RyanHarne.com

My outlook for this semester is hopeful, even though the first week of Super Fall Semester 2006! has left me stunned. I would use the term “depleted” but I still have enough mental capacity right now to put this down to bits and bytes. Perhaps, even, I am mis-diagnosing this state while I could actually be over-reflective of the summer that I miss so much.

With the flocks of people back here and also the new kids, Blacksburg becomes little more than a resort for 20some thousand “students”. Facilities, apartments, residence halls, landscaping, even those robins I admired this summer - everything that was at peace over the summer is abused or ignored entirely. Squirrels are chased, where they previously were left brunching on fresh acorns. Grass is trampled and slaughtered, where it previously flourished and allowed the occasional passerby rest upon its tufts. Power plants reach and maintain peak output capacities, where they previously burned less coal and had previously emitted far fewer harmful smog particulates into the air.

This may sound like a treatise against urbanization, but that would be a false conclusion. Large, concentrated cities compact and centralize; here there is a massive spread outwards of the effects. I am positive you may find a Coca-Cola machine in the Dairy Center, far removed from campus the bustle, and they could possibly be plans to plant one on the Duck Pond route. The separated and diverse use of the land - irregular and careful use during the summer, critical mass overloads during semesters - is partially what depresses me.

So, my outlook may still be hopeful but I won’t blame the depleted feeling on courses or RA stuff or Bollo’s shifts. I blame it on the perception that the Earth is humankind’s playground, best exemplified by the hoards of people who come to Blacksburg that have been cultured and socialized to constantly take for granted anything that comes their way.

Frankly, I’m not sure where I am going with this. I always thought Ishmael is one of the best books, ever.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 4:17 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.