Days of Grace, Part 1

Here begins a series of posts from this past week, one for each day (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday). I realize that most of you probably won't know any of these people, but God saw fit to make these past three days very pleasant for me, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about them and the people I shared them with.

This morning I ate breakfast with Rachel. She told me about the economics club meeting last night. I spent the morning sending a few e-mails and working on my Honors paper. During MBW today, we talked more about “The Importance of Being Ernest”. Dr. F gave our exams back to us. She had scribbled a round A, in green pen, on the last page of mine. She let us out early. As I waited in the hall before Archaeology, I noticed four short, bow-legged little men walk by. They were dressed in holey, baggy construction jeans, stained with rust and red dirt. Most of them had on equally filthy shirts, though one was dressed in a long-sleeved, white collared shirt that was immaculate in its stainlessness. All of them wore thick belts with tools strapped to them, that thudded against their legs as they walked. Their faces were strongly Eastern European, wind-wrinkled, brown, with the hawk noses and the slanted eyes and sharp smiles. As they passed, I heard them talking in a guttural language—Russian, perhaps, or some relative of it.

I ate lunch alone in the desolate cafeteria, and after lunch, I worked on my Honors paper for a little while. It now has this imposing “handle”: “The Monk and the Knight: Contrasts between Memory, Identity, and Prowess in Church and Chivalry during the Middle Ages”. During Honors, we talked about The Song of Roland and Oliver’s strange change in the middle of the battle when Roland finally decides to blow Olifant. Dr. A showed us pictures of Roncesvaux: pictures of green mountain passes, steep meadows close to the clouds, and a white stone set up on a hillside in memory to Roland. After class I practiced my flute. The wind soughed and squealed against the practice room windowpanes. Back in my room, I worked on the paper until five-thirty, when I skipped downstairs to meet Jenna in the Lorton parking lot. The girls’ Bible study was to fix supper at Jenna’s house tonight (reminder: Jenna is a woman in her late twenties, married, with a one-year-old daughter and a son on the way; she lives near the campus), and the boys’ Bible study was to come over to share supper and to bring dessert.

I walked to the kerb just as Jenna pulled up. At Jenna’s house, Jenna set everyone to work. Crystal sliced mushrooms, while Anne chopped onions. She added Crystal’s mushrooms to her onions and sautéed them all together in a big saucepan, as a topping for hamburgers. Meanwhile, Jessica fixed a spinach-and-strawberry salad, topped with baked almonds. Jenna brought out two packages of raw hamburger meat to the dining room table, and assigned Eleanor, Rachel, Kathryn, and me to shape the raw meat into hamburger patties. Kathryn and Eleanor both wrinkled their noses at the distasteful job, but we all dived in, slapping the red meat about until it fit our palms in ruddy, plump patties. We made twenty-five burgers, scraping up the last few curlicues of meat and patting them into the burgers. Our hands were slimy with raw meat, so we all washed ourselves in the kitchen sink.

Anne was still busy sautéing mushrooms, and Jessica sat perched on a tall stool at the kitchen table and sliced strawberries. I fixed lemonade and arranged the table. Jenna took the plates of patties outside and heated up the gas grill to start grilling the burgers. Upbeat hymns (many of them the ones that RUF sings on Tuesday nights) played happily out of a CD player perched on an old sewing machine in the dining room: “Arise, arise, arise my soul, arise!” As I stood by the kitchen sink and stirred the lemonade, I noticed with surprised awe that sunset filled the west above the dark trees. The grey ceiling of clouds had been stained, as though a peach had burst and dripped pink and gold on the sky. The clouds were suffused with light. Lilac on the edges, orange and flaming magenta toward the horizon. The black trees stood up starkly against the glowing glory.

When the lemonade was done, I stood in the living room and listened to Eleanor, Jessica, and Crystal discuss boyfriends and dumb antics. Glancing over my shoulder through the archway from the living room to the dining room, I could see through the screened-in porch on the dining room and out the back door. As I looked, I noticed that the flames on the grill seemed to be unusually high. I banged open the screen door and shouted, “Jenna, do you need some help!” “Um… yeah,” she replied. Her white apron fluttered in the gloom. I stripped off my socks and danced across the prickly lawn. Pecan shells poked my toes as I pattered up beside Jenna under the little concrete-and-metal shelter in the back of the yard. (It has one wall, on the west, at the side furthest from the house; the front is open, and it has a metal peaked roof.) The fire was so hot that it charred the outside of the burgers without cooking the inside. The wind, scurrying underneath the metal roof, from slant to slant, fanned the flames so that they became angrily-whirling dervishes—fingers of fire groped out like trailing ends of sleeves. I brought out a plate to take the half-done burgers from Jenna, and brought them inside for Anne to sautee (which she did, though she’s a vegetarian) on the stove indoors. I held a flashlight for Jenna outside so that she could see what she was doing.

As Jenna was starting to grill a second batch, the boys, Katie, and Jenny arrived. Kevin immediately came outside. “Do you need some help?” he asked courteously. “I’m a little grill-savvy.” “Yes, please!” Jenna said, and handed the long spatula over to him. She went inside to supervise the start of the meal, while I stayed outside. Kevin was surprised by the ferocious flames, which leapt out and died down sporadically. One particularly mean burst jumped out and singed the hair on his knuckles. “That has got to be the most mean-tempered fire I’ve ever seen,” Kevin said, shaking his hand. Grease dripped from the burgers and sizzled on the coals. Kevin took the long metal spatula in one hand, and the flashlight in the other, and tried to keep the flames under control. As Kevin finished a batch of burgers, I’d carry them inside and put them on a plate, then patter back outside again with another plate.

Being outside but under the shelter was comforting, somehow. The prickly grass, the pecan tree, the high privacy fence surrounding the little yard, and the half-seen glimpses of other privacy fences and other little houses on little yards reminded me of San Antonio. Lights glowed in the upper windows of the small homes nearby, twinkling like will o’ the wisps in the gloaming. The wind seethed in the pecan tree above the little shelter, and the tree whooshed, like the flames on the grill. Tree and flames flared together as the wind took them. The trees were huge, curving billows of grey waves, the clouds above them froth steaming from their wind-whipped peaks. A jet roared over. The eye of the fire condensed all the swirling darkness to one warm heart--like a windblown tulip bobbing on a wind-whipped lake.

It was nearly eight o’clock when Rachel and I finally sat down to eat in the living room with everyone. The wind and smoke had made me very hungry, and the smoke had roughened my throat so that I was hoarse. The sweet salad, with creamy poppyseed dressing, soothed my throat, and the substantial burger, cooked thoroughly and with the bitter edge of charred meat to cut through the sweet tastes of mushrooms and onions, satisfied my hunger. Jenna and Jeremy (her husband) laughed about the grill. “You know, if I’d gotten leaner meat, we probably wouldn’t have had so much trouble with the flames,” Jenna said. In the corner of the living room, Anne and Jenny played with Anna (Jenna's little daughter). Anne stroked her hair and dangled toys in front of her, while Jenny spooned vegetarian chili into her little round mouth. Eleanor and James, on the sofa under the window, took turns strumming Jenna’s guitar, while Kathryn, squeezed on the couch, sat with her eyes half-shut, sleepy and content.

Jenna drove Jenny, Anne, Jessica, and me back to the university. I was almost surprised to see the familiar campus buildings again. They seemed sterile, impersonal, after Jenna’s house—the classy creams and blacks looked harsh compared to the reds and greens and warm browns on Jenna’s walls, and the uniform buildings looked stiff compared to the odd little nooks and crannies, the unexpected windows and cubbyholes of Jenna’s house (one closet in her house has a little arched hole cut in the bottom of the door, so that a cat could climb in and out of the closet). Back in my room, I took a shower and sat down at my laptop to write up today’s journal entry. I listened to Loreena McKennitt and gulped hot orange spice tea, which scorched away the hoarseness in my throat. The cinnamon steam warmed my cold cheeks. I had a brief e-mail conversation with my mother about rides on Friday, did my devotions, and went to bed.

meals and a midterm

An incredibly boring post.

This morning I ate breakfast in my room. My father had given me a Krispy Kreme donut (he brought back a dozen from the donut shop in OKC during my siblings' basketball tournament), and I’d saved it for today. The sugar melted in my mouth, and the gooey dough oozed over my tongue. At eight-thirty, I padded down the hall to Jenny-and-Tara’s room. Tara and I studied together for Romantic British Literature—mostly Wordsworth, especially “Peter Bell” and the Lucy poems. We walked to RBL together and arrived as Dr. de A was handing out the exam. I sat in a chair on the edge of the room and wrote in my bluebook, balancing it on my notebook on one knee. I don’t think I did very well. The essays fell flat somehow—I knew what I needed to know (for the most part), but I couldn’t figure out how to write eloquently. One of the essays didn’t have a proper conclusion. To make matters worse, I left before the full time was up instead of staying until the professor told us to leave. So I didn't even take advantage of all the time to go back and finish the conclusion and polish the essays. That makes it worse—knowing that I could've done better, but didn't.

After the midterm, I hurried to the cafeteria to pick up lunch. The cafeteria was dreadfully crowded: they’d had a fire alarm, and the building had had to be evacuated. In the end, I managed to grab a sandwich and dash over to First Seminar. In FS today, Dr. T assigned us to bring flashlights, matches, and cigarette lighters. We spent the whole class period thinking of weird things to do with them—such as creating a religion that was based on fire (the team I was on made up a religion in which all the "true believers" used matches or cigarette lighters, and everyone who used electricity (lightbulbs and flashlights) were heretics), complete with sacred rites that we were supposed to come up with in class (thankfully the team I was on made up a rite that couldn't be done in class!). The other team made up a religion that consisted of darkness: fire was bad, and their goddess was Nox. Their initiation rite was to douse matches in a bucket of water. Sounded like a pretty dismal religion to me. The religion my team made up was fairly primitive—I contributed snatches of the Celtic fire-worshipping religion that I’d picked up from Sutcliff (the yearly bonfire, from Samhain, etc.). It was all rather ridiculous. The professor also assigned us to come up with some way to communicate with our flashlights as a group—a “symphony of light”, he called it. My group lined up. One person would stand by the wall as leader and shine his flashlight in random patterns on the floor. The first person in line would follow the leader’s flashlight beam till it reached the wall. One of the boys jumped jerkily after Rachel’s flashlight like a big cricket. Kathryn, who was in our group, hopped delicately from spot to spot. After FS, I practiced my flute.

On my way back to my room, I stopped in at Jenny-and-Tara’s room to ask Tara how the exam had gone. She said she hadn’t budgeted her time very well: she was still working on her last essay when people were leaving. “How many essays did you write?” I asked in wonder. “Three,” she replied. “What?! I thought we were only supposed to write on two of the three questions!” I said. Tara pulled out the assignment page. “Oh. You’re right. We were.” She sighed. “Well, I think it’ll be ok. Maybe Dr. de A will just count the first two.” Jenny bounced in. “What’re you talking about?” she asked. “On the RBL midterm today, we were supposed to write on two questions, and I wrote on three instead,” Tara explained. “Overachiever,” Jenny growled jokingly.

In my room I wrote e-mails and cleaned up. Dark clouds began to roll up from the southwest, and the sun set through a crimson crack. As I walked to the cafeteria for supper, a pair of twelve-year-old girls perched on the cafeteria porch squealed, “Buy Girl Scout cookies!” Inside the building, a row of Girl Scouts sat outside the cafeteria, twittering noisily, like sparrows, with boxes of cookies lined up in front of them. Rachel and I ate supper together. We laughed about Honors papers. Before supper I’d spent a little time looking over Dr. A’s comments on my paper about the writers’ community. I was a little crestfallen: she’d pointed out the tension between individual, creative expression (i.e., writers having to drop everything in order to set down a poem when “the Muse” visits) and group schedule. I suspect that part of it is due to difference in our writing styles: she seems to be much more spontaneous, writing poetry in the middle of the night or whenever the inspiration takes her, while I, on the other hand, often just jot down a few notes and piece the poem together at a later, more convenient time. My style would fit into a schedule; hers would not. Rachel said that she’s been having difficulty thinking through all the “facets” of her paper. “Maybe your brain is so tired from last semester that it’s refusing to consider all the facets again!” I joked. We both laughed, remembering Dr. G’s insistence that we examine all the facets of a question in our papers.

After supper, I opened my mailbox (wonder of wonders!) and found three “World” magazines in it. I was occupied reading the earliest of them (they dated from the last week of February), when A.C. knocked on my door. She glanced skeptically at the magazine, then asked me to rub her back. I perched on a cushion she brought, on her haunches as she lay stretched on the floor, and massaged her back. She walked part of the way to the chapel with me when I went out to RUF. After she turned back with one of her friends, I caught up with Anne, who was walking slowly, savoring the warm evening. The wind seethed in the bare sycamore and sweetgum trees, but the air was damp. Clouds scudded past overhead, their underbellies tinted pink, as though their grey flanks had been muddied by the city lights. Anne and I stood on the chapel steps, relishing the evening, until Jenny joined us. We trooped up to the second-floor RUF meeting room, and as we arrived, I heard a siren going off in the building. “What’s that?” someone asked, startled. “It’s the severe weather alarm. There’s a storm coming,” Esther replied. Anne and Jenny explained Springfest to Rachel and me (Rachel’s church’s Bible study was canceled tonight). Springfest is “a week of parties”, Jenny said, which happens after spring break. Kathryn, Rachel, and I giggled about FS together.

During RUF, Mr. K preached about Isaiah 36-37, and how we should trust God because He shows His love for us, and how God uses our prayers as a means to accomplish His purposes. After RUF, I chatted with Mandi about her siblings’ school (she's college-aged but lives at home and teaches her little siblings), with Jessica and Kathryn about classes, and with Jenna about the Bible study supper tomorrow night (girls’ and boys’ Bible studies are meeting at Jenna’s house for a meal). As I returned to my room around nine-thirty, I sniffed the moist air. It smelled faintly smoky. Above, the moon rode clear in the blank sky, with stars sparkling around it like faint ripples—as though the moon was a stone dropped into a black pool. No storm after all. No rain. In my room, I skimmed “World”, showered, and now may go to bed. I can hear bursts of laughter and giggles from a room downstairs, and the thumps, groans, and roars of a movie. Last night, the movie was so loud that it sounded like thunder. Cars swish past outside, and the wind tugs at the casement.

hmm, this blog seems lonely

Where is everyone?

Crickets chirp. One of them is polite enough to hop up to me and say, "They're all at robotics. Or at school."

Thanks. I really wanted to know that. :)

My thanks to those of you who've been commenting despite all the chaos.

Pray for rain!

And to Princess: I haven't forgotten about posting on the other blog. It's just that I haven't had the time or the wherewithal to actually sit down and say something. It'll be up there by the end of the week, hopefully.

Again: Pray for rain!

Psalm 92: a meditation

Here's something that I posted on "Through A Glass Darkly". I probably won't post on there again for awhile, and just use this blog instead. It's just more convenient for everyone.

Passage: Psalm 92, “a Song for the Sabbath day”.

Meditation: vs. 1-4. This is a Song for the Sabbath, a song that summarizes God’s works and the theology of His sovereignty. The Psalmist begins by declaring the fitness of praising God. On a day dedicated to worship, it is good to remember that we are made for worship, that this is our highest calling. Morning and night, harmoniously, we are to honor Him, for He has made us glad through His work. He satisfies us. We give thanks to Him because it is His due, because it is proper for us to praise Him for His mercies.

vs. 5-7. The Psalmist praises God for His “great works” and “deep thoughts”. He says that fools and senseless men do not understand these things. First, they do not understand that God’s thoughts are great. They think either that God has no thoughts or that He is some trifling little demigod who they can bribe to do what they want. Second, they do not understand their own end. They cannot grasp how a just God could condemn anyone. To them, the idea of Hell, of eternal punishment, is preposterous. They do not understand that God is sovereign and that He has chosen to make some men “vessels” for glory, and some men “vessels” for wrath. Some men are to show God’s mercy by praising Him; others are to show His justice by suffering His righteous anger. Thus, when the wicked grow and flourish, they are only flourishing to be destroyed. As the tree puts on leaves in the summer only to have them die in the fall, so the earth puts on wicked men, only to have them be destroyed.

vs. 8-9. Standing before God in worship, the Psalmist meditates on God’s exaltedness. God is high above everything, and He is eternal. He alone is worthy of praise. The Psalmist understands that God’s enemies, the wicked, will be destroyed. Seeing God’s might, the Psalmist understands that the end of the wicked is certain, and just. They are not merely wicked or annoying, as they are from the world’s perspective—they are wicked, God-haters, and they deserve to perish in light of their offenses against this eternally holy being. God has given the Psalmist understanding as one of His people. On the Sabbath day, we are enabled to grasp some small part of God’s plan.

vs. 10-11. In contrast to His judgment of the wicked, God is merciful to the Psalmist, who is one of His people, a vessel made to show God’s mercy and glory. God blesses His people and exalts us. He anoints us, cleanses us, chooses us. The Holy Spirit settles upon us like the anointing oil that covered the heads of Israelite priests and kings. Indeed, we do not merely rejoice that we are strong—we even rejoice in God’s judgment of the wicked, for they are our enemies, too. They are the ones who persecute us for following God. It is right for us to desire their punishment since they have offended our Lord and King. Their end is certain. Those who rebel against God and mock His people will have a nasty awakening from the sleep of this life.

vs. 12-13. The Psalmist declares God’s uprightness by recounting His mercies—the Psalmist has already spoken of God’s justice. Now he points out God’s grace to undeserving sinners, even to those who may appear useless and ugly to the world. Unlike His treatment of the wicked, God establishes His people. They flourish in Him, growing and extending. In God we have our joy deepened, our sense of God’s greatness and love enlarged, our capacity to serve Him stretched. Those whom He chooses to plant in His house cannot wander. They are like cedars, which stay firmly rooted in one place and are a wonder, a magnificence, to those around them.

vs. 13-14. Not only in their youth or in middle age, but even in old age God’s people flourish. Young people of the world gloss over their suffering and discontent with riches and prettiness, with all the pleasures of youth. Yet they may wither as they grow older, and as they face the endless bleak hopelessness of death. Many elderly people feel useless. They are helpless by sickness, and they are hopeless for they have no work to do. But those who trust God will never wither. Even in old age they will serve God in their specific vocations. God leads His people through all ages, from childhood to death. Christians of all ages bear fruit and flourish. (My Bible’s notes say that verse 14 reads literally, “They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be fat and green.”) God doesn’t let his people grow rusty in old age. He doesn’t abandon them. He keeps them on earth for as long as He has planned, and He has given them work for every moment of every day so that they may glorify Him.

vs. 15. This ties back to the first verses of the Psalm. "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." God gives His people hope and joy as they praise Him. Praising God gives them purpose and meaning. The elderly remain fresh and flourishing “to declare that the Lord is upright”, and they do so consciously, and this conscious knowledge is what God uses to keep them flourishing. God sustains us alive so that we can serve Him. We are to stand as conscious monuments to His grace. My parents and friends often talk about how they’ve been encouraged and edified by elderly people. I know of one woman in particular who was homebound. She couldn’t even leave her rocking chair. She often felt despairing and useless, and she was in pain, but she held firmly to the belief that God would take her to Himself only when He had no more use for her on this earth. So she found a way to be useful: she would listen to the radio and read the newspaper, and pray about all the things she heard or read. I heard that, after she died, they found her sitting in her rocking chair with the newspaper spread over her knees and the radio switched on. She declared that the Lord was upright. The Psalmist finishes by praising God: “there is no unrighteousness in Him”. This boldly refutes the claims of the senseless men earlier who say that the wicked flourish for their own ends and are not cut down. God is upright in His dealings with men. He is merciful to some (and that is great mercy, for no one deserves it! the Psalmist has detailed some of that mercy, both to himself personally and to the elderly), and uses all the others for His glory, to show His justice. No man has any right to argue with the upright God, for no man can claim to be upright. God is unmovable. He is our rock, our strength, our completely righteous One. It is in this Holy God that we have our refuge.

looks different, does it not?

Yes, I confess I've been messing with my template again.

Thanks to Shadow's help earlier, and to some experimentation and trial-and-error, this is what results. If someone knows how to cut back on the slight image repeat with the header, I'd appreciate some advice as far as that's concerned. Despite the fact that the image appears to match the header size (740 x 110 px.), it still repeats itself.

Some of you will probably object to all the grey. My excuse: all the brighter colors look awful on my screen. The greens, reds, and yellows tke on a sickly hue that is not at all appealing. With grey and black, I can't go wrong. Someday I'll figure out how to incorporate brighter colors, perhaps.

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.

******

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.

Well, well, well, look at that! It's a....

.... White Rabbit!

Cheers! :)

By the way, if you want an excellent laugh, go read SwanElf's blog post, the one with a quote from G.K. Chesterton at the top. It's a humorous account of a very humorous dialogue. (I think I probably woke up some people here this morning by laughing so loudly when I read it.)

booksale

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor. Third movement, which is a Nutcracker-like march that has a crazy little dance scurrying behind the grand brass fanfare.

Here's an entry that I didn't have time to post earlier. It's an account of Friday, February 24th, in which Rachel and I go with the Ss to the booksale in Oklahoma City.

My mother drove Rachel and me home in time for lunch this morning. My mother and Daisy left for Irish Dance class at 1:15. Rachel and I fixed our suppers, collected our gear, and asked Brother1 to drive us over to campus. The plan for the afternoon: to go to a lecture at the OSU library at two o’clock, and then to walk over to Mr. S’s office at three fifteen, to drive with him to Irish Dance to pick up the girls, and then to leave directly for the Oklahoma City booksale. Brother1 took us down to OSU and dropped us off behind the power plant. Rachel and I walked to the library together, staring at the huge, sharp-edged brick buildings. They looked harsh and ungainly to my eyes, more used to the gentle, cream-colored stone and the Gothic arches of the Tulsa campus. The library still smelled like a library, though, and Rachel breathed in the smell of ink and dust with a happy sigh. We walked around to the front of the building and up the grand flight of marble stairs to the reading room, where the lecture was to take place. The reading room is two stories tall, with massive Corinthian columns and upholstered armchairs down both sides of the room, under floor-to-ceiling windows, which are shaded with heavy cream-and-grey silk drapes. Faded plastic orange chairs had been set up in rows down the center of the room, and here the talk took place.

The lecture was quite good. The speaker somehow managed to bring in most of the concepts that we’ve studied in Honors, plus some of the writers that I’ve studied in MBW this semester. The lecturer was a tall, paunchy man with a fleshy face and a deep voice. He spoke well. We left during the question-and-answer session after the lecture. We walked over to Engineering North, glorying in the warm spring sunshine and the fact that, in God’s providence, everything had worked out for us to be able to attend the lecture, and to go to the booksale too.

Inside the engineering building, I picked our way down the hall, up a staircase of brown-sugar-colored marble, and down another long hall. Our feet echoed on the hard tile. Fluorescent lights flickered dully on announcement boards fluttering with notifications of competitions, scholarships, and favorite faculty. The office that Mr. F and Mr. S share is at the north end of the hall. I knocked timidly on the door. No one answered. I knocked again, rather louder, and Mr. S finally opened to us. We sat down on the two chairs in the secretary’s area in the front of the office (Mr. S’s little room is to the left of the secretary’s room, and Mr. F’s little room is to the right). I looked at the tall shelves of engineering files, and pointed out to Rachel the poster for the Smart Bridge project (they’ve been working to store solar heat in the summer to heat bridges in the winter so that they don’t freeze over). Rachel commented that science is much like magic. “The internet—that’s magic,” I said. “Yeah. It’s like having a crystal ball or a magic mirror or something,” Rachel replied. “Oh, my magic mirror isn’t working today!” I whined, mimicking someone whose internet isn’t working, and Rachel giggled. I laughed at the sign that someone had made for Mr. Fisher (probably SwanElf): “To all students: Make sure Dr. F has had at least three cups of coffee before you ask stupid questions.”

When Mr. S was ready to go, we stepped out of the office into a crowd of Pakistani students, who were all jabbering in Arabic. As we hurried downstairs, we passed a couple of Chinese men earnestly discussing something in Mandarin. Outside, as we crossed the sidewalk to the parking lot, we passed a couple of Eastern European men in long coats arguing in something that sounded like Russian. “That’s got to be the third language I’ve heard on the way downstairs,” Mr. S commented, and we laughed. Mr. S drove us to Irish Dance to pick up Princess, Marigold, Hannah, and Rebekah.

When the lesson was over, Princess, Marigold, Hannah, and Rebekah whisked themselves together, and we all hurried out to the car. There was a scramble to get in: knapsacks, sweaters, books, and Susie’s car seat had to be dumped in the trunk before there was enough room for all of us. Marigold sat in front, with Mr. S; then came me, Princess, and Rachel, and last of all, Hannah and Rebekah. As soon as we got in the car, Princess produced snacks. We passed around a bag of jellybeans, and everyone took a handful. I sucked them: banana, popcorn, lemon, peach, green apple, strawberry, blueberry, licorice. Princess wrinkled her nose as she bit into one that “tastes like bubble bath”. Hannah dug chocolate-covered peanuts from the cooler, and we all had some of those, too. Rebekah handed up some almonds for Mr. S. “Are these all for me?” he asked. “No! Mommy said you had to share them,” Rebekah replied. Everyone laughed. “Rachel, one of my friends was once on a web chat group where they were discussing Presbyterians. A Baptist commented on the thread and said that Presbyterians always remind him of hobbits—they love to eat, they’re cheerful, they love to talk, and they love to be together,” I said. Mr. S had fusion rock/Celtic blaring out of the CD player as we drove out of Stillwater toward Oklahoma City.

On the outskirts of the city, Hannah and Rebekah spotted a water tower with a white canopy tied over it. “Look! It’s a landing platform for aliens!” Hannah joked. She began to write a story in her notebook about aliens. As we neared the fair grounds where the booksale takes place, we ran into road construction. The highway was backed up for miles. Mr. S got off the highway and drove through cramped back streets, between seedy hotels, dirty gas stations, liquor stores, and old houses toward the fairgrounds. I wondered aloud if everyone who lives in that part of town is Hispanic. At the fairgrounds, Mr. S pulled into the big gravel parking lot. We scrambled out of the car, leaving behind coats and sweatshirts, and hurried to the exhibition building where the booksale is housed. I skipped, dancing the jig step to keep warm. However, it turned out that we were just too late to stand inside the building, for there was no more room inside; instead, we had to wait outside for half-an-hour until the booksale opened. A chilly south wind raced over the building across the street where they show airplanes and cars, scouring the dry ground and whirling dust in our eyes. Princess, Rachel, and I huddled together with our arms around each other’s shoulders and Rebekah in the middle of the three of us. Mr. S chafed at the waiting and apologized brusquely for telling us to leave our jackets behind. He took one of his bookbags, a huge army knapsack that he’d bought at an army surplus store, and pulled it over Hannah. It came down to just above her ankles. Encased in the rough green canvas, she was fairly warm. We laughed at her: “A bookbag with feet!” Mr. S took pictures of us with his palm pilot.

The booksale finally opened at five thirty. We shuffled inside the entry hall with everyone else, into Collector’s Choice. Trash cans rumbled over the dusty cement floor. Boxes, suitcases, bags, and tennis shoes rustled on the concrete. Mr. S made sure that Hannah and Marigold, Princess and Rebekah were set (they were supposed to be “buddies”). Rebekah inquired pertly whether he had a “buddy”. Rachel and I switched on our walkie-talkies.

Inside Collectors’ Choice, Rachel and I pushed our way to the religion section. She found a NKJV Bible for my father, which he’d requested that I look for. Then we went to literature, where Rachel found several volumes of plays, including one of Gilbert and Sullivan, and where I found Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. I browsed the SciFi and Fantasy sections, pushing past a girl with curly red hair in a black, spiderweb-patterned jacket, and a boy with a spiky Mohawk.Rachel and I scanned the old books, too, poring over dusty covers, faded leather jackets, and peering at the dim gold leathering and fading ink. We sorted our books with Princess and Rebekah—like children sorting through a bag of jellybeans, choosing out their favorite flavors. I exclaimed happily over a volume of Irish folktales I’d found that had the legend of Cuchulain in the back. We stood in line for awhile, then purchased our books, counting them out at one of the many little tables. The volunteers at my table flipped open each cover, read out the price, and added them up. I wrote a check and met Rachel outside the Collector’s Choice area. We handed our books to volunteers at the holding area, who arranged them in brown paper grocery sacks, slapped a tag number on each sack, and gave us a token strung on a rubber band, with our tag number on it. We left as they were settling the sacks among countless other sacks on tall shelves.

Entering the General Area, Rachel gasped: the huge exhibition building soared above us. Books, books, books! On tables, like mazes, and lined on the floor under the tables. People, pushing through the aisles, carrying babies in strollers, or leading children by the hand, or dragging boxes or grocery carts or bulging knapsacks. Girls in long skirts with the little black caps of Menonites perched on their heads. Young women, eyes lined with dark mascara. Fat old women examining the Romance novels. Boys flipping through the CDs, plastic cases clicking together between fast fingers. Old men sampling the religion section or browsing the sets with the air of connoisseurs. Little girls sitting cross-legged in the middle of the children’s section with picture books spread over their knees, oblivious to the people pushing past them. Blonde-haired little boys with ruddy cheeks. Grey-haired women with gently-wrinkled smiles. Colored balloons hovered over each section to mark the various genres, hanging like pale nebulae in the shimmering, dusty air.

Rachel and I went to literature first, then split up. I browsed through various sections—SciFi, Fantasy (in quest of Lloyd Alexander or Susan Cooper), religion (praying for C.S. Leiws), adventure, mystery (tracing any copies of Sayers or Chesterton), youth (hoping for George MacDonald for Daisy), science (investigating after copies of Living Fishes of the World, or books about sharks and the sea, for Brother2), and the CDs, which were the most crowded. It was eight thirty by the time Rachel and I met up, in a quiet corner, to sort our books. I had managed to find a book of shark pictures for Brother2, a Liszt CD for Daisy, and a piano CD for Brother1, as well as a Matthew Henry commentary that I’d wanted, a copy of Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, The Robe, Kon-Tiki (without the gloriously tropical paintings that are in my mother’s copy, but still enchanting to read), The Name of the Rose (a mystery that Syneva recommended), and a little volume of G.K. Chesterton poems and essays that Rachel picked up for me. We checked out briskly, picked up our books from the holding area, and sat down outside in the large entry area.

I munched a couple of crackers while Rachel went off about her own business. Mr. S came by to give the direful news that he’d lost one of the tags for a bag of his books, and it would probably be awhile before he could find it in the holding area. The other girls showed up, grinning and cheerful, with their arms full of books. We curled up like gypsies in a corner by one of the metal buttresses that support the big building (like a metal bubble, with a stiff skeleton), books stacked in bags around our feet. Dust tasted dry on my tongue and coated my fingers, staining my jeans, too. I began The Name of the Rose, which starts with a delightful Author’s Note in which Umberto Eco gives you a ridiculously long and unlikely story about how the mystery he’s written actually derives from a fourteenth-century account he picked up and then lost somewhere—just like the Romantic and Victorian authors who would say that they’d “discovered” a story somewhere, when they were really making it up. I read and watched a lithe Asian girl clamber about in the holding area. She was light enough to climb onto the tallest of the steel shelves of books and to search among them for a sack that someone else had lost. Her long straight black hair swung down over her shoulders.

Us girls sat together until Mr. S returned, in a miraculously short amount of time, with his missing sack of books. Someone had found the tag, which had snapped off its rubber band lacing, and had turned it in to the holding area. Mr. S made several trips with books, and then we all trooped out to the car together. The trunk of the suburban was piled high with crunching brown paper sacks, angles and poking corners and leather covers peering out of them. Everyone was shivering from the cold night wind. Rebekah split up the last of the chocolate-covered peanuts. I shared jellybeans with Princess. We talked busily about the books we’d found. Mr. S was pleased with his catch of the night. He’d netted fly fishing books, a couple of books about Irish history, etc. Marigold had found a copy of Detectives in Togas for Ruth. Hannah had found some children’s Christian mystery books. Rebekah and Hannah listed off their books happily, like misers counting treasure. Mr. S asked Rachel what she’d found, and Rachel told him about the books of plays and an economics volume that she’d discovered.

In the back seat, the “peanut gallery” (Hannah and Rebekah, who were very, very silly, being hyper on candy and adrenaline) counted radio towers. Hannah counted thirty-nine on the way back to Stillwater—towers light upright blades of wheat beaded with red seeds. Lights flickered on the dark hills as though the land was a deep sea, remembering the play of sunlight on its surface, and clinging to the red and the gold reflections until day should come again. Orion swung high overhead. Wisps of cloud flung silver robes over his shoulders. We left Princess and Marigold at the Fs’ house to spend the night—they were to go to robotics Saturday morning, and were staying the night with the Fishers so that Mrs. S wouldn’t have to spend the two hours driving out to robotics to drop them off and pick them up. Mr. S drove Rachel and me to my house. We went to bed.

Charlemagne, Coleridge, spooks, and sermons

Now Playing: "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra" by Samuel Barber, performed by Hilary Hahn. Track 3, "Presto in Moto".

Rachel and I ate breakfast together this morning. She told me about a poetry reading she went to last night by a woman named Jen Bervin, whose latest project has been to write poems by stealing snatches from Shakespearean sonnets and piecing them together with her own words to make something rather "existential". Rachel said she actually wasn't too bad--her new policy regarding poets is not to evaluate them rigorously but instead to relax and just appreciate the language, because that's the only way they can be enjoyed (I couldn't help but grin inwardly at this).

After breakfast I practiced my flute, then spent the morning studying, mostly reading ahead for Major British Writers (the later Victorians--Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and their compatriots) and Honors (Notker's Life of Charlemagne). For Honors we're reading both Einhard's Life of Charlemagne and Notker's verison of the same story. Einhard is much more cut-and-dry. He sticks to the "facts" for the most part, and his style reminds me of Thucydides's. Notker, on the other hand, jumps around and follows rabbit trails right and left. His Life is more of a folklore than a historical account of Charlemagne (which Einhard's account tries to be). Charlemagne doesn't show up very often, but when he does Notker is sure to assign him some new laudatory epithet: "Charlemagne the unconquerable", "Charlemagne the pious", "Charlemagne the wise", "Charlemagne the generous", and so it goes. Notker seems more interested in almost fairy-tale like anecdotes about bishops and priests. The hobgoblins and demons are always popping up to torment bad churchmen; either that, or some particularly saintly person is being "divinely inspired" to say or do something momentous. Notker is rather like Herodotus--colorful and unbelievable.

I walked to Romantic British Literature class at 11:00 a.m. The snow has melted in some places, but it's still fairly thick over most of the lawns. In Romantic British Literature we discussed Coleridge's "Conversation" poems. They're a series of five poems in which Coleridge speaks to another person (his wife in one poem, his child in another, his friends in another). They have vivid, simple imagery, and they usually take place at night or at twilight, with a sense of solitude and serenity. Though they are addressed to someone else, the other person is either absent physically or absent mentally, wrapped up in his or her own thoughts. I actually like most of the poems, despite the often-stifling emphasis on unity with Nature. The language is so luminous and pretty, and the stereotypes that Coleridge tosses out are stereotypes that are worthy of being tossed out (i.e., in one poem, the nightingale as a symbol for the dejected lover)--though of course at the same time he sets up stereotypes that are equally ridiculous in some ways.

After RBL, I dashed into the cafeteria, shouldered my way through crowds of burly football players and girls in fuzzy boots, and picked up my lunch. Then it was time for First Seminar. The first half of class was spent discussing papers and the "storyboards" we'd done last week. These storyboards were supposed to be drawings about what a "creative encounter" would look like. *hem* If you get a picture of abstract art with lots of weird shapes and bright colors, you're on the right track. The second half of the class was spent discussing contemporary myths, which was much more interesting--things like the cults that form around sports stars, movie stars, politicians, etc.; the "curses" that haunt baseball teams, archaeologists, and theatres (Did you know that "Macbeth" is supposed to be cursed? Superstitious actors refer to it as "the Scottish play", and every actor who plays Macbeth has something dreadful and mysterious happen to him); superheroes (Spiderman, Superman, and that whole rogues' gallery), aliens, Bigfoot, and the like.

Someone mentioned ghosts, and of course the class had fun with that. The campus here is supposedly home to a whole zoo-ful of ghosts. The library is an especially favorite haunt: there's Farley, who goes around shutting doors and turning off lights. Then there's also the room on the top floor of the library that's always locked, but if you put your eye to the crack in the door, you can see a light inside. Supposedly there's a chandelier in that room, and a dean hung himself from that chandelier (sounds like "The Phantom of the Opera" to me). Then of course there are the ghosts who reside in the residence halls: Leo, who was killed by his fraternity brothers in a tragic accident in what's now the Honors House, and a young girl who hung herself from the rafters in the third-floor study lounge of Twin Towers (someone in the class pointed out that that particular study lounge doesn't have any rafters, whereas all the other study lounges in Twin Towers do--the administration supposedly had the rafters removed). Add to these ghosts the stories that Tyrrell Hall is haunted (!!--I've spent hours in there and never run into a spook), and that the classroom building where we were meeting also has its own "spirit". I sat and listened and laughed quietly, though there were times when my skin crawled, too. Ghosts aren't a pleasant subject, at least to someone with an overactive imagination like mine--think of Anne and Diane in Anne of Green Gables, and their scare in the "haunted" wood, and you'll get an idea of how my silly brain works.

First Seminar ran for almost its full duration of two hours and forty-five minutes. The cold air outside was a welcome refresher after the stale classroom indoors. Dr. T had assigned us in First Seminar to write our own contemporary myth, which sounded like fun to me. I've been tossing around ideas for such stories for quite awhile now, so I spent all afternoon furiously dashing out a five-page short story that's really more of a spooky take-off on "The Village" than anything else.

I ran around 5:00 p.m. The gym usually isn't as crowded at that time, but there is a yoga class that meets in the dance room. I can't help but laugh a little whenever I run past the dance studio and see all the yoga girls standing on one foot with their arms stuck out over their heads like divers, or lying on the floor curled up in little balls, or poised with their hands perched over their foreheads like little tipis.

After running, I ate supper and spent it studying archaeology, then came back to my room and studied some more. I never can tell whether to be worried about exams or not. Sometimes the information I study is too specific: I focus on memorizing the three interpretation techniques, or the individual definitions of sundry artifacts, when I should instead be working on grasping the "big picture" and thinking about how to apply those things to real-life situations.

RUF tonight. On my way to RUF, I met up with Tara, Esther, and Esther-and-Syneva's new roommate, Rachel (Rachel has moved in with Esther and Syneva since Amanda, their roommate (well, apartment-mate is more accurate) is in Spain). Esther and Rachel hummed songs from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" while Tara and I laughed at them.

Mr. Knorr preached an excellent sermon tonight about how the fear of the Lord is a great treasure, and how that fear should prompt God's people to toss out idols and get rid of false securities and seek to do good to the poor (he used Isaiah 31-33 as his text).

During the hymn singing, Syneva played her cello. They usually have at least two people playing guitar, too. I'd never heard Syneva play her cello, and I must say that it was quite lovely, the mello tones of the instrument blending easily with guitar and voices.

After RUF, I chatted with various people: Jenny H., who figured out that Rachel (Esther and Syneva's roommate) leads her chemistry section; Kathryn, who's in First Seminar with me and thinks it's about as strange as I do; Tara, who took the same First Seminar last year and liked it; and Alisha, who invited me to a Signature Symphony concert coming up in March, and also told me about an opportunity for prayer on campus.

As I walked back to my dorm, the damp air pressed against my face. Haloes of mist hung around the bluish-white lamps so that air and snowy lawns all sparkled together. Light became a tangible substance, wet and cold.

Now the first strains of Edward Elgar's "Enigma Variations" are playing--melancholy, variegated, tender.

Last week my parents gave me the most wonderful little rosebush for Valentine's Day. It flourished cheerfully all week. When I returned to my room from being in Stillwater for the weekend, though, I was shocked nearly to tears by seeing that all the leaves and flowers had wilted to green and red shreds. It had dried out over the weekend. I watered it vigorously, frantically e-mailed my mother, and carefully snipped off the crisp leaves. It looked dreadfully leggy and naked. By Monday morning, it had started to put out tentative baby sprouts where the old leaves had been. Tonight, every stalk has a few sprigs of tender leaves on it. Perhaps it may even bloom again.

some pictures of magnolias

Here's Jenny studying statistics under the star magnolias in the courtyard.






















Here are the star magnolias back in January, before the frost.








One magnolia bloom, fully open.












Yet another flower, half-open... you can see that it does look like a star.













These are the saucer magnolias, in bud. If they had bloomed, they would've been huge towers of deep pink blooms, like lotus flowers.










One of the flowers is almost open.

Bronte, Benedict, and Bible study

Warning: Long post ensues.

This morning Rachel and I ate breakfast together. After breakfast, I spent the time until Major British Writers studying. In MBW, we discussed critical reactions to Wuthering Heights. Most of the reviews we read (which were from the 1800s) were by people who thought that the book was wild and dismal and unpleasant (a sentiment which I heartily endorse :). Next came archaeology. The professor has been showing us slides of surveys he's done in British Columbia and Oklahoma. An archaeological survey divides a space of land into patches, and then people go out and walk over those patches to see what they can find that's of archaeological value. Since anything over fifty years old is classified as a site, this can range from old oil wells and cemeteries and homesteads (in Oklahoma) to prehistoric, donut-shaped houses and hearths (in British Columbia).

I practiced my flute for an hour after archaeology. I'm working on the "Cantilena" from the "Sonata" by Poulenc. It's the second movement--slow, meditative, airy, delicate. Like the traceried shadows that sunlight throws through a magnolia tree on a stone wall. It's very difficult to follow the arabesques of the phrases through. They start down low, in the octave of middle C, and climb all the way up to the octave that's two or three above middle C, then back down again--quite a leap, and all pianissimo, which makes it even harder.

The cafeteria was very busy when I went in for lunch. I ordered a dubious grilled turkey sandwich from one line, with a generous portion of French fries. The bananas were all brown, and the apples looked sickly, so what with one thing and another, my lunch consisted of a spinach salad (hastily tossed together from the salad bar), a few French fries, a glass of milk, and three-quarters of the turkey sandwich, which oozed pale cheese and buttery grease whenever I bit into it. I sat with a bunch of acquaintances, Nicole and Alex among them, and listened to them talk.

After lunch, I worked on my Honors presentation and on rewriting my paper about "The Lady of Shalott". When I showed my paper about "The Lady of Shalott" for MBW to Dr. F on Monday, she gave me some helpful comments about it, and so now I had to go back and revise it extensively. I cut out a bunch of nonsense about women, and just focused on the symbolism of the Lady of Shalott as a metaphor for the poet--which, in my opinion, is also rather far-fetched, but nonetheless interesting to examine.

In Honors class this afternoon, everyone was supposed to present a short talk about their community. Since we've been reading The Rule of St. Benedict, we're each supposed to come up with a community that shares some aspects and rejects other aspects of the Benedictine community. The first one to present was a young man whose community consists of an inner-city ministry. The goal of this "ministry" is to be as diverse as possible, and to expose young people to as many different cultural and moral options as possible. (Rachel and I, discussing it later, wondered if this would only confuse the "at-risk" youths even more.) Next came a young woman whose community was to be a loose group of artists who would work in rural areas, promoting the arts in poor schools.

Then came Russ, whose community consisted of soccer-playing monks. (Yes, he created quite a stir with this.) He was quite forceful and articulate, though, so he managed to convince the class after awhile that his community wasn't quite as ridiculous as it sounded. After that was Nicole, who talked about a community devoted to the study of political science (her major). It was basically a microcosm of the university, as she said herself. Finally was a boy who set his community in a post-nuclear-fallout America. His community of militants, similar to the Knights Templar, existed to protect poor farmers from bands of redneck raiders who were going around, robbing the countryside of what few resources it had left.

Neither Rachel nor I had the chance to present, but after class, we stayed a little and talked with Dr. A. Unlike everyone else, Rachel actually planned to deconstruct a community--to discuss how marriage cannot exist in a Benedictine setting because the loyalty and unity between husband and wife overrides the loyalty to the community.

I worked on my presentation for an hour after Honors class. There were several gaps that Dr. A had brought up as she critiqued the other students, asking questions and poking holes in their communities, which I thought best to clear up before she saw my community on paper (we're supposed to turn our presentations into essays). After the hour was up, I walked back over to Chapman Hall to visit Dr. A during her office hour. She was fifteen minutes late, and I stood in the narrow hall, listening to the secretaries gossip, and hearing a professor down the hall ordering home insurance, while another professor bustled past with reams of paper.

When Dr. A arrived, we had a good discussion in her office. She has a small office, with a high ceiling. It's dark and cool, like a cell, with floor-to-ceiling, east-facing windows that look out on the sunwarmed wall of the Business Administration Hall next door. She's so little and wrinkled, with such small, dark, sleepy eyes that I'm always surprised by her willingness to talk with me. Somehow, we started to talk about Augustine and creativity. "I often find, as Augustine does, that there are ideas in me, things I knew, but never fully grasped," she said, referring, I think, to Augustine's ideas about memory and the mind. She told me that she writes poetry, though she's never published it, and that one of her friends recently chastized her gently for not publishing because that's sort of the "final step" of the creative process for some.

We did talk about my community, and she helped me with solutions to some of the problems that I'd seen in the practical aspects (government, daily chores, teaching positions, etc.). The community I came up with is a community of writers who both teach and do research and writing (creative and scholarly). So I had to figure out a way for the members of the community to balance teaching with writing. Dr. A said that there's a couple at the University who split a position: the husband teaches one semester, and the wife teaches the next semester. That way they both have the opportunity to work on their own personal research and writing, as well as doing teaching. She also said that there's a woman who teaches a semester at the University, then takes a semester off to do her own research elsewhere (the woman is pretty famous, so she manages to live, though frugally, on her salary from one semester). Somehow, our discussion branched onto our own writing habits. Dr. A said that she's very particular, when she writes. She's found that she has to be in a certain place, with certain things around her: "It's hard to work creatively in a room full of dissonance." I complained about finding it hard to write in my dorm room, which feels sterile in comparison to my room at home, with all its books and pictures.

I walked back to my room, blue sky above and greening grass under my feet, my hair bobbing in waves against my ears, tossed by the wind, which smelled like smoke today.

I worked on my Honors paper and MBW paper until supper.

Supper tonight consisted of pizza downstairs in the Lottie lobby. A.C. was there, and I sat near her. She told me about a business project that she’s doing with another girl. They’re supposed to take a country, analyze its culture, and sell a product there. She’s doing Sweden. She said that she identifies with the culture there more than anywhere else. She plans to sell hiking boots since the Swedes, having been locked up indoors for the long winter, spend all summer doing activities outside. I munched my pizza and listened. The hot cheese scorched the roof of my mouth. After A.C. left, Alisha, Esther, and Jenny came in. I sat with Esther and Alisha on the floor. We talked about Esther’s exams last week, and Alisha asked if I was enjoying RBL. I grinned and said, evasively, “Tara is.” Both Esther and Alisha laughed. “It’s not really my particular interest,” I explained, “It’s so ridiculously melodramatic.” “What sort of literature do you like better?” inquired Esther. “Anglo-Saxon.” “Oh. Do you like ‘Beowulf’?” asked Alisha, making a face. I tried to explain “The Seafarer” to her as something she might like better, with its theme of finding peace in God. Jenny sat down with us. She twisted her ankle last Sabbath playing basketball, and now it’s swollen twice as big as it should be. She refuses to put any ice on it, though. She sat and laughed with Alisha and Esther about Art and Coffee (RUF talent night) this weekend. She, Spencer, and the two Davids are doing a dance together that (apparently) is supposed to look really weird and really funny.

After supper, I read Christina and Dante Gabriel Rosetti for MBW. A.C. knocked on my door and bounced in right before I had to leave for Bible study. We sat and chatted for a little while, nevertheless. She talked about her project, and about how few friends she’s had—only two, in her whole life. One of them was a Japanese-Swedish girl at her boarding school in Sweden; the other is a girl on the golf team here. As we parted, she said she’d stop by later—she wanted to hear me read one of my poems.

Downstairs in the lobby, I found Jenny, Rachel, Stephanie, Syneva, and Kathryn sitting and laughing and talking. Jenny was giving them a demonstration of her dance, and when she’d finished, she romped off to the lobby, where one of her friends was listening to air-headed rock from the 1980s and hopping around energetically. Their slaphappy contortions fit the happy-go-lucky, pie-in-the-sky music, with its jingling synthesizer and breathless vocals. (I’m not sure I would call what they were doing dancing per se.) I watched them through the door, laughing silently as they wiggled their hands in the air and jigged about. “C’mon, E--, you know you want to dance!” Jenny called. “Yeah, I want to dance, but not like that,” I laughed back. I sat by Kathryn and Rachel on the bench in front of Mrs. Lottie Jane’s portrait, and asked Kathryn about her home in Houston. Kathryn a small girl with glossy, wavy dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin, and a petite turn of speech—whenever she speaks, she curls her lips, like a kitten’s. Her mother is a church secretary; her father is a personal resources manager for a company. She said that when she moved up here, the pace of life was very different, and it’s taken her awhile to get used to it. She told us that, in the airports here, everyone is really nice and unassuming, laid-back, friendly. There’s hardly anyone in the airport, and the people who are in the airport don’t seem to be going anywhere in a hurry. In Houston, by contrast, the airports are full of people rushing to and fro at great speed, trying frantically to get where they’re going.

Syneva led the study tonight. Before the study, Syneva asked us all if we’d been watching the Olympics. A few of us had, though most of us, like typical college students, are pretty oblivious of what’s going on in the outside world. Jenny asked questions about curling, which she’d never heard of before. “I saw them pushing this thing over the floor, and I thought they were just cleaning the ice!” Anne said. “Yeah. It’s definitely not an American sport—no contact. It wouldn’t go over very well in a country where people like to hit each other whenever they play sports,” Jenny commented.

After Bible study, I showered. Once again, I was writing in my journal when A.C. interrupted me. She was in her blue fuzzy bathrobe, and said she’d just come by to say good-night. But she really wanted to hear a poem. So I invited her in, and she sat down, resting her head on her elbows. I scanned my files and finally settled on “Psyche Before the Gods”. I performed it as best I could, though, since I was reading from the computer screen, I couldn’t face her directly, and so some of the impact of the poem was lost. When I had finished, she smiled at me sleepily, and said, “It’s good.” She sat and stared at the poem on the computer screen for a long time. The room was silent. I rocked gently in my chair, wondering what she was thinking of it all. Finally, she sat up. “Sometimes things can inspire us so much that they become works of art,” she said. I looked puzzled. She paused. “I can’t believe how much you believe in this. I don’t understand,” she said at last. “Well, I don’t do anything. He works in me. I didn’t choose Him. He chose me,” I replied quietly. She nodded drearily and went back to staring at the poem. “It’s really good,” she said finally, and then invited me over to her room to read a paragraph she’d written. If she was a modern writer, she’d probably call it a prose poem. I read it over her shoulder on her laptop. It was titled “Oblivion”, and sounded cold, hard, and desolate. The imagery was all brittle, vividly surreal, reminding me of Picasso and Dadaists. Then, jokingly, she flinched aside from the exposure of her writing and showed me some poetry about golf that she’d found on the internet, by Andrew Lang. She read some of it out loud in a humorous, mock-Scottish accent, substituting the Spanish rolled “r” for the Scottish burr.

She hugged me good-night. I returned to my room for devotions and bed.

old books, blackberries, and basketball

Now Playing: (how did you know?) "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams. Track 1, "The Blitz, 1940". Yes, I do listen to other music--lots of other music! Yesterday it was all three LOTR soundtracks and Beethoven's 3rd symphony.

My mother seems to think I'm getting bored with this blog. I'm not. It's just been a dreadfully busy week. Midterms are coming up, so I've got lots of studying to do, papers to write, etc.

Yesterday I ate breakfast with Rachel. She's been reading a book written by an economist who thinks that private property began in tribal societies with wars over women: one tribe would steal the other tribe's women, and so on, and whoever had the most women was the most courageous. Gradually it became not only the women but also the things they made. She and I both thought this was rather ridiculous. Her economics professor believes that people should stop working to let technology do the job, and that there should be a redistribution of wealth--another rather peculiar proposition, as it leaves out a great deal of understanding of human nature (our desire to work as being a good thing; our greed).

This morning in MBW we went on a "field trip" to the top of the library to visit Special Collections. The Special Collections head is a plump, sleepy man who has pale blue eyes behind thick glasses, and a stringy salt-and-pepper ponytail. He briefly walked us through the collections on display in the reading room. He asked us if we had any questions, sighing noisily when we didn't. I finally plucked up courage to ask about finding the book-of-hours I'd seen last semester in MBW when Dr. S brought us up here. I could feel the other five students (out of a class of 22, only 6 people showed up!) groaning with impatience as the little man walked me through the computer system--it was actually quite helpful for finding rare books for which I don't remember the titles. He asked me if I wanted to see it. I just grinned and blushed sheepishly. "You sure?" he asked, blinking like a hedgehog behind his glasses.

In archaeology, the professor marched in with his textbook in hand. "Do you all want a quiz?" he asked the class. "No!" everyone said. "Ok! We won't have one! See, this is a democratic class," he replied, and everyone laughed.

After archaeology, I hurried back to my dorm, packed up, and dashed down to meet my mother who came to pick me up just after eleven o'clock. On the way home we passed some horrible burned places where the black was like sickening leprosy under scorched grass. As we pulled into the driveway at home, Brother2 was shooting baskets. He grinned at me as I made faces at him through the car window. We were home in time for lunch.

After lunch, Daisy and my mother went to their Irish dance class. I stayed home to finish writing journal entries and to work on the Honors project. Daisy left directly after dance class to drive down to Oklahoma City for a basketball game. She rode with a family on the team. The rest of us waited to go down to the game until my father finished his committee meeting, which ran until five thirty. We made our suppers, then picked him up on campus. As we drove out of town, I saw half-a-dozen deer grazing on the edge of a field, like puffs of goldenrod pollen caught in blue evening shadow.

We listened to the "Two Towers" soundtrack on the drive as we ate our supper in the car. I munched a chewy bagel, spread thickly with crunch-sweet blackberry jam. We arrived at the gym in time for the second half of the girls' basketball game. My father sat next to me and excitedly watched the game, sometimes shouting directions to the girls. He winced when Meri took a long jump shot, but she made it. Our girls' team won, 37-33.

After the girls' game, Meri sat beside me on the bleachers. We talked all through the boys' game about our small affairs: the car wreck Meri was in this week, our school, professors, "Cinderella Man", Charles Dickens, Dorothy Sayers. Meri described giving blood today, and I told her about the time when Danielle tried to give blood but got horribly bruised because for some reason they couldn't get anything out of her though she tried desperately. Meri said that her English composition teacher told their class not to read poetry because "it will turn your brain to mush". I laughed at that. "If you read the sort of poetry he's probably thinking of, it would!" and I complained about the Romantics.

We watched the game, cheering Josh and David and Brother1 on. Brother1 grabbed a steal and made a great lay-up. Meri squealed, "Yay! He's my brother!" then looked at me, and we both giggled. Our boys' team won, 57-34.

On the drive home, we listened to one of the new "Father Gilbert" mysteries. All of us except Brother1 showered and went to bed. Brother1 managed to convince my father to let him go out and work on a robot that he's preparing for a competition. He was gone till about one o'clock in the morning.

various terse ramblings

Now Playing: "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams. Track 15, "Wunderkind".

This is an edited journal entry. It's late--hence the brief language. Well, it seems brief to me, but when I actually sit down and look at the length of this thing, it's not. *groan* My fingers just keep dancing, like children to the Pied Piper.

If things are unclear, that's because I should have been either in bed or studying by now. Ask any questions you like.

As I settled in to practice my flute this morning after breakfast, Syneva came by and knocked on the practice-room door. We chatted for a little. She told me that Amanda had called her this morning, and that they’d had a good talk. Amanda is studying abroad in Spain this semester. Both Amanda’s “house mother”, her hostess, and her roommate are Catholic, which makes for some strange situations: her roommate sleeps with a rosary clutched in one hand.

I had MBW at 9:00 as usual. Dr. F was on a trip, so a substitute taught the class—Wuthering Heights. Next came archaeology, more site formation processes and discussion of the effect that wind and water have on artifacts. After archaeology, I sat in my room and furiously read Wuthering Heightsuntil 11:45, when I dashed downstairs to meet Mrs. L (she's a brisk little Chinese woman who has asked me to tutor her daughter Karis). She arrived at the Lottie parking lot in her long, maroon, fifteen-passenger van, to take me to her house for lunch and to give Karis a first lesson in poetry. She had all her children with her: Karis, the eldest, who’s twelve; Joshua and Thaddeus (I think those names are correct) who are young boys, probably eight or so—very lively; Hannah, a little girl who’s perhaps five or six, and Benjamin, the two-year-old.

The children all ogled me from the back seats and then, deciding almost immediately that I was not a threat, began to chatter, argue, giggle, etc. Mrs. L told me all about her extended family as we drove south through Tulsa to their neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. We passed through dense areas of businesses, restaurants, and hospitals. Traffic was thick. Finally, we pulled up over a steep hill and saw a deep, narrow valley, with another hill blue on the other side. Elegant houses lined both sides of the road, sheltering comfortably under grey trees. The Ls’ house is one of these—an older house, large, one story, with big windows. Joshua and Thaddeus found a good deal to tell me as we trooped inside. Hannah burbled quietly about her coat and her boots while Karis helped her to take them off. In the kitchen, I helped Mrs. L serve gigantic helpings of rice and split-pea soup into enormous bowls. Her father, a wizened Chinese man, stepped out of one of the back rooms to greet me and beam at me through thick glasses. All the children, Mrs. L, and myself sat down together to lunch. The boys brought out chips and eagerly suggested that I use them instead of my spoon. They chattered, tongues rushing over one another, about Narnia and LOTR, and all the books and toys they had related to these two. They prattled at me about their swords and bows-and-arrows, and asked me all sorts of questions about whether I thought balrogs or Moria to be frightening (they staunchly declared that such things weren’t scary at all). Karis listened and smiled at me occasionally, while Hannah occasionally lisped a corroboration to the boys’ tales through thick mouthfuls of soup. Benjamin stared at me between spoonfuls of soup that his mother poked into his plump mouth.

After lunch, Karis showed me the four anthologies that Mrs. L bought for me to use with her. Karis and I sat down in the living room under the skylight and started our lesson. I used the Grammar of Poetry book that my mother had given me to work through years ago. It turned out, as a pleasant surprise, that Karis is actually a good deal farther along than I had expected. She has a pretty firm grasp of rhyme, and understands such things as rhyme and meter. The trick will be to move her beyond mere understanding to get her to really use them—and I myself am not sure of that lesson, or of how I even began to understand it in my own writing. But I do know that reading good authors helps. I asked her if she’d like me to loan her some of my anthologies. She eagerly said, “Yes, please!”. I felt as though the first lesson must’ve seemed dull and scatter-brained to her.

Occasionally during the lesson the boys would peer in or hover around us. The children’s pet boa constrictor slumbered in its aquarium under a heat lamp on the bookshelf. Mrs. L was anxious that I return to campus on time, so we ended at 1:30 after barely half-an-hour of teaching. Karis and Hannah rode with us back to campus. Mrs. L dropped me off, and I walked straight over to Honors class. In Honors, we discussed the Rule of St. Benedict. Dr. A asked us what sorts of communities we’re considering. Russ described a community of soccer-playing monks who would honor God and witness through being good sports and excellent athletes. He couldn’t think of the word “witness”, and when Rachel supplied it for him, he leaped out of his chair and yelled, “YES!! That’s it! WITNESS!” so that she jumped back in surprise, and everyone laughed. Someone suggested that they play soccer in robes and cowls.

After class, I finished Wuthering Heights and also the second read-through of the Rule, in which we were supposed to look for personal/spiritual guidance for the monks (as opposed to the practical, every-day details from the first time through). My mind felt like a piece of mouldy bread. So I stretched and walked down the hall, to go out to the gym and run. On my way, Jenny called me into her room. She and Tara were looking at pictures from the RUF formal, and at a short digital video that someone had taken of the Virginia Reel. I stood and laughed with them at the pictures for awhile. They went to supper, and I ran. After I ran, I ate supper.

After supper, I came back to my room and thrashed out which poems I should send off to yet another small college magazine (at another college) for publication. One of my former teachesr in poetry gave this magazine my name. The editor-in-chief e-mailed me, soliciting submissions, so I sent her “Rain On the Day Before Communion Sabbath”, “Latin Tutorial at Sarah’s House”, and “Medicine Park, Oklahoma”. I have a deep dislike for all of them, except “Rain On…”. I kept scouring my files for something that was acceptable to publish (besides “Psyche”, which I’ve already sent to “Stylus”), and coming up with nothing. If I were to become a nun, my first resolution would be to give up showing people any poetry.

Bible study at 8:00 p.m. For a little, I was the only one in the lobby, so I amused myself by drawing sketches in my old journal. Then Crystal came in with a girl named Stephanie. Stephanie is a slim girl with close-set eyes behind narrow glasses, and a white face with pink lips. She and Crystal sat and chattered happily for awhile. Eleanor, James’s girlfriend, came, too. Eleanor is short, with brown hair and tanned skin. She laughs a lot—somehow, the name Eleanor fits her from LOTR, and is proper to James, for he likes LOTR, too. Rachel came, and so did Anne. Rachel told me about the paper she’s writing for biology class about pomegranates. Syneva arrived and stared at us all in surprise for a minute.

We had a good study, about Galatians 2:11-21. Anne made popcorn, and everyone munched it happily, leaving flakes of it on the floor like yellow pollen. Jenny wasn’t there because she had a meeting. After the Bible study, I walked Rachel out. She described to me the Honors House/LaFortune Hall dinner that she’d gone to tonight. They’d invited a speaker, a professor in psychology, to come after the meal and talk to them about romance in the workplace. Rachel said that it was entertaining, if rather strange. She sat at the table with all the other Honors House people. “Oh, the zoo,” I quipped, and she smiled slowly. It was cold outside, so we didn’t talk for very long. “I’m still trying to get used to the fact that it’s actually winter,” Rachel chuckled as she waved good-bye.

Now it's time for devotions and bed.

Violin's Four Things Game

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 10, "Anduril". SwanElf has written a gorgeous poem about this track. Go to the War of the Ring website in the links, and click on "FanFic". Go to the first Elvellon account if you want to read it (or just ask me for a copy).

Four Jobs I Have Had
- babysitter
- petsitter
- secretary/internet sleuth (for Mr. Y)
- leaf-raker

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over
- the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy
- "The Village"
- "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"
- "Chariots of Fire"

Four Books I Could (and Have) Read Over and Over
- the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy (who would've guessed?! :)
- the "Chronicles of Narnia"
- "The Shining Company"
- "Til We Have Faces"

Four Places I Have Lived
- Stillwater
- Sweden
- Tulsa
- ....

Four TV Shows I Watch
- Three Stooges
- Beverly Hillbillies doesn't count because I only watch it under duress! :)
- nope
- not a chance

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
- Michigan
- Colorado
- California
- Texas

Four Websites I Visit Daily
- blogs
- Weather Underground
- WebCT (not quite daily, but close enough since I have a couple of classes with required discussion groups on the internet)
- ....

Four Favorite Foods
- golden delicious apples
- artichokes
- mushrooms
- bell peppers

Four Places I'd Like To Be Right Now
- home
- Horn Creek
- San Antonio
- British Isles

Four Bloggers I'm Tagging Who Must Now Play This Game
- Daisy
- Princess
- Shadow
- Stupendous Man

lovely day

Now Playing: "The Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack by Andrew Lloyd-Weber. Track 10, "Masquerade".

This is my 108th post. And it's disgustingly flowery, too, so beware.

I managed to get seven hours of sleep last night instead of the usual six. That made a big difference.

This morning before Major British Writers, I worked on my paper for First Seminar, about The Courage to Create. We actually started to write our papers in class yesterday. Rachel told me that she'd managed to crystallize some of our collective thoughts in her essay about how the courage to create is really the courage to obey God and go against men. She said that she talked about Socrates, Christ, and Joan of Arc, all of whom are mentioned in the book as "saints", and all of whom, incidentally, were urged on by some sort of "spiritual force". I, on the other hand, wrote a pompous and sappy piece of work about how we all face the daunting task of creativity and how some people have chosen to overcome that formidable challenge. The only bright spot was at the end, where I managed to say that as we take courage to create, we honor the source of courage. On the whole, I was quite disappointed with myself, but now that Rachel is doing her own essay, I don't want to steal her ideas, and it isn't so bad, I suppose.

In Major British Writers today, we started the Victorian era. The professor thinks that Queen Victoria was both weird and a hypocrite. I'm just glad that we get to start Tennyson on Friday. I've only met three people that I like during Major British Writers II: Jane Austen, surprisingly, John Keats, and Alfred Tennyson (whom I already knew I liked). The rest of them are either too strange or (to speak plainly) very stuck-up.

In archaeology, we went on a field trip. It was much more fun than the oceanography field trip last semester, though I wish it had lasted longer. Of course, I had to find a ride, but one of the boys who's both in the archaeology class and in the First Seminar was already taking two other girls, so I went with them. He had a nice car (not a jeep :), though the one drawback was that he played loud rock music the whole time. It was sad music, too--selfish and angry. The singer, a woman, belted out her depression and disappointment with a string of lovers and friends because they didn't treat her as being "special". Everything in her lyrics was centered on herself, her own feelings, and how other people didn't give her her due, or how she was searching for satisfaction in someone--satisfaction meaning someone just to stand and "listen to me cry". Empty music. There's no hope in a world like that.

We drove out to a place called Bird Creek. It's on the eastern edge of Tulsa, near the port and also near limestone quarries. As we approached the place, the road became thick with heavy trucks trundling past, some of them tooting long blasts on their horns. Limestone dust hung in the warm air, veiling the naked trees and the gaping pits that had been blasted in the flat sweep of prairie. Towers puffed smoke into the air, and long metal chutes rattled with gravel. Heavy tires tore up the soft ground, punching soft grass into harsh tread patterns. We pulled off the road near the bridge over Bird Creek. Trucks roared by. The wind from their passing and the stench from scorching diesel caught in my throat and made it hard to breathe. We sat in the car at one place for awhile before realizing that we were supposed to meet everyone at a spot just back the road a few hundred yards. We were the last to catch up with the rest of the class.

It was a relief to get away from the highway. I pushed through dense scrub--bare sumac and pokeberry, my feet sinking deep into the thick golden grass. Long spears of grass, spotted maroon, snagged on my jeans. Cottonwood leaves splashed silverly around my feet--as though the Milky Way had, snake-wise, shed its scales on the earth.

We stood on a gently-sloping bank on the east side of the creek while the professor told us about the geology and hydrology of the area, and told us how natives a thousand years ago could've lived. Warm sunshine freckled my face and the green water of the creek below. The creek foamed over low rapids before fanning out into a broader area. It had slashed the west bank steeply so that we could see the stratification in the soil. Cottonwood and oak trees grew sparsely on both banks, towering over the scrub. I fingered a pliable cottonwood branch, its tips spiked with leaf buds velvety and pointed as rabbit's ears. The dull green outer casing, like the juvenile feathers of a hawk, was beginning to open and show the silky-wet copper of the young leaves beneath.

I desperately wanted to push through the woods, perhaps even to scramble down to the bank and walk by the water, but everyone left immediately, as soon as the professor was done with his brief lecture. When the young man who gave me a lift dropped myself and the other two girls off on campus, I paused beside the parking lot. A thick quince bush, with little yellow flowers, was humming with bees. They staggered over the curly petals, energetically pushing their fuzzy bodies into the pollened interiors. I sniffed the faintly sweet smell, delicate as the drop of honey at the lip of a honeysuckle's tube. Then I nearly jumped out of my skin, for a mockingbird was watching me suspiciously from the interior of the bush. It silently hopped away when I eyed it, its grey plumage blending with the still-grey twigs inside the bush, and I glanced up to where its small, raggedy nest perched among the top branches.

I ate a fast lunch alone. They didn't have any whole wheat bread, so I had to make do with white bread for my sandwich. Like eating sugary air.

For the earlier part of the afternoon, I edited my Honors paper, which I turned in early, and also read Tennyson for Major British Writers. When I had finished both of these tasks, I decided to try and practice my flute, but all the practice rooms were full--a soprano, half-a-dozen pianists, a flutist, and a violinist.

Back at Lottie, I took some pictures of the magnolias in the courtyard. There are not only three or four low star magnolias in the center of the courtyard but also two tall, grand saucer magnolias growing in two of the corners. The saucer magnolias are beginning to open. The tree in the most sheltered corner, the northwest corner, has one bloom that is nearly fully-open, its huge, silky, dark pink petals unfolded luxuriously against a vividly blue sky. Hot sun warmed the yellow sandstone walls, which basked gratefully in the afternoon light. You could almost feel the heavy petals unfolding on the magnolias. Jenny came outside while I was in the courtyard, and sat down to read her Calculus book under the star magnolias.

Since the weather was so delightful, I went running outside today. There's a basketball game tonight, so they were preparing to shut off a couple of the parking lots. Construction crews have started to dig out the north end of the football stadium, above the endzone, to put in a new sports administration building. As I jogged by, all the racket of a demolition/construction site assailed my ears: the woodpecker rattle of pneumatic chisels, the clank and scrape of backhoes lifting concrete into creaking dumptrucks.

After running, I briskly cleaned up my room. I was surprised, as I wiped down the mirror, to see how pink my face was. I did my devotions and then, at last, went to practice my flute. Blue evening shadows had begun to creep across the lawn, as though the sky was crawling down to earth, to sleep under the sycamore trees.

The flutist was still in the practice rooms, but the soprano had been replaced by a trumpeter. There was only one pianist left--not a very serious one, for he kept doodling around on the keyboard, playing snatches of Bach and "Linus and Lucy".

After practice, I went straight to supper, which I spent mostly reading The Two Towers, until Nicole marched over and commanded me to put down the book and come and sit with herself and her two friends. She thought I was studying, which was rather funny to me, since my copy of The Two Towers doesn't look anything like a textbook: for one thing, it has no underlining in it; for another thing, its cover is far more disintegrated than any self-respecting textbook would ever be. I keep finding bits and pieces of the cover, like flakes of parchment, lying around in my knapsack or on my bookshelf. Pretty soon the elegantly stylized watercolor of Fangorn will be completely obliterated, and there won't be a cover anymore. But I like it because the book is soft, and fits easily in my left hand while I eat with the right.

Nicole's friends were talking about going to the basketball game tonight. Nicole asked me about my paper. She'd started hers at one o'clock this morning, but had managed to turn it in a couple of hours early (at three o'clock instead of five o'clock this afternoon).

Straight after supper I came back here. As I walked through the Lottie courtyard, mourning doves were cooing. One of them sounded just like the doves in San Antonio--so much so that my heart nearly leapt out of my breast, for longing to go back to the warm mornings in my grandparents' back yard, running on the wet St. Augustine grass, and whizzing through the air on the tire swing under the pecan tree.

Listening to ROTK, Track 3 now. Outside, radio towers glimmer like aliens in the darkness, three or four red eyes winking on each bronze spike.

Bible study in thirty minutes.

Here's Gondor: I can hear the seagulls crying, their whistling calls and the clatter of wings as they circle upward, over pounding hooves and flashing walls.

a surprise....

White rabbit, everyone!

:)