booksale

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor. Third movement, which is a Nutcracker-like march that has a crazy little dance scurrying behind the grand brass fanfare.

Here's an entry that I didn't have time to post earlier. It's an account of Friday, February 24th, in which Rachel and I go with the Ss to the booksale in Oklahoma City.

My mother drove Rachel and me home in time for lunch this morning. My mother and Daisy left for Irish Dance class at 1:15. Rachel and I fixed our suppers, collected our gear, and asked Brother1 to drive us over to campus. The plan for the afternoon: to go to a lecture at the OSU library at two o’clock, and then to walk over to Mr. S’s office at three fifteen, to drive with him to Irish Dance to pick up the girls, and then to leave directly for the Oklahoma City booksale. Brother1 took us down to OSU and dropped us off behind the power plant. Rachel and I walked to the library together, staring at the huge, sharp-edged brick buildings. They looked harsh and ungainly to my eyes, more used to the gentle, cream-colored stone and the Gothic arches of the Tulsa campus. The library still smelled like a library, though, and Rachel breathed in the smell of ink and dust with a happy sigh. We walked around to the front of the building and up the grand flight of marble stairs to the reading room, where the lecture was to take place. The reading room is two stories tall, with massive Corinthian columns and upholstered armchairs down both sides of the room, under floor-to-ceiling windows, which are shaded with heavy cream-and-grey silk drapes. Faded plastic orange chairs had been set up in rows down the center of the room, and here the talk took place.

The lecture was quite good. The speaker somehow managed to bring in most of the concepts that we’ve studied in Honors, plus some of the writers that I’ve studied in MBW this semester. The lecturer was a tall, paunchy man with a fleshy face and a deep voice. He spoke well. We left during the question-and-answer session after the lecture. We walked over to Engineering North, glorying in the warm spring sunshine and the fact that, in God’s providence, everything had worked out for us to be able to attend the lecture, and to go to the booksale too.

Inside the engineering building, I picked our way down the hall, up a staircase of brown-sugar-colored marble, and down another long hall. Our feet echoed on the hard tile. Fluorescent lights flickered dully on announcement boards fluttering with notifications of competitions, scholarships, and favorite faculty. The office that Mr. F and Mr. S share is at the north end of the hall. I knocked timidly on the door. No one answered. I knocked again, rather louder, and Mr. S finally opened to us. We sat down on the two chairs in the secretary’s area in the front of the office (Mr. S’s little room is to the left of the secretary’s room, and Mr. F’s little room is to the right). I looked at the tall shelves of engineering files, and pointed out to Rachel the poster for the Smart Bridge project (they’ve been working to store solar heat in the summer to heat bridges in the winter so that they don’t freeze over). Rachel commented that science is much like magic. “The internet—that’s magic,” I said. “Yeah. It’s like having a crystal ball or a magic mirror or something,” Rachel replied. “Oh, my magic mirror isn’t working today!” I whined, mimicking someone whose internet isn’t working, and Rachel giggled. I laughed at the sign that someone had made for Mr. Fisher (probably SwanElf): “To all students: Make sure Dr. F has had at least three cups of coffee before you ask stupid questions.”

When Mr. S was ready to go, we stepped out of the office into a crowd of Pakistani students, who were all jabbering in Arabic. As we hurried downstairs, we passed a couple of Chinese men earnestly discussing something in Mandarin. Outside, as we crossed the sidewalk to the parking lot, we passed a couple of Eastern European men in long coats arguing in something that sounded like Russian. “That’s got to be the third language I’ve heard on the way downstairs,” Mr. S commented, and we laughed. Mr. S drove us to Irish Dance to pick up Princess, Marigold, Hannah, and Rebekah.

When the lesson was over, Princess, Marigold, Hannah, and Rebekah whisked themselves together, and we all hurried out to the car. There was a scramble to get in: knapsacks, sweaters, books, and Susie’s car seat had to be dumped in the trunk before there was enough room for all of us. Marigold sat in front, with Mr. S; then came me, Princess, and Rachel, and last of all, Hannah and Rebekah. As soon as we got in the car, Princess produced snacks. We passed around a bag of jellybeans, and everyone took a handful. I sucked them: banana, popcorn, lemon, peach, green apple, strawberry, blueberry, licorice. Princess wrinkled her nose as she bit into one that “tastes like bubble bath”. Hannah dug chocolate-covered peanuts from the cooler, and we all had some of those, too. Rebekah handed up some almonds for Mr. S. “Are these all for me?” he asked. “No! Mommy said you had to share them,” Rebekah replied. Everyone laughed. “Rachel, one of my friends was once on a web chat group where they were discussing Presbyterians. A Baptist commented on the thread and said that Presbyterians always remind him of hobbits—they love to eat, they’re cheerful, they love to talk, and they love to be together,” I said. Mr. S had fusion rock/Celtic blaring out of the CD player as we drove out of Stillwater toward Oklahoma City.

On the outskirts of the city, Hannah and Rebekah spotted a water tower with a white canopy tied over it. “Look! It’s a landing platform for aliens!” Hannah joked. She began to write a story in her notebook about aliens. As we neared the fair grounds where the booksale takes place, we ran into road construction. The highway was backed up for miles. Mr. S got off the highway and drove through cramped back streets, between seedy hotels, dirty gas stations, liquor stores, and old houses toward the fairgrounds. I wondered aloud if everyone who lives in that part of town is Hispanic. At the fairgrounds, Mr. S pulled into the big gravel parking lot. We scrambled out of the car, leaving behind coats and sweatshirts, and hurried to the exhibition building where the booksale is housed. I skipped, dancing the jig step to keep warm. However, it turned out that we were just too late to stand inside the building, for there was no more room inside; instead, we had to wait outside for half-an-hour until the booksale opened. A chilly south wind raced over the building across the street where they show airplanes and cars, scouring the dry ground and whirling dust in our eyes. Princess, Rachel, and I huddled together with our arms around each other’s shoulders and Rebekah in the middle of the three of us. Mr. S chafed at the waiting and apologized brusquely for telling us to leave our jackets behind. He took one of his bookbags, a huge army knapsack that he’d bought at an army surplus store, and pulled it over Hannah. It came down to just above her ankles. Encased in the rough green canvas, she was fairly warm. We laughed at her: “A bookbag with feet!” Mr. S took pictures of us with his palm pilot.

The booksale finally opened at five thirty. We shuffled inside the entry hall with everyone else, into Collector’s Choice. Trash cans rumbled over the dusty cement floor. Boxes, suitcases, bags, and tennis shoes rustled on the concrete. Mr. S made sure that Hannah and Marigold, Princess and Rebekah were set (they were supposed to be “buddies”). Rebekah inquired pertly whether he had a “buddy”. Rachel and I switched on our walkie-talkies.

Inside Collectors’ Choice, Rachel and I pushed our way to the religion section. She found a NKJV Bible for my father, which he’d requested that I look for. Then we went to literature, where Rachel found several volumes of plays, including one of Gilbert and Sullivan, and where I found Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. I browsed the SciFi and Fantasy sections, pushing past a girl with curly red hair in a black, spiderweb-patterned jacket, and a boy with a spiky Mohawk.Rachel and I scanned the old books, too, poring over dusty covers, faded leather jackets, and peering at the dim gold leathering and fading ink. We sorted our books with Princess and Rebekah—like children sorting through a bag of jellybeans, choosing out their favorite flavors. I exclaimed happily over a volume of Irish folktales I’d found that had the legend of Cuchulain in the back. We stood in line for awhile, then purchased our books, counting them out at one of the many little tables. The volunteers at my table flipped open each cover, read out the price, and added them up. I wrote a check and met Rachel outside the Collector’s Choice area. We handed our books to volunteers at the holding area, who arranged them in brown paper grocery sacks, slapped a tag number on each sack, and gave us a token strung on a rubber band, with our tag number on it. We left as they were settling the sacks among countless other sacks on tall shelves.

Entering the General Area, Rachel gasped: the huge exhibition building soared above us. Books, books, books! On tables, like mazes, and lined on the floor under the tables. People, pushing through the aisles, carrying babies in strollers, or leading children by the hand, or dragging boxes or grocery carts or bulging knapsacks. Girls in long skirts with the little black caps of Menonites perched on their heads. Young women, eyes lined with dark mascara. Fat old women examining the Romance novels. Boys flipping through the CDs, plastic cases clicking together between fast fingers. Old men sampling the religion section or browsing the sets with the air of connoisseurs. Little girls sitting cross-legged in the middle of the children’s section with picture books spread over their knees, oblivious to the people pushing past them. Blonde-haired little boys with ruddy cheeks. Grey-haired women with gently-wrinkled smiles. Colored balloons hovered over each section to mark the various genres, hanging like pale nebulae in the shimmering, dusty air.

Rachel and I went to literature first, then split up. I browsed through various sections—SciFi, Fantasy (in quest of Lloyd Alexander or Susan Cooper), religion (praying for C.S. Leiws), adventure, mystery (tracing any copies of Sayers or Chesterton), youth (hoping for George MacDonald for Daisy), science (investigating after copies of Living Fishes of the World, or books about sharks and the sea, for Brother2), and the CDs, which were the most crowded. It was eight thirty by the time Rachel and I met up, in a quiet corner, to sort our books. I had managed to find a book of shark pictures for Brother2, a Liszt CD for Daisy, and a piano CD for Brother1, as well as a Matthew Henry commentary that I’d wanted, a copy of Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, The Robe, Kon-Tiki (without the gloriously tropical paintings that are in my mother’s copy, but still enchanting to read), The Name of the Rose (a mystery that Syneva recommended), and a little volume of G.K. Chesterton poems and essays that Rachel picked up for me. We checked out briskly, picked up our books from the holding area, and sat down outside in the large entry area.

I munched a couple of crackers while Rachel went off about her own business. Mr. S came by to give the direful news that he’d lost one of the tags for a bag of his books, and it would probably be awhile before he could find it in the holding area. The other girls showed up, grinning and cheerful, with their arms full of books. We curled up like gypsies in a corner by one of the metal buttresses that support the big building (like a metal bubble, with a stiff skeleton), books stacked in bags around our feet. Dust tasted dry on my tongue and coated my fingers, staining my jeans, too. I began The Name of the Rose, which starts with a delightful Author’s Note in which Umberto Eco gives you a ridiculously long and unlikely story about how the mystery he’s written actually derives from a fourteenth-century account he picked up and then lost somewhere—just like the Romantic and Victorian authors who would say that they’d “discovered” a story somewhere, when they were really making it up. I read and watched a lithe Asian girl clamber about in the holding area. She was light enough to climb onto the tallest of the steel shelves of books and to search among them for a sack that someone else had lost. Her long straight black hair swung down over her shoulders.

Us girls sat together until Mr. S returned, in a miraculously short amount of time, with his missing sack of books. Someone had found the tag, which had snapped off its rubber band lacing, and had turned it in to the holding area. Mr. S made several trips with books, and then we all trooped out to the car together. The trunk of the suburban was piled high with crunching brown paper sacks, angles and poking corners and leather covers peering out of them. Everyone was shivering from the cold night wind. Rebekah split up the last of the chocolate-covered peanuts. I shared jellybeans with Princess. We talked busily about the books we’d found. Mr. S was pleased with his catch of the night. He’d netted fly fishing books, a couple of books about Irish history, etc. Marigold had found a copy of Detectives in Togas for Ruth. Hannah had found some children’s Christian mystery books. Rebekah and Hannah listed off their books happily, like misers counting treasure. Mr. S asked Rachel what she’d found, and Rachel told him about the books of plays and an economics volume that she’d discovered.

In the back seat, the “peanut gallery” (Hannah and Rebekah, who were very, very silly, being hyper on candy and adrenaline) counted radio towers. Hannah counted thirty-nine on the way back to Stillwater—towers light upright blades of wheat beaded with red seeds. Lights flickered on the dark hills as though the land was a deep sea, remembering the play of sunlight on its surface, and clinging to the red and the gold reflections until day should come again. Orion swung high overhead. Wisps of cloud flung silver robes over his shoulders. We left Princess and Marigold at the Fs’ house to spend the night—they were to go to robotics Saturday morning, and were staying the night with the Fishers so that Mrs. S wouldn’t have to spend the two hours driving out to robotics to drop them off and pick them up. Mr. S drove Rachel and me to my house. We went to bed.

Charlemagne, Coleridge, spooks, and sermons

Now Playing: "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra" by Samuel Barber, performed by Hilary Hahn. Track 3, "Presto in Moto".

Rachel and I ate breakfast together this morning. She told me about a poetry reading she went to last night by a woman named Jen Bervin, whose latest project has been to write poems by stealing snatches from Shakespearean sonnets and piecing them together with her own words to make something rather "existential". Rachel said she actually wasn't too bad--her new policy regarding poets is not to evaluate them rigorously but instead to relax and just appreciate the language, because that's the only way they can be enjoyed (I couldn't help but grin inwardly at this).

After breakfast I practiced my flute, then spent the morning studying, mostly reading ahead for Major British Writers (the later Victorians--Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and their compatriots) and Honors (Notker's Life of Charlemagne). For Honors we're reading both Einhard's Life of Charlemagne and Notker's verison of the same story. Einhard is much more cut-and-dry. He sticks to the "facts" for the most part, and his style reminds me of Thucydides's. Notker, on the other hand, jumps around and follows rabbit trails right and left. His Life is more of a folklore than a historical account of Charlemagne (which Einhard's account tries to be). Charlemagne doesn't show up very often, but when he does Notker is sure to assign him some new laudatory epithet: "Charlemagne the unconquerable", "Charlemagne the pious", "Charlemagne the wise", "Charlemagne the generous", and so it goes. Notker seems more interested in almost fairy-tale like anecdotes about bishops and priests. The hobgoblins and demons are always popping up to torment bad churchmen; either that, or some particularly saintly person is being "divinely inspired" to say or do something momentous. Notker is rather like Herodotus--colorful and unbelievable.

I walked to Romantic British Literature class at 11:00 a.m. The snow has melted in some places, but it's still fairly thick over most of the lawns. In Romantic British Literature we discussed Coleridge's "Conversation" poems. They're a series of five poems in which Coleridge speaks to another person (his wife in one poem, his child in another, his friends in another). They have vivid, simple imagery, and they usually take place at night or at twilight, with a sense of solitude and serenity. Though they are addressed to someone else, the other person is either absent physically or absent mentally, wrapped up in his or her own thoughts. I actually like most of the poems, despite the often-stifling emphasis on unity with Nature. The language is so luminous and pretty, and the stereotypes that Coleridge tosses out are stereotypes that are worthy of being tossed out (i.e., in one poem, the nightingale as a symbol for the dejected lover)--though of course at the same time he sets up stereotypes that are equally ridiculous in some ways.

After RBL, I dashed into the cafeteria, shouldered my way through crowds of burly football players and girls in fuzzy boots, and picked up my lunch. Then it was time for First Seminar. The first half of class was spent discussing papers and the "storyboards" we'd done last week. These storyboards were supposed to be drawings about what a "creative encounter" would look like. *hem* If you get a picture of abstract art with lots of weird shapes and bright colors, you're on the right track. The second half of the class was spent discussing contemporary myths, which was much more interesting--things like the cults that form around sports stars, movie stars, politicians, etc.; the "curses" that haunt baseball teams, archaeologists, and theatres (Did you know that "Macbeth" is supposed to be cursed? Superstitious actors refer to it as "the Scottish play", and every actor who plays Macbeth has something dreadful and mysterious happen to him); superheroes (Spiderman, Superman, and that whole rogues' gallery), aliens, Bigfoot, and the like.

Someone mentioned ghosts, and of course the class had fun with that. The campus here is supposedly home to a whole zoo-ful of ghosts. The library is an especially favorite haunt: there's Farley, who goes around shutting doors and turning off lights. Then there's also the room on the top floor of the library that's always locked, but if you put your eye to the crack in the door, you can see a light inside. Supposedly there's a chandelier in that room, and a dean hung himself from that chandelier (sounds like "The Phantom of the Opera" to me). Then of course there are the ghosts who reside in the residence halls: Leo, who was killed by his fraternity brothers in a tragic accident in what's now the Honors House, and a young girl who hung herself from the rafters in the third-floor study lounge of Twin Towers (someone in the class pointed out that that particular study lounge doesn't have any rafters, whereas all the other study lounges in Twin Towers do--the administration supposedly had the rafters removed). Add to these ghosts the stories that Tyrrell Hall is haunted (!!--I've spent hours in there and never run into a spook), and that the classroom building where we were meeting also has its own "spirit". I sat and listened and laughed quietly, though there were times when my skin crawled, too. Ghosts aren't a pleasant subject, at least to someone with an overactive imagination like mine--think of Anne and Diane in Anne of Green Gables, and their scare in the "haunted" wood, and you'll get an idea of how my silly brain works.

First Seminar ran for almost its full duration of two hours and forty-five minutes. The cold air outside was a welcome refresher after the stale classroom indoors. Dr. T had assigned us in First Seminar to write our own contemporary myth, which sounded like fun to me. I've been tossing around ideas for such stories for quite awhile now, so I spent all afternoon furiously dashing out a five-page short story that's really more of a spooky take-off on "The Village" than anything else.

I ran around 5:00 p.m. The gym usually isn't as crowded at that time, but there is a yoga class that meets in the dance room. I can't help but laugh a little whenever I run past the dance studio and see all the yoga girls standing on one foot with their arms stuck out over their heads like divers, or lying on the floor curled up in little balls, or poised with their hands perched over their foreheads like little tipis.

After running, I ate supper and spent it studying archaeology, then came back to my room and studied some more. I never can tell whether to be worried about exams or not. Sometimes the information I study is too specific: I focus on memorizing the three interpretation techniques, or the individual definitions of sundry artifacts, when I should instead be working on grasping the "big picture" and thinking about how to apply those things to real-life situations.

RUF tonight. On my way to RUF, I met up with Tara, Esther, and Esther-and-Syneva's new roommate, Rachel (Rachel has moved in with Esther and Syneva since Amanda, their roommate (well, apartment-mate is more accurate) is in Spain). Esther and Rachel hummed songs from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" while Tara and I laughed at them.

Mr. Knorr preached an excellent sermon tonight about how the fear of the Lord is a great treasure, and how that fear should prompt God's people to toss out idols and get rid of false securities and seek to do good to the poor (he used Isaiah 31-33 as his text).

During the hymn singing, Syneva played her cello. They usually have at least two people playing guitar, too. I'd never heard Syneva play her cello, and I must say that it was quite lovely, the mello tones of the instrument blending easily with guitar and voices.

After RUF, I chatted with various people: Jenny H., who figured out that Rachel (Esther and Syneva's roommate) leads her chemistry section; Kathryn, who's in First Seminar with me and thinks it's about as strange as I do; Tara, who took the same First Seminar last year and liked it; and Alisha, who invited me to a Signature Symphony concert coming up in March, and also told me about an opportunity for prayer on campus.

As I walked back to my dorm, the damp air pressed against my face. Haloes of mist hung around the bluish-white lamps so that air and snowy lawns all sparkled together. Light became a tangible substance, wet and cold.

Now the first strains of Edward Elgar's "Enigma Variations" are playing--melancholy, variegated, tender.

Last week my parents gave me the most wonderful little rosebush for Valentine's Day. It flourished cheerfully all week. When I returned to my room from being in Stillwater for the weekend, though, I was shocked nearly to tears by seeing that all the leaves and flowers had wilted to green and red shreds. It had dried out over the weekend. I watered it vigorously, frantically e-mailed my mother, and carefully snipped off the crisp leaves. It looked dreadfully leggy and naked. By Monday morning, it had started to put out tentative baby sprouts where the old leaves had been. Tonight, every stalk has a few sprigs of tender leaves on it. Perhaps it may even bloom again.

some pictures of magnolias

Here's Jenny studying statistics under the star magnolias in the courtyard.






















Here are the star magnolias back in January, before the frost.








One magnolia bloom, fully open.












Yet another flower, half-open... you can see that it does look like a star.













These are the saucer magnolias, in bud. If they had bloomed, they would've been huge towers of deep pink blooms, like lotus flowers.










One of the flowers is almost open.

Bronte, Benedict, and Bible study

Warning: Long post ensues.

This morning Rachel and I ate breakfast together. After breakfast, I spent the time until Major British Writers studying. In MBW, we discussed critical reactions to Wuthering Heights. Most of the reviews we read (which were from the 1800s) were by people who thought that the book was wild and dismal and unpleasant (a sentiment which I heartily endorse :). Next came archaeology. The professor has been showing us slides of surveys he's done in British Columbia and Oklahoma. An archaeological survey divides a space of land into patches, and then people go out and walk over those patches to see what they can find that's of archaeological value. Since anything over fifty years old is classified as a site, this can range from old oil wells and cemeteries and homesteads (in Oklahoma) to prehistoric, donut-shaped houses and hearths (in British Columbia).

I practiced my flute for an hour after archaeology. I'm working on the "Cantilena" from the "Sonata" by Poulenc. It's the second movement--slow, meditative, airy, delicate. Like the traceried shadows that sunlight throws through a magnolia tree on a stone wall. It's very difficult to follow the arabesques of the phrases through. They start down low, in the octave of middle C, and climb all the way up to the octave that's two or three above middle C, then back down again--quite a leap, and all pianissimo, which makes it even harder.

The cafeteria was very busy when I went in for lunch. I ordered a dubious grilled turkey sandwich from one line, with a generous portion of French fries. The bananas were all brown, and the apples looked sickly, so what with one thing and another, my lunch consisted of a spinach salad (hastily tossed together from the salad bar), a few French fries, a glass of milk, and three-quarters of the turkey sandwich, which oozed pale cheese and buttery grease whenever I bit into it. I sat with a bunch of acquaintances, Nicole and Alex among them, and listened to them talk.

After lunch, I worked on my Honors presentation and on rewriting my paper about "The Lady of Shalott". When I showed my paper about "The Lady of Shalott" for MBW to Dr. F on Monday, she gave me some helpful comments about it, and so now I had to go back and revise it extensively. I cut out a bunch of nonsense about women, and just focused on the symbolism of the Lady of Shalott as a metaphor for the poet--which, in my opinion, is also rather far-fetched, but nonetheless interesting to examine.

In Honors class this afternoon, everyone was supposed to present a short talk about their community. Since we've been reading The Rule of St. Benedict, we're each supposed to come up with a community that shares some aspects and rejects other aspects of the Benedictine community. The first one to present was a young man whose community consists of an inner-city ministry. The goal of this "ministry" is to be as diverse as possible, and to expose young people to as many different cultural and moral options as possible. (Rachel and I, discussing it later, wondered if this would only confuse the "at-risk" youths even more.) Next came a young woman whose community was to be a loose group of artists who would work in rural areas, promoting the arts in poor schools.

Then came Russ, whose community consisted of soccer-playing monks. (Yes, he created quite a stir with this.) He was quite forceful and articulate, though, so he managed to convince the class after awhile that his community wasn't quite as ridiculous as it sounded. After that was Nicole, who talked about a community devoted to the study of political science (her major). It was basically a microcosm of the university, as she said herself. Finally was a boy who set his community in a post-nuclear-fallout America. His community of militants, similar to the Knights Templar, existed to protect poor farmers from bands of redneck raiders who were going around, robbing the countryside of what few resources it had left.

Neither Rachel nor I had the chance to present, but after class, we stayed a little and talked with Dr. A. Unlike everyone else, Rachel actually planned to deconstruct a community--to discuss how marriage cannot exist in a Benedictine setting because the loyalty and unity between husband and wife overrides the loyalty to the community.

I worked on my presentation for an hour after Honors class. There were several gaps that Dr. A had brought up as she critiqued the other students, asking questions and poking holes in their communities, which I thought best to clear up before she saw my community on paper (we're supposed to turn our presentations into essays). After the hour was up, I walked back over to Chapman Hall to visit Dr. A during her office hour. She was fifteen minutes late, and I stood in the narrow hall, listening to the secretaries gossip, and hearing a professor down the hall ordering home insurance, while another professor bustled past with reams of paper.

When Dr. A arrived, we had a good discussion in her office. She has a small office, with a high ceiling. It's dark and cool, like a cell, with floor-to-ceiling, east-facing windows that look out on the sunwarmed wall of the Business Administration Hall next door. She's so little and wrinkled, with such small, dark, sleepy eyes that I'm always surprised by her willingness to talk with me. Somehow, we started to talk about Augustine and creativity. "I often find, as Augustine does, that there are ideas in me, things I knew, but never fully grasped," she said, referring, I think, to Augustine's ideas about memory and the mind. She told me that she writes poetry, though she's never published it, and that one of her friends recently chastized her gently for not publishing because that's sort of the "final step" of the creative process for some.

We did talk about my community, and she helped me with solutions to some of the problems that I'd seen in the practical aspects (government, daily chores, teaching positions, etc.). The community I came up with is a community of writers who both teach and do research and writing (creative and scholarly). So I had to figure out a way for the members of the community to balance teaching with writing. Dr. A said that there's a couple at the University who split a position: the husband teaches one semester, and the wife teaches the next semester. That way they both have the opportunity to work on their own personal research and writing, as well as doing teaching. She also said that there's a woman who teaches a semester at the University, then takes a semester off to do her own research elsewhere (the woman is pretty famous, so she manages to live, though frugally, on her salary from one semester). Somehow, our discussion branched onto our own writing habits. Dr. A said that she's very particular, when she writes. She's found that she has to be in a certain place, with certain things around her: "It's hard to work creatively in a room full of dissonance." I complained about finding it hard to write in my dorm room, which feels sterile in comparison to my room at home, with all its books and pictures.

I walked back to my room, blue sky above and greening grass under my feet, my hair bobbing in waves against my ears, tossed by the wind, which smelled like smoke today.

I worked on my Honors paper and MBW paper until supper.

Supper tonight consisted of pizza downstairs in the Lottie lobby. A.C. was there, and I sat near her. She told me about a business project that she’s doing with another girl. They’re supposed to take a country, analyze its culture, and sell a product there. She’s doing Sweden. She said that she identifies with the culture there more than anywhere else. She plans to sell hiking boots since the Swedes, having been locked up indoors for the long winter, spend all summer doing activities outside. I munched my pizza and listened. The hot cheese scorched the roof of my mouth. After A.C. left, Alisha, Esther, and Jenny came in. I sat with Esther and Alisha on the floor. We talked about Esther’s exams last week, and Alisha asked if I was enjoying RBL. I grinned and said, evasively, “Tara is.” Both Esther and Alisha laughed. “It’s not really my particular interest,” I explained, “It’s so ridiculously melodramatic.” “What sort of literature do you like better?” inquired Esther. “Anglo-Saxon.” “Oh. Do you like ‘Beowulf’?” asked Alisha, making a face. I tried to explain “The Seafarer” to her as something she might like better, with its theme of finding peace in God. Jenny sat down with us. She twisted her ankle last Sabbath playing basketball, and now it’s swollen twice as big as it should be. She refuses to put any ice on it, though. She sat and laughed with Alisha and Esther about Art and Coffee (RUF talent night) this weekend. She, Spencer, and the two Davids are doing a dance together that (apparently) is supposed to look really weird and really funny.

After supper, I read Christina and Dante Gabriel Rosetti for MBW. A.C. knocked on my door and bounced in right before I had to leave for Bible study. We sat and chatted for a little while, nevertheless. She talked about her project, and about how few friends she’s had—only two, in her whole life. One of them was a Japanese-Swedish girl at her boarding school in Sweden; the other is a girl on the golf team here. As we parted, she said she’d stop by later—she wanted to hear me read one of my poems.

Downstairs in the lobby, I found Jenny, Rachel, Stephanie, Syneva, and Kathryn sitting and laughing and talking. Jenny was giving them a demonstration of her dance, and when she’d finished, she romped off to the lobby, where one of her friends was listening to air-headed rock from the 1980s and hopping around energetically. Their slaphappy contortions fit the happy-go-lucky, pie-in-the-sky music, with its jingling synthesizer and breathless vocals. (I’m not sure I would call what they were doing dancing per se.) I watched them through the door, laughing silently as they wiggled their hands in the air and jigged about. “C’mon, E--, you know you want to dance!” Jenny called. “Yeah, I want to dance, but not like that,” I laughed back. I sat by Kathryn and Rachel on the bench in front of Mrs. Lottie Jane’s portrait, and asked Kathryn about her home in Houston. Kathryn a small girl with glossy, wavy dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin, and a petite turn of speech—whenever she speaks, she curls her lips, like a kitten’s. Her mother is a church secretary; her father is a personal resources manager for a company. She said that when she moved up here, the pace of life was very different, and it’s taken her awhile to get used to it. She told us that, in the airports here, everyone is really nice and unassuming, laid-back, friendly. There’s hardly anyone in the airport, and the people who are in the airport don’t seem to be going anywhere in a hurry. In Houston, by contrast, the airports are full of people rushing to and fro at great speed, trying frantically to get where they’re going.

Syneva led the study tonight. Before the study, Syneva asked us all if we’d been watching the Olympics. A few of us had, though most of us, like typical college students, are pretty oblivious of what’s going on in the outside world. Jenny asked questions about curling, which she’d never heard of before. “I saw them pushing this thing over the floor, and I thought they were just cleaning the ice!” Anne said. “Yeah. It’s definitely not an American sport—no contact. It wouldn’t go over very well in a country where people like to hit each other whenever they play sports,” Jenny commented.

After Bible study, I showered. Once again, I was writing in my journal when A.C. interrupted me. She was in her blue fuzzy bathrobe, and said she’d just come by to say good-night. But she really wanted to hear a poem. So I invited her in, and she sat down, resting her head on her elbows. I scanned my files and finally settled on “Psyche Before the Gods”. I performed it as best I could, though, since I was reading from the computer screen, I couldn’t face her directly, and so some of the impact of the poem was lost. When I had finished, she smiled at me sleepily, and said, “It’s good.” She sat and stared at the poem on the computer screen for a long time. The room was silent. I rocked gently in my chair, wondering what she was thinking of it all. Finally, she sat up. “Sometimes things can inspire us so much that they become works of art,” she said. I looked puzzled. She paused. “I can’t believe how much you believe in this. I don’t understand,” she said at last. “Well, I don’t do anything. He works in me. I didn’t choose Him. He chose me,” I replied quietly. She nodded drearily and went back to staring at the poem. “It’s really good,” she said finally, and then invited me over to her room to read a paragraph she’d written. If she was a modern writer, she’d probably call it a prose poem. I read it over her shoulder on her laptop. It was titled “Oblivion”, and sounded cold, hard, and desolate. The imagery was all brittle, vividly surreal, reminding me of Picasso and Dadaists. Then, jokingly, she flinched aside from the exposure of her writing and showed me some poetry about golf that she’d found on the internet, by Andrew Lang. She read some of it out loud in a humorous, mock-Scottish accent, substituting the Spanish rolled “r” for the Scottish burr.

She hugged me good-night. I returned to my room for devotions and bed.

old books, blackberries, and basketball

Now Playing: (how did you know?) "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams. Track 1, "The Blitz, 1940". Yes, I do listen to other music--lots of other music! Yesterday it was all three LOTR soundtracks and Beethoven's 3rd symphony.

My mother seems to think I'm getting bored with this blog. I'm not. It's just been a dreadfully busy week. Midterms are coming up, so I've got lots of studying to do, papers to write, etc.

Yesterday I ate breakfast with Rachel. She's been reading a book written by an economist who thinks that private property began in tribal societies with wars over women: one tribe would steal the other tribe's women, and so on, and whoever had the most women was the most courageous. Gradually it became not only the women but also the things they made. She and I both thought this was rather ridiculous. Her economics professor believes that people should stop working to let technology do the job, and that there should be a redistribution of wealth--another rather peculiar proposition, as it leaves out a great deal of understanding of human nature (our desire to work as being a good thing; our greed).

This morning in MBW we went on a "field trip" to the top of the library to visit Special Collections. The Special Collections head is a plump, sleepy man who has pale blue eyes behind thick glasses, and a stringy salt-and-pepper ponytail. He briefly walked us through the collections on display in the reading room. He asked us if we had any questions, sighing noisily when we didn't. I finally plucked up courage to ask about finding the book-of-hours I'd seen last semester in MBW when Dr. S brought us up here. I could feel the other five students (out of a class of 22, only 6 people showed up!) groaning with impatience as the little man walked me through the computer system--it was actually quite helpful for finding rare books for which I don't remember the titles. He asked me if I wanted to see it. I just grinned and blushed sheepishly. "You sure?" he asked, blinking like a hedgehog behind his glasses.

In archaeology, the professor marched in with his textbook in hand. "Do you all want a quiz?" he asked the class. "No!" everyone said. "Ok! We won't have one! See, this is a democratic class," he replied, and everyone laughed.

After archaeology, I hurried back to my dorm, packed up, and dashed down to meet my mother who came to pick me up just after eleven o'clock. On the way home we passed some horrible burned places where the black was like sickening leprosy under scorched grass. As we pulled into the driveway at home, Brother2 was shooting baskets. He grinned at me as I made faces at him through the car window. We were home in time for lunch.

After lunch, Daisy and my mother went to their Irish dance class. I stayed home to finish writing journal entries and to work on the Honors project. Daisy left directly after dance class to drive down to Oklahoma City for a basketball game. She rode with a family on the team. The rest of us waited to go down to the game until my father finished his committee meeting, which ran until five thirty. We made our suppers, then picked him up on campus. As we drove out of town, I saw half-a-dozen deer grazing on the edge of a field, like puffs of goldenrod pollen caught in blue evening shadow.

We listened to the "Two Towers" soundtrack on the drive as we ate our supper in the car. I munched a chewy bagel, spread thickly with crunch-sweet blackberry jam. We arrived at the gym in time for the second half of the girls' basketball game. My father sat next to me and excitedly watched the game, sometimes shouting directions to the girls. He winced when Meri took a long jump shot, but she made it. Our girls' team won, 37-33.

After the girls' game, Meri sat beside me on the bleachers. We talked all through the boys' game about our small affairs: the car wreck Meri was in this week, our school, professors, "Cinderella Man", Charles Dickens, Dorothy Sayers. Meri described giving blood today, and I told her about the time when Danielle tried to give blood but got horribly bruised because for some reason they couldn't get anything out of her though she tried desperately. Meri said that her English composition teacher told their class not to read poetry because "it will turn your brain to mush". I laughed at that. "If you read the sort of poetry he's probably thinking of, it would!" and I complained about the Romantics.

We watched the game, cheering Josh and David and Brother1 on. Brother1 grabbed a steal and made a great lay-up. Meri squealed, "Yay! He's my brother!" then looked at me, and we both giggled. Our boys' team won, 57-34.

On the drive home, we listened to one of the new "Father Gilbert" mysteries. All of us except Brother1 showered and went to bed. Brother1 managed to convince my father to let him go out and work on a robot that he's preparing for a competition. He was gone till about one o'clock in the morning.

various terse ramblings

Now Playing: "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams. Track 15, "Wunderkind".

This is an edited journal entry. It's late--hence the brief language. Well, it seems brief to me, but when I actually sit down and look at the length of this thing, it's not. *groan* My fingers just keep dancing, like children to the Pied Piper.

If things are unclear, that's because I should have been either in bed or studying by now. Ask any questions you like.

As I settled in to practice my flute this morning after breakfast, Syneva came by and knocked on the practice-room door. We chatted for a little. She told me that Amanda had called her this morning, and that they’d had a good talk. Amanda is studying abroad in Spain this semester. Both Amanda’s “house mother”, her hostess, and her roommate are Catholic, which makes for some strange situations: her roommate sleeps with a rosary clutched in one hand.

I had MBW at 9:00 as usual. Dr. F was on a trip, so a substitute taught the class—Wuthering Heights. Next came archaeology, more site formation processes and discussion of the effect that wind and water have on artifacts. After archaeology, I sat in my room and furiously read Wuthering Heightsuntil 11:45, when I dashed downstairs to meet Mrs. L (she's a brisk little Chinese woman who has asked me to tutor her daughter Karis). She arrived at the Lottie parking lot in her long, maroon, fifteen-passenger van, to take me to her house for lunch and to give Karis a first lesson in poetry. She had all her children with her: Karis, the eldest, who’s twelve; Joshua and Thaddeus (I think those names are correct) who are young boys, probably eight or so—very lively; Hannah, a little girl who’s perhaps five or six, and Benjamin, the two-year-old.

The children all ogled me from the back seats and then, deciding almost immediately that I was not a threat, began to chatter, argue, giggle, etc. Mrs. L told me all about her extended family as we drove south through Tulsa to their neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. We passed through dense areas of businesses, restaurants, and hospitals. Traffic was thick. Finally, we pulled up over a steep hill and saw a deep, narrow valley, with another hill blue on the other side. Elegant houses lined both sides of the road, sheltering comfortably under grey trees. The Ls’ house is one of these—an older house, large, one story, with big windows. Joshua and Thaddeus found a good deal to tell me as we trooped inside. Hannah burbled quietly about her coat and her boots while Karis helped her to take them off. In the kitchen, I helped Mrs. L serve gigantic helpings of rice and split-pea soup into enormous bowls. Her father, a wizened Chinese man, stepped out of one of the back rooms to greet me and beam at me through thick glasses. All the children, Mrs. L, and myself sat down together to lunch. The boys brought out chips and eagerly suggested that I use them instead of my spoon. They chattered, tongues rushing over one another, about Narnia and LOTR, and all the books and toys they had related to these two. They prattled at me about their swords and bows-and-arrows, and asked me all sorts of questions about whether I thought balrogs or Moria to be frightening (they staunchly declared that such things weren’t scary at all). Karis listened and smiled at me occasionally, while Hannah occasionally lisped a corroboration to the boys’ tales through thick mouthfuls of soup. Benjamin stared at me between spoonfuls of soup that his mother poked into his plump mouth.

After lunch, Karis showed me the four anthologies that Mrs. L bought for me to use with her. Karis and I sat down in the living room under the skylight and started our lesson. I used the Grammar of Poetry book that my mother had given me to work through years ago. It turned out, as a pleasant surprise, that Karis is actually a good deal farther along than I had expected. She has a pretty firm grasp of rhyme, and understands such things as rhyme and meter. The trick will be to move her beyond mere understanding to get her to really use them—and I myself am not sure of that lesson, or of how I even began to understand it in my own writing. But I do know that reading good authors helps. I asked her if she’d like me to loan her some of my anthologies. She eagerly said, “Yes, please!”. I felt as though the first lesson must’ve seemed dull and scatter-brained to her.

Occasionally during the lesson the boys would peer in or hover around us. The children’s pet boa constrictor slumbered in its aquarium under a heat lamp on the bookshelf. Mrs. L was anxious that I return to campus on time, so we ended at 1:30 after barely half-an-hour of teaching. Karis and Hannah rode with us back to campus. Mrs. L dropped me off, and I walked straight over to Honors class. In Honors, we discussed the Rule of St. Benedict. Dr. A asked us what sorts of communities we’re considering. Russ described a community of soccer-playing monks who would honor God and witness through being good sports and excellent athletes. He couldn’t think of the word “witness”, and when Rachel supplied it for him, he leaped out of his chair and yelled, “YES!! That’s it! WITNESS!” so that she jumped back in surprise, and everyone laughed. Someone suggested that they play soccer in robes and cowls.

After class, I finished Wuthering Heights and also the second read-through of the Rule, in which we were supposed to look for personal/spiritual guidance for the monks (as opposed to the practical, every-day details from the first time through). My mind felt like a piece of mouldy bread. So I stretched and walked down the hall, to go out to the gym and run. On my way, Jenny called me into her room. She and Tara were looking at pictures from the RUF formal, and at a short digital video that someone had taken of the Virginia Reel. I stood and laughed with them at the pictures for awhile. They went to supper, and I ran. After I ran, I ate supper.

After supper, I came back to my room and thrashed out which poems I should send off to yet another small college magazine (at another college) for publication. One of my former teachesr in poetry gave this magazine my name. The editor-in-chief e-mailed me, soliciting submissions, so I sent her “Rain On the Day Before Communion Sabbath”, “Latin Tutorial at Sarah’s House”, and “Medicine Park, Oklahoma”. I have a deep dislike for all of them, except “Rain On…”. I kept scouring my files for something that was acceptable to publish (besides “Psyche”, which I’ve already sent to “Stylus”), and coming up with nothing. If I were to become a nun, my first resolution would be to give up showing people any poetry.

Bible study at 8:00 p.m. For a little, I was the only one in the lobby, so I amused myself by drawing sketches in my old journal. Then Crystal came in with a girl named Stephanie. Stephanie is a slim girl with close-set eyes behind narrow glasses, and a white face with pink lips. She and Crystal sat and chattered happily for awhile. Eleanor, James’s girlfriend, came, too. Eleanor is short, with brown hair and tanned skin. She laughs a lot—somehow, the name Eleanor fits her from LOTR, and is proper to James, for he likes LOTR, too. Rachel came, and so did Anne. Rachel told me about the paper she’s writing for biology class about pomegranates. Syneva arrived and stared at us all in surprise for a minute.

We had a good study, about Galatians 2:11-21. Anne made popcorn, and everyone munched it happily, leaving flakes of it on the floor like yellow pollen. Jenny wasn’t there because she had a meeting. After the Bible study, I walked Rachel out. She described to me the Honors House/LaFortune Hall dinner that she’d gone to tonight. They’d invited a speaker, a professor in psychology, to come after the meal and talk to them about romance in the workplace. Rachel said that it was entertaining, if rather strange. She sat at the table with all the other Honors House people. “Oh, the zoo,” I quipped, and she smiled slowly. It was cold outside, so we didn’t talk for very long. “I’m still trying to get used to the fact that it’s actually winter,” Rachel chuckled as she waved good-bye.

Now it's time for devotions and bed.

Violin's Four Things Game

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 10, "Anduril". SwanElf has written a gorgeous poem about this track. Go to the War of the Ring website in the links, and click on "FanFic". Go to the first Elvellon account if you want to read it (or just ask me for a copy).

Four Jobs I Have Had
- babysitter
- petsitter
- secretary/internet sleuth (for Mr. Y)
- leaf-raker

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over
- the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy
- "The Village"
- "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"
- "Chariots of Fire"

Four Books I Could (and Have) Read Over and Over
- the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy (who would've guessed?! :)
- the "Chronicles of Narnia"
- "The Shining Company"
- "Til We Have Faces"

Four Places I Have Lived
- Stillwater
- Sweden
- Tulsa
- ....

Four TV Shows I Watch
- Three Stooges
- Beverly Hillbillies doesn't count because I only watch it under duress! :)
- nope
- not a chance

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
- Michigan
- Colorado
- California
- Texas

Four Websites I Visit Daily
- blogs
- Weather Underground
- WebCT (not quite daily, but close enough since I have a couple of classes with required discussion groups on the internet)
- ....

Four Favorite Foods
- golden delicious apples
- artichokes
- mushrooms
- bell peppers

Four Places I'd Like To Be Right Now
- home
- Horn Creek
- San Antonio
- British Isles

Four Bloggers I'm Tagging Who Must Now Play This Game
- Daisy
- Princess
- Shadow
- Stupendous Man

lovely day

Now Playing: "The Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack by Andrew Lloyd-Weber. Track 10, "Masquerade".

This is my 108th post. And it's disgustingly flowery, too, so beware.

I managed to get seven hours of sleep last night instead of the usual six. That made a big difference.

This morning before Major British Writers, I worked on my paper for First Seminar, about The Courage to Create. We actually started to write our papers in class yesterday. Rachel told me that she'd managed to crystallize some of our collective thoughts in her essay about how the courage to create is really the courage to obey God and go against men. She said that she talked about Socrates, Christ, and Joan of Arc, all of whom are mentioned in the book as "saints", and all of whom, incidentally, were urged on by some sort of "spiritual force". I, on the other hand, wrote a pompous and sappy piece of work about how we all face the daunting task of creativity and how some people have chosen to overcome that formidable challenge. The only bright spot was at the end, where I managed to say that as we take courage to create, we honor the source of courage. On the whole, I was quite disappointed with myself, but now that Rachel is doing her own essay, I don't want to steal her ideas, and it isn't so bad, I suppose.

In Major British Writers today, we started the Victorian era. The professor thinks that Queen Victoria was both weird and a hypocrite. I'm just glad that we get to start Tennyson on Friday. I've only met three people that I like during Major British Writers II: Jane Austen, surprisingly, John Keats, and Alfred Tennyson (whom I already knew I liked). The rest of them are either too strange or (to speak plainly) very stuck-up.

In archaeology, we went on a field trip. It was much more fun than the oceanography field trip last semester, though I wish it had lasted longer. Of course, I had to find a ride, but one of the boys who's both in the archaeology class and in the First Seminar was already taking two other girls, so I went with them. He had a nice car (not a jeep :), though the one drawback was that he played loud rock music the whole time. It was sad music, too--selfish and angry. The singer, a woman, belted out her depression and disappointment with a string of lovers and friends because they didn't treat her as being "special". Everything in her lyrics was centered on herself, her own feelings, and how other people didn't give her her due, or how she was searching for satisfaction in someone--satisfaction meaning someone just to stand and "listen to me cry". Empty music. There's no hope in a world like that.

We drove out to a place called Bird Creek. It's on the eastern edge of Tulsa, near the port and also near limestone quarries. As we approached the place, the road became thick with heavy trucks trundling past, some of them tooting long blasts on their horns. Limestone dust hung in the warm air, veiling the naked trees and the gaping pits that had been blasted in the flat sweep of prairie. Towers puffed smoke into the air, and long metal chutes rattled with gravel. Heavy tires tore up the soft ground, punching soft grass into harsh tread patterns. We pulled off the road near the bridge over Bird Creek. Trucks roared by. The wind from their passing and the stench from scorching diesel caught in my throat and made it hard to breathe. We sat in the car at one place for awhile before realizing that we were supposed to meet everyone at a spot just back the road a few hundred yards. We were the last to catch up with the rest of the class.

It was a relief to get away from the highway. I pushed through dense scrub--bare sumac and pokeberry, my feet sinking deep into the thick golden grass. Long spears of grass, spotted maroon, snagged on my jeans. Cottonwood leaves splashed silverly around my feet--as though the Milky Way had, snake-wise, shed its scales on the earth.

We stood on a gently-sloping bank on the east side of the creek while the professor told us about the geology and hydrology of the area, and told us how natives a thousand years ago could've lived. Warm sunshine freckled my face and the green water of the creek below. The creek foamed over low rapids before fanning out into a broader area. It had slashed the west bank steeply so that we could see the stratification in the soil. Cottonwood and oak trees grew sparsely on both banks, towering over the scrub. I fingered a pliable cottonwood branch, its tips spiked with leaf buds velvety and pointed as rabbit's ears. The dull green outer casing, like the juvenile feathers of a hawk, was beginning to open and show the silky-wet copper of the young leaves beneath.

I desperately wanted to push through the woods, perhaps even to scramble down to the bank and walk by the water, but everyone left immediately, as soon as the professor was done with his brief lecture. When the young man who gave me a lift dropped myself and the other two girls off on campus, I paused beside the parking lot. A thick quince bush, with little yellow flowers, was humming with bees. They staggered over the curly petals, energetically pushing their fuzzy bodies into the pollened interiors. I sniffed the faintly sweet smell, delicate as the drop of honey at the lip of a honeysuckle's tube. Then I nearly jumped out of my skin, for a mockingbird was watching me suspiciously from the interior of the bush. It silently hopped away when I eyed it, its grey plumage blending with the still-grey twigs inside the bush, and I glanced up to where its small, raggedy nest perched among the top branches.

I ate a fast lunch alone. They didn't have any whole wheat bread, so I had to make do with white bread for my sandwich. Like eating sugary air.

For the earlier part of the afternoon, I edited my Honors paper, which I turned in early, and also read Tennyson for Major British Writers. When I had finished both of these tasks, I decided to try and practice my flute, but all the practice rooms were full--a soprano, half-a-dozen pianists, a flutist, and a violinist.

Back at Lottie, I took some pictures of the magnolias in the courtyard. There are not only three or four low star magnolias in the center of the courtyard but also two tall, grand saucer magnolias growing in two of the corners. The saucer magnolias are beginning to open. The tree in the most sheltered corner, the northwest corner, has one bloom that is nearly fully-open, its huge, silky, dark pink petals unfolded luxuriously against a vividly blue sky. Hot sun warmed the yellow sandstone walls, which basked gratefully in the afternoon light. You could almost feel the heavy petals unfolding on the magnolias. Jenny came outside while I was in the courtyard, and sat down to read her Calculus book under the star magnolias.

Since the weather was so delightful, I went running outside today. There's a basketball game tonight, so they were preparing to shut off a couple of the parking lots. Construction crews have started to dig out the north end of the football stadium, above the endzone, to put in a new sports administration building. As I jogged by, all the racket of a demolition/construction site assailed my ears: the woodpecker rattle of pneumatic chisels, the clank and scrape of backhoes lifting concrete into creaking dumptrucks.

After running, I briskly cleaned up my room. I was surprised, as I wiped down the mirror, to see how pink my face was. I did my devotions and then, at last, went to practice my flute. Blue evening shadows had begun to creep across the lawn, as though the sky was crawling down to earth, to sleep under the sycamore trees.

The flutist was still in the practice rooms, but the soprano had been replaced by a trumpeter. There was only one pianist left--not a very serious one, for he kept doodling around on the keyboard, playing snatches of Bach and "Linus and Lucy".

After practice, I went straight to supper, which I spent mostly reading The Two Towers, until Nicole marched over and commanded me to put down the book and come and sit with herself and her two friends. She thought I was studying, which was rather funny to me, since my copy of The Two Towers doesn't look anything like a textbook: for one thing, it has no underlining in it; for another thing, its cover is far more disintegrated than any self-respecting textbook would ever be. I keep finding bits and pieces of the cover, like flakes of parchment, lying around in my knapsack or on my bookshelf. Pretty soon the elegantly stylized watercolor of Fangorn will be completely obliterated, and there won't be a cover anymore. But I like it because the book is soft, and fits easily in my left hand while I eat with the right.

Nicole's friends were talking about going to the basketball game tonight. Nicole asked me about my paper. She'd started hers at one o'clock this morning, but had managed to turn it in a couple of hours early (at three o'clock instead of five o'clock this afternoon).

Straight after supper I came back here. As I walked through the Lottie courtyard, mourning doves were cooing. One of them sounded just like the doves in San Antonio--so much so that my heart nearly leapt out of my breast, for longing to go back to the warm mornings in my grandparents' back yard, running on the wet St. Augustine grass, and whizzing through the air on the tire swing under the pecan tree.

Listening to ROTK, Track 3 now. Outside, radio towers glimmer like aliens in the darkness, three or four red eyes winking on each bronze spike.

Bible study in thirty minutes.

Here's Gondor: I can hear the seagulls crying, their whistling calls and the clatter of wings as they circle upward, over pounding hooves and flashing walls.

a surprise....

White rabbit, everyone!

:)