Days 83-84: Getting back into things

So, Tuesday was a pretty uneventful day. I got some work done, worked with my first film shot on Saturday, and did a bit of studying for my Rescue Diver test scheduled for Wednesday. Later that night I shot my second film of the project with one of my subjects, models, whatever you want to call them. The focus of the main piece was about breast cancer, and ideas I really want to develop with it. I got a pitiful amount of work done the rest of the night.

Today I woke up to Waikato weather- during the winter, it gets chilly, but not piercing cold. The lowest temperatures here are around freezing. Winter is more like the rainy season here- for days it has been partially overcast, raining a few times an hour then stopping. This is normal, from what I have been told.
Anyway, I woke up and began to study for this SCUBA test. I spent the entire day working on the rescue diver manual. My first reaction was that I was a fool for putting this off so much- there is so much to know, and no possible way to determine it all in only one day. This would take at least a week of constant preparation to understand, and months to master. I slaved over the book, absorbing every detail as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Night came, and it was time to go and test my skills. I walked a half hour in rain, at night, to get to the dive shop. I arrived precisely at the appointed time. I was one of 3 people there.

Thanks to my wonderful, glorious, amazing internet service here, I did not receive a fairly critical email that notified the rest of the class that the test had been postponed a week to next Wednesday. Half relieved, half annoyed, I trudged back a half hour through the dark rain to uni. I used the rest of my night to study for an impending biochemistry test (on Monday) and developed the film I had shot the night before. On my walk back from the education building (where the security guards know me by heart since I am in there more nights than not, working on photography), I was listening to classical music, and walked past an artistically lit pond that I cross every day and most nights. I realized I was in no real hurry to get back to my room. I began to slow my pace, began to meander a bit. Perhaps it was just the music, or mood I was in, or the fact that my back was killing me, but I decided to lay on a raised portion of the wooden boardwalk and watch the stars as I listened to Anton Dvorak’s 7th symphony. Sipping the crisp autumn air, listening to an energetic symphony poorly chosen for something as passive as stargazing, a sense of peace and happiness came over me. Ask yourself, how often do you look up, stop everything you are doing at a whim, and stare at the unobstructed night sky? It is humbling. We go about our days and nights, our busy schedules and dramatic existences, and still the stars burn. They look down on us with constant and cold eyes, distant observers in a universe so old and vast that some of them have already winked away, unbeknownst to us. They sit, day after day, night after night, millennia after millennia. It makes one want to take life just the slightest bit slower. It made my night better.

Tomorrow is my busy day, with obligations from sun up (okay, 9 am) to sundown. Every assignment creeps the tiniest bit closer, but I think I’ll take it one step at a time. The assignment will get done, and the stars will still burn as bright as ever. No point in adding stress.