Now Playing: Seabird, “Rocks into Rivers”.

Walking the streets here has been an adventure. Last night I went for a long walk around the area where we live, which isn’t the most scenic but yielded a couple of oddities: an apartment complex named Stonehenge, dressed with those atrocious wooden shingles and a long, low roof that made it look like a hood rat, and the back of Bloomington Hospital, where an enormous chimney rising into the air reminded me of City Hospital by the train station in Belfast—all sorts of sinister mental images of ominous “biohazard” bags being burned, especially since the parking spot right next to it was reserved for the coroner!

This morning I parked by the RP church on First Street and walked down First Street to Ballantine Street, and so up to campus. It was a lovely walk. The neighborhoods around campus are full of old, well-cared for houses with lush gardens. Jasmine grew on a wrought iron fence; naked ladies poked out of deep green grass; riotous zinnias exploded around front porches.

Despite the classy Better Homes and Gardens appearance of the neighborhood, I did notice one strange phenomenon. Someone seems to have a penchant for throwing shoes up onto electrical lines so that they dangle by their laces—one stretch of electrical line was as thick with pairs of shoes as it would be in Oklahoma right now with migrating starlings.

The crowning pleasure of the day, aside from talking to Sarah, my mother, and Stephen on the phone, was discovering that the Lilly Library will be hosting an exhibition of its medieval manuscripts and incunabula in October! Can’t wait. To whet my appetite, today they had on display, among others, a copy of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene with annotations by J.R.R. Tolkien himself. :o)

  Now Playing: Andrew Peterson, “Many Roads” from “Counting Stars”.

You want to know what life is like in Bloomington, Indiana? Well….

First impressions weren’t terribly inviting. My mother, Laura, and I pulled in fairly late Monday night and promptly got lost while trying to find our hosts’ house. The town appeared to be a blur of fluorescent lights streaking and spreading into each other, a mélange worthy of a Jackson Pollock painting. (Yes, I had to go look that word up, so you should, too.) We hit a roundabout, and my reflex was to start around it clockwise instead of counterclockwise! The effects of those driving adventures in Northern Ireland still haven’t worn off, apparently. 

Tuesday morning was move-in time. Pastor H rounded up a couple of math grad students, who obligingly screwed together the Ikea bed and desk that Laura S left behind for me. They had an apparently magic toolkit that contained every implement known to man for wrestling with recalcitrant furniture.

The townhouse is in good shape, though the washing machine leaks, I’ve heard. I like my wee room. It’s taken a couple of different iterations of furniture arrangements, but now the posters are up on the walls, the books are on the bookshelves, and the clothes are in the closet. The other three girls seem to be nice enough. No instant friendships, but perhaps that would be too much to ask. We’ve all been keeping to ourselves for the most part.

One of the best parts of the week, aside from having my mother and sister here to help with the transition, was having Laura and Elizabeth stay for a couple of days on their way up to Geneva. Yesterday we cooked all afternoon. Here’s Elizabeth with “Jeffery”, the chicken, boiling happily in “his” spa bath with one toe sticking daintily out. Unfortunately, today we realized that “Jeffery” was probably a hen, but by that time “she” was nicely pulled to bits and frozen for future meals. I won’t recount the rest of our grisly entertainment; suffice it to say that now I have a stash of cooked ground beef, chili, and broth to last me for awhile.

Our other adventure yesterday was finding a tension rod from which to hang a curtain. We went to Wal-Mart (my second time that day!), but they were out of tension rods—a swarm of freshmen had obviously severely depleted their stock. Said freshmen were still wandering all over the store in appalling numbers, so we escaped as quickly as possible. We went to Target, but the infestation had reached it, too, and nary a tension rod was to be had!

So we marched nearly the whole length of College Mall, from Macy’s to Sears. Macy’s was too highbrow to have a tension rod, but at the very back of Sears, tucked modestly away in a corner, was our quarry! I think the clerk was a bit incredulous about how ecstatic we were.

Today the girls left to go on to Geneva. I’m missing them already. I spent the day in the townhouse, settling in. In the afternoon I went out again (my third visit to the Center of the Universe in two days!) to get a key cut. I was astonished that none of the freshman needed keys—it only took five minutes and one dollar and forty-seven cents before I waltzed out of the store with my new house key.

This evening I think I’m going to go for a walk and maybe finish North and South. I’ve got nearly all my textbooks purchased from Amazon—despite what the other grad students said, ABE books was not cheaper—and can’t do much more until tomorrow. It’s a lovely evening, cool and clear.

 

Now Playing: “Suite for Flute and Orchestra in A minor.”

The good-byes just keep happening.

At two o’clock this afternoon I was supposed to meet Anna downtown to go resale shopping. I thought I was going to be late, but I ended up hanging about Elite Repeat for a wee bit before she and Elizabeth arrived. We spent the rest of the afternoon together and had a grand old time! We poked all over Elite Repeat first. Elizabeth plunked out some sour notes on the baby grand piano that someone donated. We inspected the china collection, the knickknacks, the baskets, the photo frames. Anna found a Harry Potter poster for her room at the Ws’ house. We looked at all the used kitchenware, Mason jar glasses, old flatware, potholders, and all sorts of odds and ends. Anna found a pair of adorable black-and-white shoes. Elizabeth found a whole stack of children’s books. I found a couple of tops. We combed that whole store, and at the very end, back among the knickknacks, I found a tiny pewter owl, just a wee figurine, its wings tucked elegantly about its feet. Seventy-five cents, and the owl is sitting on my desk, watching me, debonair.

We continued our stroll down Main Street and came upon a boutique that I’d never been in. “Let’s go in here,” I said on a whim, so we did. Poked about. All pretty, artsy, hippy stuff—purses made out of rice sacks that enchanted Elizabeth, various creative wire holders for photos, candles shaped like apples or hyacinths, Fair Trade jewelry, glassware, journals, etc. Colorful extravagant “eco-friendly” stuff. Then we went down to the Antique Mall.

The dusty, moldy air nearly choked me. Claustrophobia ensued as we dove into tiny rooms crammed with so, so, so much stuff: antique furniture, endless shelves of glassware, old clothes, LPs and cassette tapes, books, mirrors, photos in frames, dolls, baskets, jewelry, an endless assortment of people’s possessions, faded, tarnished, scratched, scuffed, torn, set aside for whatever reason. Some of the bric-a-brac had tags that proclaimed that such-and-such a piece was a collector’s item, but most of it was shoved together higgledy-piggledy. Near the front there were some handmade tie-dye clothes by a local artist, and Anna bought a pretty aqua-and-gold skirt. There was a whole shrine dedicated to Elvis and to artists from the 80s. Somewhere in the middle of the labyrinth we found the children’s books, and lo and behold, I found a copy of Harry Potter VII! Been looking everywhere for it, and here it was, hardback. I probably paid more for it than I would have paid for a new paperback, but I’ve finally met my goal of buying all the books used and not from Amazon. The three of us pored over the children’s books, exclaiming as we found ones that jogged our memories: Make Way for Ducklings, the Dear America diaries, Beatrix Potter (of course!).

By this time Elizabeth was starting to get parched, so we paid for our finds and walked back up Main Street to Aspen, chattering away merrily. Aspen, too, was nearly deserted. We sat at a table by the window and talked for an hour or so. Sweet time. Sitting at tea later, I realized suddenly that that time had passed and was strangely heartbroken. The three of us talked nonsense. A gorgeous spicebush swallowtail butterfly landed on a chair just on the other side of the window. Sparrows ate breadcrumbs from the sidewalk. The shadows lengthened across the storefronts across the street. When it was close to tea time, we walked back to our cars, and I said good-bye to Anna and drove home.

Now Playing: Tenth Avenue North, "The Light Meets the Dark", "The Truth Is Who You Are."

If you go outside tonight this evening and you're living in Oklahoma, you'll see something beautiful. On the western horizon, just above and to the left of where the sun set, four planets have conjoined. Venus is the bright one (you can always see Venus thanks to the fact that she's very bright and closely follows the sun) close to the horizon. Up a little and to the right is Mercury, slightly dimmer. Up a bit more and to the left is Mars, also dim (they'll both look red thanks to the hazy atmosphere). Equidistant between Mars and Mercury is Saturn, so faint that he can hardly be seen, but he's there. Together Venus, Mercury, and Mars form an elegant triangle, with Saturn in the middle of the hypotenuse.

If you look a bit more, you can also see some of the summer constellations. Scorpius, as my father pointed out, is the huge loopy V in the southwest. The Big Dipper is in the upper northwest, and Cygnus, one of my favorites, is the huge shining cross in the middle of the sky, slightly to the east. Cassiopeia is probably up there somewhere, too, as would be the Little Dipper.

To the northeast are the Perseids, and if you feel like staying up late this week, you can catch the Perseid meteor shower. I've already seen a couple of meteors this week at about ten o'clock, but the shower is supposed to be best between midnight and four a.m.

All of these are bright enough to be seen in the middle of the city, even with the dust-filled atmosphere. Simply gorgeous.

Now Playing: KOSU.

It's begun... again. Moving is never my favorite thing to do. Is it anyone's? The only truly rewarding part is knowing that when you get wherever you're going, you'll get to organize everything just the way you like it all over again. Or something like that.

The downsides of moving far outweigh the benefits, though. I've spent the last two weekends saying good-bye to people. Not as bad as the last time this happened, but good-byes have never been my strong suit.

Then these past two afternoons have been spent boxing things up. Amazing, the amount of stuff that accumulates, even when you're not a homeowner! I've produced about twenty boxes' worth of stuff--journals, photo albums, letters, kitchen utensils, blankets, old dolls--that all has to go somewhere conveniently out of the way. Hence Laura, Stephen, and I worked up good appetites this morning hauling boxes up the attic steps. We used a bucket brigade technique: Laura heaved the box up the ladder to Stephen, who hefted it up on his shoulder to me, where I knelt on the dusty plywood of the attic floor.

Our attic is surprisingly small for such a big house, and a large part of the space is already occupied by old computer boxes and a guinea pig cage. Laura and I managed to make room for most of the boxes, though we had to clear space in a corner of the green attic for the really heavy ones, the ones that none of us could get up the ladder. (Did I mention that the ladder is wooden and creaks ominously even when Laura or I step on it?)

Once that ordeal was over, and I had all the things I'm not taking out of the way, it was time to pack what I am taking. Thankfully, Laura sold me her bed and desk, so I don't have to worry about those--but I'm determined to get my big blue wing chair up to Bloomington, as well as two bookshelves, two lamps, and a set of plastic drawers.

And that's just the furniture. I've managed to fill three suitcases with books and clothes, not to mention the several boxes full of miscellany. It seems like an impossibly large amount of things. I keep wondering whether the new place will have space for it all and wishing that I were equipped with Harry Potter-style powers and could just move the boxes effortlessly.

So the gypsy caravan is preparing to be back on the road again, knees, neck, back, arms, and hands aching. Good times! Humans are ridiculous creatures. Why bother placing so much importance on material goods? We can't even haul them along when we die, though of course we've tried.

I'm inclined to laugh as I write this. It's been a bonding experience for Laura, Stephen, and me already.

There's something humbling and comical about seeing all of one's earthly possessions done up in cardboard and packing tape--comical because all of those boxes put together weigh at least three times as much as I do; humbling because it's a reminder to me, as my muscles and joints tremble under the weight of one box of journals, that in God's eyes I am not much more durable than that cardboard.

But thanks to God's loving hands, I hold something that cardboard could never contain: "We have this treasure in jars of clay, that the surpassing power may belong to God...."