I have been regaled with excellent prose for the last few days: Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, for a mystic, Romantic voice, and now Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night, for something completely different.

“Isn’t the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?”

“Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it’s dead right, there’s no excitement like it. It’s marvellous. It makes you feel like God on the Seventh Day—for a bit, anyhow.”

“…. You expend the trouble and you don’t make any mistake—and then you experience the ecstasy. But if there’s any subject in which you’re content with the second-rate, then it isn’t really your subject.”

“You’re dead right,” said Harriet, after a pause. “If one’s genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass, as Queen Elizabeth said. Perhaps that’s the meaning of the phrase about genius being eternal patience…. If you truly want a thing, you don’t snatch; if you snatch, you don’t really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it’s a proof of its importance to you?”

“…. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring….”

~

“… there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t look on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures.”

“.... The worst of being a job… is the devastating effect is has on one’s character. I’m very sorry for the person who is somebody else’s job; he (or she, of course) ends by devouring or being devoured, either of which is bad for one….”

“But you say you don’t despise those who make some other person their job?”

“Far from despising them,” said Miss de Vine, “I think they are dangerous.”

                       Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

Now Playing: Dvorak on Laura's computer.

Our white Christmas! Annalee, Mary, Laura, and Lillian.

More photos here.

Now Playing: More Fearings!

Pictures from yesterday here.

Mary and Ross making pasta. Do we like Texas A&M? I wonder....

Oh, look, the Fearing twins! (Not really.)

Andrew, Peter, and Anna reading Sheldon comics.

Now Playing: Fearings!

23 December 2009. Slept in until half eight this morning, when certain high-pitched voices started to twitter in the schoolroom. I ate breakfast downstairs. Aunt Lisa was knitting in the dining room, and Andrew drifted down eventually, and Anna followed suit. We were sitting and chatting pleasantly when Stephen poked his head into the room and said, “E, I think Moochy is out of the yard and is running up and down the easement.” I dashed outside, and Moochy came bounding up to me. Stephen held her, I roped the gate shut, and we put the dog back inside the gate. About half-an-hour later, Ross returned from a run around Boomer Lake. “This black-and-white dog followed me halfway. It looked both ways and then ran across the street, and it followed me until it got distracted by the geese,” he said. O, the adventures of Moochy….

After lunch, Laura, Lillian, and Annalee went ice skating with Bridget and Abigail. Ross started to make lasagna noodles for tonight, using my mother's pasta press and Mary’s help. Anna and I went with Uncle Kirk, Philip, Andrew, Peter, and Stephen to Boomer Lake to play frisbee golf and walk Moochy. The morning had been overcast and chilly but not cold; the afternoon was overcast with a rising North wind. The cold was becoming bitter. The boys walked across the hill to start on the course, and Anna and I walked on north around the lake. We only went as far as the second bridge, but as we started down the path, an enormous hawk fell out of a tree with a big pigeon clutched in its talons. It dropped the pigeon and glared at us from the top of a lamppost; we were so close that I could look right up into its great yellow-rimmed eye.

We were the only ones at the lake. Anna and I turned around and walked back up the hill, rejoining the guys, who were starting the fourth hole. A red SUV drove past slowly a couple of times, the passengers gaping at us, and a couple of black cars with tinted windows also circled by before stopping to park under a tree. It was a bit creepy. We had been sauntering happily around the course, but then we picked up our pace, crossed the inlet, and went up the hill by the playground, away from the road. Moochy was enjoying herself thoroughly. Philip egged her on so that she wrapped Uncle Kirk in several loops of leash, and then he teased her to start chasing him, with the result that Uncle Kirk stumbled mildly and then extricated himself. Andrew decided to try the trick himself—but instead of winding anyone in loops of leash, Andrew tripped, fell, and ended up in a ball on the grass, Moochy enthusiastically licking his face, butting her nose through his crossed arms. We stood round and laughed at him. He was laughing, too.

We walked on, a loose knot. Anna and I trailed behind the boys, encouraging them or laughing at bad throws. When they got to the hole at the top of the hill by the ROTC building, I started to feel chilled, so Anna and I walked home. Anna, Peter, and Andrew sat on the sofa, reading Sheldon comics. I curled up with them, and Mary came and fell asleep sprawled across our laps. We giggled and giggled. Stephen squeezed onto the sofa beside us. My mother was quietly reading her Bible at the living room table; Philip was playing a game on his computer upstairs; Ross and Aunt Lisa were cooking. The house felt very quiet. The four or five of us sat on the sofa reading about Sheldon, Arthur, and Dante for about two hours, while Mary napped on our laps.

The girls came back from skating, and the house was full, warm, and noisy again. We ate tea at about six o’clock. After, while Philip, Ross, Peter, and Annalee were playing spades, the rest of us convened in an arc in the living room to watch “A Lesson in Murder” from Season 1 of Foyle’s War. Anna, Laura, and I had seen it before and relished everyone’s reaction when they recognized David Tennant. The episode ended at about ten, and Anna went home to meet her family.

After she left, people started to go to bed. Mary kept popping downstairs to say good-night or get a drink, but finally all the wee jack-in-the-boxes were put to sleep. Aunt Lisa, Ross, Uncle Kirk, and I sat in the living room talking until about eleven o’clock with Stephen and Peter. Aunt and uncle make one feel included but also carefree, relaxed, at ease. Finally I got up and turned out the lights, and we went to bed—except the boys, who are playing computer games in Philip’s room. The wind is picking up outside. Tomorrow is supposed to be a blizzard.

Only two waitresses today at the restaurant, A and me, so I opened up by myself for the most part. Just as I was dragging the heavy wooden noticeboard out onto the footpath outside the restaurant, preparing to turn on the "OPEN" sign, an SUV pulled up, and a couple of people walked in. They turned out to be the first of a three-hour lunch rush, which lasted steadily into the afternoon, and picked up again even after a lull.
Now the words "three-hour lunch rush" sound innocent enough in themselves, like some nice little ditty, comparable to Gilligan's Island's "three hour tour." However, when there are only two waitresses and three cooks, the lunch rush becomes a hurricane that practically demolishes the restaurant. Codes of conduct such as "Set the customers' table before bringing out their food," "Check back with the customers a couple of times during the meal," and "Ensure that drinks are filled at all times," are swept away with the flotsam and jetsam of empty straw wrappers, dirty plates, and soiled napkins.

(I hope, dear reader, that you are not taking this overblown rhetoric completely seriously.)

And so we were very nearly literally run off our feet today for a large portion of the shift. A party of ten and a party of seven came in at almost exactly the same time; meanwhile, the booths were filling rapidly, and the phone was ringing incessantly with take-out orders to be processed. Someone had spilled lettuce and tomatoes in the kitchen walkway, and the ice bin was practically empty.

A and I raced around, run, run, run, with trays of drinks and plates of food, trying to keep everyone happy. After, since A and I were the only ones working, we had to split the cleaning, so I worked until four o'clock cloroxing tables, refilling sugar boxes, etc. At four o'clock, I drove downtown to meet Sarah, Rachel, and Laura, who wanted to ice skate on the temporary rink that has been set up in a side street next to the old Katz building.

The rink was fairly busy. A fringe of children stumbled and crashed and giggled along periphery. Teens and adults skated confidently around the centre. An Asian man was helping his wee daughter learn how to skate; a couple of girls were clinging to each other, laughing; one wee boy kept crashing into the bit of wall adjacent to me. Every so often, Sarah, Rachel, and Laura would stop in their mad careen (hardly!) and shout to me across the racket of Christmas carols being played from a cheap speaker system.

After tea, Philip came home at about half six. Laura and I took Moochy for a walk. The night was practically balmy by the standards of the past month. Stars were gorgeous. At home, Sarah had come over to watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Philip hasn't seen any of the Harry Potter films yet and wants to. I showered quickly, and then all of us except my father went upstairs. We set ourselves up in the schoolroom and settled down to watch the film.

I have a special affection for the Harry Potter films. They are to my college experience what The Lord of the Rings was to my highschool experience (though of course LOTR is far, far, far better). Since the time I was first introduced--thanks to Lottie's widescreen TV, Tara, Alisha, a basilisk, and a phoenix--I've been fascinated by the creatures especially. I also appreciate that Rowling's bad guys are truly bad and use the same language about power, manipulation, and the lack of right/wrong as do classical villains.

However, the first film also reminds me of all the things that annoy me about Harry Potter. The evil of the villains has no clear good to balance it. Harry's goodness is definitely exaggerated. Indeed, Rowling's muse seems to express itself in exaggeration--I am always disgusted by the Dursleys, not because they are disgusting necessarily but because they seem to me to be unnecessarily grotesque, like images in a carnival mirror. It also bothers me that the main "good" characters are repeatedly rewarded for transgressing. The sheer disrespect of the "good" characters calls into question their goodness and why they are so different from the bad characters. "The end justifies the means" appears to be be the moral of the story on a foundational level.

But all of this has been said before and can be argued for or against. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed watching the first one again and introducing Philip, Laura, and Stephen to the world and its inhabitants. In the middle, we took a break for family worship, then went back upstairs to finish it. I'd forgotten how long the first one is: it was after eleven o'clock before we were done. Sarah went home, and the rest of us went to bed.

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker Suite, "Waltz of the Snowflakes."

The Mr. Darcy Dance at the Cs' ball last night.

Dancing the Dashing White Sergeant.

Sarah and me

TU people! Matt, Joseph, Grant, Stephen; Tara, Syneva, Amanda, Rachel, me, Nicole

More photos from the ball here.

Now Playing: Casting Crowns, "Praise You In This Storm."

18 December 2009.

This afternoon, just as I was putting the last few things in my car to go to Ponca City for the Cs' ball this evening, Sarah pulled up. She's going with me. I helped her pack everything, and we pulled out. The drive to Ponca scares and awes me: open fields cut with erosion gullies and an unbroken sky from horizon to horizon, unmediated, terrifying.

We arrived at the Cs' house early, at five o'clock. Jacob informed us that everyone was still at the Hutchins, decorating the hall for tonight. Sarah and I sat quietly in the living room, chatting and petting the cat, Jasmine. Jacob told us eventually to take our things upstairs, and then Nicole arrived, and then the Cs all came piling in through the back door. Sarah, Nicole, and I sat at the table in the small dining room, eating soup and bread and talking about Christmas plans. Syneva and Stefni had disappeared to splice music for tonight.

After we ate, we went upstairs to Syneva's room. The three of us changed clothes in there. When we came down, the three of us piled into my car, and we followed the guys (Matt, Stephen, Joseph, Grant) to the auditorium.

The night was very chilly, and we were shivering as we scampered up the sidewalk and through the glass doors. Inside, the big auditorium had been decorated like last year with reindeer, sleigh, poinsettias, lights, and enormous Christmas tree on the stage. Beautiful, elegant. Before the dancing began, we stood about in awkward knots, talking. Amanda and Rachel K were there, and they joined our wee circle.

At a quarter past seven, Mannheim Steamroller came on, and Syneva lined us all up for the grand march. Approximately a hundred twenty-five people came to the ball this year, so the grand march was slower than usual, though I was still dragged along, running, at certain points. The tunnel was extremely long; Joseph and I were scurrying under people's upraised arms for ages, it seemed. The curves and windings and tunnels and arches eventually unlaced themselves, and we magically resolved into an enormous circle on the dance floor. Mr. C welcomed us all, and the dance began.

We danced mostly old favorites: Scottish Wheel, Virginia Reel (like Strip-the-Willow, only less spinning), Fairfield Fancy, Dashing White Sergeant (have fun making hey!), Waves of Tory, Mr. Darcy, Posties, Broom Waltz, Polka. Three new ones this year: Dancing Priest, Joys of Quebec, and Preston. Joys of Quebec was a contradance, which felt like all the dances spliced together in a new way.

The dance seemed to go by astonishingly quickly. Part of that was the fact that we spent more time this year walking through the dances without music since there were more people who didn't know them. Syneva said that she left out a whole set because they ran out of time.

Sitting in the stands, I had a lovely view of the whole affair. The irregular pentagonal floor outlined with hanging Christmas lights, the enormous tree towering on the stage, hung with bronze and gold ornaments, and the elegant, orderly sets of dancers. I love the pattern of these dances, the logic, the rhythm. There are certain definite patterns that are shuffled in different ways for each dance, so that a night of English dancing is like becoming part of a living kaliedoscope, tracing the patterns in an endless variety of orders, all logical, lovely. The Sicilian circle, the long lines, the advance-and-retire, the spins, the genteel star, the circling left or right.... As formal, as reassuring, as elegant as the pattern of veins in a leaf or the order of stars in a constellation.

After the last Posties, everyone joined hands in a big circle--though not quite as large now because many people had left. It was after half ten. Everyone sang the doxology. Then Syneva turned on swing dancing music. Tara was practically dancing in place before Stephen invited her to dance with him. It was fun to watch Matt and Syneva dance together. They're both very, very good and love what they do.

Eventually, people started to leave. We took our usual TU people photo, and other photos. I chatted with Tara about books, and with Tara, John, Jessica, and Matt N about people falling asleep while driving--! They left to drive straight back to Tulsa. It was twenty to twelve before we walked out of the auditorium into the frigid night. At the Cs' house, when I stepped out of the car, I was awed by the spread of stars overhead.

Indoors, Nicole, Sarah, and I changed into pajamas and went downstairs. The guys, Syneva, Stefni, and one of Stefni's friends were lounging around the living room. We sat up for probably an hour-and-a-half, talking. Syneva brought out a bottle of Chardonnay, and we ate brie and crackers and pizzelles. Matt, true to form, had plenty of ideas for starting random conversations. We talked about our ideal house, the ideal location for said house, and how we could name children after monuments or historic events.

We were all very relaxed, and as the evening went on, the silences lengthened and deepened. Syneva laughed that this was the annual "Stare at each other after the ball" event, but it was very, very good to relax and chat.

By about half one, Stephen and Joseph were both practically asleep, and Matt was, too. Syneva took the hint. All of the girls went into the kitchen to put the food away, and we ended up eating cookies and talking for a wee bit longer before going upstairs to bed. Nicole and Sarah slept in Syneva's bed, and I slept on the floor.

Now Playing: Andrew Peterson, "After the Last Tear Falls."

My alarm woke me out of a deep, dream-filled sleep, like shooting up through dark water past iridescences. At nine o’clock I went to the FRC to meet Huhee. We worked on kitchen words today: I brought a bunch of utensils and dishes, and we worked on learning basic nouns and verbs.

Afterward, I sat in the car and finished chapter 5 of Burroughs. Sunshine slanting through the window kept my legs warm, though a frigid north wind was scouring out of a scraped-clean powder blue sky. I asked myself why I’m not happy and realized that I may not have the “freedom” I think I want, but I’m not using a basic freedom I actually do have—the freedom to rejoice in Jesus Christ.

At half ten, I drove to Crepe Myrtle for work. Today was steady again, busier than yesterday—at one point nearly every available seat was taken. I took a big table at first, and when they paid one of the receipts didn’t print, so after the lunch rush, Laurel told me that it looked as though one of the people hadn’t paid. If someone doesn’t pay, I have to pay, so I was cleaning, trying not to be too distressed, when she told me that she had found the missing transaction after all. I need to be objective, but I find that I'm even more sensitive at work to people's likes and dislikes. I want to make it all perfect, to be the best, smoothest server--of course. No room for grace in my world....

I finished cleaning early, before three o’clock, and went home. Moochy trotted up to the gate to watch me pull into the driveway the way she always does. Clutching my bag and pots and pans on one arm, I checked the box for post and found an envelope with the ETS stamp. My legs started to shake. I set everything down at my feet and ripped open the envelope, cold fingers fumbling with the folds. At first I stared at it, unable to believe what I was seeing. Far better than even the good score I’d gotten on the practice exam. I was too numb to do anything but tremble. God provides, God provides, God provides. I don’t understand why He keeps providing in my dumb, beast-like way (Psalm 73), but He holds my hand.

Amy had organized a surprise 21st birthday party for Catherine this evening (this evening over there, 3:30 p.m. here) and had invited me to come via Skype. So I settled down with half a bagel and my webcam in my room, afternoon sunshine slanting, dazzling, through the windows. So strong that it whited out the webcam at one point. The screen became a window into a wee room in Belfast, where a group of people (some of whom I knew, some of whom I didn't) were hiding in the dark, waiting for Catherine to arrive. Stephen had me practice "hiding", and Rosemary, Stephen, and Emmaline all informed me that I sounded very Northern Irish--! I watched the silhouettes moving around in the gloom and laughed.

Catherine finally did come, and we all shouted "Surprise!" and laughed at her appropriately surprised expression.... I sat by my laptop for most of the rest of the afternoon, watching the proceedings. Gareth had been trying to make me flinch by snapping party poppers in front of the camera, so I scared him by putting the guinea pig up to the webcam. Annie also made an appearance, albeit a squirming, disgusted one.

After my mother left, I sat and chatted with Gareth, with Naomi, with Daphne briefly. Faces poignantly vivid through the computer-generated haze. It was so, so strange to know myself to be present only as virtual reality to them--to know that I was a weird blue sheen in the corner to the people who didn't know me, and a reduced, two-dimensional version of myself even to the ones who do. I wonder if that's how Christ felt on earth, stripped of His divine glory (not to minimize His humanity; it's a bad analogy). And it was strange to have these people, so dear to me, transmuted into shadows, silhouettes, at best blurred portraits of themselves--photos of friends eerily aged, metamorphosed into Caravaggios.

Anyway, after a group of people left, the girls who were left played games. I was on Amy, Charlotte, and Rosemary's team. Then they took photos and managed to put the laptop in one of them so that I saw a digital photograph of all of them and a laptop in one corner, which was even weirder.

Then it was tea time.... Outside, the furious white blaze of afternoon through bare trees had dwindled to cobalt, still pure, still intense. All four of us were there for tea tonight, and afterward, we watched a Jeeves and Wooster episode. Annie jumped up on the stove and ate part of the casserole my mother had made! When I went upstairs, I had a missed call from Sarah, so I chatted with her on the phone for a bit.

After I talked to Sarah, I talked to Anna for awhile about random nonsense. Sat on the floor and read names of British birds to her, talked about Sutcliff and Churchill, about Latin and Greek, about her stories, the mess in her room, our families' very different approaches to going on holiday (her family plans almost nothing; mine plans everything). Then it was time for family worship, so I went downstairs.

After family worship, back upstairs again. Graduate school application submission time! I turned in eight applications tonight, all at once, plunging into deep water and paddling up to the surface breathless. Peter got on Skype. Now I'm sitting bleary-eyed, staring at the screen, listening to Andrew Peterson, Coldplay, and Tenth Avenue North.

Now Playing: Beethoven, Violin Concerto. (My other favorite violin concerto....)

If you would, please pray: I need test scores and letters of recommendation to arrive within the next six days in order to submit applications on time. God has proved His timing perfect before, and I need to trust that He will do so again, whether it looks that way from my perspective at the moment or not.

Now Playing: Felix Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto.

It appears to be the general trend for blogs to shake themselves off at the end of November like dogs emerging from a cold lake: "Well, glad we got that over with." (See Alistair, James, and co., Anna, Rachel, Jenny, Annalee, and even Asher.)

When I woke up this morning, it had been raining. The rose-and-gold colored leaves of the sweetgum tree outside my window were tipped with ice.

Showed up to work at half ten. I was three minutes early (score!), so instead of sitting in the car and trying to sip down the last few mouthfuls of hot Punjana, I rang Sarah to see how her revision is going. Her final for nursing is tomorrow morning.

O and I were the only two waitresses working this morning. The lunch rush began at noon today and only lasted for half-an-hour. I felt as though I could still breathe (for the most part), which was unusual. All my customers were kind. A couple of guys who came in yesterday came in today with a friend. They always order the same meal, right down to the drinks, but their friend kept asking me if we had beer and if he could bring some in from the club next door.

The lunch rush subsided quickly. I successfully checked out my last customers and started cleaning. Not having to deal with the soft drink machine today, cleaning went much more quickly, and O invited me to eat with her.

O and the cooks ended up leaving, so I finished my salad alone. The restaurant was empty except for the two bosses and the afternoon cook. I drove to the post office to post Christmas cards to the McCs and the Ws in N.I. Waiting in a line that ran out the door, I started A Ring of Endless Light, which Tara had lent me.

At home, I changed clothes quickly and took the dog around San Borne Lake. The afternoon was dramatic with the morbid flair of winter: brown-and-grey fields made even more dismal by soaking rain, low dark clouds racing across the sky, strokes of pale light glancing on black branches. No birds in the woods today except for a flock of mallards sheltering in the lee of some trees on the water. The dog raced and sniffed, zig-zagging, yo-yoing ahead and behind.

At home again, I sat on the floor and talked to Nicole on the phone for forty-five minutes. Intense but refreshing. Just as my mother called upstairs to say that tea was ready, we said good-bye. Annie chased a twistie all over the dining room floor during tea. Insane animal. My father and Stephen went to basketball practice in Ponca tonight, as usual. Having nothing else to do, it's become something of a tradition for my mother and me (and Sarah, when she's free) to watch a film on Tuesday evenings. Tonight, my mother and I settled down in the study to watch Prince Caspian.

I've written e-mails and uploaded photos to Facebook. My father and Stephen are home now. Outside the wind roars up the street, howling, a great, eerie endless booming in the bare trees. It whistles in the screen and moans like a siren under the door. It even stirs the curtains hanging over the window.

Indicative of my life for the past few months is the fact that when I tried to upload this photo, the browser popped up with my most recently uploaded file: a writing sample for Yale! Anyway, this is our high school girls' Bible study cookie baking party at our house last week. Good times, especially when Sarah tried to feed Anna a spoonful of icing.

This last weekend I was in Tulsa for Esther's wedding, which was wonderful. A reunion of old TU friends. I stayed with Tara and got to spend a whole afternoon/evening with Philip and Alyson. Syneva was in town for the event: Tara, Syneva, and Alisha played for the wedding.

More photos on Facebook are here.

Wheee.... White rabbit, everyone!