poetry and fish

Now Playing: "A German Requiem", by Johannes Brahms. Track 6, "Here on earth have we no continuing place".

Here follows a long, flowery (or fishy) post, a slightly shortened version of yesterday's (March 28) journal entry.

Today was a busy day. I was exhausted still when I woke up. After breakfast, I left to drive to the Ls’ house to teach Karis, my poetry student. I arrived fifteen minutes early at the Ls’ house, despite thick traffic. The morning was clear and cool, pale yellow light slanting through the trees and haloing their fuzzy buds. I drove through the Ls’ neighborhood for awhile, admiring the enormous houses perched on the steep hillside. Thick oak trees shaded immaculate lawns and flowerbeds. When the time came, I drove back to the Ls’ house and knocked on the big front door. Their house is older, shabbier, and more “lived-in” than most of the other houses in the neighborhood, which are all grander and more elegant, lacking the tricycle forgotten in the front yard and the cowboy boots tumbled on the front step. Indoors, Karis escorted me to a little side room hung with Precious Moments paintings of Bible stories. We had our lesson at the big table in there. We covered simile, metaphor, and rhyme, especially how to use a rhyming dictionary.

Back on campus, I spent a little while working in my room, then walked to RBL. In RBL today, we discussed “Manfred” and “The Vision of Judgment”, both by Byron. After RBL, Tara and I strolled together to Alisha’s room to pick her up and go to lunch. (FS was canceled today.) The three of us ate lunch with Sam, Asher, Rachel, Kevin, and Katie, who all descended around us, having swooped up from a booth like a flock of starlings. They talked about not-a-date, and Asher described silly puns he’d made up in Goethe class that morning.

After lunch, I practiced my flute. Then I hurried back to my room, put things away, grabbed car keys and various other accessories, and strode out to my car again to drive down to Jenks and meet my mother, Daisy, and Brother2 at the aquarium. It was just after two fifteen, and I chafed at the slow traffic. All the streets were congested with cars. I listened to the “Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” soundtrack as I drove: down Harvard to eighty-first street, where I would normally turn left to go to the Lowerys’ house. Here, though, as Mrs. L had suggested this morning, I turned right and drove over to Delaware, then turned left again and took Delaware until it merged into ninety-sixth street. I stared about me in awe: Fancy new shopping malls, a cluster of skyscrapers, and various sleek apartment complexes flashed past my window. I sensed the river as I approached it: the trees and buildings fell away, and pale sky shone without the city clutter. Ninety-sixth swept me up, over a broad bridge above the Arkansas River, then down and into a maze of little streets that run behind and underneath the bridge to the Oklahoma Aquarium. The lanes took me right down to the river, which was more like a trickle of limpid silver water between vast red sandbanks.

My heart leaped with relief when I saw the aquarium: A long, low white building with many pointed roofs and towers. Its clapboard siding shone like the inside of a clamshell. To the towers plastic pennants, faded from long sunlight, were attached to look as though blowing in the wind—red, blue, yellow, like scarves tied to sticks on the pinnacles of a sandcastle. Indoors, the large entry area was dim after the bright, white sunshine. I strolled uncertainly up to the attendant’s desk and purchased a ticket. “How old are you?” the attendant asked. I paused, almost said eighteen, but remembered, and said, “Nineteen.” He handed me my ticket, then said, “Are you sure you’re nineteen? You sounded a little uncertain there.” “Yes,” I said, trying my best to smile. I waited around in the entry area. After awhile, when my mother, Daisy, and Brother 2 didn’t appear, I decided to venture into the exhibits to see if I could find them. I stepped into a long hall, from which nooks and tunnels opened, lined with tanks. I found them in front of one of the biodiversity tanks.

We left the biodiversity area and looked at the invertebrates. In the center of the invertebrate room was a glass dome under which lay a pickled octopus, its tentacles writhing at the underside of the dome. Daisy thought it looked like a brain. In a tank behind the glass dome was a real octopus, which had wedged itself into one of the crannies in the rocks. We could see its suckers undulating, and the curtain-like web of its skin vibrating as it whooshed water out of its siphon gently. The jellyfish across the room fascinated Brother2. We watched white spotted jellyfish, with canopies like mushrooms, flash across a well-lit tank, and Brother2 stood mesmerized by the moon jellyfish in another tank. The moon jellyfish hung limpidly in the dark water, their translucent canopies slowly billowing, the four-clover pattern on their canopies pale as the pock marks in the moon. In a large tank beside the jellyfish swam half-a-dozen lionfish. Spines radiated like sharp manes from just behind their gills. White stripes slashed their coppery bodies, like the patterns of light and shade thrown by a kelp plant. Daisy commented, “These used to be my favorite fish, until I learned that they’re poisonous.” Beside the lionfish were a couple of small sharks. Suspended in their tank, in a special glass box, were a couple of sharks’ eggs: mermaid’s purses, their dark-green surfaces ridged like oleander leaves. Across from the octopus, half-a-dozen small white fish hovered in a tank. They had made holes for themselves in the gravel of their tank, and whenever Daisy flashed her hand in front of the glass, they would lever themselves downward into their holes with their fins. Only their heads poked out, eyes scanning their territory like prairie dogs until all was clear and they could pop up again. In the invertebrate room there were also three kinds of seahorses: Yellow ones, bobbing cheerfully to and fro in the water; a pair of large black ones which obliged Brother2 by turning green, chameleon-style, while he watched; and a drove of tiny white ones, which gobbled microorganisms from a gooey pink cloud in the water.

After the seahorses, we crossed the hall and entered the Oklahoma fish room. At the front of this room was a large open tank full of turtles. While we watched, two people were catching the turtles and handing them to two other workers to be inoculated. The turtles splashed frantically through the water and paddled their forearms rudely when they were caught. We looked at fish: alligator guar, bass, sunfish. In a tank by themselves resided two enormous alligator snapping turtles. One was slightly smaller than the other, and it heaved itself up on a log to breathe. The other sat under the log like a boulder, algae waving on its monumental shell. It must have been at least three feet long from snout to tail. While we watched, it turned its huge, hideous head and grinned at us hungrily.

From the Oklahoma room, we moved on to the tropics. In an open tank, a tidal pool had been simulated. Anemones like purple and orange jester’s caps waved tentacles in the swirling water. A starfish in a raised pool allowed us to stroke it gently. Pale purple algae growing on its rough skin made it feel slimy. The reek of salt and fish rose from the bubbling water. Nearby, a crowd had gathered at one of the aquarium’s largest tanks: the tropical reef. Two workers in diver’s suits had splashed into the tank and were scrubbing the rocks. One of the workers, an older man, swam up to the glass and made hand signs, grinning at the children who watched him in awe. He would cock his head at the children inquiringly and hold up a few fingers as a guess at their age. Smiling shyly, prompted by their mothers, the children would press their own fingers to the glass in reply. When he saw Daisy, the man waved twenty-five with his hands, and Daisy giggled. She and I turned away from the large tank, and she led me past the rays, down into the darkness of the shark display.

Behind a two-inch-thick plate glass ceiling, four sharks flickered restlessly through a spacious tank. Hardly any light shone through the dark water—only rayed fragments came down and flashed on the sharks’ bodies like white fingers. One shark hung, motionless, in a dark corner. The others swooped over us, mouths open so that we could see their daggered teeth, tails lashing the water, fins dragging above the surface and creating black ripples. My mother, Daisy, Brother2, and I stood for awhile under the glass ceiling, watching the powerful beasts as they soared overhead.

From the shark tank, we emerged into the brightly-lit tropical room. Daisy pointed out a tank of small coral fish: orange, velvety pink, blue, yellow, brown—as though they had been painted on Faberge, with turquoise water instead of gold lining between the panes of color. In the center of the tropical area were two open tanks of rays. In one tank, the rays flashed about impetuously. One of them swam along the side, its flapping body splashing our faces with water. Another ray slapped its fins on the water and wagged its tail in Daisy’s face, then paddled down to my mother and stuck its brown snout in the air as though it wanted to kiss her. The rays’ glossy bodies flew through the water, shimmering like starlings’ wings. Broeth2 said they looked like bats. In another tank, half-a-dozen sand-colored rays swam leisurely along the floor. Pale blue spots on their backs made them blend with light and shadow. We stroked their skin. Under the grainy sand, their skin was surprisingly soft and slimy. Their wings pulsed with life under my fingertips.

After touching the rays, we went back to the coral reef tanks. In a couple of small tanks, a variety of little fish swam. My mother exclaimed in wonder at a small green fish, marbled with dark orange and bronze, flecked with gold. The little fish fluttered its flared wings at the glass and poised itself politely while I took its picture. The four of us turned to the big reef tank, in which the two men were still working, scrubbing away at the slimed rocks. Fish flashed past the glass: shoals of gleaming fish with silver sides like new nickels; a large pink parrotfish with pale green stripes; an assortment of smaller reef fish, like fragments of colored glass in a mosaic. Brother2 gasped when a huge puffer fish, at least eighteen inches long and very fat, emerged from one of the rocks. It wasn’t so kind as to blow itself up, but it paddled about slowly, then returned to its hiding place.

After watching the creatures on the reef for awhile, we browsed through some of the side rooms. In one room, Brother2 came across a tank full of mudskippers. He and Daisy giggled, watching the queer little creatures which hopped in and out of the water. The mudskippers flailed thin, brown gills and wagged their shining, slimy bodies to and fro. “These are some of my favorite fish!” Brother2 laughed. As we left, we passed the turtle pond. I grinned when I saw half the turtles perched on the logs, sunning themselves under a lamp. The rest of the turtles bulldozed through the water, banging their shells against the sides of the tank. We left the tanks and reentered the entry area. The same soothing, cheerful flute music, sounding hollow and watery, was playing over the sound system as had been when I came in. The ever-changing flute melody threw streaked gleams of light and shadowed water behind my eyes. Outside in the parking lot, I hugged my mother, Daisy, and Brother2 good-bye. I tried desperately to be cheerful.

As I pushed through congested five o’clock traffic, I listened to “Can’t Take It In” and sang along with “Wunderkind”, the wind from the open window ruffling my hair. Back at Tulsa, I went to my room and studied for a little while before going to supper. After supper, I worked frantically on my archaeology paper. Having not done any serious work all day, I felt quite behind.

Just before seven-thirty, I walked to RUF. The night was strangely still, hardly a breath of air stirring the trees. Fuzzy elm seeds blossomed like a galaxy of tiny green stars in the streetlights. Sweetgum tapers glimmered. Upstairs, Andrew, Tara, and Daniel welcomed me. When Tara asked about the trip to the aquarium (I’d invited her along, but she’d had class), Andrew pricked up his ears. He said that he loved to visit the aquarium (though he doesn’t like zoos—the animals look so bored; it’s hard to empathize with fish), and he asked about a certain display they used to have: A glass tank in which a jet of water constantly spewed upward. Tiny jellyfish, floating in the tank, would hop onto the stream of water, ride it up, then drift down, only to allow themselves to be swept into the current again. “They looked as though they were having more fun than anyone,” he said.

During RUF, Mr. K preached about Isaiah 40, and giving comfort to God's people. After RUF, back in my room, I worked on archaeology for an hour-and-a-half. Bleary-eyed, I managed to finish the paper, just after ten-thirty.

Another Dull Day in the Life of a Hobbit

Now Playing: The "Chariots of Fire" soundtrack by Vangelis. Track 7, "Chariots of Fire, Film Score".

I'm sorry it's been such a while since I've posted on here. Perhaps I can explain some of that as I describe today.

This morning Rachel and I ate breakfast together, as we do on most mornings of the week. After breakfast I spent the morning sending e-mails to various people and tidying up other matters left over from the weekend.

In Major British Writers class this morning, we began to put together a study guide over the Modernists for our final exam, which is in four weeks. We also have a research paper due at the end of April. The professor will let us extend the paper we wrote earlier in the semester, which makes the process a lot easier, but I still need to do some work on that. For these past couple of weeks, we've been studying the Modernists: T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and all those strange people. It's been sad to watch English literature decay from the Anglo-Saxons in MBW I to James Joyce in MBW II. As we put together the study guide, certain distinct characteristics emerged, all of which are tied (in my mind) to the rejection of God: meaninglessness, reckless experimentation, alienation from community, depression, rejection of authority and tradition, triviality, and mockery of ideals and established morals. The Modernists, for the most part, realized what the consequences were of their rejection of God, but they preferred to live with the hideous consequences than to embrace the only One who could save them. That's what makes them so sad.

In archaeology class today the professor lectured about domestication. We're actually studying real cultures now, instead of the methods of archaeology, the way we did for the first half of the semester. The professor has assigned us to complete a virtual set of archaeological excavations which are on a CD/textbook set so that we can see how the archaeological methods work out in "real life". The lectures have been fairly interesting, and will become more so, hopefully: We're supposed to cover Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mayan culture before our final exam at the end of the semester. The articles that the professor has assigned have been really fun to read, for the most part, for this half of the course. Last week, we were assigned an article about a man who's doing an excavation of a gigantic tomb in Egypt. This tomb is the largest ever discovered in the Valley of Kings, with hundreds of rooms--pillared halls, stairs, false floors, secret passageways, statues and paintings. The thought of that enormous, dusty darkness, with the relics of a lost civilization buried inside, gave me the shivers.

After archaeology, I practiced my flute. For juries at the end of the semester, I've decided to play the first movement of the Poulenc sonata. That sonata is such fun to play that I wish I could perform all of it. If there was a recital that I could play in (even at home :), perhaps Syneva would be willing to accompany me, but I don't have enough repertoire from this semester to set up a recital of my own.

During lunch I sat with some acquaintances and listened to them talk. One of them, Nicole, is in my Honors class this semester. She sends her Honors paper to her father via e-mail so that he can edit them for spelling and grammar mistakes.

After lunch, I had all afternoon to waste, proverbially speaking. Of course, I couldn't waste it. Honors class was cancelled so that we could work on our midterm papers, due this afternoon at five o'clock. So I spent the first hour touching up my paper, easing out a few tangled clauses, etc. Then I read a book called Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, by Umberto Eco, for Honors class on Wednesday. It's quite a fascinating book. Since it doesn't have any pictures (strange for a book about art), it's more about the philosophy of medieval art than about actual examples of it. Eco's tenet is that since medieval people lived lives that integrated religion and the "real world" much more than modern people's lives, their art blossomed from a sense of the wholeness, fitness, and beauty of the world as God's handiwork. He pointed out, interestingly enough, that only ascetics trying to conquer their desire for worldly pleasures could truly appreciate how wonderful physical beauty is. I think there's a measure of truth in that: Often the people who try to overcome something are the ones who have a realistic grasp of its power.

After finishing Wednesday's reading for Honors, I proceeded to work through The Guide, by R.K. Narayan, which Dr. F assigned for MBW. The Guide is a sadly absurd modern novel about an Indian man. He starts out life as a shopkeeper, becomes a travel guide, falls in love with the wife of one of his tourists, lives with her and turns her into a famous dancer, then gets jailed for embezzling. When he leaves jail, he wanders to a temple, and a stupid villager, seeing him perched on the temple steps, thinks he's a holy man. By virtue of this rather ridiculous plot, the book makes fun of every institution imaginable--marriage and religion especially. Of course, it doesn't make fun of art: The dancer lives happily ever after (in a manner of speaking) because her art is so wonderful and she's so wrapped up in it that everyone praises her. But since art is the savior of mankind (according to just about everyone), that isn't surprising. *cough*

Finally I roused myself from my afternoon of hibernation and marched over to the Arts and Sciences building to drop off my Honors paper (now I get to start on the Anglo-Saxon research paper--it will be great fun except that the topic is so obscure, and the library doesn't appear to have very much material on the subject of the role of Anglo-Saxon poets). James and Eleanor, two young people who go to RUF, were playing lacrosse on the green lawn below the library, giggling and laughing at each other's mistakes. Across the sidewalk from them, two or three guys were tossing frisbees around, and a girl was curled up, reading, under a sycamore tree.

I ran in the gym, showered, and sat outside to finish The Guide before supper. The wind, wavering all day, had switched around to the north and seethed over the short, very green grass. Early dandelions bobbed like guttering candles in the wind, and sycamore seed balls danced overhead. Thin clouds streaked the sunset deep red and silver.

Rachel ate supper with me. We discussed our Honors papers, and plans for studying abroad. She wants to attend a highly reputed economics school in England during the summer after her sophomore year. I told her about the woes my father and I are suffering while trying to figure out Cambridge's schedule.

After supper, I've spent the whole evening cloistered in my room, working on the archaeology project. It's actually more than halfway done. The part that I had anticipated being so difficult, the actual excavations on the computer program, were very easy. It turned out that all I had to do was to hit a few buttons, and the schemes of each site appeared neatly laid out, complete with artifacts sorted into categories and little circles or squares for houses or hearths or graves. The data all lines up clearly so that the patterns for the prehistoric people I'm supposed to be studying are fairly plain. Now all that's left is writing the paper to describe what the "excavations" uncovered.

That's enough for today. I almost fell asleep this afternoon, and again this evening in the middle of my archaeology project. There must be something soporific about stories of foolish Indians and excavations of bones and stones.

So I'm going to bed. Good-night, and God bless.

a picture

Now Playing: Liszt's 30th Transcendental Etude--in my head. Syneva just finished her junior piano recital, and she played this piece. It was my favorite. Rocking, bold, noble chords.


Isn't she pretty?

















Here's something I wrote. This scrap of verse was written for the First Seminar class. One of the only things (well, there are more things that I like than just this) I like about the class is the fact that the professor accepts poetry for paper assignments. This particular bit was written when we were assigned to describe a "creative encounter" (whatever that means). It made me think of the constant barrier between the original inspiration and the actual product. No matter how hard you try, you often can't get words to capture exactly the ideas you want them to.


Chasing the Light
a creative encounter

Thudding on the screen through the May night,
One moth and half-a-dozen junebugs buzz,
Drawn to my desk light. I’m trying to write:
About Danielle, how we went swimming, shrugged
Cool water down tanned arms; how we chased links
Of tawny sunset, flared, aquamarine—
Borealis on concrete. Fan whirs. I blink.
Junebugs still rattle on the thrumming screen.
Remember: how the chlorine tasted, how
The water hit my forehead when we dove,
Hunting reflections of sun’s lyre. Light bowed
Across, ahead, but not beneath. A drove
Of junebugs still gropes for my nightlight’s glow,
While I bang meter, try to grasp light’s throe.

a poem

Now Playing: "Fifteen Variants on Dives and Lazarus", by Ralph Vaughan-Williams. (Also known as Psalm 22C.)

Here's a poem that you all may be able to help me with. It seems to be missing something to me, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

Note: The dashes on the last two lines are put in to make those two lines stand out instead of being "justified" with the rest of the poem since I can't get this ridiculous publishing format to accept the "tab" command.

Crucifixion

I cannot see his face. His head is flung
Against the sun, and shimmers in the heat—
Bronze heaven glaring down on molten earth
And metal men, their shining faces slashed.
His hands clench as his legs tense helplessly—
Push up, a gasp of bloody air, then hang,
His chest bowed outward from the splintering wood,
So sun shines resolutely on whipped back,
On writhing fingers, thorn-crowned head. “My God,
My God, why have you cast me off?” his voice
Breaks thirstily. Blood seeps from cracking veins,
A thousand needles pricking out my sins—
His flesh inscribed with quivering miniscule.
I’m kneeling suddenly. A Roman foot
Kicks Mary, his mother, toward me, and
Her tears stain my shoulder. Golgotha’s rocks
Bruise my heels as I cradle Mary’s weight.
Crowds jostle past. A Jew with hanging locks
Laughs, “Look! He saved others, but cannot save
Himself!” His two sons snicker. Their fringed robes
Are hitched above defiled dust. Dust coats
My toes, my hands as they strut past their king,
Their king upon the cross. He coughs, he breathes,
“Father forgive,” through gall-and-wine blanched lips.
“Oh Magdalene—my son, my son,” sobs Mary.
John rests his hands on her shoulders. “The ground
Is shaking!” gasps Salome. Rocks slither past.
A blinding instant—I see crosses tip
And quiver, then the sun is dark. Half-heard,
I hear him sigh, “It is finished.”
------------------------------The earth shakes,
And soldiers curse.
------------------------------Hours later, evening sun
Casts wavering crosses on the bloody rocks,
Three shadows swimming through bronze air. He hangs
Limply, head lolling to stained chest, hands stiff—
I seem to hear again, “My God! My God….”

Days of Grace, Part 3

March 10, 2006

This morning Rachel and I ate breakfast together. After breakfast, I worked on my Honors paper. During MBW today, we discussed Thomas Hardy and Siegfried Sassoon, both WWI-era poets. Their poetry is so dismal, hopeless. It is painful to watch English society decay: from the measured praise of Christ in “The Dream of the Rood” by the Anglo-Saxon poet to the ironic nursery-rhyme of Thomas Hardy about final death, decay, and forgetting, without triumph or eternal life. During Archaeology, we had a quiz, and discussed prehistoric hunter-gatherers. I practiced in Tyrrell for an hour, and as I left, I fell in with Rachel. We went to the cafeteria together to pick up our lunches. Rachel told me about her economics professor. The women serving in the line seemed as gay as the students. “Have a good spring break!” one of them called to me. Outside, we waited with Jenny and Tara for Alisha to come out with her food. Jenny sat on the stone wall and ate her lunch while Tara snacked. When Alisha came, we walked together to the apartment. Jenny was ridiculously hyper. “I’m a sugar child instead of a flower child!” she joked, swigging a Dr. Pepper. We made a jovial five, marching along in the bright sunshine, matching our swinging steps to the time of our laughter. Gleeful as mockingbirds, talking loudly, laughing loudly, drunk on sunlight and warm air. The wind ruffled our hair, tugging it teasingly over our eyes. Jenny complained about a professor who had assigned her to write an instruction manual for making a banana split (“I mean, how lame is that?!”), and Alisha told me about her midterm in Music History.

Esther and Rachel were both at lunch, and Matt, Andrew, and Grant came later. Matt and Andrew both seemed as vaguely sober as ever. Matt gave Tara a copy of his poem to edit. “Whenever you feel like writing something good about the poem, write something good about yourself, then write something nasty about the poem,” he told her. Jenny lounged in an armchair, put her feet up on a trunk, and laughed and laughed the whole time. Esther curled up in the other armchair and teased Tara, while Alisha and Rachel sat on either end of the sofa. The three of us talked about Rachel’s economics professor who said today in class that there’s a group of men suing for the requirement of child support to be lifted, on the basis that if a woman can choose not to support a child (i.e., to abort), then a man should be able to make the same choice. “It’s logical, but people don’t like it. They don’t realize that their presupposition is wrong,” Rachel commented. After Rachel left, the conversation became more ridiculous. They started talking about fish. “Some fish will resurrect after you freeze them,” Grant informed us. “Let’s try it on Alisha,” Jenny giggled. “What?! No!” Alisha exclaimed. There ensued a grotesque conversation involving decapitation and death by freezing. Jenny said that she would want to die skydiving, while Matt wondered if he would have wings in heaven.

I walked back to Lottie alone. I spent the afternoon working on my Honors paper and reading archaeology, listening to the "Two Towers" soundtrack, the Brahms violin concerto, and the "Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack. I cleaned my room, and went downstairs at four forty-five to meet my father. He helped me carry my things to the car (a red suitcase, my knapsack, a trash bag full of dirty clothes, and my potted rosebush), and we left Tulsa. I slid in the Tchaikovsky piano and violin concertos on the CD player. The sky was grey behind the steel skyscrapers as we left Tulsa. Billows of smoke hazed over the clouds—black paint swirled on grey pottery. The sun set through a blank white crack. I fiddled with the CD player. My father and I talked about the Signature Symphony. He asked questions about the ins and outs of the Signature Symphony and the TU orchestra, and he asked about Alisha and Syneva. I told him about them, and about Andrew and Matt, and all the goings-on. The land around us was beginning to be green: the elm trees had begun to put out fuzzy catkins, and some of the willows and cottonwoods were blushing at the tips. In the patches where fire had burned, green grass licked like a new fire over the black ground, lushly vibrant. But most of the hillsides and pastures were still brown, though glowing reluctant gold in the sunset—tawny as an old lion’s mane. And most of the oak trees stood stark and black against the sunset, fine lines—like strokes of a pen across patterned paper.

At home, Henry and my brothers were busy filming another movie in the backyard. I shook my head in disappointment at the withered blooms and skimpy stems of the daffodils along the front bed, but marveled at the riot of yellow and white daffodils blooming under the redbud tree in the backyard. My mother was in the midst of supper, listening to the CD of dancing music for the Irish Dance class. I relished the mysteriously happy tune of the gypsy jig, the oboe and flute twining themselves luringly through synthesizer and drums.

My father picked up Daisy from basketball practice. Daisy and I tickled each other and teased unmercifully, tussling like silly little puppies. Upstairs, after supper, Brother1 brought Sandy into his room. He ruffled up the fur behind her ears so that she looked as though she had an Indian headdress of orange feathers, or as though she was sporting an Elizabethan collar. We made fun of Sandy’s faces. She was alternately very pleased with herself, beaming at whoever scratched her between the ears; or she was sleepy, grinning drowsily; or she peered frightenedly at us as we jostled around; or she glanced from side to side, searching for a way of escape. She finally did escape.

My father read Hornblower and the "Hotspur" to us and did devotions. Now Brother1 is showering, while Daisy and Brother2 have gone to bed. My father works on papers in the study, and my mother grades paper in the living room, popping bubblegum as she does so. I sit and type at the old oak table to one side of the living room—this table that came out to Kansas in a covered wagon, a hundred years ago, and now gives a glossy place for my laptop to perch.

Days of Grace, Part 2

Now Playing: "The Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack by Andrew Lloyd-Weber. Track 2, "Think of Me".

March 9, 2006

This morning I joined Rachel and one of her friends from the Honors House, Heather, for breakfast. They had been talking animatedly, but the conversation petered out when I joined them. After breakfast, I spend the morning working fiercely on my Honors paper. The morning was damp and dreary, with a slight smattering of rain. I practiced my flute. My flute lesson didn’t go so well—I hadn’t practiced the third movement of the Poulenc as much as was needed, and I made a variety of rhythmic mistakes. In Romantic British Literature today, we talked about Byron more—themes of darkness, the mind shrinking on itself, and the transience of nature (“The Prisoner of Chillon” and “Darkness”). Dr. de A let us collect our exams. I was surprised and happy to see that I’d earned an A on my exam! I sailed outside in a state of euphoria, with Tara hopping beside me. She, Alisha, and I went to lunch together, though Tara picked up her food to go and went shopping with Esther. Alisha and I sat at lunch and talked about the backhoe digging a hole outside the cafeteria window (Alisha made fun of it), about papers and professors and movies. She asked about Honors. She likes The Song of Roland, and we discussed characteristics of epics. She demanded that I explain why I like Beowulf, so I tried, but she just laughed at me.

After lunch, I walked back to Alisha’s room to pick up my things. “You can come down and study here, if you want,” Alisha offered. “Oh… ok. Thanks! I will,” I said, impulsively. “Great. I’ll be here. You should come down more often. Whenever you walk off, it’s so sad. I always think, ‘That’s got to be so lonely,’” she told me. I went upstairs with a light heart, amazed a little at Alisha’s friendliness. In my room, I packed up my laptop and brought it down to Alisha’s room. I sat cross-legged on the floor and worked on my Honors paper amid a smatter of my own books and Alisha’s books—The Song of Roland and The Rule of St. Benedict heaped with books about Palestinian women and issues of “USA Today”. (Alisha is a Political Science (commonly known as “poli sci”) major.) She was studying for her Music History exam tomorrow, listening to clips of Handel and Haydn and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”. We compared notes about violinists, kicking around Hilary Hahn, Josh Bell, Izhak Perhlman, Isaac Stern, David Oistrakh, and Beethoven and Barber and Mozart and Tchaikovsky and Meyer. Alisha doesn’t like Mozart’s music because it’s so repetitive and even-tempered. Alisha complained about her Music History professor, who breaks up pieces into short clips. “I’m sure he’s taken ten years off my life by breaking up pieces like this,” she complained. “It’s one of my pet peeves when someone just switches off a classical piece in the middle.” Esther popped in to study for awhile. She curled up on Alisha’s bed. She guessed at what was happening in the opera clips. At one point, in “Don Giovanni”, Alisha pointed out that one of the characters was dying. “Wow, he can still sing—with vibrato, no less!” I giggled. “Yeah. That’s just the way I’d want to die,” Esther chuckled.

Alisha and Esther had a prayer meeting at three fifteen, so I trailed back upstairs to my room and spent the rest of the afternoon working hard. After supper, in my room, I changed briskly into black slacks, then dashed outside. Just as I pulled up at the kerb, Rachel came jogging down the sidewalk, her cheeks flushed in the chilly air. We stood and talked for a long while, kidding each other about procrastinating by looking at our friends’ blogs, and about going home. Mourning doves cooed and squabbled, clattering their wings in the dark pine tree behind us. Alisha and Syneva were late to pick us up for the concert. Alisha and I scrambled into the back seat of Syneva’s car as she pulled up, with Alisha’s violin between us, and Rachel climbed in the front. On the drive to the concert, we all laughed… and laughed… and laughed…. “Sorry I’m late,” Syneva said. “That’s ok. But the others will probably get there before us—the whole entourage that I invited along,” returned Alisha. “Oh, yes, Alisha has an entourage of courtiers. Now all she needs is a knight in shining armor,” I quipped.

Syneva dropped Rachel and me off by the door of the concert hall. Inside, we picked up tickets from the will-call line. I gave Rachel her ticket, but I kept the other three in case Katie, Asher, Tara, Kevin, or David would need one when they came. When Tara and Asher arrived, we huddled in a corner to try to decide what to do about tickets. A plump woman in a blue satin blouse came over and, seeing our debate (and our threadbare state—bona fide students!) gave us a ticket. “Here,” she said, “My date didn’t show up. Neither did my babysitter,” she growled, “but you can have this.” We took it, though it turned out that we had one extra ticket in the end. Katie and Asher sat up on the next-to-the-last row with Rachel and me. We watched the orchestra warm up. I looked at the program Rachel had managed to extract from the thrifty ushers. It had a tentative calendar for next season’s concerts, and with a thrill of delight, I read that they were planning to play Barber’s violin concerto and Beethoven’s seventh symphony, on the same night! To add to my glee, they’re playing Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” on another night, and Mark O’Connor is coming for their Pops series!

The concert was delightful. The Grieg piano concerto was especially wonderful: First, the morning river, then the river in rain, then the river flowing down to meet the sunset. It was a little unpleasant to be sitting so close to the back because people kept coming in and out, banging the hall door shut just when the clarinet was tapering its phrase, or the French horn was rising to a climax. During the intermission, Kevin, David, and Tara joined us in the empty seats in our row. Katie was in awe of the piano concerto, and when I laughingly asked if she was asleep (remembering her drowsiness at lunch), she replied indignantly, “Are you kidding?! That was the most awesome performance ever!” Rachel told me about the latest economics book she’s been reading, by an author who advocates rather radical, total capitalism. The Tchaikovsky symphony (the 4th symphony) was lovely, simple. After the concert, we stood in a ring outside the hall, waiting for Alisha and Syneva. Asher talked enthusiastically about the Barber concerto, which has spurred him to audition for the Signature Symphony. I asked Kevin about his exams. Syneva and Alisha came up with bright smiles. Asher offered to carry Syneva’s cello, and we walked out to her car together. The rest of the group went to their cars.

We laughed… and laughed… all the way back to campus. Post-concert adrenaline, which had filled our conversation with laughter as with helium on the trip to the hall, buoyed our laughter like explosive sparks. Sitting in the parking lot for awhile, Alisha and Syneva joked about the pianist. “I liked her dress,” Alisha said, “It wasn’t too outlandish.” “Yes, but I was hoping it would be more outlandish. She wore a baseball cap to every rehearsal,” Syneva returned. “And she brought her dog, a little white dog! Did you see it?” Alisha exclaimed. Apparently, the pianist, a young woman, had brought her dog to every rehearsal and had allowed it to frisk freely around the concert hall. It took particular interest in Alisha’s odiferous stand partner (who has lots of cats, to judge from the smell of his clothes--or so Alisha says), sniffing his feline-perfumed clothes and violin case all over. Surprisingly, the conductor, though a very strict man generally, seemed not to notice the little dog at all.

We turned off the lit highway onto the narrow, dark streets—like plunging from the cliff-tops to the shadowed valleys. We passed a sign for Oz (“Silver Jewelry; Gifts for Under Twenty Dollars!”), with an art-noveau woman relaxing languidly in a mulberry gown with blue hair against the O. We passed Mother Trizzo’s Pottery Shop, with painted ceramic pots and lion-maned sunfaces in the window. We passed a bead shop, the glass trinkets sparkling like strings of stars in the window, and little boutiques, and a bar, “The Yellow Brick Road”. Back at Lottie, I staggered up to my room, showered, and went straight to bed.

Days of Grace, Part 1

Here begins a series of posts from this past week, one for each day (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday). I realize that most of you probably won't know any of these people, but God saw fit to make these past three days very pleasant for me, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about them and the people I shared them with.

This morning I ate breakfast with Rachel. She told me about the economics club meeting last night. I spent the morning sending a few e-mails and working on my Honors paper. During MBW today, we talked more about “The Importance of Being Ernest”. Dr. F gave our exams back to us. She had scribbled a round A, in green pen, on the last page of mine. She let us out early. As I waited in the hall before Archaeology, I noticed four short, bow-legged little men walk by. They were dressed in holey, baggy construction jeans, stained with rust and red dirt. Most of them had on equally filthy shirts, though one was dressed in a long-sleeved, white collared shirt that was immaculate in its stainlessness. All of them wore thick belts with tools strapped to them, that thudded against their legs as they walked. Their faces were strongly Eastern European, wind-wrinkled, brown, with the hawk noses and the slanted eyes and sharp smiles. As they passed, I heard them talking in a guttural language—Russian, perhaps, or some relative of it.

I ate lunch alone in the desolate cafeteria, and after lunch, I worked on my Honors paper for a little while. It now has this imposing “handle”: “The Monk and the Knight: Contrasts between Memory, Identity, and Prowess in Church and Chivalry during the Middle Ages”. During Honors, we talked about The Song of Roland and Oliver’s strange change in the middle of the battle when Roland finally decides to blow Olifant. Dr. A showed us pictures of Roncesvaux: pictures of green mountain passes, steep meadows close to the clouds, and a white stone set up on a hillside in memory to Roland. After class I practiced my flute. The wind soughed and squealed against the practice room windowpanes. Back in my room, I worked on the paper until five-thirty, when I skipped downstairs to meet Jenna in the Lorton parking lot. The girls’ Bible study was to fix supper at Jenna’s house tonight (reminder: Jenna is a woman in her late twenties, married, with a one-year-old daughter and a son on the way; she lives near the campus), and the boys’ Bible study was to come over to share supper and to bring dessert.

I walked to the kerb just as Jenna pulled up. At Jenna’s house, Jenna set everyone to work. Crystal sliced mushrooms, while Anne chopped onions. She added Crystal’s mushrooms to her onions and sautéed them all together in a big saucepan, as a topping for hamburgers. Meanwhile, Jessica fixed a spinach-and-strawberry salad, topped with baked almonds. Jenna brought out two packages of raw hamburger meat to the dining room table, and assigned Eleanor, Rachel, Kathryn, and me to shape the raw meat into hamburger patties. Kathryn and Eleanor both wrinkled their noses at the distasteful job, but we all dived in, slapping the red meat about until it fit our palms in ruddy, plump patties. We made twenty-five burgers, scraping up the last few curlicues of meat and patting them into the burgers. Our hands were slimy with raw meat, so we all washed ourselves in the kitchen sink.

Anne was still busy sautéing mushrooms, and Jessica sat perched on a tall stool at the kitchen table and sliced strawberries. I fixed lemonade and arranged the table. Jenna took the plates of patties outside and heated up the gas grill to start grilling the burgers. Upbeat hymns (many of them the ones that RUF sings on Tuesday nights) played happily out of a CD player perched on an old sewing machine in the dining room: “Arise, arise, arise my soul, arise!” As I stood by the kitchen sink and stirred the lemonade, I noticed with surprised awe that sunset filled the west above the dark trees. The grey ceiling of clouds had been stained, as though a peach had burst and dripped pink and gold on the sky. The clouds were suffused with light. Lilac on the edges, orange and flaming magenta toward the horizon. The black trees stood up starkly against the glowing glory.

When the lemonade was done, I stood in the living room and listened to Eleanor, Jessica, and Crystal discuss boyfriends and dumb antics. Glancing over my shoulder through the archway from the living room to the dining room, I could see through the screened-in porch on the dining room and out the back door. As I looked, I noticed that the flames on the grill seemed to be unusually high. I banged open the screen door and shouted, “Jenna, do you need some help!” “Um… yeah,” she replied. Her white apron fluttered in the gloom. I stripped off my socks and danced across the prickly lawn. Pecan shells poked my toes as I pattered up beside Jenna under the little concrete-and-metal shelter in the back of the yard. (It has one wall, on the west, at the side furthest from the house; the front is open, and it has a metal peaked roof.) The fire was so hot that it charred the outside of the burgers without cooking the inside. The wind, scurrying underneath the metal roof, from slant to slant, fanned the flames so that they became angrily-whirling dervishes—fingers of fire groped out like trailing ends of sleeves. I brought out a plate to take the half-done burgers from Jenna, and brought them inside for Anne to sautee (which she did, though she’s a vegetarian) on the stove indoors. I held a flashlight for Jenna outside so that she could see what she was doing.

As Jenna was starting to grill a second batch, the boys, Katie, and Jenny arrived. Kevin immediately came outside. “Do you need some help?” he asked courteously. “I’m a little grill-savvy.” “Yes, please!” Jenna said, and handed the long spatula over to him. She went inside to supervise the start of the meal, while I stayed outside. Kevin was surprised by the ferocious flames, which leapt out and died down sporadically. One particularly mean burst jumped out and singed the hair on his knuckles. “That has got to be the most mean-tempered fire I’ve ever seen,” Kevin said, shaking his hand. Grease dripped from the burgers and sizzled on the coals. Kevin took the long metal spatula in one hand, and the flashlight in the other, and tried to keep the flames under control. As Kevin finished a batch of burgers, I’d carry them inside and put them on a plate, then patter back outside again with another plate.

Being outside but under the shelter was comforting, somehow. The prickly grass, the pecan tree, the high privacy fence surrounding the little yard, and the half-seen glimpses of other privacy fences and other little houses on little yards reminded me of San Antonio. Lights glowed in the upper windows of the small homes nearby, twinkling like will o’ the wisps in the gloaming. The wind seethed in the pecan tree above the little shelter, and the tree whooshed, like the flames on the grill. Tree and flames flared together as the wind took them. The trees were huge, curving billows of grey waves, the clouds above them froth steaming from their wind-whipped peaks. A jet roared over. The eye of the fire condensed all the swirling darkness to one warm heart--like a windblown tulip bobbing on a wind-whipped lake.

It was nearly eight o’clock when Rachel and I finally sat down to eat in the living room with everyone. The wind and smoke had made me very hungry, and the smoke had roughened my throat so that I was hoarse. The sweet salad, with creamy poppyseed dressing, soothed my throat, and the substantial burger, cooked thoroughly and with the bitter edge of charred meat to cut through the sweet tastes of mushrooms and onions, satisfied my hunger. Jenna and Jeremy (her husband) laughed about the grill. “You know, if I’d gotten leaner meat, we probably wouldn’t have had so much trouble with the flames,” Jenna said. In the corner of the living room, Anne and Jenny played with Anna (Jenna's little daughter). Anne stroked her hair and dangled toys in front of her, while Jenny spooned vegetarian chili into her little round mouth. Eleanor and James, on the sofa under the window, took turns strumming Jenna’s guitar, while Kathryn, squeezed on the couch, sat with her eyes half-shut, sleepy and content.

Jenna drove Jenny, Anne, Jessica, and me back to the university. I was almost surprised to see the familiar campus buildings again. They seemed sterile, impersonal, after Jenna’s house—the classy creams and blacks looked harsh compared to the reds and greens and warm browns on Jenna’s walls, and the uniform buildings looked stiff compared to the odd little nooks and crannies, the unexpected windows and cubbyholes of Jenna’s house (one closet in her house has a little arched hole cut in the bottom of the door, so that a cat could climb in and out of the closet). Back in my room, I took a shower and sat down at my laptop to write up today’s journal entry. I listened to Loreena McKennitt and gulped hot orange spice tea, which scorched away the hoarseness in my throat. The cinnamon steam warmed my cold cheeks. I had a brief e-mail conversation with my mother about rides on Friday, did my devotions, and went to bed.

meals and a midterm

An incredibly boring post.

This morning I ate breakfast in my room. My father had given me a Krispy Kreme donut (he brought back a dozen from the donut shop in OKC during my siblings' basketball tournament), and I’d saved it for today. The sugar melted in my mouth, and the gooey dough oozed over my tongue. At eight-thirty, I padded down the hall to Jenny-and-Tara’s room. Tara and I studied together for Romantic British Literature—mostly Wordsworth, especially “Peter Bell” and the Lucy poems. We walked to RBL together and arrived as Dr. de A was handing out the exam. I sat in a chair on the edge of the room and wrote in my bluebook, balancing it on my notebook on one knee. I don’t think I did very well. The essays fell flat somehow—I knew what I needed to know (for the most part), but I couldn’t figure out how to write eloquently. One of the essays didn’t have a proper conclusion. To make matters worse, I left before the full time was up instead of staying until the professor told us to leave. So I didn't even take advantage of all the time to go back and finish the conclusion and polish the essays. That makes it worse—knowing that I could've done better, but didn't.

After the midterm, I hurried to the cafeteria to pick up lunch. The cafeteria was dreadfully crowded: they’d had a fire alarm, and the building had had to be evacuated. In the end, I managed to grab a sandwich and dash over to First Seminar. In FS today, Dr. T assigned us to bring flashlights, matches, and cigarette lighters. We spent the whole class period thinking of weird things to do with them—such as creating a religion that was based on fire (the team I was on made up a religion in which all the "true believers" used matches or cigarette lighters, and everyone who used electricity (lightbulbs and flashlights) were heretics), complete with sacred rites that we were supposed to come up with in class (thankfully the team I was on made up a rite that couldn't be done in class!). The other team made up a religion that consisted of darkness: fire was bad, and their goddess was Nox. Their initiation rite was to douse matches in a bucket of water. Sounded like a pretty dismal religion to me. The religion my team made up was fairly primitive—I contributed snatches of the Celtic fire-worshipping religion that I’d picked up from Sutcliff (the yearly bonfire, from Samhain, etc.). It was all rather ridiculous. The professor also assigned us to come up with some way to communicate with our flashlights as a group—a “symphony of light”, he called it. My group lined up. One person would stand by the wall as leader and shine his flashlight in random patterns on the floor. The first person in line would follow the leader’s flashlight beam till it reached the wall. One of the boys jumped jerkily after Rachel’s flashlight like a big cricket. Kathryn, who was in our group, hopped delicately from spot to spot. After FS, I practiced my flute.

On my way back to my room, I stopped in at Jenny-and-Tara’s room to ask Tara how the exam had gone. She said she hadn’t budgeted her time very well: she was still working on her last essay when people were leaving. “How many essays did you write?” I asked in wonder. “Three,” she replied. “What?! I thought we were only supposed to write on two of the three questions!” I said. Tara pulled out the assignment page. “Oh. You’re right. We were.” She sighed. “Well, I think it’ll be ok. Maybe Dr. de A will just count the first two.” Jenny bounced in. “What’re you talking about?” she asked. “On the RBL midterm today, we were supposed to write on two questions, and I wrote on three instead,” Tara explained. “Overachiever,” Jenny growled jokingly.

In my room I wrote e-mails and cleaned up. Dark clouds began to roll up from the southwest, and the sun set through a crimson crack. As I walked to the cafeteria for supper, a pair of twelve-year-old girls perched on the cafeteria porch squealed, “Buy Girl Scout cookies!” Inside the building, a row of Girl Scouts sat outside the cafeteria, twittering noisily, like sparrows, with boxes of cookies lined up in front of them. Rachel and I ate supper together. We laughed about Honors papers. Before supper I’d spent a little time looking over Dr. A’s comments on my paper about the writers’ community. I was a little crestfallen: she’d pointed out the tension between individual, creative expression (i.e., writers having to drop everything in order to set down a poem when “the Muse” visits) and group schedule. I suspect that part of it is due to difference in our writing styles: she seems to be much more spontaneous, writing poetry in the middle of the night or whenever the inspiration takes her, while I, on the other hand, often just jot down a few notes and piece the poem together at a later, more convenient time. My style would fit into a schedule; hers would not. Rachel said that she’s been having difficulty thinking through all the “facets” of her paper. “Maybe your brain is so tired from last semester that it’s refusing to consider all the facets again!” I joked. We both laughed, remembering Dr. G’s insistence that we examine all the facets of a question in our papers.

After supper, I opened my mailbox (wonder of wonders!) and found three “World” magazines in it. I was occupied reading the earliest of them (they dated from the last week of February), when A.C. knocked on my door. She glanced skeptically at the magazine, then asked me to rub her back. I perched on a cushion she brought, on her haunches as she lay stretched on the floor, and massaged her back. She walked part of the way to the chapel with me when I went out to RUF. After she turned back with one of her friends, I caught up with Anne, who was walking slowly, savoring the warm evening. The wind seethed in the bare sycamore and sweetgum trees, but the air was damp. Clouds scudded past overhead, their underbellies tinted pink, as though their grey flanks had been muddied by the city lights. Anne and I stood on the chapel steps, relishing the evening, until Jenny joined us. We trooped up to the second-floor RUF meeting room, and as we arrived, I heard a siren going off in the building. “What’s that?” someone asked, startled. “It’s the severe weather alarm. There’s a storm coming,” Esther replied. Anne and Jenny explained Springfest to Rachel and me (Rachel’s church’s Bible study was canceled tonight). Springfest is “a week of parties”, Jenny said, which happens after spring break. Kathryn, Rachel, and I giggled about FS together.

During RUF, Mr. K preached about Isaiah 36-37, and how we should trust God because He shows His love for us, and how God uses our prayers as a means to accomplish His purposes. After RUF, I chatted with Mandi about her siblings’ school (she's college-aged but lives at home and teaches her little siblings), with Jessica and Kathryn about classes, and with Jenna about the Bible study supper tomorrow night (girls’ and boys’ Bible studies are meeting at Jenna’s house for a meal). As I returned to my room around nine-thirty, I sniffed the moist air. It smelled faintly smoky. Above, the moon rode clear in the blank sky, with stars sparkling around it like faint ripples—as though the moon was a stone dropped into a black pool. No storm after all. No rain. In my room, I skimmed “World”, showered, and now may go to bed. I can hear bursts of laughter and giggles from a room downstairs, and the thumps, groans, and roars of a movie. Last night, the movie was so loud that it sounded like thunder. Cars swish past outside, and the wind tugs at the casement.

hmm, this blog seems lonely

Where is everyone?

Crickets chirp. One of them is polite enough to hop up to me and say, "They're all at robotics. Or at school."

Thanks. I really wanted to know that. :)

My thanks to those of you who've been commenting despite all the chaos.

Pray for rain!

And to Princess: I haven't forgotten about posting on the other blog. It's just that I haven't had the time or the wherewithal to actually sit down and say something. It'll be up there by the end of the week, hopefully.

Again: Pray for rain!

Psalm 92: a meditation

Here's something that I posted on "Through A Glass Darkly". I probably won't post on there again for awhile, and just use this blog instead. It's just more convenient for everyone.

Passage: Psalm 92, “a Song for the Sabbath day”.

Meditation: vs. 1-4. This is a Song for the Sabbath, a song that summarizes God’s works and the theology of His sovereignty. The Psalmist begins by declaring the fitness of praising God. On a day dedicated to worship, it is good to remember that we are made for worship, that this is our highest calling. Morning and night, harmoniously, we are to honor Him, for He has made us glad through His work. He satisfies us. We give thanks to Him because it is His due, because it is proper for us to praise Him for His mercies.

vs. 5-7. The Psalmist praises God for His “great works” and “deep thoughts”. He says that fools and senseless men do not understand these things. First, they do not understand that God’s thoughts are great. They think either that God has no thoughts or that He is some trifling little demigod who they can bribe to do what they want. Second, they do not understand their own end. They cannot grasp how a just God could condemn anyone. To them, the idea of Hell, of eternal punishment, is preposterous. They do not understand that God is sovereign and that He has chosen to make some men “vessels” for glory, and some men “vessels” for wrath. Some men are to show God’s mercy by praising Him; others are to show His justice by suffering His righteous anger. Thus, when the wicked grow and flourish, they are only flourishing to be destroyed. As the tree puts on leaves in the summer only to have them die in the fall, so the earth puts on wicked men, only to have them be destroyed.

vs. 8-9. Standing before God in worship, the Psalmist meditates on God’s exaltedness. God is high above everything, and He is eternal. He alone is worthy of praise. The Psalmist understands that God’s enemies, the wicked, will be destroyed. Seeing God’s might, the Psalmist understands that the end of the wicked is certain, and just. They are not merely wicked or annoying, as they are from the world’s perspective—they are wicked, God-haters, and they deserve to perish in light of their offenses against this eternally holy being. God has given the Psalmist understanding as one of His people. On the Sabbath day, we are enabled to grasp some small part of God’s plan.

vs. 10-11. In contrast to His judgment of the wicked, God is merciful to the Psalmist, who is one of His people, a vessel made to show God’s mercy and glory. God blesses His people and exalts us. He anoints us, cleanses us, chooses us. The Holy Spirit settles upon us like the anointing oil that covered the heads of Israelite priests and kings. Indeed, we do not merely rejoice that we are strong—we even rejoice in God’s judgment of the wicked, for they are our enemies, too. They are the ones who persecute us for following God. It is right for us to desire their punishment since they have offended our Lord and King. Their end is certain. Those who rebel against God and mock His people will have a nasty awakening from the sleep of this life.

vs. 12-13. The Psalmist declares God’s uprightness by recounting His mercies—the Psalmist has already spoken of God’s justice. Now he points out God’s grace to undeserving sinners, even to those who may appear useless and ugly to the world. Unlike His treatment of the wicked, God establishes His people. They flourish in Him, growing and extending. In God we have our joy deepened, our sense of God’s greatness and love enlarged, our capacity to serve Him stretched. Those whom He chooses to plant in His house cannot wander. They are like cedars, which stay firmly rooted in one place and are a wonder, a magnificence, to those around them.

vs. 13-14. Not only in their youth or in middle age, but even in old age God’s people flourish. Young people of the world gloss over their suffering and discontent with riches and prettiness, with all the pleasures of youth. Yet they may wither as they grow older, and as they face the endless bleak hopelessness of death. Many elderly people feel useless. They are helpless by sickness, and they are hopeless for they have no work to do. But those who trust God will never wither. Even in old age they will serve God in their specific vocations. God leads His people through all ages, from childhood to death. Christians of all ages bear fruit and flourish. (My Bible’s notes say that verse 14 reads literally, “They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be fat and green.”) God doesn’t let his people grow rusty in old age. He doesn’t abandon them. He keeps them on earth for as long as He has planned, and He has given them work for every moment of every day so that they may glorify Him.

vs. 15. This ties back to the first verses of the Psalm. "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." God gives His people hope and joy as they praise Him. Praising God gives them purpose and meaning. The elderly remain fresh and flourishing “to declare that the Lord is upright”, and they do so consciously, and this conscious knowledge is what God uses to keep them flourishing. God sustains us alive so that we can serve Him. We are to stand as conscious monuments to His grace. My parents and friends often talk about how they’ve been encouraged and edified by elderly people. I know of one woman in particular who was homebound. She couldn’t even leave her rocking chair. She often felt despairing and useless, and she was in pain, but she held firmly to the belief that God would take her to Himself only when He had no more use for her on this earth. So she found a way to be useful: she would listen to the radio and read the newspaper, and pray about all the things she heard or read. I heard that, after she died, they found her sitting in her rocking chair with the newspaper spread over her knees and the radio switched on. She declared that the Lord was upright. The Psalmist finishes by praising God: “there is no unrighteousness in Him”. This boldly refutes the claims of the senseless men earlier who say that the wicked flourish for their own ends and are not cut down. God is upright in His dealings with men. He is merciful to some (and that is great mercy, for no one deserves it! the Psalmist has detailed some of that mercy, both to himself personally and to the elderly), and uses all the others for His glory, to show His justice. No man has any right to argue with the upright God, for no man can claim to be upright. God is unmovable. He is our rock, our strength, our completely righteous One. It is in this Holy God that we have our refuge.

looks different, does it not?

Yes, I confess I've been messing with my template again.

Thanks to Shadow's help earlier, and to some experimentation and trial-and-error, this is what results. If someone knows how to cut back on the slight image repeat with the header, I'd appreciate some advice as far as that's concerned. Despite the fact that the image appears to match the header size (740 x 110 px.), it still repeats itself.

Some of you will probably object to all the grey. My excuse: all the brighter colors look awful on my screen. The greens, reds, and yellows tke on a sickly hue that is not at all appealing. With grey and black, I can't go wrong. Someday I'll figure out how to incorporate brighter colors, perhaps.

Kipling, Roland, and Galatians

Now Playing: "The Book of Secrets", by Loreena McKennitt. Track 7, "Night Ride Across the Caucasus".

This week has been very dull. I've spent almost every waking moment not in class or practicing my flute by studying. I'd appreciate prayer: two midterms tomorrow. One of them involves three short essay questions and one long essay question. Since I have difficulty writing one long essay in fifty minutes, let alone one long essay and three short ones, I'm rather worried.

Anyhow....

Here's an abbreviated journal entry from yesterday. By the way, does anyone visit the "Through A Glass Darkly" site anymore? Because if y'all don't, I'll just start posting the things that I'd normally post on there on this page instead.

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March 1, 2006

When I woke up this morning, as I dressed and prepared to leave for breakfast, I could hear A.C. stirring in her room. It sounded as though her door was open, for I could clearly hear the water running in her sink. There was a pause, and I could sense, through my closed door, that she was standing outside my door. Then she knocked. “Just a minute,” I called wearily—I almost always sound tired and exasperated whenever anyone knocks on my door. I hurriedly whisked up my hair. “Good morning,” I said when I opened and saw her standing outside. “Hi,” she replied with her quirky grin. “Would you like to come to breakfast with me? I heard movement, so I thought you were awake.” “Sure,” I replied, unenthusiastically, “just a minute.” I strapped on my shoes, locked my door, and followed her downstairs, clasping on my watch and my cross necklace as I did so. We sat with Rachel at breakfast. A.C. giggled about her dreams, nightmares and otherwise.

After breakfast I studied and wrote e-mails. In MBW today, we talked about Rudyard Kipling. Dr. F and the whole class mocked his poetry, especially “If—” and “The White Man’s Burden”. It was miserable sitting there and listening to them make fun of him, when, from my point of view, Kipling satirizes both East and West in his writing. Ironic, too, because in “White Man’s Burden”, Kipling specifically mentions those who make fun of the West for trying to civilize other countries. “Oh, it’s such a pain to have to go out and rape and pillage. I just can’t bear it,” one of the students satirized in a whining voice, and everyone laughed. Dr. F told us that Kipling is the last gasp of the British Empire, the voice of the Victorian Era trying to shout down its critics. She said that Kipling embodies the idea that the British Empire conquers in order to bring peace and order—the idea that “savages” can’t govern themselves, so the West has to teach them how to govern. “Does this rhetoric sound familiar to anything we’ve heard today?” she inquired pointedly. Everyone chuckled. “Well, I think it’s like the Iraq War…” one woman said, and the whole class went off, like fat trout on a fisherman’s line, following Dr. F’s lead. One of the young men in the class stood up for Kipling and did his best to withstand the trend of the class. In general I find it hard to be patient with this particular chap, for he will show off his historical knowledge constantly, and he does stutter very badly, so it’s hard for him to put together coherent sentences. In this instance, though, I couldn’t help but admire him. I left class puzzled and disheartened.

In Archaeology, we studied methods of interpretation, such as ethnoarchaeology (which is done by going around to modern day tribes who are still living like Stone Age people and seeing how they live) and experimental archaeology (which is done by trying to replicate the activities that Stone Age people did, like making stone arrowheads). After Archaeology, I practiced my flute, then ate lunch. Today there was spaghetti for lunch, with tomato sauce. The tomatoes were sweet and round, with a tang of parsley in my mouth. I sat with Nicole, Mary, Alex, and some of their friends, and listened to them joke. After lunch, as I left the cafeteria, I saw Tara, and we chatted for a little while. She was sitting at a booth selling tickets for the ipod raffle. You pay a dollar for a ticket, and it goes to help restore the Lottie Jane piano. Since that’s a worthy cause, I produced a dollar that I’d been carrying around in my knapsack for awhile, and bought a ticket. Then I went to the Parking Services office and bought a tag for "my" car.

I studied until Honors. During Honors, we talked about prowess, memory, and the importance of a knight’s name to his honor. We also talked about The Song of Roland—its technical aspects, what we liked/didn’t like, etc. I like it for its luminosity (Dorothy Sayers’s translation is a lyric delight), and its half-real, half-mythic characters, which have an edge of vividness more than any living human. Russ and the other two guys liked it for its slightly exaggerated storyline. Rachel and I talked about The Faerie Queene after class as we walked toward the library. I walked with her to the Honors House. She described for me some of her difficulties with reading Spenser, especially the archaic spellings and the meandering plot. She asked me if Dr. T had read the story I’d written for First Seminar, which was supposed to be a contemporary myth. I told her that he had, and that he’d asked me to expand a dialogue near the end in which two of the characters discuss myth. To me, that part seemed dreadfully didactic, but he wanted more there. Rachel said that she actually really likes stories that have such dialogues in them—she cited G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mystery about the blue cross, in which Father Brown and Flambeau have a discussion that draws together the themes of the whole story. “I was reading that around Christmas time, and, perhaps because of all the heightened emotions of the holiday, that final dialogue really caught my attention. After I read it, I lay back and cried, ‘Praise God!’,” she told me, her cheeks flushing with enthusiasm.

In the Honors House, she showed me the door decorations that people had made for their competition, a competition to see who could come up with decorations most fitting to the people living in each room. The decorations were themed--animals, characters from Harry Potter, presidents, baseball players, cities, etc. Rachel's animal was a rabbit, and someone had given her the city of Denver. We walked back together as far as the library. As we walked, the wind whipped our hair. It made the beads on my sleeves jingle and clink—as though I was walking in the midst of my own wind chimes. We parted at the library. I intended to spend the afternoon studying, but I nearly fell asleep at my desk, so I stretched out on my bed instead. I woke with a jerk thirty minutes later. For awhile I worked on revising my First Seminar story before I went outside and ran. The West wind blew fiercely, drawing a veil of clouds, like grey sails, across the pale blue sky. The afternoon was very warm. Everyone seemed to be out on the lawn below the library—talking, napping, studying, sunning themselves.

I showered after I ran and ate supper. Belgian waffles for supper tonight, with strawberries. Crystal sat with me. She was in a dismal mood (she usually is). She’d managed to spill most of her supper on the floor, and didn’t have much of an appetite. After supper I studied archaeology.

Bible study at eight o’clock. Crystal, Jenny H., Jenna, Syneva, Kathryn, and Katie all came. Jenna brought purple grapes, goldfish, and orange soda. I brought down three of the cups my mother bought for me back in August, and Jenna split the sodas between the girls. During Bible study we discussed Galatians 3 and the doctrine of adoption.

After Bible study, when everyone had left, I helped Jenna and Syneva pick up in the study lounge. Syneva asked Jenna’s advice about something to keep her awake as she studies tonight. She has a massive amount of percussion patterns to memorize for her percussion methods midterm tomorrow. Jenna suggested coffee, but Syneva doesn’t like coffee. She said that the only thing that will keep her awake is eating—pizza and Dr. Pepper. We laughed in disgust at the boys’ pizza eating contest last week. Syneva said that she’d heard that David had eaten twenty-four pieces of pizza. “Girls don’t do that, do they?” she asked, laughing. “They eat chocolate instead,” Jenna replied with a grin. After they left, I walked upstairs. I gave Jenny the leftover can of orange soda before locking myself in my room for the night. I put a pause on studying archaeology for the night, and went to bed.

Well, well, well, look at that! It's a....

.... White Rabbit!

Cheers! :)

By the way, if you want an excellent laugh, go read SwanElf's blog post, the one with a quote from G.K. Chesterton at the top. It's a humorous account of a very humorous dialogue. (I think I probably woke up some people here this morning by laughing so loudly when I read it.)