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.