was to throw a stone whose faint ripple would be vanishing almost as it left his hand. As yet he had given nothing, he had taken nothing."
--Description of Amory in college, This Side of Paradise

Four sentences about an American college youth waiting for the world to form its impressions on him. How accurately the author captures the sentiments we all experience at some point. In fact, I feel like this description at this very moment!

It is miserable to never be able to fully capture beautiful things. You would think that with a camera, you could easily trap reality, but photographs only dissappoint. I used to feel that I could do a passable job with music, on the piano, but now from lack of practice, my attempts at capturing emotions become frustrating sessions that first must overcome the barriers of techniques and familiarity with the music. I realize that it takes time and effort, things I don't have, to be able to have the luxury of expression. Listening to music, reading books, enjoying others' art, is always such a welcome pasttime. It is unfortunate that I must rely on others to portray my own sentiments.

I've only ever been noted for literary achievement three times in my life, but I deep down, I feel that they were won for an idea rather than for the execution. Without an idea, all I write is nothing. I can't capture, I can only analyze. I won something once writing about an essay by Charles Dickens, but not because I understood him and showed the true nature of his work, but because I extracted a single line from his essay, took it apart and turned it both upside down and inside out in bizzare permutations that produced an entertaining 1000 words on the use of imagination in Dickens's writing.

I took a creative writing class this past semester. We all shared what we wrote in class, and in general, it was very englightening to see how each person's writing is such a reflection of themselves. My instructors comments showed that I wrote ironically, I always had juxtaposed streams of thought running through, subtly, and one must read thoughtfully to catch them. But that is so boring to read! It's interesting enough in my own mind, as often I am lost in these thoughts, and they are understandable to myself, but I find them of utmost boredom on paper. Perhaps because we never just think in sequential ideas, but in idea trees that branch off in several places at once. I imagine the growth of fractals, but without such predictable arrangements. At any rate, my goal was to write a complete essay on my experience abroad last summer. I finally decided that, on paper under my hand, the experience becomes so cliched that it is better left in my private thoughts and reflections.