It's either short or it's not... and this is definitely not!

Now Playing: "Paint the Sky with Stars", by Enya. Track 2, "Caribbean Blue". (Now, people, don't choke too loudly. Enya is pleasant to listen to at the end of a long day when one is emotionally and mentally exhausted. And I've made up for this apparent temporary vapidness by a fairly decent, "eclectic" mix today: Beethoven's 5th and 6th, the "Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack, the "Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack, and Loreena McKennitt.)

Having stayed up late last night chatting with Tara, I got up late today. At breakfast, I indulged in two thick, syrupy pieces of French toast, eaten with the pleasurable seasoning of Rachel's company. We laughed about twins, of which there are at least two sets here: Dipti and Divya (RUFers, Malaysians, seniors, and a great deal of fun to be with) and two boys who play ultimate frisbee with us occasionally on Monday evenings. There's also a set of triplets, but they're rather weird: two of the triplets look like twins, and the third triplet doesn't look anything like her sisters.

After breakfast, I spent the morning trying to study archaeology--mostly an ineffective struggle against distractions (i.e., e-mail, C.S. Lewis, and watching the softball team practice--not interesting in itself, but an excuse for not studying). Around noon, I wandered downstairs to see if Alisha wanted to go to lunch with me. She happened to have her door open, so I poked my head in, and she said she'd like to come along. We ate lunch with Dipti, Divya, Matt, and one of the twins' friends. Matt seemed rather depressed: he'd just said good-bye to the professor who'd been his senior project mentor. But he did tell me that he'd talked to the professor: "I told him that there was at least one undergraduate I knew of who was dying to take Anglo-Saxon studies," he said with a smile, "but that really isn't his specialty, and he hasn't taught it in awhile. So your best bet...." "Yeah, I know, I'm going to have to study abroad," I said with a grin. That's what I get for such obscure tastes! Matt also asked me what I thought of the past semester. "Will you miss it?" he asked. I shrugged my shoulders.

Alisha and I went to Tara's violin jury at twelve forty-five. We sat on the "dunce's bench" at the back of the concert hall, while the members of the string faculty sat in the actual chairs. Tara's performance surprised me: she's a petite, quiet, gentle girl, but when she played the violin, her vibrating sound filled the auditorium. Her professor, the violin teacher, asked her to play a B flat scale. I couldn't hear very well what the professor had said from the back of the room, so when Tara started to play her scale, I thought it was the beginning of the piece--the vibrato and phrasing were impeccable, even on a humble scale. For her actual jury, Tara played a fiery, temperamental Spanish piece, her fingers scurrying elegantly up and down the runs.

The three of us walked back to the dorm together afterward. I spent the afternoon alone, alternating hours of studying archaeology and reading C.S. Lewis. Yesterday I finished The Weight of Glory and The Problem of Pain, and by the end of the afternoon, I'd read halfway through Surprised by Joy. To be honest (though I know SwanElf and Mrs. P, if she reads this, would probably take issue), I didn't much like The Problem of Pain (though I did like parts of it). Lewis doesn't have a very high opinion of total depravity, predestination, election, and the complete inspiration of Scripture, all Calvinist doctrines deeply ingrained in my being. He tells a really weird "creation" myth to try to explain pain, attempting to combine Creation and Evolution--making Neolithic apes into Paradisial Man or something along those lines. I liked The Weight of Glory a lot. A couple of years ago, my father read the first essay in that book to me at Quartz Mountain (an arts camp) on a Sabbath afternoon: I'd been banished to Quartz Mountain, but he was allowed to come down on Sabbath and take me to church. After church in the morning, we spent the afternoon together. I'll never forget sitting on the porch outside the cafeteria, listening to him read: the green-and-gold scurries of wind ruffling the huge face of Lake Altus-Lugert, the afternoon sun glowing on the rose granite mountains, the little striped lizard sneaking out from behind a low wall onto the hot concrete, the rough edge of the table on my elbows and forehead, and the homesick longing which Lewis's sermon stirred in me.

At six-twenty, Syneva and I picked up some girls (Rachel, Anne, Kathryn) in the parking lot and drove in our separate cars to Jenna's house for supper for our Bible study. Jenna had made sticky spaghetti with delicious meat-and-mushroom sauce to go with it, and a large salad with lettuce, strawberries, and almonds, and French bread. We sat around the oval table in the small dining room and chatted (though I must admit I paid more attention to the food than the conversation). When we'd finished eating, Jenna eagerly took us upstairs to show us the room that she and her husband, Mr. B, have created for their one-year-old daughter, Anna. They've walled off the end of the long, low room under the roof, which serves as Mr. B's study. They've made a bedroom out of this little room, opening onto the study. They painted the room pale purple (a shade pinker than the purple on Princess's bedroom walls). The bedroom has a little high window and a ceiling fan--it's small, with a low, sloping roof, but very snug and cozy. Downstairs again, Syneva dished up generous portions of chocolate brownies and butter pecan (or vanilla) ice cream for everyone. Jenna woke Anna from her nap, and the seven of us sat in the little screened-in porch off the dining room. I perched on the threshold and slowly ate the creamy, gooey sweetness. Jenna spooned leftover spaghetti into Anna's mouth, with bites of ice cream. I chuckled when I saw Anna's eyebrows go up when Jenna gave her her first mouthful of ice cream. Anna begged for more. :)

We were comfortably quiet, listening to the creaks of the little old house, and the tap of a neighbor's hammer across the street, and the clatter of sparrows in the eaves. The house still tingled comfortably with Italian smells: garlic, tomato, basil, thyme. The open louvres of the screened windows, and the thick-bladed St. Augustine grass outside, reminded me of my grandparents' house in San Antonio. I shut my eyes and half-expected to see Grampy's skein of thick silk ribbons tied against the wall, and the old panoramic-view photographs of balloon races and harbors, and the tall, black stools standing on either side of the raised fireplace. In the middle of the screened porch there used to be a black wooden table, and over the table hung a low lamp on a chain. My mother told me once that when Grammy left the room during supper, Grampy used to push the lamp to start it swinging, and then he and my uncle and my mother would all sway in rhythm with the lamp, as though they were on shipboard. That would startle Grammy when she came into the room, and make her scold them.

Mr. B came home as we sat on the porch, and he joined us with a big plate of spaghetti: he joked he was glad that we weren't boys, because if we were, we'd have eaten all the food and left none for him. At eight o'clock, Syneva left with Rachel to go to a hymn-sing at the Ks' house. I took Anne and Kathryn back to campus. As I walked back to my room, I stopped by the study lounge in my dorm where Alisha was working on her second twenty-page paper. She had finished ten pages, but the paper is due tomorrow. I flopped down in a chair, and we chatted for forty-five minutes. We talked about various things: papers and finals, of course (these topics form the bread-and-butter of every college conversation, as I've discovered). We discussed her missions trip with Tara to South Africa this summer. She puzzled over the "cocktail" of shots she'll have to take in order to go, immunizations for all sorts of peculiar tropical diseases.

I showered, and then sat down here with determination to write down this long monologue. I realized as I folded away my clothes after my shower that I am going to miss this after all--realized with a sort of wide-eyed, Father Brown surprise. I'll miss Honors classes (but none of the other classes! :), and, most of all, I'll miss my friends: Alisha, Syneva, the Jennys, Tara, Rachel. I'll miss seeing someone I know every day, and being able to sit down and talk about things we both know intimately. I hate this: I wish the two worlds could be together, and all the wires could cross. But that's impossible. I have to live two different lives. At home I can talk all about abstract fun times or nasty classes, but when it comes to the philosophical theories about Love and Beauty and Art, which I discuss with Rachel, or the sideways jokes about music with Syneva, or the serious discussions about being lonely and missions trips with Alisha--none of this seems to cross over.

"Off in the distance is my wish under moonlight/On my way home, I remember/Only new days/On my way home, I remember/All the best days"....

“Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 103)

"Listen, O daughter, consider, and incline your ear; forget your own people also, and your father's house; so the King will greatly desire your beauty; because He is your Lord, worship Him." (Psalm 45:10-11)