fear

fear is when you're on your knees,protecting your charge from the blades of other ice skaters. fear is when you pray fervently, each time he falls, that no one, no wheelchair, or no sled will run over his fingers. or neck. fear is when he wobbles on his too-tight skates and threatens to pull you down with him, mostly succeeding.

fear is when you read and reread a sentence, and have absolutely no clue what is going on, despite knowing the meaning of each and every word that makes up the sentence. fear is when you decide to wiki or google it and realise that everyone else (aside from your tutor) is probably like you, except they don't have essays due in 24 hours.

i've been reading armstrong's thermometer theory of knowledge for the past two hours now, despite it being only about 20pages long. let's just say, i will never look at a thermometer in the same way again (i might actually scream and run away if someone so much as puts one in front of me). he uses a thermometer as an analogy for his theory, which is well and good, except this time the analogy befuddles me more than that theory does. (or maybe i'm just really dumb?)

fear is when you realise you will be tested on such topics, and you just know you will have nothing to say. (at this point, i must qualify my usage of 'know', otherwise armstrong will protest. i do not 'know' that i will suck at epistemology, i merely 'believe' it. seriously, it's me you're talking about here. philosophy and lixin just doesn't mix.) fear is when you have seven weeks of term left, and probably nothing to show for it at the end of exams. but naturally you won't do badly enough to be expelled, which leaves the (really terrifying) prospect of remaining in oxford for another 6x8 weeks, writing another 48x2 essays (minimum).

at least my maths is all right. (points up to the mental sums i just did)

back to knowledge.