It's snowing!

Now Playing: NPR's "Performance Today", a live performance of Dvorak string chamber music for two violins and (hahaha!!) viola. Very lovely, melodic, sweet, like meadows full of wildflowers.

People keep complaining about the colors on my blogs. Sorry. I have a screen that somehow distorts colors so that I see colors that look completely different on every other monitor.

This morning Rachel and I ate breakfast together, comparing notes on our Thanksgivings. After breakfast, I went to Tyrrell and practiced. There were several pianists already banging away when I got there. Thanks to my cold, the flute sounded fuzzy and faltering, not clear and Christine-like. After an hour, I gave up in despair and went to the library to research my paper about the consequences of stereotypes of Native Americans for my Pocahontas class. I ended up with a thick pile of mostly politically-correct rubbish, and spent the morning working on my paper.

As I walked to linguistics class this afternoon, I noticed little fuzzy flakes floating down the ferocious wind like diatoms on a strong current (there's another biological simile for you, Violin :). They were as tiny and grey-white as the smallest stars on the edge of seeing. Some melted, flecking the pavement wetly, while others scurried like molted feathers over the bricks.

After linguistics, I spent the afternoon studying. Dr. S has told us that we will be expected to write two in-class essays for our final exam, in addition to a variety of other questions. I can handle one essay. That's not too bad. I can write and slightly revise it. But two.... How on earth can I write two good essays, and revise them, make them acceptable, even with the extra time given for final exams?!

Evening came on fast, grey clouds eating up the sky like ice creeping over a blue pond. Two white stars sparkled in the sky, like swans in open water.

I ate supper with Rachel. She told me that she'd taken her heavy brown coat with her home, telling her mother, "I'll only wear this if it snows." So she'd left it at home... and lo and behold, the first day she's back, it does snow! We speculated about the secret lives of our professors, which led to some rather funny moments.

Well, 'tis time for more studying. Bible studying, and literature studying. We might have a pop quiz in British literature tomorrow. Ugh.

Nineteen!

Now Playing: Solas, "Sunny Spells and Scattered Showers". Track 2, "The Big Reel of Ballynacally/The High Hill/Flash away the Pressing Gang". (courtesy of Brother1, who got it courtesy Violin and SwanElf)

Today is my nineteenth birthday.

This morning, at ten o'clock, my family and I went to the funeral of Princess and Marigolds' grandfather. The front of the chapel was decorated with flowers. People filed in silently. There was quite a crowd. While people filtered in, quiet piano music played, and a slideshow of photos of Mr. M rolled on a TV screen—photos of a smiling, round-cheeked young man, a man with unwavering cheerfulness. We all stood as the Spitlers and their family entered and sat at the front of the chapel. Mr. P led the service. We sang Psalm 23B to begin. Mr. Parnell red Mr. M’s obituary. Then two soldiers in green dress uniforms marched to the front of the chapel. They stood silently before the folded, tri-cornered flag resting amidst the flowers, while outside a trumpeter played taps. The solemn, clear notes fell without wavering through the cold air, as vivid and ephemeral as the yellow maple leaves scudding down the street. When the last phrase had died away, one soldier lifted the flag while the other slowly saluted. Then the other held the flag, and the first soldier saluted, their salutes as measured and graceful as ballet arabesques. When they had saluted, one soldier placed the flag in Mrs. M’s arms, and the two men marched down the aisle. Mr. Parnell preached a brief message about the hope of resurrection in Christ. To finish, we sang Psalm 118C. It was a short, solemn sermon.

At home after the funeral, while M put the finishing touches on a simmering pot of bean stew, I baked biscuits. The girls were all coming over to celebrate my birthday--all except Meri and Estella, who are on vacation. We listened to the "Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack, which Brother2 gave me for my birthday (our deal was that if I gave him the "National Treasure" soundtrack for his birthday, he would give me the "Phantom of the Opera" for mine). L fixed icing for the chocolate cake. All the "men" vacated the house: my father went to work, on the way dropping Brother2 off at a friend's house, while Brother1 took refuge by going over to a neighbor's house to do her yardwork.

The Ws were the first to arrive. They helped set the table, and Christi helped my mother with the relish tray. Then Brioni came, and Violin and SwanElf. We ate a merry meal. People shared stories of silly things they’d done when they were littler. ALF and ECF, for instance, had made “perfume” with grape hyacinth flowers, dirt, and grass. We talked and laughed for an hour. Then L brought out the cake. She had switched the nine and the one, for what she thought would be a joke, so that the cake read “91”. *hem* All the voices together made quite a pretty three-part harmony out of the simple “Happy Birthday” ditty.

After ice cream, cake, and tea, everyone adjourned upstairs. Christi brought out her fancy embroidery machine, and we spread T-shirts, “bling-blings” (iron-on crystals), and spools of thread across the tables in the schoolroom. Everyone busily pondered what to do with their shirts. Dazzling silk colors flashed, sprawled, splashed across the table—indigo, teal, crimson, magenta, saffron, orange, aquamarine, turquoise, lilac, violet, royal blue, royal purple, rose, salmon, baby blue, lime, forest green, cream—colors rich as wine, heady, vibrating like pulsing butterfly wings.

In the midst of the sewing, I happened to glance out my window and see the Ss' car pull up. Princess and Marigold climbed out. I flew downstairs to greet them, bursting with joy, and brought them up again to join the party. Brioni and I had been agonizing over what to put on the Spitler girls’ empty shirts, so that we could give them to the girls at church, but they saved us the trouble by coming themselves. The schoolroom was a clatter of laughter, chatter, and click of the embroidery machine—bright colors, happy noise, like a flock of starlings, iridescent in the sunshine. We listened to the “Chariots of Fire” soundtrack, and L showed the girls crazy movies and photos on the computer until she had to leave for basketball practice. Brioni and the Ws left
at four o’clock.

After they left, Violin and Marigold brought up the presents that were downstairs. SwanElf and Princess ensconced me on my bed, and both crashed down beside me. Marigold dumped the presents onto the bed, then climbed on herself, while Violin sprawled on the floor, and my mother sat in the doorway on a chair. I opened the presents, with laughter at the little inside jokes (the "Mad Scientists" know what I mean... :). After I opened the packages, we sat around and joked for awhile. Princess snapped crazy pictures of Violin, SwanElf, Marigold, and me. Marigold tickled Princess and made her squeal. Outside, dusk fell quickly. The sky had become cloudy, and the golds and crimsons in the trees glowed in the gloom. We moved downstairs eventually, where we sat around and chatted until they all had to leave.

After the girls left, the house fell strangely quiet. I rattled around, putting things away. Nothing felt real. The moments slide through my fingers like sand. My family ate a quiet supper of Thanksgiving leftovers. Brother1 insisted on putting a candle into a piece of cake and singing happy birthday to me again since he hadn't gotten to yet. We watched an episode of the "Three Stooges" afterward.

So my week at home is almost over. It's strange not to live at home anymore, but to be a vagrant. I truly have "no fixed abode". Living out of a knapsack isn't the most pleasant thing, but for the next eight years of my life (counting grad school), that's the way it will be--and maybe the way it will be for the rest of my life. Writers aren't renowned for their settled ways, after all. But perhaps that's for the best. If I put down roots too firmly in this world, I won't be any good for the next one....

Nota Bene

Yes, I have way too much time on my hands....

This is the same blog! Don't worry, just fooling around. The title comes from a story by Rosemary Sutcliff, about a group of Christians in late Roman Britain. The silver branch is the emblem they use to identify each other.

Anyhow, I now have another blog out there for philosophical ramblings and poetry. Check my profile to find it.

sniffles and coughs

Now Playing: an "Adventures in Odyssey" CD. I'm not actually playing it, but I can hear it from the study because Daisy is playing it on the other side of the wall in the kitchen. She's baking cookies.

It has been brought to my attention (by Brother1, who teased me about it yesterday, and miss SwanElf, who just posted a comment) that I haven't posted in awhile. Hmmm... wonder why... could it possibly have to do with the fact that I have caught *drumroll please* The Plague?

Ok, here's a brief rundown:

I'm home for Thanksgiving break! Woo hoo! It feels wonderful to be home. Or rather, it would feel wonderful, had not my body decided that, now that I'm not under stress, to crash and burn: I've caught the Plague.

On Saturday, I managed to haul myself through door-to-door evangelism in a city near my hometown. I was with a bunch of friends from church, which made it an event not to be missed, let alone the opportunity to share the Gospel. We walked down lovely, long, story-book streets lined with old, Victorian homes. The houses were like paper cutouts from the Mitford stories. Some of them were brick, palatial, with white Corinthian columns. Others were clapboard, painted maroon or green, with blue or crimson shutters, and broad porches that creaked underfoot. Most of the houses were fairly well-kept, but they were all slightly dishevelled--like your mother's recital or prom dress, the dress that has a hem falling out and lace unravelling around the throat. Stately elm and sycamore trees dropped drifts of copper and gold leaves onto the sidewalks. We rustled through them, like wading through brown tidepools.

Thanks to my dissipation on Saturday, Sabbath was a struggle. I dragged myself out of bed Sabbath morning and managed to dress. I wheezed through Sabbath school and the church service, but as soon as the service was over, I shuffled over to my father. I gazed up at him out of sad, puppy-dog eyes. "Do you want to go home?" he asked. I nodded, a tear sliding down my cheek. "Ok, just a minute, and I'll take you home," he said. I sat down in the back row of chairs in the sanctuary. I was so exhausted, and so angry with myself for giving in to weakness that I couldn't stop crying. Tears welled up of their own accord. Mrs. P came and sat beside me for awhile, sympathizing with my helpless state. She offered to take me home, but I was so afraid of making her sick, too, that I insisted my father do it. On the drive home, my father chatted gently. He's a quiet person, but when you're in pain or sick, he'll come and talk about simple little things, so soothingly that it makes you relax and believe that the world isn't so dreadful after all.

At home, I changed clothes and flopped into bed. The rest of the day was spent in bed. Sabbath evening, all of my family (except Brother2, who is also plagued with the Plague) went to a Bible study. Brother2 and I ate chicken noodle soup for supper. Then he lounged on the sofa with a bag of kettlecorn, while I pulled the cushions off the other sofa in the study, stacked them on the living room floor, and lay down on them. Sandy curled up at my feet. We watched the old BBC production of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". Despite the lame animals and animation, there's something comforting (don't laugh too loud, Violin and SwanElf) about those old movies.

On Monday, my mother coaxed me to the hospital to have lab work done (for a sickness completely unrelated to the Plague and not infectious). We sat in the waiting room for almost an hour before the phlegbotomist (Princess, you'll have to tell me if that's spelled right) called my name. I felt as miserable as an old rag doll. I slumped down into the phlegbotomist's blue chair and stared off over my right shoulder while she drew blood from my left arm. Now, I don't mind blood too much. The only difficulty is the hideous pulling sensation that you feel when someone is drawing blood. It seemed like forever before she was done. I sat and sang Psalm 84A to myself as loudly as I could, in my head.

Spent the rest of the day in bed--cough, sniffle, and all that. Drank quantities of tea and chicken soup. Listened to the "Chronicles of Narnia" series from Focus on the Family, watched "National Treasure" on my DVD player, and worked on Someone's birthday present.

Today I'm a little bit better. As I ate breakfast this morning, my father called with some very bad news. It doesn't directly touch my family (as in, none of my human-blood relations), but it touches my relatives by Christ's blood. I'll just say this: please pray hard for Princess, Marigold, and their family, especially their mother.

Well, if I go back to bed, maybe I'll be able to go to the orchestra concert at the university here tonight. It's all a matter of persuading my mother, who's fluttering over Brother2 and me as though we are two-day-old kittens. This is pleasant, for now--as long as I'm not desperately trying to go anywhere, which happens to be the case tonight.

the Infamous poem

Now Playing: Beethoven's 7th Symphony (as always!), first movement.

Today was Honors class, and time to show Dr. G my ridiculous poem.

I was the first to enter the room. The class meets in the Dean's "conference room", around a long wooden table shaped like the body of a paramecium. The room attempts to be warmly imposing, Oxfordian, but fails somewhat, because it also attempts to be modern and avant-garde. The severe modern style makes the room feel cold and sterile instead of warm and welcoming.

Anyhow, I was first in. As I sat down, I planted my bit of poetry at the head of the table, where Dr. G usually sits (except, of course, when a student usurps his place). I had to leave the room for a bit, and when I returned, the table was almost full. People were chatting and arguing about classes. Rachel came in and sat down beside me. She glanced at the sheet of paper lying innocently at Dr. G's place and gave me a conspiratorial grin.

A few moments later, Dr. G entered the room. He strolled down the table until he came to his seat. Noticing the paper, he picked it up and scanned the first couple of lines. "Does anyone know who left this?" he inquired. The other students turned from their conversations. "I think it was someone in the last class," Morgan ventured. Dr. G shook his head. The students returned to their talk. Dr. G settled down in his chair, delicately unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves and rolling them back as he always does. Then he lifted the paper with my poem on it and began to read carefully. I glanced at him, keeping a straight face, then glanced at Rachel, who smiled a little. Then I stared at my lap, toying with my pen.

Slowly, the rest of the class realized that Dr. G hadn't begun class. Conversation tapered off. "What're you reading, Dr. G?" one of the boys, named Russ, asked. Dr. G was silent. Russ put his question several times, but still Dr. G was silent. Covertly looking up, I saw a smile hovering on his face, but he was quiet.

The whole class was hushed until he had finished reading--the minutes crawled by as slowly as this past week has done. I sat, twisting the cap of my pen around, anticipating what he would say, the same way I've spent this week, waiting anxiously for the break.

At last, Dr. G looked up, his face blank.. "Will anyone confess to this?" he inquired. Silence. "No one wants to own up? Who wrote this?" he asked again, his voice level, empty of sentiment. Russ waved his hand jokingly. "I wrote it!" he volunteered. Dr. G shook his head. "No one?" he said. I stared at my hands. They were chapped, the knuckles red, the skin between my thumb and forefinger peeling.

"Read it!" someone commanded. Several people chimed in. "Read it, read it!" they pestered. "I'm reluctant to read it without attributing it," he said. I glanced over cautiously and noticed that the smile was twitching at the corners of his mouth. "I won't read it unless the author confesses. Who wrote this?" he asked again. By now, a smile was broad on his face. I looked up, and caught his eye. I grinned, and he grinned back. He paused, but didn't say anything more than, "C'mon, no one's going to confess?" to the rest of the class.

The students murmured impatiently.

Silence.

"I wrote it," I muttered, half-raising my hand.

Dr. G chuckled. "I had a feeling," he said, "Thanks for owning up." He slid it toward me across the table. "Here, read it." I gasped softly. "It's really good," he encouraged.

I picked it up, my hands shaking, though I hardly noticed them. The white paper stuck to my sweaty fingertips. Everyone was quiet, watching. Still slumped in my chair, I murmured, "This is all in fun."

Then I straightened up, leaned forward, grasped the paper, and began to read.

All the shards of the classroom fell away, the murmuring died down, and I was in control. It's hard to explain, but this has happened before--reading at Quartz Mountain, usually. You can feel the audience's attention immediately yank away from the busy thoughts of classes, food, boys, boredom, and become riveted, for perhaps only a couple of minutes, on you, yourself, your words, your voice. But you aren't the same person anymore. Someone else steps in, fills your body, speaks with another voice through you. An authoritative writer, a storyteller, an artist. The frightened, apologetic child steps back, and Orpheus stands in her place.

People laughed softly at the jokes--class jokes, things we knew about. They probably didn't find it nearly as funny as Rachel and Danielle did, they being my friends (besides, it had no bad words or filthy jokes in it--perhaps I'm rather cynical, but usually only things with that sort of humor are found enjoyable by these people).

When it was over, they clapped. There were broad smiles, polite murmurs, "That's really good," running around the table.

"That was fabulous," Dr. G said as I pushed the poem back to him across the sleek table. "Do you want to be in my poetry class, because you're in," he said--not asking, but stating.

He settled back in his chair. "Now, I have no connection to said Oracle or the Pythia [which I had mentioned in the poem], but I do have some things to say about revising papers..." and he moved on to class business.

After class was over, everyone began noisily to pack up their things. There were the usual cries of, "Have a good break! Get lots of sleep! Drive safely! Thanks! See you in a couple of weeks!" Dr. G, himself busy with his papers, looked over. "Thank you for the poem," he said, "it was really quite good."

I grinned at him, and then at Rachel, standing beside me, the three of us freely enjoying the moment. Then Rachel and I strolled to lunch together.

So that's how it went--probably less dramatic than I'm making it out to be, but a break from routine, certainly.

marine biology, Alexander Pope, Socrates, and sleepiness

Now Playing: "The American Seasons" by Mark O'Connor. Track 6, "Strings and Threads Suite: Captain's Jig". This violin sounds like a drunk but cheerful mockingbird. Reminds me of August nights (or early mornings), at 2 a.m., when a mockingbird would suddenly and randomly start to sing away at the top of its lungs outside Daisy's window. Reminds me of waking up early in the morning to hot sunshine and the sound of all the crazy birds making as much ruckus as possible.

Today has been fairly unremarkable so far. Up early to do oceanography, as usual. The professor admitted last Thursday that students usually beg him to put in more marine biology, so he started marine biology earlier than usual. (N.B.: We only have two weeks left to the semester! I wonder, would he occupy the last one-and-a-half weeks with coastline properties, and only that last day with marine biology?!) He is most certainly not a biologist himself. He spells "Kingdom Protista" as "Kingdom Proctoctista", which drives me crazy since my mother is a biologist and drilled into me the proper names of all the kingdoms.

In Major British Writers, we received our paper topics for our final paper. If we want to turn in rough drafts to her to revise, they have to be ready by the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I cannot express just how much I do not want to work on this paper during Thanksgiving, so I'm going to try to at least get most of it ironed out before the end of this week. It shouldn't be too bad. I'm either going to write about Feste in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", or about Alexander Pope and John Donne. We're reading Pope's "Essay on Criticism". I had no idea that these familiar maxims came from Pope: "To err is human, to forgive divine", and "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Anyhow, I think I'm going to write about the irony of how Pope, who is a Catholic, doesn't like the ornate styles popular with Catholics of Donne's time, while Donne, who was an Anglican (not quite a Protestant, I suppose, but certainly not a Catholic) uses the ornate styles that the Catholic Pope abjures. Feste is an interesting character because he's the typical Shakespearean "wise fool" who acts as a conscience for the other characters in the play. While all the other characters are rushing around making fools of themselves, Feste understands their emotions and tries to get them to realize what they're truly doing and feeling. Like Donne and Pope, he's interesting because of the irony--he's supposed to be a fool, and the other characters treat him as such, yet he's wiser than they are because he's the only one who sees through their deceptions.

In Honors, we looked at the "Apology of Socrates" and discussed piety. Last Saturday, I wrote a ridiculous poem about our class and Dr. G. I was silly enough to show it to Rachel and Danielle, who are in the class with me. They both thought it was hilarious and begged me to show it to Dr. G, so I reluctantly agreed to place it at his usual seat on Thursday, for him to read (without my name on it!). We shall see what he thinks of it.

During lunch, Rachel and I sat with a bunch of raucous Honors kids (students who live in the Honors House (the "Ho Ho"), not people who, like me, are not part of this elite housing establishment *hem hem*). For some reason, the Honors kids, who are supposed to be the quietest, most studious students, are the weirdest, wildest, noisiest people on campus. They're constantly teasing each other about inside jokes.

This afternoon I practiced my flute and read "World" magazine (yes, I did both simultaneously). While I was practicing, Syneva knocked on the practice room door. She's a double piano/cello major, and so she's often haunting Tyrrell Hall. She came in and chatted with me for awhile. She and the other girls here have been so hospitable to me that it's been quite a blessing. She and I are going to have a private Bible study/prayer time together, starting this Thursday. She's a mature, thoughtful girl, and I really look forward to getting to know her better. (For the record: she's a Calvinist, too. *grins*) After I finished practicing, I nearly fell asleep, daydreaming over Pope and listening to the "Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack. The music and the iambic pentameter were so mesmerizing that the vivid pictures they traced in my brain drowned out the dull images of reality my eyes were seeing, forcing my eyes slowly to close.

It was far too cold and windy for my hothouse tastes to go jogging this afternoon. The sun set through a blue lake of sky, with clouds floating across the water like ripples kicked up by the wind.

Tonight I ate supper alone in the cafeteria. I recognized several acquaintances of mine who were in the caf at the same time, but I never can get the courage to sit with them, nor do I particularly want to. I suspect it's probably cowardice on my part, but I do prefer to sit either alone or with only a couple of good friends (like Rachel), instead of with distant acquaintances. Violin and SwanElf, doubtless, will argue, "How can you get to be good friends with someone unless you sit with them, and begin by being acquaintances?" Very good question. My only reply would be that there are certain people who just are good friends, and were from the moment you met them--Rachel, Danielle, Syneva, while other people, for one reason or another just sort of remain on the periphery--people I nod to, or smile at, but rarely actually sit down and talk to.

At 8:00, I went to RUF. The meeting was truncated this evening because Mr. K, the RUF leader, had to go somewhere. Rachel happened to be there, which was unusual since she usually goes to a different Bible study on Tuesday nights, so we stood and chatted for a bit before heading out into the frigid night. She had a calculus project to finish--something about proving theorems with experimentation.

The moon is full tonight, scoured clean by the wind, but the stars and planets, as usual, are drowned out by the city lights. Venus is the only one that shines clearly, undaunted by the lights.

Some Answers

Now Playing: "The American Seasons", by Mark O'Connor. Track 1, "Spring".

Several of you have asked what the answers to these questions are. I posted these questions last month before my oceanography exam. Well, here are the answers, as near as I can give them.

What is water's latent heat of melting? Of vaporization?
The latent heat of melting, when ice turns into water, is 80 calories/gram. The latent heat of vaporization, when water turns into vapor, is 540 calories/gram.

What salts are in the ocean, and how do they get there, and where do they go?
Cl- comes from volcanic gas and goes into evaporites, which are weird-looking things like stalagmites on the seafloor in shallow places.
Mg2+ comes from weathering of rocks and is stored in the seafloor.
Na+ comes from weathering of rocks and goes into salt deposits, which are kind of like evaporites.
SO4 2- comes from volcanic gas and is stored in the seafloor.
Ca 2+ comes from weathering of rocks and is used to make the shells of microorganisms. These shells actually harden and turn into chalk. They make landmasses, like the famous "white cliffs of Dover" on the English coast.
K+ comes from weathering of rocks and gets turned by bacteria into clay.

What is the degree of the angle between hydrogen molecules?
The angle is 105 degrees.

What controls seawater density?
Salinity and temperature.

What are the three layers of the ocean?
The three layers are the surface mixed layer, where oxygen is being stirred in by the waves; the pycnocline, and the deep layer, where the water is really cold.

What is the Coriolis Effect? What is Ekman Transport?
The Coriolis Effect is the apparent turning of freely-moving bodies above a rotating planet. That's why hurricanes seem to have curved paths, and that's what drives some currents. Ekman Transport is the movement of water ninety degrees away from the direction the wind is blowing.

What are the greenhouse gases?
They are carbon dioxide, ozone, CH4, N2O, and the CFCs (about which environmentalists make such a stink).

What are the gases that are disolved in the ocean?
The main ones are oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen.

Where do icebergs come from?
Icebergs are bits of glaciers that break off when the glaciers hit the ocean.

So, those are my answers to these questions.

weird things

Now Playing: Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, first movement.

While I was studying my Bible tonight, I noticed something really, really weird: though there wasn't any CD playing, and though the program that plays CDs was turned off, I could hear sound coming out of the speakers. Not static, but music. Somehow, the speakers are playing pop music of their own accord, and there's no way to turn it off, unless I turn off the speakers themselves. When I unplug the speakers from the computer, but leave them on, the music keeps playing. I guess there must be some sort of radio receiver in the speakers themselves that’s tuned to a particular frequency, which also happens to be the frequency of this pop radio station, though I have no idea why they would need such a receiver. So now, as I listen to this symphony, if I turn it up all the way, I can still hear the pop music clanking away in the background.

It's enough to give anyone the creeps.

Not too much happened today. Since Pocahontas class had its last official meeting last Friday, I didn't have class this morning, which was quite pleasant (several of you got e-mails as a result). This afternoon in linguistics, the professor gave us another one of his talks about how dialect is tied to power and gender. He doesn't seem to be very interested in the actual mechanics of language; he only cares about the "sociolinguistic" implications of what language you speak, and how the patterns in language get repeated in culture. This might actually be interesting if it wasn't tied to Liberal stereotypes of professors who don't care two bits for Christianity, such as this particular professor. As far as I'm concerned, why bother studying human beings if they're just a bunch of cosmological dust that evolved from slime? It seems rather morbid to study mankind as though it's just a bunch of apes in the jungle, but that's what these people do, without considering for a moment that it seems odd for the intricacies of language and culture to be spouting from a bunch of walking amoebas. I suppose that since they are amoebas, they can't realize the irony of it. *hem hem*

oh, no... another picture!

Now Playing: New Song, "Psalms of Praise, Volume 2". Psalm 84A

My mother, Brother1, Daisy, and I raked a huge pile of maple leaves on Saturday. It was like raking up the blanket of the Milky Way, for the leaves were thick and shimmering like stars. The leaf pile was about three feet deep, five feet long, and three or four feet wide (I could lie in it and stretch out my arms and just barely reach the edges, and I'm about five feet tall). Daisy and I splashed around in the leaves for a long while. I buried Daisy completely. When Brother1 came to scoop up the leaves and bag them, he poked his arms into the leaf pile, and Daisy grabbed him. The whole pile shivered, but you couldn't see any of her at all. Brother1 howled that the "leaf monster" had captured him. He started to tickle her, and the pile quivered even more, until a pair of mock-tortured hands poked out of the top of the leaves. Finally, the leaves erupted, and there was Daisy, with her long, brown hair so full of them that she looked as though she'd been sleeping outside for weeks. Here we are in the leaf pile--Daisy is on the right.

tree

Melissa asked for this picture. It's the tree outside my dorm window last Monday.

fitting subject matter, considering the music

Now Playing: (Well, the CD is over, but most recently....) "Song of the Liberty Bell", from "Heartland", by Mark O'Connor, Edgar Meyer, Yo-Yo Ma, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Mike Marshall, Josh Bell, and all those other weird bluegrass people.

Here's a funny little poem.

Cowboy
11/8/05

He climbs onto his steed. One kick,
And off he clanks across the dusty field.
He pulls steers from the herd, grey backs
Jerked up and sideways, levered from the road
Of bodies. In their pen he dumps them, and
The pen’s sides shake with clattering clamor, trampled
By concrete hooves. He swings his horse around,
His brown boots glinting on the clutch. Horse’s sides
Gleam gold, well-polished. Round and round he rides,
Mesmerizing, a balanced dressage
Of steel and sleek pneumatics. His rope floats
Above dusty melee, glinting and graceful
As a brachiosaurus’s neck. When steers
Are in, he stops and cleans the gravel from
His mount’s treads. Then he walks home, the beast tethered
And crouching patiently, its snout bowed low—
Streetlights shine on asphalt, on his backhoe.

Pictures, Part 3

Last, here are some pictures of the musem's grounds. The view of the museum itself is from its back, where it looks out over acres of landscape. There's a really lovely walk between great, pale purple drifts of salvia. Butterflies and bees hovered over the flowers. On the lawns under the trees, there were pieces of "public art", stranded like metal leaves in the grass. Most of them weren't very aesthetically pleasing, at least to our tastes. My mother pointed out that the retaining wall along the shallow creek was much more artful, being carefully constructed, than the random chunks of metal dotting the grass.

Pictures, Part 2

These are photographs of the musem's interior. Since it was once a mansion, it's a very grand building. Its architecture is that of an Italian Renaissance villa. Everything is carefully and ornately decorated, and everything is set in careful symmetry and order. The stained-glass window here is a picture of Dante seeing Beatrice for the first time.

thanks to my mother's request: Pictures, Part 1

Last Saturday, Rachel, my mother, and I visited an art museum in the town where Rachel and I attend college. The art museum is an old mansion surrounded with beautiful gardens. My mother requested that I post some of the pictures I took.

Here are pictures of four of the paintings themselves. Of course, the gallery has lots more. There are some excellent portraits, and a collection of old altarpieces from medieval times, and a gallery of Japanese screens, and a gallery of Chinese pottery.



This painting is of Cossacks in Siberia. I wrote a poem about it as my audition piece for the summer writing camp. There's a gallery of Romantic and semi-Impressionist paintings at the start of the museum, which is one of my favorite galleries. It has pastoral scenes, including one of a rough-faced, placid peasant girl escorting her sheep into a barn.






This is a pen-and-ink sketch. My grandfather owned a sailboat that looked a lot like this one, only a little bit smaller.















The entrance to the museum is a big rotunda. The dome goes up for two stories, and at its zenith is a round skylight. Directly under the skylight on the floor of the entry area below is a Rodin sculpture of Adam. On the second floor, there is a circular gallery that runs around the edge of the rotunda. The paintings in this gallery are modern still-lifes. There are some beautiful, photorealistic paintings of plants: gaudy, dewy roses; golden, full-bodied rosehips, and this one, of irises. There was also a hideous painting of a nest with two eggs in it, while the decayed corpses of the parent birds lay sprawled beside the nest. Their featherless bones stretched like scratches on the canvas. It was a painting of utter hopelessness and futility, and very gruesome to look at.






The museum also has a gallery of ancient art: an Etruscan bronze mirror with delicate etchings; a serene-faced Egyptian sarcophagus; battered Roman denarii. There were also several pieces of Greek pottery, among them this little jar. It thrilled Rachel and me greatly because the pieces of pottery were from the exact time period that we've been studying in Honors class. One of them was fired when Pericles was preaching his funeral oration to the Athenians in the midst of the Peloponnesian War. It gave me shivers to think that these same vessels are ones that were touched and handled by those distant, great men that we've read about and discussed in class.

Aristotelian spiders

Now Playing: Beethoven's "Symphony No. 7", first movement.

In Honors class today, we were discussing Aristotle's "Poetics", in which he sets out some of his views on what makes a good tragedy, what the characteristics of a good play should be, etc. At the start of the discussion, Whitney and Zoe complained that the "Poetics" is far too rigid and black-and-white. As usual, though, Dr. G managed to work it into the "grey are" (where there are no absolutes) and show that it's not very definitive after all. (I've observed that Dr. G likes absolutes about as much as Zoe and Whitney do, but he's cunning enough always to fit any apparent absolute into the "grey area".)

Anyhow, Dr. G was trying to illustrate the Aristotelian concept of a beginning for us. For Aristotle, a beginning is that which doesn't have an apparent cause but which naturally leads to other events. As he was in the midst of this deep philosophical conjecture, Morgan, sitting near the other end of the table, started to flail her hands wildly. (Morgan is a very blonde girl, in every sense of the word.) This made Dr. G stop. Morgan smacked one of her books onto the table in front of her, and one of her pens flew over her shoulder.

"Now, you see, that's a perfect example of an Aristotelian beginning. Morgan starts flailing her arms for no apparent reason. The flailing of the arms leads to a pen being thrown. It has a natural result."
Morgan looked up sheepishly. "It was a spider. I'm terrified of spiders," she mumbled.
"That had to be the smallest spider I've ever seen!" one of the boys laughed derisively.
"Hey, when I was a kid, I woke up once with a spider on my face, and I couldn't sleep for weeks afterward!" Morgan protested.
"You see, a beginning doesn't have to have an apparent cause, but later, a cause may come out, such as that Morgan is terrified of spiders," Dr. G explained. "And now we see that a beginning leads to natural consequences, including a pen being thrown and a professor blathering on about Aristotelian arachnids."
"The spider just fell out of the air in front of me!" Morgan protested.
"Arachne ex machina," Dr. G sighed, and everyone laughed.
For a while, the class was busy giggling over theories of whether the building was invaded by spiders, and whether an enormous spider was going to jump through the classroom door and eat Morgan.
"They're coming to get me!" Morgan whimpered.
"Ok, ok!" Dr. G said finally. "I will teach, and I will continue to teach, no matter what!"
We all went back to paying attention until later, when another spider appeared crawling on Zoe's notebook. She gently tore a bit of paper off and carried the spider outside.
The discussion flowed on for a while, and we were in the midst of a heated debate over the definition of telos in Aristotle when the classroom door suddenly opened a couple of inches, then silently shut again. Dr. G paused.
Into the silence, I whispered, "It's the big spider!"
Dr. G had a hard time quelling the uproar that followed, I'm afraid.
Rachel grinned at me in complete surprise. "Oh, that was genius!" Whitney chortled, and the boy that had teased Morgan earlier growled in a sinister voice, "Is Morgan here?", impersonating, I suppose, the unseen arachnid, while Morgan sat, trembling, in her chair, and everyone else (including Dr. G) turned pink with laughter.

more pictures

Now Playing: a Father Gilbert mystery, "A Soul in Torment".

Here are some photos of my dorm room.

quiz

Here are my results to some of the quizzes SwanElf posted on her blog. Read, and laugh.

You are 'Latin'. Even among obsolete skills, the tongue of the ancient Romans is a real anachronism. With its profusion of different cases and conjugations, Latin is more than a language; it is a whole different way of thinking about things.

You are very classy, meaning that you value the classics. You value old things, good things which have stood the test of time. You value things which have been proven worthy and valuable, even if no one else these days sees them that way. Your life is touched by a certain 'pietas', or piety; perhaps you are even a Stoic. Nonetheless, you have a certain fascination with the grotesque and the profane. Also, the modern world rejects you like a bad transplant. Your problem is that Latin has been obsolete for a long time.

You are the Sad Queen! Somber, quiet, softspoken and yet beautiful, you hold your subjects in awe of your silent but forceful nature. You are jaded and tired of this world because you are so different from everyone else.Possible Name: Tristyn Element: Shadow Color: Grey

SPIRITUAL BEAUTY - You are calm, peaceful, and content. Introverted and quiet you know everything about yourself. You never speak without thinking and every decision you make is well thought out. Since you know yourself so well you aware of your strengths and your shortcomings, which gives you the advantage of easily learning from your mistakes and improving yourself quickly. You may or may not be religious. If you are religious your faith and convictions are solid and no one can sway you from your beliefs.

Quiet, Smart Girl - You're the quiet girl that hardly anybody notices, and only talks to when they're failing a class and need to copy from someone. You probably hate it, but you also probably enjoy any attention that you can get. You're remarkably inteligent and very studious, but also very quiet and reserved. Your cold, mysterious appearance can be intimidating, an attribute that drives people away.

Your element is air. You are quiet and reserved. Extremely intelligent you love learning and love to explore things. Mysteries intrigue you to no end. You are a loner and quite content to spend hours and hours by yourself, reading or thinking. Complex and enigmatic most people tend to shy away from you. You don't seem to notice them however, and prefer doing things your own way. You can be very emotional though and insecure, fearing other people and what they might think of you. You would be best matched with Darkness and Water.

Bonny Swans... right now!

Now Playing: "The Mask and Mirror" by Loreena McKennitt. Track 2, "The Bonny Swans".

Here's the rest of it. Now you won't be bored, Vinca! :) (Or maybe you will be. Beware of flowery writing!) This has got to be a record, though: three posts in one day. Exceptionally long posts, too, and (what's worse) on an exceptionally busy day. Where has all my supposedly-famed discipline gone?!

After lunch, I went up to my room, intending to put together a few last-minute things before my flute lesson. However, I left my door ajar, and A.C. burst in. She gave me an exuberant hug and told me that she's doing very well in one of her classes, which is making her happy. We chatted about history for awhile. She told me that she could easily envision me going to Jerusalem and digging up evidence for "what you believe" (that's how she phrased it--she won't take Christ's name on her lips). Playing along, I pointed out that it's "interesting" that Christ arrived just at the right time to have the greatest impact, just when the Roman Empire was ensuring peace and good communication across an incredible section of the world.

Flute lesson went well. After, I walked over to Zink Hall to meet with Dr. G about revising my Herodotus paper. I sat in trepidation for awhile outside his office, for the door was fast shut despite the fact that it was his office hour. Computer keys rattled from offices down the hall, and voices murmured in one room. Through Dr. G's closed door, I could hear delicate piano music playing from a CD. At last, I summed up the courage to knock. "Oh, hello," he said in his cultured, slightly nasal voice. "I'm sorry to disturb you," I apologized. "No, no. Sorry I didn't have my door open. I was so immersed in what I was doing that I didn't even realize it. Please, have a seat," he replied. I sat down and slid my paper across the table to him. "Hello, paper," he said humorously. "I'd like you to tell me what you think of it, and how I can make it better," I said shyly. He sat and read it over carefully, scribbling comments with a pencil stub. I gazed out the window at the bending, bronze-edged oak trees. The windows of the anthropology building across the way reflected the turquoise sky and the tossing trees like eyes. I sat quietly, smiling to myself, remembering the times when my siblings and I had had to go up to my father's office. He had usually let us draw with chalk on the green chalkboard in his room, and we had covered it, as high as we could reach, with dragons and tanks and flowers and horses and cats. I toyed in my mind with how my own office will look, if I should ever become a professor, and noticed idly that Dr. G's window was the open one: as I'd walked up to Zink, I had noticed that there was only one window open in the whole building, and it was his. The silence rustled gently, noise caressing. At last, Dr. G looked up. "This is really good," he said. "It's at leastan A minus paper." He showed me some editorial things I needed to clean up, and then went over a couple of places where I could add some evidence. "Any more questions?" he asked. "Yes," I said. "I seem to be plagued with A minuses in this class. Is there anything I can do to make that better?" He chuckled. "A perfectionist," he said. "Let me tell you a story. When I was a sophomore in college, I went to the TA of one of my English classes and spent a long time arguing with him over the grade of my paper. I finally managed to get him to concede the points of my argument. 'By the way,' the TA said, 'what grade did you make on that paper?' 'An A minus,' I replied. 'Get out of my office!' the TA roared." We both laughed, but he kindly went on to explain to me what he was looking for, and to make some complimentary statements about my work.

I flew out of Zink on angel's wings.

As I walked to Tyrrell Hall to practice my flute, I sang to myself, Psalm after Psalm, my heart "overflowing with a good theme". Practicing my flute somewhat deflated my joy. I think I should keep playing the flute, just to keep myself humble: it can be so frustrating! Just as I think I've learned a piece, or just as I'm about to perform it, I start to crack notes, slip on fingerings, lose all sense of rhythm. It's incredibly frustrating. I channeled my overwhelming joy into trying to force myself to get the Saint-Saens piece right (which I never really did).

Then I went running. The wind was very strong while I ran, buffeting me from the south-southwest. Strands of hair streamed from my head like the trees' auburn leaves flying above me. Back in my room, I fiddled with my Herodotus paper revision for a bit. At 5:30, I padded downstairs to the basement. Tonight was a free-dinner night: chili and cinnamon rolls. The basement echoed with laughter and high-pitched conversation. The whole dorm reeked of chili powder, beans, icing, and cinnamon. Bethany, Tara, Alisha, Julie, Katie, and Kathryn were all there, among many others. I stood and chatted with Tara about classes. Tay joined our conversation. She's a young woman from RUF who's in a wheelchair. She's about the size of an overweight six-year-old, and her voice is very squeaky. Her head is hunched back on her crooked shoulders. However, her mental capacity is unimpaired, and she's majoring in Philosophy. Bethany described to us the sophisticated watergun fights that she and her friends are having. They carry their waterguns with them everywhere, like spies in enemy territory, and shoot each other sneakily. Whoever gets shot is "dead". Apparently, they used to take their guns even into the cafeteria, but when the official of Housing and Dining accidentally got caught in the line of fire one day, they decided to declare the cafeteria an armistice zone.

After supper, I spent an hour-and-a-half revising my Herodotus paper. My brain is completely fried, but I still have to read Aristotle's Poetics for next Honors class and also to study for the Major British Writers exam on Tuesday. Oh, dear.

And there's another Honors paper to consider, a story to work on, a poem to write, two "World" magazines to read, and my room to clean, and a shower to take, and devotions to do, and prayers to make... let alone sleep! Woo hoo.

Chariots of Fire... almost, but not yet

Now Playing: "Chariots of Fire" soundtrack by Vangelis. Track 1: "Titles".

This track is one of my favorite pieces of music, despite the synthesizer, which I usually don't like. My father burned this CD for me from an old vinyl LP that he had. When he gave it to me that first evening, he also told me some news that made me begin to realize the pain of growing up and not belonging where I had thought, all my childhood, that I belonged. As soon as he left my room, I put the CD into my player and turned up the volume. That poignant, indomitable theme swept me away into tears, tears that sparkled pale gold in the setting sun streaming through my window. Now, as I listen, I remember, in the midst of my heartache, that no matter where I am, my home is in my Heavenly Father (as one of my friends recently reminded me). There is no going back, but the best is yet to come. It lies ahead. And even if I don't attain it riding in chariots of fire, I will get there someday, and be at peace at last. That is what my heart longs for, and He has promised me that I will not be disappointed.

So, for today.

I stayed up way too late this morning/last night. Rachel and I ate breakfast together this morning, which left me only fifteen minutes to get across campus to oceanography class (at a brisk trot, I can tell you). In oceanography, we studied waves. We didn't get our exams back from last Thursday, but he assured us that we'd have them on Tuesday.

On my way out of oceanography, I once again picked up a quick canter to get to British Writers on time. On my way, I passed Liz, one of the girls who's in oceanography and a friend of Alisha's. (Alisha is an RUF girl--solidly Christian, sweet, quiet, plays the violin. What more could you ask for? :) Liz was strolling down the sidewalk. I slowed as I passed her. "Where are you going next?" I asked. "To art history," she replied dreamily. "I'm just taking my time, enjoying watching the trees change colors. I've never really seen them do that before." (She's from Houston.) As I went on my way, I, too, slowed down a little bit, my appreciation of the vivid crimson, gold, and bronze sharpened by Liz's own quiet appreciation.

In Major British Writers, we looked at Andrew Marvell and John Donne, both poets of the mid 1600's. We read Marvell's poem, "Bermudas", which is a psalm of praise from a group of English pilgrims arriving in the New World. Dr. S impressed on us the vividness and awesomeness of the New World after the dreariness of England and the three-month voyage across the Atlantic. "Imagine holding an orange in the middle of an English winter and biting into it. What an explosion of taste!" she said. She reminded us, also, that the New World was seen as a new Eden by some people, and thought of a Promised Land to be conquered and lived in.

Our discussion in Honors today got off slowly. For one thing, Dr. G mistakenly thought that Zoe was supposed to lead the discussion today. She wasn't. He raised his eyebrows when he realized this, paused, and then plunged into a lecture about how to write good papers. This took half-an-hour. Several people (among them a girl from the Pocahontas class) complained about the bad writing instruction they'd had. The class was rather slap-happy, and some comments made everyone, including Dr. G, burst into unquenchable laughter. Dan snidely suggested that, since we're all having such trouble writing about complicated subjects, perhaps the Honors program should start off with less philosophical works, "Say, for example Old Yeller." This made Dr. G laugh more than ever. The rest of us laughed, too, but more (I would venture to say) at Dr. G than at Dan's comment.

Once the discussion actually got off the ground, though, it was quite interesting. We're studying Greek drama, and now we're on "Oedipus the King", "Oedipus Rex" being, as Dr. G said, an oxymoron since it is formed from one Greek and one Latin word. He also was kind enough to point out that "Oedipus" is not pronounced with a short "e" at the beginning (a short "e" as in "bed"), but instead a long "e", as in "sheep". (Am I sleepy, or what? :) We talked about sympathy vs. empathy. Sympathy is feeling pity or compassion for someone's suffering, while empathy is actually feeling what the sufferer is feeling. We talked about surprise vs. suspense. Surprise is when you didn't know what would happen, and suspense is when you know what will happen, but you don't know how (Dr. G claims that suspense is a concept that Hitchcock got from Sophocles, the author of "Oedipus the King").

After class, Rachel and I walked briskly to lunch together. We sat with Jenny and Tara during lunch. (Both RUF girls. Have I introduced them to you all yet? Jenny is a tall, muscular girl with fair skin, very blond hair, a deep voice, and an infectious laugh. She's always the core of the conversation. Tara is Jenny's roommate. She's a petite, slender little girl, about the size of Daisy, with short, brown hair, and deep brown eyes. The corners of her mouth and the tip of her nose always seem to be turning up, like a mouse's.) Jenny found a couple of friends of hers from the rowing team to chat with, so Rachel, Tara, and I struck up a conversation together. Thanks to "Oedipus", it became deeply philosophical. Rachel is fascinated with the Aristotelian idea that we sympathize most with tragic characters who share our flaws. We understand them because we, too, have their problems. Also, as soon as we read about their demise (such as Oedipus in Sophocles's play and Nicias, an Athenian general who meets a tragic fate, in Thucydides's history), we immediately begin to try to figure out why their lives were so horrible. Rachel suggested that this is because humans always like to have logical reasons for the way the world works, and also because we like to think to ourselves, "Oh, because such-and-such happened to him, and not to me, my life won't be as terrible." Once we've found a reason for their demise, we can feel ourselves safe because that same sequence of events won't happen to us (or so we think). I wonder if this could be tied to a trend I've noticed in modern culture. It struck me this past Monday. I saw a sign reading, "Have a safe Halloween". Normally, you'd expect such a sign to read, "Have a happy Halloween". But it didn't. Perhaps we're seeing a shift in our culture away from the idea of happiness as an ideal; instead, safety and security have become ideals. Perhaps people have begun to feel unstable and insecure, and so instead of happiness are seeking safety. Perhaps this was at the back of Sophocles's mind, too, as he wrote his play. For if you are an old man whose parents are already dead, though you may share Oedipus's failings, you can feel quite safe in the knowledge that no such dreadful things are going to happen to you.

To be continued....

Praise!

Now Playing: Nothing! Are you kidding?! I have way too much work to do!

Yes, I stayed up till midnight. Twelve forty-five, actually. You see, as soon as the clock struck twelve, all the freshman in the universe (it would seem) attempted to enroll, and the poor computer couldn't handle it. So it crashed for thirty minutes. When I finally got on (in a state of drowsy frustration), I was able to enroll for all my classes except the Honors section that Rachel and I were going to take together. Too sleepy to argue, I left it until this morning, when I fired off a bambi-eyed-and-haloed e-mail to my advisor, pleading with him to get me into this particular section. I ate breakfast with Rachel, and it turned out that she hadn't been able to enroll either, so I was rather downcast, but hopeful, too--at least we'd both be forced to take the same section.

When I returned to my room after lunch, I decided to go ahead and enroll in the unwanted Honors section. I'd received an e-mail from my advisor saying that he couldn't help me but would talk to the dean and see what he could do. So, I enrolled myself in the unwanted section. But when I clicked on my course schedule, I realized to my shock and surprise that I was enrolled for eighteen hours. "Good grief," I thought to myself. "I should only have fifteen! I'll if I have to take eighteen!" I looked more closely at the schedule and noticed that the hours for the Honors class at the top of the list were the wrong hours--they were the hours for the full class that I'd wanted, not the class that I was being forced into. Smelling a rat, I put the schedule to closer scrutiny, and realized that the eighteen hours and the weird meeting time were the result of the fact that I was enrolled in two Honors sections: one taught by the desired professor, Dr. H, and one taught by the unwanted professor, Dr. A.

And so, sending up great praises to my Father (and some smaller praises to His tools, my advisor and the dean-with-the-magic-wand), I dropped Dr. A's section and settled back into my day with a placid, fat-cat smile on my face. My one reservation is that I'm afraid Rachel won't be able to get into this section--we'll see. If she doesn't, I'm not sure what I'll do, but that's a bridge to worry about later.

There's way, way, way more that I need to say about today. Lots of interesting ideas in Honors, and from discussions over lunch, and a funny story from Dr. G. But I need to practice my flute, revise a paper, and read, read, read.

Solus Studius, as Mr. Y at church would say.

"the oldest joke"

Now Playing: "Not All who Wander Are Lost", by Chris Thile. Track 1, "Song for a Young Queen".

It turned out on Halloween night that I did not shut myself in my room. Instead, I ate supper with Rachel. The cafeteria was even crazier by night than it had been by day. I saw a boy dressed as Peter Pan, down to knife and panpipes. There was a girl dressed as a nurse, wearing only a flimsy white slip with a big red cross painted on the chest. Cafeteria cooks were dressed as doctors, cowboys--even a Hershey's kiss! Everyone seemed to have gone mad. Sitting and chatting with Rachel, though, I considered the reason behind all the craziness, and my thoughts turned to Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", which we recently read in Major British Writers. "Twelfth Night" has the theme of carnival, the ritual overturning of conventions with a time of brief feasting and celebration. In the Catholic calendar, Twelfth Night was the night when the Magi supposedly visited Christ. It was a time of masquerade and frolicking. Servants ordered their masters around; boys were crowned king or pope. Our culture has no such set times of carnival, and so perhaps it has turned to Halloween as an excuse. Of course, we cannot neglect the fact that festivals such as Twelfth Night and Halloween are linked with pagan customs, such as the Roman Saturnalia and Celtic devil-worship. However, there could be something deeper going on. It seems inherent in human nature to seek masquerade. Perhaps this has to do with the "oldest joke", as Rachel called it, quoting from C.S. Lewis: the fact that human beings, who have immortal souls, also possess mortal bodies. Bodies seem so ridiculously clumsy and burdensome compared to souls. Our bodies are almost like masks for our souls (don't worry; I'm not turning into a Gnostic here). But you cannot "pretend" with a soul the way you can with a body. A soul is what it is; there is no covering it. Bodies can change, can be hidden, can be transformed. Maybe the human love of play-acting is part of all this. Perhaps it is a looking-forward to the time when we will no longer have to masquerade, but we will "be known even as we are known". After all, Christ Himself took the form of a Man, though for Him what might appear to be masquerade is actually reality, and He, being divine, truly became human. Anyhow, these were some of the things that crossed my mind as I sat, shrinking, in the midst of the noisy cafeteria.

After supper, Rachel persuaded me to go with her to a talk by Charles Martin, an African-American writer. He seemed quite knowledgeable, but also (if I may say so) rather too focused on his own achievements. He quoted his own books as basis for his talk, and he constantly mentioned the contests he'd won, editorial boards he'd been on, etc. But he had some interesting ideas about storytelling. There were a couple of young girls in the audience who were positively star-struck over him. It was rather funny, especially since, had I not heard them say their ages, I would've thought they were in their early twenties. Their clothing was sophisticated, their hair perfectly combed, their hoop earrings impeccably shiny. When they started to talk, though, they sounded quite ditzy, and when Mr. Martin asked them their age, they giggled that they were only fifteen. Later, during the question-and-answer session, Rachel and I nearly jumped out of our skins when Dr. G's lazy voice came out of mid-air behind us. He'd come in after we had, and had taken a chair directly behind Rachel's. As soon as we heard him, we both sat up straighter and stopped fidgeting so much. *grins*

After the talk, Rachel and I went up to my room, where we watched the short clips about the making of the new Narnia movie. Whenever the "real" story was mentioned, we both sighed, as star-struck as the silly girls at the lecture. Rachel didn't much like it when the director said that his job is to "exceed imagination". I myself think they've gone a bit slap-happy with their computers. These huge battle scenes, which are far bigger than the ones in the book, appear to my mind to be showcases for their sleek new toys.

So, that was the end of Monday.

Tuesday, there was no oceanography class. I sat around and read depressing Greek drama ("Oedipus Rex") and complicated British metaphysical poetry (Andrew Marvell).

In linguistics today, a lesson on patterns in human thought. All through class, ther was such a racket from the roofers working overhead that Dr. L could hardly be heard. A fine, yellowish powder sifted from the vibrating ceiling. Whenever there was a particularly loud hammering, Dr. L would pause and pull a face so comical that it was har dnot to laugh. Kendall Hall, where linguistics is held, always reeks of evil to me (its main purpose is to be a home for the theatre department). It's a dark, asymmetrical building, built at the height of Modern architecture, with few windows. All the rooms and hallways seem jumbled together, without any right angles or reason. The colors are all wrong: greyish white, faded blue, watery black, dirty orange. It smells musty. It seems as though all the people inside it hate God and enjoy hating Him as fully as possible.

This evening when I ran, I passed the university-run elementary school. A bunch of kids were playing soccer on the lawn outside the school. Off to one side, two girls, a clarinetist and a flutist, were playing duets. Their music was pure and plain. As the sun set, the sky turned the stormy blue of a wind-tossed lake, with clouds churned up on its surface like whitecaps or drifts of dark, fallen leaves.

Tonight (or rather, tomorrow morning) at midnight, freshman get to enroll. So... I have dutifully decided to stay up until 12:01 precisely. Which means that there may be more than one post on here this evening. Not very likely, though. Last night, a strange thing happened to me: I dreamed a story. Just one brief scene from a story, and while I woke up and got dressed, it was still with me, ongoing and vivid, so I embroidered on it in my mind. I shall have to see where it takes me. Nowhere, most likely, but it has promise to spin out into some sort of weird science fiction/fantasy yarn (yes, that was a bad pun :).