Where to begin?

The shiny bubble containing my lofty hopes for blogging success was promptly burst upon starting university.
I am ashamed to admit that these ambitions were lost under the pile of books I was immediately pressed to conquer.
However, now that assessment season is over, I have rediscovered my blog and plan to attack it again.

My internet absence does not at all mean I have ceased to read fascinating books. Not at all. In fact I will give a quick run down of my course thus far, in the hopes of spreading the reputation of a simple arts degree not as a last-resort option for those who didn't get into anything "better", but as the ultimate way to explore a variety of interesting fields in as much detail as you want.

My first subject is philosophy. The unit itself has a very ambitious title: Reality, Ethics and Beauty. This means jumping into Parmenides, Plato, Hume, Smith, Kant, Tolstoy, Socrates, Aristotle and Al-Farabi, to name a few. I found myself spending hours trying to understand Supernaturalism, Realism, Cognitivism, and the World of Perfect Forms. I saw myself arguing Moore against Smith, then Hume against both, then being from non-being, and Tolstoy's "Infection theory" against Brillo boxes.
Philosophy is nothing short of a brain f***. Every lecture I leave with a migraine and a demented grin, if I'm not so absorbed in faraway, abstract thoughts to forget about facial expressions altogether. It really is marvelous, and my enthusiasm rewarded me in my assessment, as my tutor commented "this is everything a philosophy essay should be". Like an imbecile, though, I omitted a bibliography and paid the price in the form of a credit instead of a distinction.

Next comes studies of religion. I'm still amazed by how many people assume me to be religious upon hearing this. Does studying Arabic make one an Arab? Does studying religion make one religious? You wouldn't think so. Anyway, this subject is fiercely anti-Theological, as much as my politically correct lecturers would have me think otherwise. This semester is called "The History of God", comprising a eurocentric history of monotheism from Ancient Egypt to the present day, via Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Celtic and Nordic paganism, Gnosticism, ancient religions of Cyprus and Rome, Islam and more, even with a quick stopover for The Enlightenment and Renaissance Humanism. This is likely the subject I will end up majoring in. I cannot imagine studying anything more fascinating. The way the intertwine across space and time, the way they interact and integrate, develop and reminisce, preserve and advance, in my view makes religion the crowning glory of human inventions, even if simultaneously its most costly and damaging. For my assessment I tackled the theories of religion according to Freud and Jung. Enough said. It was amazing. I couldn't read enough. I bow to psychoanalysis.

Studies of Arabs, Islam and The Middle East is a subject hardly less demanding. Attempting to get some sort of grip on understanding Islam only proves to be less possible the more time you devote to it. As a cultural, religious, economic, historical being, the way in which islam has affected the populations of the world, and billions of changes and interactions it has brough about, is simply mind-boggling. Even studying pre-Islamic Arabia, a largely Christian region, requires knowledge of the various sects of Christianity, where they had come from and where they prevailed, how the economy and social life worked, and the same for the simultaneously important religions of Judaism and polytheistic Meccan paganism which contributed to the melting pot that was the Arabian peninsula even before the rise of Islam. To study it is a sort of escapism for me - something that would not have any effect on my everyday life had I not chosen to dive into it. I know that sounds nauseatingly ignorant, but I get the feeling that one could make their way through life in Australia without being aware of the subtleties of the history of the Middle East. All I know is that I love it, it dumbfounds me, and I want to get out there and check it all out for myself.

Finally, english. I have a love/hate relationship with english. I love reading the texts. Chaucer, Swift, Ovid, Shakespeare, Virgil - all names to make a literature fanatic weak at the knees. "Narratives of Romance and Adventure" as a unit title should be enough to lure even the most stringent book haters to the lectures. And it is amazing. I do wish, however, that there was some way in which I could complete the work of the course without being tested on it. I know, I know. But despite really enjoying "The Canterbury Tales", I dug my heels in life a tushy toddler when I found out there were deadlines I had to meet, analyses I had to make, and essays I had to write. I wanted to find myself lolling around in willow trees in the dappled afternoon sun, "Metamorphoses" in hand. Instead, I spend a lot of time hunched over my laptop cramming articles from Jstor and wishing I had started this earlier. It really makes the texts harder to enjoy. Complaints over, however hard it is, and however terrible my marks are, what I learn from my lecturers and author ancestors outweighs it all, every single day.

So there we go. Less brief than I had thought. And I didn't even get to tackle any of the texts in any sort of detail. But that will have to wait, as I am about to go jump back into "From The Holy Mountain", a piece of travel literature by William Dalrymple, who travels the path of the Byzantine Empire, hunting for the history of the largely forgotten Christian East. I will of course write about it when I have finished.

Until then, book-lovers!