Well, here in Arizona the spring has been in full bloom for the entire month of March. The weather is really beautiful, but the intense summer will soon be here...

School has been hectic, but I'm really enjoying my classes. It surprises me how much tougher the courses get with each passing semester. I've been struggling with my declaring majors. I'm a minor in Italian, a major in Literature, but I want to add on another major. Until recently, I was always a double major with Philosophy, but now I'm thinking career-wise, and I've been struggling between PHI and Art History...I think I might really want to go with the art, it'd be more competitive, but I think I might really enjoy it. It's just so strange--here I am, a sophmore in a university, about to make a decision that will affect a good part of my future. I always imagined what it be like, but now it all just seems so surreal, as if it's not actually happening, not me, not now. Life is so strange.

But I hope all of you are enjoying the arrival of spring and that you aren't stressing too much over school, which I know is a hard thing. Go out and enjoy the time, it really passes by so quickly.

"Incantation"
by Czeslaw Milosz

Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.
It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,
Giving us the estate of the world to manage.
It saves austere and transparent phrases
From the filthy discord of tortured words.
It says that everything is new under the sun,
Opens the congealed fist of the past.
Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia
And poetry, her ally in the service of the good.
As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth,
The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit.
Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.

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I’m always fascinated by this poem each time I read it. It holds such great beauty and has a certain underlying power to it. A piece I like to read every once in awhile.

I think it's a record that I haven't been on DA for so long, and now that I finally check, I've got 700 pageviews! Thanks to everyone who keeps coming.

I studied all of last week for these midterms, and yesterday I was up for 20 hrs straight...not something I'm wanting to repeat again any time soon. Too much stress, but I think I did really well on most of the examinations.

I've rested, but still a little tired. I will begin the long process of commenting on the 54 deviations, 20 comments, 20 journals, and other things that have really filled up my inbox. Be warned that it will take a while, but I'll eventually get to everyone.

Thanks again to everyone!!!

Elisa A. G.

Wow, I've got tons of deviations to look at and comment on, I promise to look at all of them, might take me awhile. Sorry for the delays, school is hectic right now, 6 midterms coming up and all in the same week! Makes me want to scream...I'm taking slow breaths and trying to make it.

Hope everyone is well.