hodgepodge

Now Playing: "Heaven When We're Home" by The Wailin' Jennys. (Yes, Emmaline, this is a good song.)

First, a quote from John Calvin (always a safe place to start).

"… He is merciful towards the merciful, and pure towards the pure. God never disappoints His servants, but always at length deals graciously with them, provided they wait for His aid with meekness and patience…. The scope of this discourse is, that the people of God should entertain good hope, and encourage themselves to practice uprightness and integrity, since every man shall reap the fruit of his own righteousness.
As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. The phrase, the way of God, is not here taken for His revealed will, but for His method of dealing towards His people. The meaning, therefore, is, that God never disappoints or deceives His servants, nor forsakes them in the time of need… but faithfully defends and maintains those whom He has once taken under His protection. But we will never have any nearness to God, unless He first come near to us by His word…. Let us, therefore, rest assured that God will actually show Himself upright towards us, seeing He has promised to be the guardian and protector of our welfare, and His promise is certain and infallible truth." (John Calvin, Heart Aflame, Psalm 18:25-39)

This was Labor Day week here, which means that we had Monday off from uni. Which meant that I spent most of Monday splashing in Skiatook Lake with about twenty RUFfians. It didn't feel like a big group, probably because I knew all of them. So, yeah, already talked about that.

Tuesday was the back-to-work-for-real day. No more break now until Thanksgiving. On Tuesday, the hurricane, which had been inflicting mayhem on the Gulf Coast, decided to swing north and cause some mayhem up here instead. As a consequence, on my way to an interview for a job in the afternoon, I was completely doused by a sudden rain shower, which turned out to be just the precursor. During RUF, I had a breakdown moment and had to go outside, and was "rewarded" (or comforted or something) with the sight of a violently beautiful sunset: flaming yellow-green on the horizon, turning slightly aquamarine, running up to a thick bank of flat grey clouds, which were all ominous pale greens and pinks and blues underneath where the light caught them.

Wednesday was another insane day. Lunch with Rachel, Crystal, and Emily, during which Crystal and Emily discussed Greek declensions; flute practice; PHIL 2113, in which I invariably want to shoot myself because the professor goes on so many uninteresting rabbit trails despite the fact that the stated material of the course should be so interesting; then helping Alisha and Hannah color a banner to advertise RUF's game night tonight; then racing back to our apartment to help Rachel and Bob move the two sofas that Rachel and I have adopted. The day was cool and cloudy, and a thin soaking mizzle was falling. Philip had declared that he wasn't moving furniture in the rain, so Bob, Rachel, and I had to get the first, coincidentally the heaviest, couch down from Jennifer's third-floor apartment and onto Bob's truck by ourselves. Then Bob rang James, who came over to help move that couch into our apartment and then to pick up the smaller loveseat from Nicole's apartment. So that happened, and then after tea there was the RUF game night in the fishbowl, the big glass-windowed meeting room just beside the cafeteria. We had a good group of people and drew in plenty of new people, mostly freshmen attracted by the noise and lights from the Wii, Nintendo, DDR, and so on.

Thursday was the day of the study abroad returnee dinner. Because the day was cool, I wore my rugby jersey, which was a little bit weird, but whatever. Turns out that I was accepted for the post of staff writer at the study abroad office. Also turns out that wherever they got their curry from for the dinner makes a curry almost identical to that place on the Lisburn Road that Rachel, Emmaline, and I went to all the time during the first week of exams. Turns out furthermore that there's a student at the University of Tulsa in the BEI program from the University of Ulster. Ciaran, one of the most energetic people I've met in my life, incredibly outgoing, showed up after the meeting was over with two or three American students in tow, whom he is already busy persuading to study abroad in Belfast.

Walking back from the study abroad dinner at about eight o'clock in the evening, I was again met by an incredible sunset. The sky has a pellucid shine, translucent, almost violent in its brilliance these evenings. Tonight it was orange and gold at the horizon, as though the illumination from a medieval psalter had become somehow alive, and aquamarine above, and deep, deep blue above that. I saw fireflies and a bat, both unusual at this late point in the summer. I sauntered, strolled, watching the light striking through the library windows, rippling in the panes of one of the downstairs wings, watching the horizon deepen rapidly from saffron to scarlet to rust red to umber.

Back in the apartment, I settled down to study. Rachel came whistling up the stairs.

Yesterday I met with my advisor after lunch. She encouraged me strongly to take a year out before going to postgraduate school--liberating. She also gave me permission to do the outlandish senior project I've proposed: a study of translation of Beowulf, how different translations over time change the text, how translations reflect their own particular part of history--incorporating my own creative writing, probably about transience. I went to senior seminar later in the afternoon, in which we examined the Genesis account of the creation of Eve, and our culture's responses and dialogues with that incident.

I spent late afternoon and evening at Jenny and Andrew's apartment. Jenny and I put Classical records on Andrew's LP player and cooked Thai curry. Coconut milk, fish oil, soy sauce and sweet soy sauce, fresh ginger root, Indonesian satay paste, Thai curry paste, beef, potatoes.... For the first time in months I was almost completely at home. Jenny took a shower while the curry bubbled on the stove, and I was able to write poetry, scribbled in the margins of HON 3003 reading. At about eight o'clock, we sat down to eat--Andrew had come back from his afternoon of meetings; Philip, Rachel S., and the Tyree brothers all came. Andrew said that the curry reminded him "of a Thai curry/Irish stew fusion" because the potatoes had practically dissolved into the curry.

Today was quiet. Nicole came over at lunch so that she and I could discuss the logistics of leading Bible studies. In the late afternoon, after having a ridiculous e-mail tag conversation, I rang Emmaline, and we spent a good hour-and-a-half talking (and it still wasn't long enough, as I realized after, for us to tell and ask), with interruptions courtesy Nathanael, Reuben, and Eleanor, who told me that I sound American. (!) Rachel and I ate our tea on the library lawn, the sunset modulated by a ragged cloud bank coming out of the west. We've spent a good quiet evening in our apartment, revising with all the windows open to the cool evening air. I'm listening to the playlist of music I sent to Emmaline on a couple of CDs. Rachel is sitting curled up in the corner of what used to be the pink couch. Now it's swathed in a blue cover. The lamplight is glossy on her dark hair. Outside, cars zip through the car park, blasting out hip hop or techno, and emergency sirens wail away beyond the edge of campus.

"It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day...."