hear ye, hear ye!

Now Playing: The neighbor's lawn mower and leaf blower. We are sitting outside on the back porch of what is, for now, the royal domicile, after all, and such racket is to be expected, we suppose.

Such raucous noise aside, we begin.

Announcing the ascendancy of the author of this blog to the position of Queen of the United States of America, which is rapidly becoming the United Bureaucracy of America in our opinion.

As far as the presidency, Congress, etc., goes, in the words of King Caspian in The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader", "'I think we have had enough of governors,' and so made him a Duke."

The policies of this new government will include the following:

First, a federal ban on abortion in all its forms, gay marriage, and gambling. Also, a ban on stem cell research, cloning, and creation of human-animal hybrids. Minotaurs, centaurs, and werewolves are all very well in Narnia or mythology, but we want no such monsters roaming the halls of our nation's research facilities, their escape a definite and disturbing possibility.

Second, withdrawal of all federal funding from organizations including but not limited to NPR, the NEA (both as concerns arts and education), NASA, National Geographic, and the Smithsonian. These institutions can take care of their own business from henceforth as far as we are concerned, and they can make as much hullabaloo as they want about any and all of the new policies, as long as they don't expect the new government to pay any attention to their racket.

Third, abolishment of the federal income tax. In place of this, we will establish a national sales tax, which will be built into the shelf price of every item, as in the U.K. No more of this silly business of going up to the cash register and being sadly disappointed by discovering that one's purchase costs fifty cents more than one expected!

Fourth, privatization of transportation systems. All transportation will now be owned by the states or private companies. Tax breaks will be given to those states, cities, or companies that construct public transportation systems, and particularly to those that give discounts to large families to travel on such systems. (By the way: For environmental protection, only families with three children or more and those requiring the vehicles for daily work (i.e., farming, construction, etc.) will be permitted to own large vehicles. No more of this buying SUVs and Hummers for status purposes!)

Fifth, the opening of Alaska and offshore drilling options for private oil companies. Simultaneously, tax breaks will be given to those companies and research institutions which are exploring alternate fuel options.

Sixth, because this new government is concerned for the aesthetic appeal of our beautiful country, we will give tax breaks to all municipalities that bury their power lines. This will remove the need for obnoxious companies such as Asplund (*cough*), which butcher trees, and the possibilities for citizens' death as a result of live damaged electric lines. (This one is slightly random, but it makes sense--to the royal "us", that is.)

Seventh, removal of all federal funding from the "public" school system. It won't be public anymore.

Eighth, the establishment of English as the official national language. We are heartily weary of the time and expense sacrificed on translating things into Spanish, which, though intrinsically beautiful and worthy in its own culture, has no business being officially recognized by a government founded and dependent upon a distinctly English linguistic heritage.

Ninth, privatization of health care, social security, and all that jazz. Those who are wise enough to take care of themselves should have ample opportunity; those who aren't should know the consequences. (Paul does say, "If a man shall not work, neither shall he eat," after all....)

It is our understanding, as an explanation of the above policies, that the Constitution does not give any precedent for the federal government's involvement in the arts, sciences, health care, education, transportation, medicine, or any of the other exhaustive and exhausting entanglements in which the current bureaucracy has immured itself.

It is also our understanding that with the removal of income tax and tax breaks for companies, states, or municipalities which are demonstrating good stewardship, the much-discussed, much-pitied, and much-doctored economy will be stimulated and quickened as people will have more money to spend, save, and invest as they see fit.

As far as issues of royal succession goes, we propose to appoint successors. We will not be restricted to our children (should such an eventuality arise) or blood relatives, though it must be stated that for the moment, we are strongly inclined to appoint one of the royal siblings to be next in line for the throne.

As far as our royal decrees, nine seems like a good number at which to stop for now. For international policy, and the war in Iraq, our chief adviser, M (with overtones of James Bond), has suggested the shipping over of a hefty number of troops to settle the issues there once and for all, so that when the soldiers do come back, it will be a lot more quickly and without the constant nightmare fear of having to be sent out again, instead of this rather wishy-washy state of affairs. Further consideration must be applied to this suggestion; however, because of the wisdom of M on other aspects of the administration's policy, we incline to agree with her.

We would like to point out that these new regulations will allow the government to pay off a large chunk of the national debt. Also, that in some ways these new regulations would be more environmentally friendly since instead of pouring resources into fruitless research on helpless children, companies would be able to develop alternative technologies in medicine, fuel, transportation, and the like.

We propose that the royal parents and the session of our church be the chief royal advisers. Also, that Miss Rachel S. be the adviser on economic policy, and a panel of petroleum engineers, including Mr. K and (the new) Mrs. H, be in charge of overseeing the new drilling options. The royal brother, P, will be encouraged to form a company to ensure that all those new train and subway lines are safe for the public once he graduates as a mechanical engineer, and the other royal brother, S, will be encouraged to head the EPA, keeping an eye on Alaska and the nation's oceans, should he choose to graduate with a degree in marine biology. The royal sister, L, will be presented with the opportunity to use whichever of her many talents (sign, music, and culinary arts) she chooses to pursue.

We also propose that the royal friends in other parts of the globe be consulted on issues of international policy since they can keep a somewhat more impartial eye on the international attitude toward our new government.

As an overarching guide to policy, we propose to take the Holy Bible as our chief guide and primary authority.

Herewith concludes the royal declaration. Citizens, salute!

(And from now on, if anyone asks me what I'm going to do after I graduate, I'm going to whip out a copy of this and command them to give me their allegiance as their sovereign. *grin*)

trying to do better

Now Playing: Chris Thile, "Stealing Second", Track 3, "Kneel Before Him".

Sandy is curled up on my bed, on her side, purring.

I realized after A.L.'s comment that I haven't said anything about work at Cafe Bella, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Actually, I'm so lonely right now that it hurts like being kicked in the stomach every time I take a breath. What makes it harder is the fact that I can see this hurting the people around me, particularly my family members, but I haven't found a way yet to overcome it. Giving thanks helps, but it also reminds me of how good the Lord was to me there, so why not here? As I was discussing with a friend a couple of weeks ago, when you're "home" for the summer, your spiritual life inevitably falls flat, and this summer so far has been no different--as though the familiarity of four walls bars the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God from entering!

The Lord works in His time. That comes into my mind, along with Philippians 2:14-15, which I read in my quiet time today. I'm reminded that God actually does hear prayer, from Paul's earnestness in Philippians 1 and Ephesians 1 and 3. From this I know that He hears all these prayers for people I may never see again (melodrama, anyone?) and for my shattered, helpless consciousness.

All this aside, a summary of a "normal" day thus far.

Woke up at eight o'clock-ish, went downstairs for breakfast. My father is at synod this week, as mentioned earlier, so my mother and Stephen had just finished family worship. The guinea pig, which has taken up residence on a table under the stairs, squealed loudly and protestingly as I went downstairs, mistaking me for Laura, who feeds him.

After breakfast, I had my quiet time in my room, then went running around Boomer Lake. I've been listening to Pastor Driscoll's sermons as I run, and today I finished the second sermon. He talked about how Gospel partnership leads you to pray for your friends, leads to a love that abounds more and more (hope!), leads to discretion and care in choice of friends, and how it is based on the imputed and imparted righteousness of Christ. He did a beautiful job of expounding the doctrine of justification, and went on to talk about how we have High Priest who sympathizes with us in our weakness, who has suffered the epitome of loneliness on the cross, cut off from the Father, and how this gives us the courage to name our sins before God, repent, and live out the new righteousness of Christ by the power of the Spirit in the community of the church. (Logan pointed out to me, by the way, that Pastor Driscoll used to be notorious for his use of bad language; however, I have found him to be, though energetic, very clean.)

Running in 80-90 F heat tends to be draining, and by the time I get back to the house, my head is a bit dizzy, requiring a good shower to sober me. I had just enough time after my shower to write a couple of e-mails and then go to work at half eleven. Cafe Bella is downtown. Downtown in Stillwater is like the postcard pictures of midwest downtowns in America: one straight street with row buildings on either side, high brick shopfronts, big plate glass windows (and here no one bars their windows at night), black lamps marching down the broad sidewalk, little planters at the intersections full of brightly-colored flowers, impatiens, petunias, lantana, marigolds.

Cafe Bella is one of those places that can't decide whether to be Italian or French. Tiled floor, neutral colors, pictures of Italian vineyards on one side and French Chat Noir posters on the other. The sandwich bar runs down one of the long sides of the long, narrow shop so that people can watch their sandwiches being made. At the back, behind the counter, there's a couple of steps up, leading into the kitchen, which is rather grimy (whoever picked white for the color of a kitchen needs to have their head examined). Big walk-in refrigerator in one corner, sink and dish sanitizer in another, stainless steel counters, one with a gyros grill and one with a fryer (smaller than the one Mrs. M fries chips in) for falafel.

My shift ran from half eleven to half four. The lunch "rush" was pretty pitiful today. We serve gyros, falafel in various permutations, dulma, hummus, and the like, but everyone always seems to want turkey-and-swiss or BLT sandwiches. After lunch, Patrick and I were the only ones on duty. I washed stacks and stacks of dishes while he baked cookies for the bank down the street, to be delivered tomorrow morning. Then we stood around and talked, and listened to his iPod, which had Green Day and Sufjan Stevens on it, among others.

At about three o'clock there was a very random "rush" of people, fifteen or twenty, who came into the shop, all wanting proper food--not the usual afternoon fare of drinks and a brownie, but hot gyros sandwiches, paninis, etc. But after they left, there wasn't much else to do, except watch the stark shadows lying flat on the red brick storefronts across the street and scrub the baking sheets, until Miguel arrived to relieve me.

I drove to Braum's on the way back to the house, ended up meeting Logan there and talking for an hour or so. I was home in time for tea. After tea, my mother, Laura, and I drove down to the library for a community band concert; Stephen had basketball practice, an open gym night. The concert was at half seven and was unusually crowded. Behind the library is a sloping lawn forming a small natural amphitheatre with an oval concrete pavement at the bottom where the band always plays. Tonight the grass above the pavement and in the shadow of the library walls was crowded with people. Besides the usual contingent of elderly folks, who always come out in droves, there were lots of young families with tiny blond toddlers, a crowd of maybe twenty teenagers, and another, much larger crowd of Hispanics, as well as some Africans dressed in bright traditional fabrics.

We sat at the edge of the gathering with my grandparents. I had brought along a book to read and curled up in the sagging lawn chair, kicking my flip-flops off on the manicured grass. The sky overhead was completely clear, a dusty evening blue. A Mississippi kite was veering and oscillating on hot updrafts, its tail flickering, making a rudder as its wings scooped the air.

The music tonight was actually fairly decent. They played Prokofiev and Holst, two ubiquitous wind band pieces. The Holst was lovely, as Holst usually is. They also played a very unusual piece by a twentieth-century composer, called "Dinosaurs", with a variety of percussion and strange sound effects from the band, including stroking crystal glasses, stamping, clapping, singing, and clicking keys from the woodwinds. It did indeed sound like a whole pile of dinosaurs and made a pleasant change from the usual band fare. The concert opened with "Star Spangled Banner", and closed with "Oklahoma!".

Back at the house, my mother, Laura, and I had family worship. Stephen came home from basketball. I ate a snickerdoodle cookie and let Mandy try a large crumb. She licked and licked it, but decided not to eat it in the end. Mildly amusing. Sandy is sound asleep on my bed.

not doing very well for posts in June

My mother is listening to Nickel Creek's "Ode to a Butterfly" in the kitchen, and it's making me happy.

My father is away at synod this week, so my mom has been sleeping upstairs in Philip's room. Last night Laura and I were at the Fishers' house, and I watched "Enchanted" with the Fisher kids while Laura, Elizabeth, Ruth, and Bridget worked on learning how to knit. The Fishers are the perfect audience to watch "Enchanted" with: little Calvin sat beside me and squirmed at every kissing part (and I punched him and he punched me back, in a friendly fashion); Ben lay on the floor and moaned, "When is the boring part going to be over?"; Christa sat up front with Greg and huffed whenever anyone started to sing; Dani and Anna sat off to one side, laughing hilariously with me at the incredibly cheesy prince.

Another hot day here. I didn't go running this morning. In Belfast I didn't run on Wednesdays because I had the excuse that I had to help with communal lunch; here, I have absolutely no excuse, but oh well. Keeps me from getting burned out, I guess. I've been listening to a series of sermons by Pastor Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, on Philippians. Amanda introduced me to them on the road trip to St. Louis a couple of weeks ago. As I've been trying to understand Philippians (it's my goal for this year), I've really benefited so far from the sermons, even though I've only listened to one-and-a-half. He has a different way of looking at things, certainly, and a preaching style reminiscent of John's at RUF in Tulsa, but his exegesis of Paul's long-distance Gospel friendship with the Philippians is an encouragement to me right now, and an incentive to pray for the ongoing work on the other side of the ocean....

wedding pictures

Yay for Spencer and Jenny!
It was good to see Jenny again! And to watch all the fun everyone had dancing. As well as swing dancing and waltz, we had Postease and a little bit of Irish going on.

(Sadly, Rosemary, I did not wear green to the wedding as in your black book drawing. *grin*)

18 june 2008

Now Playing: "Blabbermouth Radio" (as christened by my mother; also known as "Pumpkinhead Radio" by other sources; more accurately known as NPR, the American equivalent of a BBC news station) from the radio in my parents' room.

These days are beginning to have a sort of rhythm to them. I was sleeping this morning at about half six, as one usually does here, with all the windows in my room open, when I was rudely awakened by an enormous storm that blew in without any warning. One moment I was pleasantly asleep; the next, I was scurrying about in a sleepy daze, shutting my windows against the gale of wind and rain that was lashing the trees outside. I heard the garage door open and close: my mother goes out walking early in the morning with some of her friends at the lake near our house, and she and her friend had gotten partly around the lake when the storm blew in suddenly and soaked them both.

After breakfast, I did my devotions. My mother was pottering about upstairs, working on Stephen's curriculum for next year and clearing out old books from the green attic and schoolroom bookshelves. When I finished my devotions, I worked on gluing pictures into the N.I. black book.

At half eleven, my mother and I drove out to my grandparents' house to take my grandmother out to lunch to celebrate her birthday. After the storm, the day was pristine: overarching blue sky without a cloud, yellow sunshine rippling through the green grass, coreopsis, yarrow, Mexican hat, and Queen-Anne's-lace bending under a breeze. We went to Panera for lunch. The sandwich shop was busy, bussinesspeople, mothers with children, couples, groups of elderly friends going out for lunch. We sat at a round table by a window. I had a strawberry poppyseed salad (one of the best mixtures of fruit and greens ever, Charlotte! :o) and half of a chicken salad sandwich, which was really good. My grandmother asked me all about living in Belfast--where I'd bought groceries, who had cooked for whom, what sorts of noise there had been at night, and so on. She and my mother talked about people they know, relatives, etc.

We had errands to run and then went home. Back at home, I sat down at my laptop to find someone to ring, and managed to catch Catherine at her phone. We ended up talking for nearly an hour, though it only seemed like fifteen minutes. She told me about her trip to London; I told her about getting tanned; we laughed about revision week in Renwick, "ragin", the house sitting empty, Amy, Emmaline, Romania, the Stillwater church's kids' club, and so on. It was so good just to hear her voice again and laugh about the fact that it was raining there and sunny here....

I chatted with Rachel and Lillian on Skype for a little while after I'd said good-bye to Catherine and finished the last pages in the black book. Then I went downstairs to find my mother, who was making egg salad, and get ready to go. My mother and I sat outside on the back porch with the cats. I ate my egg salad sandwich, and we talked.

Logan and Jonathan came to pick me up at quarter past five or so. We drove out to the Fishers' house to pick up Elizabeth so that the four of us could go see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian at Quail Springs Mall in Oklahoma City. The Fishers were just getting back from somewhere: they came spilling out of their van as we pulled into the driveway, Ben, Greg, Calvin, Christa, and Elizabeth. Christa had found a chain somewhere and was swinging it around; Mrs. F gave me a hug since this was the first time we've really seen each other. We stood around chatting in the driveway in the sunshine, laughing.

In the car, Elizabeth and Jonathan ended up in the back seat, an amusing combination. The four of us got into a discussion about anime. Jonathan told a hilarious story about going to see an anime film in OKC, and finding himself in a cinema full of hicks and Mexicans--hardly any of the "geeks" that "ought" to be at such a film. Logan and I laughed about shared memories from N.I., and at Jonathan, saying outrageous things in the back seat. Coreopsis and Indian blanket were blooming.

We managed to find our way to the mall alright and arrive in time for Jonathan to get his front middle seat. I felt rather as though I were being eaten alive as we walked back and back and back through the cinema, past the little black doors leading into the individual theatres. Prince Caspian was playing at one of the farthest back ones.

We sat through previews through superhero movies, Pixar films, doomsday flicks, and so on, and finally the film begun. I really liked it. The film is much more complex than the book. Though the audience doesn't get to know Caspian as well, the adult actor who plays him carries off the vulnerability and uncertainty of the boy Caspian in the book. The soundtrack was good, especially the ending songs.

On the ride back to Stillwater, we got a little bit lost, but not really. Talked about the film some. Elizabeth dozed off. Logan told us about his awful day at work while the dark miles slid by. The moon shone low and yellow in the southeast, half-veiled by clouds. No stars in the east. We left Elizabeth home, then the boys left me home. The house was silent. I crept upstairs and went to bed.

big storms make me happy

Ascribe to the Lord,
o heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.
The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf,
and Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

Psalm 29:1-8

Incredible storm moving over right now, wind and rain, thunder, the noise of the neighbors' wind chimes across the street swirling wildly with the torrent of the gale in the maple trees.

Jenny S. becomes Jenny H. (and the Jenny H. some of us know and love is about to become Jenny M.)

Now Playing: An "Adventures in Odyssey" episode, at which my dad is laughing hilariously while he reads a huge book.

14-15 June 2008.

Syneva and I drove to Tulsa last night, to spend the night with Amanda, Tara, and Denise in Amanda/Alisha/Ange's apartment. This morning, we met up with Jenny H., Nicole, Matt, Andrew, and three other guys to drive to St. Louis for Jenny and Spencer's wedding at five o'clock. We stopped for lunch at Sonic near Joplin, MO, in the midst of rolling hills covered with trees. By about half three, we reached St. Louis. Our hotel was on the near side of St. Louis, a very fancy Doubletree Hotel. Our room was on the ninth floor—Amanda, Syneva, Nicole, and I shared. Amanda, Syneva, and I dressed quickly in the room while Nicole showered and dressed. We watched a cartoon and news on TV, and talked about the presidential elections.

By half four, we were ready to go, and drove to the Kirk of the Hills PCA building, where the wedding was to be held at five. We were in plenty of time. The church turned out to be set in a luxurious neighborhood, neighborhoods of posh houses screened behind thick woods. The church was beautiful in a Classical way—a large porch lined with massive white columns, the doors open on the lobby. Inside, Kathryn and Joanna were managing the gifts; Tara was managing the guestbook. A whole pile of RUFfians were there: Kevin and Holly, JAH and Andrew, the Davids, Matt, Matlock, the Knorrs, and so on. Syneva, Amanda, and I slipped into the sanctuary and found seats near the front, right behind the Knorrs. The sanctuary was lovely, high-ceilinged, filled with late afternoon sunshine through long west-facing windows, clean, bright colors. A pianist played as people were seated.

As the time came, the pianist moved over to the organ and played the prelude. People continued to talk in low whispers. Then the family was seated, parents and grandparents, Jenny’s brother and Spencer’s brothers acting as ushers, then taking their places. Spencer, the other groomsmen, and John, enveloped in a black surplice, came onto the stage. The bridesmaids came down the aisle to Bach, dressed in satin royal blue ankle-length dresses: Rachel and Kali, the Knorr girls, then Ange, then AAB, then Jenny’s sisters, and Charis, last of all, in a little white dress, as flowergirl. Then Jenny herself came down the aisle on her father’s arm. We all rose as she entered the church. She was beaming, and her white satin train swept the red carpet, the jewels on her stiff encrusted bodice flashing as she passed through panes of sunshine. The ceremony was beautiful and simple, traditional. John presided, welcoming everyone, giving a rich but brief sermon on Christ’s passion for the church, and administering the vows. Once the rings had been exchanged, he gave Spencer and Jenny each an individual charge, reminiscing briefly about their early years at TU and their first counseling. During the charge to Jenny, John choked up, but I think very few people cried: Jenny and Spencer were too happy. Everyone cheered as they went down the aisle together. John gave the benediction, telling us all to “go in peace to the lobby”, at which point we adjourned with laughter.

We all spilled out into the lobby, leaving the sanctuary behind so that the wedding party could have photographs taken. We stood around in the lobby, everyone talking. Soon we left to go to the reception at the Elks Lodge just down the road. The reception room was big, full of round wooden tables, with windows on two sides, a bar at the front, a dance floor at the back, etc. It had been nicely decorated with some white netting and flowers and candles and such. The room gradually filled up. Of course it was a long process, waiting for the bride and groom to arrive, standing while they were seated, waiting in line to be greeted by the parents before getting our food from the buffet table, and so on.

It was a very happy time. Everyone was talking, laughing, enjoying themselves. The room was full. It was wonderful to look around and recognize so many people, and to see Jenny and Spencer together, finally able to make public their love. It had never been real to me before (and even still, Spencer looked young, the big ring on his hand strangely heavy), but seeing them together, touching and holding each other, it began to make sense. Our table talked about various esoteric things—questions of American citizenship and the presidency, brought up by Nicole and kept alive by Matt and Amanda (as Syneva reminded me, whispering in my ear, this is the RUF specialty). As people began to finish eating, they began to mix, getting up to talk to each other. Jenny and Spencer left their table to start making the rounds, and when Jenny beckoned, I went over to say hello. She gave me a big hug, my face pressed against the hard textured surface of her bodice, and we laughed together. Spencer also greeted me, and joked about getting to know Philip, and invited me to have a meal with them. They were both, of course, very popular, so I slipped away.

When Jenny and Spencer were seated again, DMo gave a toast for Spencer, and one of Jenny’s sisters gave a toast for her—both of them spoke well. There was a powerpoint presentation with pictures of Jenny and Spencer from when they were young, and then from their relationship together, bringing lots of laughter. There was cake, too, and at last the dance floor was opened. Swing dancing, mostly. It was fun to watch—Matt and Syneva, Matlock and Tara, Andrew and Jenny H. were some of the most adept couples on the floor, doing all sorts of fancy moves. Alisha and I danced together a bit, being fairly silly. The big room was beginning to empty. Someone changed the swing dance music, and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" started to play--everyone left the dance floor except Jenny and Spencer. This is "their song", the song that all of the RUFfians know as theirs thanks to an Art and Coffee performance back in Spencer's freshman year. We watched them dance to it, and laughed when they did a little bit of the ridiculously over-the-top choreography they'd done that night in Sharp Chapel.

When the song ended, everyone stood around, talking. DMac wanted to try Postease, so I stood to one side and watched. Tara and I went outside with Jenny for a little while. The evening was cool and fine. Jenny and Spencer were getting ready to go, so we said our good-byes. They’re going to Costa Rica for their honeymoon. Syneva, Amanda, Nicole, and I left and drove back to the hotel by about eleven o’clock. We were all tired.

This morning we started at about nine o'clock to drive back to Tulsa, Syneva's car and Denise's car. We drove through the day and reached Tulsa in the middle of the afternoon; from there, Syneva and I continued west, parting ways at the Cimarron Turnpike.

"well, I'm back" - samwise gamgee, "the lord of the rings"

Now Playing: Sandy scampering around the kitchen; my father reading The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tay.

I write now from the living room in the house on Monroe St., not from my desk on Elmwood Avenue.

I've been assisting this week at the Vacation Bible School (American version of Holiday Bible Club) my church is doing. This year we're in a daycare, using the top floor. Due to miscommunication, none of the daycare kids have come, to our disappointment, but we've had a fairly good group of very little kids anyway. They've been a lot of fun to work with. No riots yet, Emmaline, though I was attacked these past two mornings by a little blond ruffian with glasses and an amateur knowledge of tae kwon do.

Driving back from VBS this morning to pick up a forgotten item from the house, I found myself having to repeat over and over in my head, "Stay on the right! Stay on the right!" Amusing.

More amusement: My mother laughs at me every time I say, "Hiya!", and people stare at me twice. I had to repeat my order at Starbucks in the Newark airport for hot tea and a scone twice to the waitress at the counter, and, to keep me from being bored in the airport when I'd finished my tea and scone, I managed to convince a woman from Fife that I was properly from Belfast.

Some of the good things about being back: Not being cold anymore (!); discovering that my mother had got on the internet in order to find and fix two recipes that Claire's mother made for us at Sabbath day dinner; going through old books with Laura; playing with my cats, and catching up with friends here.

Yet I find myself struggling. Something small will remind me--a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of someone who looks a bit like Emmaline, the little wooden giraffe dangling from my purse given to me by Charlotte and Michaela at the airport, the thriller Claire sent with me to keep me from being bored on the flight--like when I first was walking around Queen's campus and kept expecting to see friends from the University of Tulsa. And I'll have to ask the question that I badgered Emmaline with all fall semester, "What are you thankful for now?", to keep myself from indulging in a string of vivid flashbacks.

I spent the Saturday after I returned and the Monday afternoon going through my things, not just the things I'd brought back (Logan was thankful to hear that I hadn't thrown away any of the things he'd so helpfully hauled from the minivan up to my room Friday night/Saturday morning), but everything. Old books, old clothes, old boxes, finding so many past incarnations of myself, like sorting through the left-behind shells of a hermit crab. In some ways, good memories to laugh over; in other ways, the "I'm a Christian kid" veneer makes the little evils even more disgusting.

Anyway, Laura was delighted with the books, and in true McCollum fashion, I worked my way through a grand total of three films in the process of turning the tip into a slightly more organized and streamlined landing spot.

This weekend I get to go to Jenny S. and Spencer's wedding, on the way joining forces with Syneva, Alisha, and Amanda. Woo! Road trip, fun times ahead, with VBS in Enid and going to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian with my dad, Logan, Jonathan, and maybe Elizabeth and Anna next Monday to look forward to.

pictures for Aunt Lisa

Belfast May-June2008

in case you wanted to know....

On Sabbath day I said good-bye to my church family at Trinity. It was a hard enough day that I didn't feel adequate to sleeping in the emptiness of Renwick, so Claire took pity on me, and I stayed one last night at her house. She took me to the train station in the morning on Monday, and we said good-bye there.

Back in Belfast, I tied off the odds and ends of daily life here: printed my last few journal entries, returned books to the library, closed my bank account, packed up the last few things left in Renwick, said good-bye to Liz.

Thankfully, though, life in Renwick wasn't quite over. Phil A., Naomi, Emmaline, and Clare, all from small group, came over to spend the day having a LOTR extended edition marathon. Phil had found a projector and speakers somewhere, and we turned the bare walls of Room 4 into a cinema, sitting on chairs, the stripped beds, and the hoovered floor. We watched The Fellowship of the Ring, ate lunch, watched The Two Towers, took a break to run errands (I mailed a postcard to Sarah and walked around Botanic Gardens one last time), and watched The Return of the King. It was half eleven when the last film finished.

We did a quick clean-up of the house. Naomi, Emmaline, and I washed the dishes; Phil packed up his gear. While Emmaline took Naomi home, I tidied our room and then waited in the dark common room, watching cars go by on the desolate street outside. Orange streetlights threw strange shadows on the grey walls. Emmaline came back for me, and we left the dark house behind us. On the way to Coleraine, we stopped at an Indian take-out on the Lisburn Road and ate in the car, sharing a sloppy mango dish with rice and naan bread.

Yesterday and today I've been helping Emmaline out with some of the chores round the house: cleaning the small flat in the garage for the Bulgarian farm workers who arrived this morning; moving furniture; hoovering and mopping floors; fixing tea last night; grocery shopping, and so on. This morning we've spent counting the church money from the past couple of weeks, and Emmaline is still busy punching numbers into a calculator to get the totals. It started to rain a little while ago, so we had to dash outside to take the towels and boiler suits off the clothesline.

Fun things, in between times. Last night before tea Erin taught me how to play dominoes on the trampoline (I'm hopelessly rubbish at it), while Massey dashed around the trampoline on the ground, barking. While Emmaline cleaned the flat last night, we watched the old Anne of Green Gables TV series, and we might bake banana bread this afternoon.

surprise

Now Playing: Bob Marley, "I Can See Clearly Now" (just a minute ago), and now Dvorak, Serenade for Strings, movement 1, "Moderato".

Sitting in the room in Renwick with the window open, drinking lemon ginger tea (slightly garlic-flavored thanks to Dean's escapade with garlic powder and the kettle), I'm looking at a blank wall. Emmaline's bed is stripped, the desk and bookshelves cleared, the pile of pillows and sleeping bags in the corner gone. I feel like a tiny island in the midst of the blankness, and crying has made my voice hoarse, though fortunately there's no one to hear. I feel rather like Eustace the dragon in The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader', crying his eyes out in a lonely valley under the moon.

However, such doleful meditations are not the purpose of this post, and I refuse to permit them to occupy more space. On to more pleasant things.

30 May 2008.

The day began for me at half six. Laura and Emmaline were both sound asleep, but sunshine was already slanting through the red curtains. It was depressing to wake up: the room was an absolute tip. I got up and dressed anyway, then woke the other two, and while they dressed, I worked on the task of packing my suitcases. Of course Logan and my father were already awake and breakfasted. We did manage to leave Renwick by about twenty to eight, though, packing my father's, Philip's, Laura's, and Logan's bags into the van. Emmaline drove us to the airport, first to George Best City Airport, where we dropped off Philip, and then to Belfast International Airport, where we left the other three.

Pulling out of the airport, Emmaline and I tried to decide what to do next. The morning was warm and sunny, the sky pale blue and hazy. We ended up in Ballymena after a couple of detours, through the sleepy town of Antrim, where bakeries were the only shops open, and church steeples loomed above steaming graveyards, and to Junction One, where all the shops were closed. In Ballymena, the town centre was already busy. The town centre is a confusing maze of one-way streets, all running at wrong angles, like the veins on the back of a hand. The warm sunshine slanted brightly between the buildings, catching the vivid colors on flowers blooming in pots. Emmaline and I walked into the town centre and went into a mall, where we ate breakfast at The Streat, a cafe that sells mostly sandwiches. We both had pancakes, and she had a strawberry milkshake, and I had tea, and we sat at a table in a corner where the sunshine streamed through big windows, and laughed and laughed, reliving the past few weeks.

After we'd eaten breakfast, we strolled around the mall a bit, completely relaxed. Then we walked around the town centre, window-shopping. Emmaline doesn't shop for clothes but for "gadgets" as she puts it. We went into Woodsides to poke around at the shelves of candy and racks of suitcases, and into Cameron's to look around on the showroom floors. We dandered about in the sunshine for awhile, too, then went back to the car and drove into Belfast.

Rachel still wasn't awake, so Emmaline and I, like the good friends we are, bounced into her room to get her up. Her room was dark, and while Emmaline sprawled all over her, I whisked open the curtains, making her curl up and squeal at the light. We teased and laughed her out of bed. Once Rachel was up, Emmaline and I dragged ourselves reluctantly upstairs to work on tidying our own disaster area. Emmaline put Mulan on her laptop. We deflated air mattresses, stripped beds, dumped sheets in piles, collected pillows, rolled up sleeping bags, and so on. Eventually, Catherine came downstairs so that the two of us could spend the afternoon shopping together. I said good-bye to Emmaline and Rachel, who happened to be in our room, and Catherine and I ran out together into the sunshine.

The early afternoon was wonderfully warm. Catherine and I walked down to Maggie May's on Botanic, chatting about the past week, nodding to Dr. H when we went by him at the library, saying hello to Andy M. when we passed him coming up Botanic, and laughing at people in Renwick. Maggie May's was crowded, as always. We sat at the table under the counter. Both of us ordered veggie burgers. The food was delicious. We shared memories of the past year and talked about the summer and the year ahead.

Lingering over our meal, we didn't leave the restaurant until almost two o'clock. We dandered down the road to Rusty Zip, a retro shop that Catherine wanted to show me just for the craic. It was a pretty amazing place, full of the weird, the wonderful, and the downright ugly. After a look round there, we walked on down toward city centre. The afternoon was becoming hot. The green lawn outside City Hall was full of people sunning themselves. Catherine and I walked on down and turned off on one of the side streets near Castlecourt. We stepped into Clinton's to buy birthday cards and postcards, and paused on the way out to admire the fruits and vegetables spread in boxes at the grocer's next door. Then we went into Fat Face to look round. Fat Face is Catherine's favorite shop.

From there we walked on to a sports shop to look for rugby shirts. Finding nothing, and feeling very out-of-place, we went down to Castlecourt, where we both "had joy" in Lifestyle Sports. The sale rack yielded a rugby shirt for each of us (though we both had to buy boys' size 8!). From there we walked back up Queen Street toward City Hall. We turned off partway down to visit Jessops to buy a camera battery per Emmaline's request. Having waited in a long queue and having had no success, we went down the stairs to Victoria Square, where we spent awhile browsing in Accessorize, admiring the pretty jewelry. From there we walked back up the street to M&S, where I ran in to buy Percy Pigs to take back to the States. The streets were dusty and hot in the sunshine. Everyone was out in sleeveless tops and shorts, the guys without shirts at all, the sun beating down on the dirty pavements. Catherine and I walked back up to Renwick.

Coming back down Elmwood Avenue, we met Naomi and stopped to chat. I said good-bye to her, hoping to see her on Monday for our LOTR party (organized by Phil). Back in Renwick, I dumped my things (the room was still an absolute tip, even more so) and ran out. Catherine, Emmaline, Rachel, and Daphne were all hanging about the stairs to see me off. I thought Emmaline's enormous grin, as she poked her head over the banisters, was rather suspicious--she was positively beaming at me. Rachel asked me how long I thought I'd be tonight when I went to Claire's house, and I said not long, I thought. I said good-bye to them all and ran to catch the 17:18 train from City Hospital.

Calvin was waiting for me at Mossley West, sitting in the car with the sunroof open. Walking up the driveway to the back door, I could smell one of Mrs. W's wonderful roast dinners. Claire, Calvin, and I sat in the living room for a little while, fooling around--Claire straightened Calvin's hair. Then Mrs. W drafted the three of us to help fix tea. Calvin made applesauce; I made egg salad sandwiches to take to a church meeting tonight; Claire set the table in the conservatory (glass greenhouse-type structure on the back of the house, warm and full of late afternoon sunshine). We sat down to tea at about quarter to seven--chicken, potatoes, and peas, with a wonderful chocolate pudding to follow. Matthew showed up to spend the evening with Calvin. Claire had warned me that we were going on a "surprise mystery journey" this evening, and decided that Calvin was allowed to come and bring Matthew. We helped clear the table.

Claire, Calvin, Matthew, and I left at about half seven. The evening was still warm and full of sunshine. Claire asked me a couple of times if I knew where we were going, but I protested that I had absolutely no idea. I knew that we were going into Belfast, and at first I thought we were going to Renwick, but we turned off too soon and took another motorway around the edge of Belfast. We went past the Ormeau embankment across from Queen's, then turned off eastward--I recognized the way as leading us toward Ravenhill, and was busy being fascinated by the usual Belfast-style hodgepodge of buildings, houses, churches, and shops from all different eras and styles, when Claire asked Calvin if he had a jacket. When Calvin handed his jacket up, Claire told me to put it over my head. Very suspicious that some sort of ridiculous prank was going on, I did so, and spent the last ten minutes of the trip alternately staring at my knees and laughing in confusion.

When we reached our destination, Claire told me to keep the jacket over my head. She came round and opened the car door, leading me by the hand. As soon as the car door opened, I was hit with a strong smell of cow, which completely bewildered me. Claire led me down steps, around a corner, and into a long silent place full of sunshine. We stood in the doorway for a minute, I by this time utterly confused, very slightly afraid. All of a sudden, Claire took off the jacket, and at the same time I heard Phil Dunwoody shout the opening phrase from Lion King--in a blink I saw him sitting at the far end of a big church hall behind a table full of sound equipment, with a mic in one hand. But that was a split second; instantly all I was aware of was complete shock as the door down the middle of the hall opened and just about all my favorite people from here came running out toward me, laughing, cheering, clapping. In that instant, the first single thought that crossed my mind was, "This is what Heaven will be like!"

I was completely stunned, amazed, delighted, overwhelmed, and any other synonyms you can think of for sheer mind-boggling joy. They were all there--even people I'd already said good-bye to, like Amy, and people I thought I'd missed, like Emma and the ones from Ballyclabber. Everyone was laughing at me. I suppose I looked like a total fool, standing there speechless and grinning as they all crowded round, but there wasn't much other way for me to react: my laughter was almost tears, and an enormous hug from Emmaline was about the only thing that kept me from bursting out crying for the first ten seconds.

Fairly soon Phil got the dancing underway. We danced the cha-cha slide, at which I was rubbish; we danced the Waves of Tory (to dance music--techno, that is); Strip the Willow, during which everyone got heartily out-of-breath; Honeymoon Circle (Alister was my partner, so when we got out we sat and chatted, and I poked Emmaline every time she went by); Long Road to Tipperary (which Rosemary and I almost won, and during which I accidentally stepped on Rosemary's toe countless times); Y.M.C.A.; fives-and-sixes (at which I was also rubbish), and so on. One song Phil played, and no one got up to dance, so he and Steven danced in the corner, being absolutely ridiculous, while everyone sat on the chairs round the edge of the room and laughed heartily at them.

Between dances, I sat and chatted with people. By the end of the dancing, were all hot and exhausted. Some of the girls went to put out food; the rest of us went outside to cool down. The boys made a circle in the grassy lot beside the church and played football. Just behind the church (the hall, as it turned out, was part of Knockbracken RPC) were open fields full of dairy cattle, and beyond them to the south and east green hills rolled away, darkening to blue in the distance. Overhead the sky was clear blue, but in the west, where the sun was setting behind the ridge of hills that ends in Cave Hill, there were a few scaly clouds, turned magenta and grey and gold in the sunset. The cool country smells were all round us. I stood outside chatting with Claire and Beulah, with Amy and Alister, until it was time to go inside for refreshments.

The hall was beginning to get cold, so the door to the outside was shut, and someone switched on the lights. Sarah W. and Charlotte had decorated the hall with paperchains and pink-and-white balloons. A lot of the girls had brought food, and there were drinks also. I sat between Charlotte and Dean, attempting to talk to both of them.

When people had mostly finished, Emmaline took the mic and thanked everyone for coming. Then Catherine and Linsey presented me with two brightly-wrapped packages, gifts from Renwick (!). Andy M. got up and held a devotional time, reading Psalm 39:4-7 and talking about the brevity of life and the importance of placing God as the first priority. He prayed, and after his prayer, we clapped round to thank everyone who'd organized the event.

People began to leave. I opened the presents, though, and sat with a little cluster of people around me, admiring them--a calendar, each page made by a person in Renwick, with pictures from the past year, and a big picture book, Northern Ireland from the Air. One-by-one, I said good-bye to Emma, to Robert, to Steven, to Mark and Connor and Steelo, to Alister, to Mike, to Beulah and Rosemary and Amy, to Charlotte, Sarah W., and Michaela. Heather was so excited when she heard that I was coming to Trinity on Sabbath day that she nearly strangled me.

Emmaline, Linsey, Rachel, Daphne, Catherine, and I piled into the van. Rachel and Daphne were completely hyper and made a running joke out of not having locked the back door (which they had) until Emmaline threatened to scream if she heard it again. We nearly got lost on the way back, and at Daphne's suggestion almost went the wrong way up a one-way road, which made Emmaline frustrated, but we got back to Renwick all in one piece nonetheless. The Big Dipper was swinging over the house as we stepped out of the car.

Inside, the kitchen was a disaster area, and the common room wasn't much better. I was heading up to bed almost immediately, so I said good-bye to Daphne in the kitchen, fighting back tears. Yet I ended up back in the common room for another hour at least. Phil A., Mike, Dean, Jonny, Matthew, Samuel, Andy M., Rachel, Daphne, Catherine, and Emmaline were all sitting around. I downloaded pictures to my computer and sat flipping through them with Rachel, Daphne, and Catherine laughing over my shoulder while Emmaline quietly fell asleep under a pillow.

It was almost two o'clock in the morning. I tried to tease Emmaline up to bed. At last, I waved everyone good-bye and good-night.

second visit, day 8 (adventures continued)

Now Playing: Strongbad, on Matthew's laptop, courtesy Philip, watched by Daphne and Laura.

29 May 2008. I was up and ready this morning by about ten o'clock. EMM was up, too, gradually--she lay in bed and we had a half-amused conversation until she finally hauled herself out of bed. The two of us tickled L awake, then went downstairs for breakfast. While EMM worked on fixing a pavlova for tea tonight, Rachel came in and started to make Mars bar and apple sandwiches for us to take for lunch today, and I sat at the table, eating leftover apple crumble (joining the dark side!) for breakfast. It was at least half eleven before we were ready to go, our sandwiches, crisps, and apples packed into Logan's backpack. EMM came with the five of us today. The morning was mostly sunny, humid, huge spreading grey clouds stretching over the sky. I directed us onto the M2, and from there EMM took over, both of us sitting in the back seat and chatting cheerily between giving directions. We drove to Ballymena, and from there took signs to Slemish, a rather random mountain in the middle of Northern Ireland. We turned off onto a honeycomb of narrow country roads, between steep walls of grass topped with hedges, overgrown with white Queen Anne's lace. Sometimes we drove under arches of trees, and as the roads wound upward, the hedges became drystone walls, patched together. Slemish reared above us, the core of an old volcano, like the huge stump of an ancient tree, looming grey-green against the sky. There was a small car park at the bottom of the mountain, and we climbed out of the car and started our hike. The lower slope of the mountain was springy turf, grass and heather, scattered with grey stones and twisted hawthorn trees. Warm misty sunshine lingered over the fields below us, and the thin insistent sounds of sheep bleating. We scrambled up over the stones and stopped to rest halfway, EMM puffing and blowing, under a hawthorn tree. Then we went on up, Logan springing on ahead, D silently and slowly bringing up the rear, P, L, and EMM joking and mucking about in the middle. I scrambled on behind Logan. We took a path that curved around and took us to the northern edge of the mountain's crest, and from there we climbed on up. Cottongrass, tormentil, bog myrtle, daisies, heather, and grasses, in all sorts of shades, grew on the ridge. A smooth run up to the top, and we were there, at the peak, crowned with grey rocks. The view was lovely, like standing above a great map. To the north, east, and south, the land was flung out around us in a great green-gold arc, green fields, fields of yellow rape, straw-colored fields cut for silage, criss-crossed by hedges and fences. Lines of trees marked roads or clustered around houses, and the green places were freckled with white sheep. To the south, on the edge of sight, was the grey profile of Cave Hill; to the west was the line of the Antrim Hills. To the west the land was wilder. Heaths, moors, brown heather, dun and tan, barren places, where not even sheep grazed, and where the land rose up in crested cliffs, beyond which the grey sea could be guessed. The early afternoon was hazy, grey-blue veiling the horizons, great low grey clouds rolling over the sky. Light rippled over the green land, gold flowing over the green, a land like shaken foil, lovely with the warm peace of quiet places. We ate lunch at the top, Mars bar and apple sandwiches, crisps, apples, EMM, L, P, and I joking around. We lingered there, and took the walk down the southern side of the mountain, scrambling and leaping, sliding on damp places. The endless songs of birds filled the air. The air at the bottom was warm and still. We piled into the car again, and EMM and I decided that it would be fun to go to Portglenone Forest, so EMM directed D there, through Ballymena (crazy roundabouts!). As we were driving along a forested way, EMM said, "This looks like Portglenone Forest," and just then, there was a sign for it. We turned in and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the quiet paths in the forest. The forest was absolutely beautiful. Still, empty, silent, waiting. Great tall trees, beech and pine and sycamore, standing barely lapped in undergrowth. Ferns, bluebells, and moss grew over silver roots. The expanses of bluebells were amazing, curling stems hung with tiny purple flowers--the only trouble was that we'd arrived at the end of the season, and most of the flowers were withered on their stalks. Our feet made only quiet noises on the paths, covered with ruddy pine needles and bits of bark and nutshells. As the path curved toward fields, a few cows stared sleepily at us on the other side of a fence. Overhead beech trees made living interlinked tapestries, lovely lush patterns of leaves supported on silver stems. We found an open glen where huge mature rhododendron bushes were growing, deep red, pink, and magenta. There was a well under one bush, where Logan and L amused themselves fishing for coppers in the detritus under the clear water. We walked on and found ourselves at the edge of the River Bann eventually--opaque green water flowing slowly between the tree-hung banks. We joked around more. L and EMM were being absolutely ridiculous, and P was joining in, their voices echoing in the quiet woodlands. D and Logan walked silently behind. It was so refreshing to walk in the woods--to run ahead and horse around with the three of them, shoulder wrestling, tickle matches, and such silliness--and then fall back, strolling slowly behind the whole group, enjoying the luxury of green silence above and around me. We came up the path back to the car park. Logan, D, and I sat at a picnic table while the other three fished for coppers in a mucky little waterfall out of sight. We left at about five o'clock, and it was nearly six as we were coming back into the house. When we got back to RH, EMM, L, and I started to fix tea in the kitchen. Amy came in to help us by washing dishes. While L worked on putting whipped cream on the pavlova, I cooked the mince and sliced carrots, and EMM peeled potatoes. We made shepherd's pie with peas, corn, and carrots in addition to the mince and potatoes. I got P and Logan to carry one of the tables outside, and they helped us set up chairs. CMAM, Amy, and L helped me serve the food, and eventually ten of us sat down to tea outside in the yard by the car park: Logan, Amy, D, EMM, Rachel, Daphne (who's back, with great rejoicing), CMAM, L, P, and me. The sky overhead was clear, and the evening was warm and still. Conversation flowed up and down the long table. After we'd eaten, Rachel and I decorated the pavlova with a classy (if I do say so myself :o) pattern of mandarin oranges and strawberries, and carried it outside for everyone to admire before we sliced and served it. We lingered over the meal. Afterward, while everyone else helped clear away, I stood with Amy and CMAM in the hall, chatting. At last I said good-bye to Amy: this will be the last time I'll see her. We said a cheerful good-bye to each other. We all drifted into the common room and sat there with Samuel and Matthew. D and Logan both went to bed when we got back. P was watching videos on YouTube with Matthew, Daphne, and L, while Samuel and Rachel were playing draughts. EMM had gone on an errand. We all just mucked about for awhile.

second visit, day 5 (more adventures)

Now Playing: The Mask of Zorro.

26 May 2008. I woke up tired again this morning. I got up, did my devotions, woke L, and went downstairs for breakfast. Of course D and Logan were already up. While I ate my breakfast, they made PB&J sandwiches for us for lunch today. We chatted with Rachel and Samuel, who both drifted in. D had to wake P. We were finally ready to go by about quarter to eleven. Emma said good-bye to us as we went out the back door to the car park—she was sitting in the sunshine, revising. I piloted us down Sandy Row, onto the M2, and from there to the Antrim Road, where we turned into Cave Hill Country Park. The road wound up Cave Hill, winding through green woods, huge rhododendron bushes on either side. We parked just outside Belfast Castle and stopped there to look around. The castle is small, fairly recent, built in the 1800s, I think. Behind it are some small, neatly-arranged ornamental gardens—a fountain casting sparkling arms in the sunshine, tessellated pavements with cat patterns, a little patch of herbs in a warm corner, topiaries, crimson poppies like fine silk. We went inside the castle, which is a honeycomb of small rooms, used mostly for weddings and meetings. We climbed a long tightly-wound spiral staircase up the main tower to the visitors’ centre on the third floor, where there were displays about the flora and fauna and history of the area, and we had views out of narrow windows onto Belfast Lough. The rooms were empty, quiet, still patches of sunshine lying on grey carpet. At last we went back outside and started our climb up Cave Hill. We took the Cave Hill trail, the trailhead near the car park. At first we climbed up through the forest. Vetch, Queen-Anne’s-lace, and other yellow clover bloomed on tall stalks on either side. The sunshine lay warm on the long green grass, warm smells eddying up toward us. Then the woods closed over us, cool and green, sycamore, birch, beech, and oak, thick canopies of green-gold rippling overhead. A few pine trees. The path wound round the bottom shoulder of Cave Hill, then sprang out of the woods onto the steep tumbled slopes. We scrambled up a long dusty path to an actual cave in the side of one of the cliffs. It wasn’t too impressive: a ragged scoop out of the cliffside, painted with graffiti inside, and reeking of stale cigarette smoke. Logan, P, L, and I climbed up to it, but D sat on a knoll, surveying the scene. From there, Logan found a narrow trail springing straight up the side of the cliff, and he went for it eagerly. The rest of us followed. The trail went up steeply, straight up, between the two big shoulders of the hill. One last scramble brought us up over the edge—I was up first, and my heart rose. A great sweep of moor spread before me, with the huge sky close overhead. Brown heather and dun grass, swept over by the wind, great buffeting sweeps of wind. We climbed and ran over the brow of the hill, the great knoll on the top, McArt’s Fort. From there all my best-loved places could be seen: the wind generators on the Antrim hills to the north, the stack of the old linen mill near Trinity RPC, the tower of the power plant near Carrick Castle on the far side of Belfast Lough, the green trees hiding Belfast Zoo below, the creamy crescent of beach on the other side of Belfast Lough showing Helen’s Bay and Crawfordsburn, the two yellow splay-legged shapes of the H&W cranes, the white dome of the Odyssey, the tower of City Hospital near Queen’s, and out beyond, in the hazy pale distance, the pinnacle of Scrabo Tower near Newtownards, and away out beyond that, the high forbidding slopes of the Mournes, rearing like the body of a monstrous snake on the edge of the world. We ran about on the hilltop, and D found a steep small hollow where we at last sheltered from the wind. We sat down there on the short green grass and D and Logan brought out the snacks they’d carried up in their backpacks. I lay on my back on the warm grass, looking up at the sky. White clouds skirled high over the pale blue, and swallows flashed, black above, copper beneath, dipping and turning, wheeling over our warm place. Wind ruffled the green grass running up to the lip of the dell. At last we moved on. We found another path leading down, after a false start, and followed it down around the bend of the hill, down around its foot, past the cave, and into the woods again. It was about two o’clock. We sat down on a green lawn outside the gates to the castle, under a big pine tree, to eat lunch. The lawn was steeply sloped, scattered with people sitting about, eating, sunning, etc. We ate our PB&J and crisps (everyone makes fun of me for liking salt and vinegar), then drove back to RH. We were back by three o’clock or so. Rachel and EMM were chatting in the common room, and I bounced in and gave EMM a hug, and we wrestled and had a pillowfight to show how happy we were to see each other. :o) After awhile, D, L, and I went to Tesco (we go through bread at an amazing rate!)—EMM had promised to make dessert for a couple of nights. The afternoon was still beautiful, clear and sunny. Back at the house, we lazed around in the common room for awhile. P stole my laptop; I read the latest “World” that D had brought over. L and I fixed tea together: I made chicken and directed her while she fixed raspberry surprise. We had tea at about seven o’clock (the boys went outside and played ultimate with Ian, Matthew, and Andy M.). CMAM and EMM ate with us—good fun, EMM, P, and I horsing around plenty, rehearsing old jokes. After tea, she went to study, and now D, P, L, Logan, and I are sitting in the common room, watching The Mask of Zorro. Ridiculous. The evening is becoming overcast, but still fully light. (9:24 p.m.) – ERN (FB)

second visit, day 3 (first day of real adventures)

24 May 2008. I woke up at seven o’clock. Rachel came and tapped on our door to wake EMM up—EMM tumbled out of bed, still in her clothes, and ran downstairs to start studying. I dressed, did my devotions, then went downstairs for breakfast. D and Logan had already eaten, of course. EMM was sitting in the kitchen, studying. P and L got up eventually. We all fixed lunches and then walked to City Hospital to catch the 8:40 train to Coleraine. For the first half of the journey, I sat with P, L, and Logan. P played songs for me on his MP3 player. He and Logan joked around. Then I went to sit beside D, who’d taken a separate bench. The lush green fields slid past. Everything here looks so much fairer now that early summer is here. White hawthorn, yellow furze, deep green grass, blue sky. The day was perfect, clear, a slight N breeze. On the train there was a little girl traveling with some older relatives. She kept chirping, “The lady dropped her handbag!” to a woman who must’ve been her aunt, and staring at me with big blue eyes. The platform at Coleraine was crowded, but Mr. M was there to meet us, combed and showered, with a warm smile. He drove us out to the farm. The boys were out moving calves between fields, but Erin, Eleanor, and Mrs. M were all in the house. Mrs. M had laid out the table with cups and saucers, and we had tea and scones—delicious. The McCollums made us very welcome. The boys came in eventually, and after we’d finished our drinks, Eleanor badgered all of us with her usual enthusiasm to come outside and bounce on the trampoline. I stayed inside, though, to get directions from Mrs. M. We pored over a map together, she marking the places of interest in neon highlighter. Mr. and Mrs. M had to leave for a funeral at half eleven—I said good-bye to Mrs. M, perhaps the last time I’ll see her. After they left, Erin, Eleanor, and the boys gave us a tour of the farm. Quiet at midmorning, between milkings. Swallows flying in and out under the slanting metal roofs, the smells of grass and molasses mingling in the silage sheds, the sound of the calves. One of the cows had just given birth, so we got to watch the newborn calf take its first steps—incredibly shaky, its legs splayed, its back humped. We all bounced on the trampoline in the back yard, even D. The wind rushed in the sycamore trees and raised rich smells from the grass. The kids played around. I was weary to the bone already…. P and L played basketball in the farmyard while Eleanor chatted with Logan. We said good-bye and left at about half twelve. Mrs. M had marked out the Causeway Coastal Route on the map, and this we followed. The Ms had ensured D on their minivan. D was tense, driving the narrow country roads between the high hedges. We drove past Glenmanus RPC and turned off onto the East Strand. The day was perfect, warm, sunny, hazy, the sea completely calm. Small waves came lapping up onto the shore, teal far out, aquamarine and white nearby. We played around, barefoot, running in and out of the cold water. P and Logan skipped stones; L found a few shells. A couple of little boys were body-boarding. We spent a long while on the beach, then drove on through Portrush, taking the narrow A2, out onto the cliffs, and stopped at Dunluce Castle. The stairway to the bay underneath the castle was open (it’s been closed both other times, to EMM’s great disappointment), so we went exploring under the castle. A steep flight of steps down the cliff-face to a deep steep-sided bay of grass in between the mainland and the castle peninsula. We could glimpse the cave underneath the castle’s peninsula, a low-ceilinged long affair. To Logan’s disappointment it was off limits. P and L scrambled up one of the steep knolls. The sunshine was warm in the deep bay, the wind running down the hill in the long grass, and crows flying out of the ruined stones overhead, wheeling and crying against the clear sky. White butterflies danced over the grass, over purple vetch blooming in the sunshine. After awhile we drove on to the Giant’s Causeway. The afternoon was still pristine. At the Causeway, we ate lunch in the car, then took the cliff path to the Causeway. Glorious day: the path running between the furze bushes was warm, sunshine on arms and neck, cool breeze in my face, cattle and sheep grazing to the right, steep drop and blue sea to the left. We took the cliff across and down, down, down. At the bottom, in the huge bay of the coast, we scrambled around over the rocks. The sea was farther out than I’ve ever seen it before, perfectly calm. Most of the rocks were exposed, so we climbed quite far out, to places normally covered by the great waves. In still warm tidal pools we found prawn larvae squirting from side to side, and orange and burgundy anemones, and long rubbery kelp leaves, and clams and barnacles. It was beautiful, poking about among the rocks. We lingered…. The Causeway itself was mostly exposed. L and I climbed all the way out to the farthest tip, our feet crunching on a crust of white barnacles on the farthest rocks. I stood silently, mesmerized, watching the waves seep and slurp at the stones, kelp leaves weaving in the dark water. The sea was so many colors today: bright aqua in the shallows; copper on the kelp beds; teal and royal blue far out; aquamarine at the very edge, in the curls of the breaking waves. As usual, it was interesting to hear all the different accents—French, Eastern European, lots of British. We walked up the road (usually take the bus) to the tourist centre at the top of the cliffs. It was four o’clock. From the Causeway, we took the A2 on north and east. We drove past Sheep Island View and stopped at Carrick-a-Rede but didn’t go in. We drove on and on, taking the route EMM, CMAM, and I had taken back during inter-semester break. The land was so different now, a completely different face than it had worn in January. The highway wound through tiny towns, Ballintoy, Cushendall, Glenarm, Glenariff, like white beads strung down the road. The road wound up to the Glens of Antrim—highlands that had been windswept moors, grey and brown, barren, full of pools of grey rainwater, hung with mist, were now copper and dun, heather and furze, long grasses bowing in the fresh wind and sunshine. We drove through one of the country parks, dark evergreens on either side, and from there the road began to twist down. We drove along the edge of one of the glens, the place where CMAM had whipped round her hairpin bend, now not slick with rain, but instead under a shimmering canopy of green-and-gold sycamore leaves, the trees arching over the highway. D took in his breath at the scenery. It was lovely. At the mouths of the glens, where the valley came down to the sea, would be a cluster of white buildings, a village, usually each with its harbor. Then the road would wind round the steep face of the glen, and curve into another valley, and then another steep bend, and then another valley, headland and valley, headland and valley…. Green fields on the steep slopes, interspersed with thatch-yellow fields where silage had been cut, hazy gold behind us in the late afternoon sunshine. To the left, the deep blue of the sea, cropped with whitecaps. Seagulls skipped from wave to wave. I saw a tiny island with a lighthouse on it far out toward Scotland. It was beautiful…. Serene, quiet, the highways mostly empty, the villages silent, the sunshine lingering over a still land, like driving through a photograph. At last we reached Larne, and there we turned off onto the A8, which eventually joined up with the M2, and took us into Belfast. I navigated us back to RH. D was relieved to be safely in RH. I started to fix tea in the kitchen at quarter to seven, shortly after we’d returned—Chinese beef and noodles. Logan came in to ask if he could help; P crept in quietly and sat down in the corner with his book, Journey to Ixtlan. We had tea, the five of us, joking around. After D and Logan had washed the dishes, we all gathered in Room 4. D led us in family worship. Then D and Logan went downstairs to read. P borrowed my laptop, but L insisted that we listen to a Gunsmoke episode online while she sat in the window and knitted. I lay on my bed and read the next O’Malley mystery, The Protector, borrowed this morning while we were at their house. At nine o’clock, I told L to take a shower and moved downstairs to the common room. Logan and P are sitting in here, chatting with Dean about mountains, cars, and environmentalism in the States. Dean is being mostly polite, with only a little of his usual sarcasm. Clouds are coming down from the north.

talk talk talk

Now Playing: No one. They're all revising (theoretically).

A certain person has requested another post. Don't have much to say, I'm afraid. I went to the library tonight and found a copy of the Kalevala on a dark shelf in an unlit alcove. I wonder if any of the Native American tribes have epic poetry, and if they put the same weight on words as the Old English poets did. I know they have stories, I just can't find them, aside from the one slim volume that my grandparents gave me ages ago, with odd stories from the Lakota about humanoid animals.

A search on the internet has only turned up gruesome Pawnee religious rites, though one interesting fact is that the Pawnees constructed their longhouses so that they could see the Pleiades through the smokehole. Apparently their life was tied closely to the observance of celestial bodies.

That's a strange phrase: "celestial bodies". If you didn't know much about English, you'd think it meant human bodies that had been modified in some way so that they were "heavenly" or shining or able to fly. Maybe superheroes should be "celestial bodies", not stars, planets, asteroids, and so on. Though of course we have a way of calling people who excel "stars" anyway. Then again, it reminds me of C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" and the Star's daughter at the end. In the world to which Narnia belongs, stars are bodies.

So it's the Kalevala now. I understand, just from reading the introduction, where Tolkien got the other half of his mythology. Middle Earth turns out to be a crossbreed between Old English and Finnish. The Finnish languages and names, even the spelling and pronunciation, have a familiar ring because I've encountered them already in Sindarin and Quendi. The work promises to be heavy reading, perhaps badly translated into Modern English verse, but if I managed to slog through my thick volume of prose Sagas of Icelanders last summer, I can get through this, and the language is much nearer to home, being part of my linguistic heritage thanks to Middle Earth, than the strange Scandinavian names of the characters in the sagas.

I wonder why C.S. Lewis chose to fill the world in which Narnia exists with so much Greek mythology, and Tolkien chose traditions completely different. Ironic, in a way: Narnia seems much younger than Middle Earth, but the versions of Greek legends we have are far older than the versions of Beowulf and the Kalevala. Apparently oral poets were still making songs in Finnish in the fifteenth century A.D., and Beowulf was written down around 800 A.D., long after Ovid and Homer.

I also wonder how these old legends might interplay with postmodern theories about language. It's interesting that in Scandinavian mythology, runes were so important. Odin lost an eye, they say, in order to buy the power to write. For an oral culture one can only imagine how powerful writing would seem. In Beowulf, runes written on a sword cause Hrothgar to unearth a whole new mythic world, sparking one of the tangents so difficult for contemporary readers of Beowulf to endure.

Postmodern poets put such an emphasis on words themselves and on exploring subjective ways to shape meaning. I've heard professors say that the question is, as in the quote from Alice that used to be on the cover of my Wordly Wise books, "Whether you can make words mean so many different things". The difficulty is that their "poetry" so-called makes words meaningless. The quest for meaning makes it disintegrate into strings of words without punctuation or reference point. One of my professors wisely advised a sort of poetry that forces the reader to deal with unusual word combinations but pauses along the way to let the reader get a foothold in the familiar before leaping away again.

Is it possible for legends and oral poetry to have something to contribute to the postmodern confusion over meaning and who has authority to say what word means what? I can agree with the postmodernists, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E people, and all that, that it is good to be aware of words, as one is aware of one's physical surroundings, to be aware of their ranges of meanings. But I don't want to let it flake apart into meaninglessness, discarding the idea that words can have meaning and do, by consensus, have definite meanings, no matter where you are. A cat is still a cat: but the connotations will by necessity be different for every person. I simultaneously think of Mandy and a tiger; Rosemary will probably think, "Unwanted two a.m. serenade", and Elizabeth, on the other side of the Atlantic, "Sneezes and itches."

How does an awareness of words themselves shape stories, communication, everyday life? Textbooks, news flashes, movies, novels?

The problem, of course, is that no one really cares. Or rather: No one is aware that they care. When you start to use a word that means one thing in one place in another place, and the people there don't understand you, you begin to realize that the question of words as embodying a variety of meanings actually does have practical implications for everyday life. It can inhibit communication; it can also provide hours of hilarity, or a new perspective on a serious topic.

So why poetry? Because I think it provides a forum for the most directly self-aware discussion of the question. You can sit down and explore meanings in a poem in ways that would definitely be annoying on BBC news. On the other hand, most people don't have a patience to consider the effect the language of a poem is having on them in this much detail.

But there's hope, in an odd sort of way. Doing a paper on Renaissance English made me realize how similar linguistically our era is to the Renaissance, especially in reference to American English, which apparently has the highest coinage rate. English speakers are drawing in new words, creating new vocabulary, exploring new registers, in ways similar to those used during the Renaissance with its demand for new vocabulary to name new commodities from Europe, exotic creatures from the New World, and new ideas drawn from emerging Classical philosophies and Reformation theology. In some ways, we are in a similar position, forced to come up with new vocabulary for internet and computer technologies, trying to deal with globalization, interacting rapidly with other cultures, and creating new subcultures, each one demanding its own range of vocabulary. The hope comes when you realize that the Renaissance produced some of the greatest modern English authors: Shakespeare, Donne, Milton. Perhaps new linguistic self-awareness will result in a similar flowering....

Ah, well, I'll just keep chasing this particular problem by the tail, round and round. Probably end up in knots.

It's about time for Rachel's e-mail break, which means my laptop will be needed soon.

news flash: serious outbreak of contagious disease in Renwick House

Now Playing: "An Ancient Muse" by Loreena McKennitt. Track 3, "Caravanserai".

Warning: Rosemary, you'll need a full-fledged dictionary for this one.

Tonight at tea Andy M., a second-year medical student apparently exercising his knowledge prior to his exams, diagnosed Renwick House with the clinical condition Examination Related Insanity, or, in layman's terms, ERI.

The Warden's reaction was reported to be: "I'm pretty sure I have 'I' year round!"

The chief symptom of this disease seems to be, in Renwick’s case, increased gregariousness on the part of most residents (though for some this is followed by periods of extreme aloofness), as demonstrated by the following examples.

A group of students gathered outside in the car park around one of the kitchen tables, which, having been removed for the barbecue a week ago, has become a permanent fixture in the area behind the kitchen and has been covered with notes, binders, laptops, cups, and empty food containers. Said students have been observed spending all day sitting outside around this table and on the concrete nearby, "studying", some of them leaning against the tyres of the cars parked nearby, others sitting with their feet propped up on the low brick wall between the car park and the back area. In order to control the unruly mob, the Warden has instituted three rules: No Talking, You Must Write More Than Fifteen Words (Emmaline!), and We Go For Ice Cream at Four O'Clock (direct quote from the Warden herself: "Revision is all about the food!").

This final rule has been kept religiously by a selection of Renwick girls for the past two days, specifically the Warden, Emmaline, Linsey, Catherine, and the author of this humble blog, with additions from outside Renwick (Sarah W. and Rosemary), who have been seen marching down Elmwood Avenue in the late afternoon for the past two days to Botanic, where they have queued with half of the rest of Belfast's population at the red ice cream van parked beside the Tropical Ravine. Said collection of girls has been seen dandering back to the house licking ninety-nines, munching Magnums, and eating ice lollies.

In fact, the symptoms of disease seem to be most pronounced in the late afternoon. Just today residents were observed setting up a volleyball net in the car park next door to Renwick's, having tied the net to Renwick's high metal fence on one side, and on the other side having stacked half-a-dozen kitchen chairs on top of a large rubbish bin, and tied the net to the chairs' legs. A lively game of volleyball ensued, with Andy L., Allison, and Matthew against Rachel, Ian, and Andy M. Though afterward Rachel complained of swollen hands and Matthew sent the volleyball crashing into a full cup of tea, baptizing Ian's medical notes, otherwise the residents seemed to extract a great deal of pleasure out of inflicting vigorous wallops on the aforementioned innocent object of their sport as it flew back and forth over the net in a haze of concrete dust in the late afternoon sunshine.

It was noted during the course of the volleyball match that for some reason the disease has prompted all the boys in the house to wear matching reflective sunglasses, a strange manifestation of the malady.

While not all the residents of the house have been quite so seriously ill as to spend all day sitting outside, most of those present have at least spent meal times outside. At lunch and tea, nearly everyone has made an appearance, lounging in the sunshine, eating, dozing, and sunbathing, an indication of the contagiousness of this serious disease. As further sign of the grave condition of the inmates of the house, the conversation at such times turns on completely trivial topics: the influence of Andy M.'s yogurt with seeds on the digestive system, Emmaline's purportedly strange middle name, and Matthew's theory that "if I can't see it, it doesn't exist" in response to Rachel's questions on the shared properties of wind, the Holy Spirit, quarks, leptons, and gravitons have all been discussed at points in the not-too-remote past. In addition, a great deal of mockery of dialectical differences has also surrounded mealtimes. One resident (wouldn't know who this would be, now would we?) has been observed laughing hysterically over the use of "while" in phrases such as "A while good time" and "A while lot", and correcting the pronunciation feel for fail by her not-so-innocent roommate, as well as drawing great satisfaction from mimicking the use of glottal stops in the Warden's pronunciation of words such as butter and water.

Meals indeed seem to be prolonged by the disease. Certain girls, namely the Warden and the author of this post, were seen sitting in the kitchen drinking tea and eating biscuits for half-an-hour after their appointed time to return to their studies, and had to be soundly rebuked by Andy L. for such procrastination.

Yet another symptom observed in the house has been a sudden rash of pranks played on the Warden, executed by certain of the boys. As someone in the house said, "They have too much time on their hands!" Whether this outburst of misapplied creativity is due to an excessive amount of hours in the day or to the madness induced by disease cannot be acertained; however, it is certain that strings of toilet paper, vaseline, ladders, and boys' boxers have all appeared in the Warden's demesne at one point or another, to her disgust.

Another bothersome indication of the disease has been the pile-up of dirty dishes in the house sinks. Apparently the disease inhibits one's physical abilities to clean anything. The most obvious physical effect, however, has caused only slight consternation: Nearly all the residents have pronounced cases of sunburn.

In conclusion, the public is warned to stay well clear of Renwick House in the coming weeks since this disease has proved to be highly contagious, as demonstrated above. Anyone traveling to the area is warned to take extra precautions to avoid contracting ERI.

last day of class

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 1, "The Prophecy".

9 May 2008.

In some ways, just like every other day, and not really very exciting, though there was banana bread for breakfast this morning. I went to my last class at ten o'clock, ENG309, and sat through a two-hour lecture about William Tyndale and his translation of the Bible. Then I went to the gym to run, though I got some horrible shin splints.

Walking back through the Gardens was eerie in some ways. Earlier this week the weather was beautiful, warm and sunny, in the 70s Fahrenheit. The Gardens have been absolutely packed with people, the bowling green giving off the same murmur as would come from a crowd, and people in every nook and cranny. Today, though, was still and overcast, like walking around under a thick comforter, so there was hardly anyone on the green. The rhododendrons have started to bloom in full force, profusion of red and white flowers.

Back in Renwick, I found EMM, Rachel, and Andy M. sitting in the kitchen, talking. When I came back from my shower, they were still in the kitchen, though this time Andy M. was showing them cricket techniques (Andy L. would have been shocked and horrified, but it kept us laughing). I ate lunch. Nathan showed up to do small group planning with EMM, so I took my laptop and notes outside to the table that was left in the car park after Monday night's barbecue. It wasn't as pleasant to sit outside today as it was earlier in the week, but quiet at least--pigeons fluttering in and out of the attics of the flats across the street, and seagulls wheeling slowly against the grey sky. I worked on my papers until about half three, until I could hardly see straight, then went inside.

EMM, CMAM, and I ended up going to Cafe Renoir, down Botanic. The cafe was unusually quiet. It's a very large place, occupying a couple of the row houses, and going up three or four stories--all sorts of levels, and odd nooks, and dim, cool spaces, low-lit lamps hanging over wooden tables, richly-colored upholstery on chairs and benches. We took our food upstairs and sat at a table in a back corner. We basically just sat and talked nonsense quietly for an hour.

I worked a little bit more on my papers back in Renwick, then at half five went down to the kitchen to help Emma and EMM cook tea. Tonight Ken Ham was speaking at the Waterfront, and Emma, EMM, Robert, Steven, and Jonny were all going to hear him--the boys were coming round at half six for tea before the talk, and Emma had agreed to cook for Andy L., Samuel, Matthew, Rachel, Daphne, Rosemary, CMAM, and me as well. We boiled pots and pots of rice. We had creamed peppered chicken, rice, and bread, all of us sitting around the common room. Matthew's laptop was out, and we looked at marathon pictures and discussed the times of the various teams. There was ice cream for dessert, and then one by one, people started to leave--the group going to the talk; the boys about their business; CMAM up to study; Daphne and Rosemary, after awhile, to go home to Donegall. I left Rachel miserably trying to motivate herself to study. I listened to Chris Thile and washed dishes.

I went upstairs at nine o'clock, intending to work, but didn't get much done. I sat and thought for a long time. Read through the black book that my friends in the States had made for me before I left. Holding three places together in one's head is so hard.... It's like staring at a maths equation, trying to make the factors reconcile, when they just won't (like the allusion, Emmaline and Rachel? :o).

CMAM came downstairs to see if I wanted a cup of tea at about ten o'clock. We made tea for ourselves and Rachel, and heated up slices of banana bread. Rachel was buried in a sea of notes and binders in the common room. CMAM and I stood in the stairwell, talking for about half-an-hour. Poetic symmetry: As we had begun our time in Renwick way back in September, talking about Heaven, the night when it was just the two of us and Andy M., watching CSI, in the house, so we ended our time in Renwick, now, talking about Heaven again.

At about eleven o'clock, the group came back from the talk. Robert and Emma made tea and found biscuits somewhere for everyone to share. Simon, Matthew, and Dean appeared from somewhere, and we all sat around in the common room, talking. EMM and I nearly fell asleep in the corner. Robert, Steven, Emma, and EMM left to go home to Culleybackey/Coleraine at about midnight, and I, dodging Dean's threats to interrogate me about America, escaped upstairs to go to bed.

And, to finish, a good quote: "Sleep in peace! Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them." - Galadriel, The Fellowship of the Ring

some variation

Now Playing: Mark O'Connor, "The Fiddle Concerto".

Seems to have been an unexplainable dearth of poetry on this blog. For an English major, and one who writes poetry at that, this is inexcusable. Therefore:

First of all, slightly out-of-season, and for sheer pleasure's sake, with no ulterior motives,

Queen’s Quarter, Belfast, October
10/07

Autumn here becomes a wakeful bustle:
Trees clot the streets with crisply-cluttered scraps,
And people, swirling home from work and school,
Scuff through the sloughing scales, sheer serpent-gold.
Late summer’s sleepy shadows, sprawling blue
From endless afternoons of hoarding sun
And billet on the town, yawn, stretch, and slink
Into the brooding dusk, and disappear
Behind the whirlpooled whir of winging trees.
The deep, warm dragon-days leave in their slot
Slick sidewalks pressed with gold and umber leaves.

I get so frustrated with academia....

Badminton
4/08

Whisk, whack, swish, flick,
Quick shuttlecock flit back and forth.
Racket raised, reach and clutch,
Players leap, bow, dip and dodge.
Click, click, crisp-flown fletch,
Words gone bouncing, net to net,
Ecofeminism, academics, bourgeoisie,
Neologisms flicked from lip to lip.
The intellectuals posture, strike a pose,
A stance, another argument or masquerade—
Watch them fly, falter, slip and duck,
Dodge the meaning, dither, add a phrase.
Conversation tips from hand to hand,
Book or journal where the sets are played,
Conference, lecture, paper, match by match.
Keep the racket poised, the shuttle flown,
Tense the wrist, serve, jump to volley up,
Postcolonial, postmodern, postromantic,
Socialism, symbolism, sectarianism,
Pause, paraphrase, and postulate—
Then quick flick back.

And something more hopeful to finish with.

Ruins
4/08

Each wall lies broken: stones, piece by piece,
Fall, crushed, and crop in crumbled heaps. Sills,
Thresholds, gables, gutters, ledge by ledge—
This protected, barred the winter back,
This kept warm and pleased the architect,
This grit, dirt-dust, gravel ground to ground.
This, us: our pieces scattered here,
No wall but broken stones in flaying flakes—
No understanding, our brittle words gone dry,
Our mortar chipping even as we try to patch
Our shattered selves together, to each other,
Yet cut and scrape our stones with every shard.

When the architect will come again,
He will see the heap, this ruin, where stones
Wound stones and stones crack into dust—
He will restore, will see the remnants’ pieces,
And will rebuild, join stone to broken stone,
Stone to itself, and stabilize our walls
To stand, not just repaired but recreated,
Increased, enlarged, and strengthened, stone by stone,
Our shattered frames re-formed, re-joined and whole.

C4441

May 5, 2008.

This morning I woke up very reluctantly. Outside the morning was clammy and foggy, not at all what I’d expected, and it didn’t help my mood. I wasn’t looking forward to running my 7.1 mile leg of the Belfast marathon at all. After I dressed, I crept downstairs, got breakfast (the house was very quiet), then came upstairs and did my devotions. By eight o'clock, the house was full of people, mostly boys—Andy L. had registered a couple of teams for the marathon, and lots of other guys seemed to be about. We had to go downstairs eventually, though, to find our numbers and bags for the things we wanted before or after we ran. As the boys trickled out, girls started to trickle in. Naomi, Sarah W., and Lindsey Montgomery showed up. The boys were mostly gone by now, taking their noise, leaving their mess of kit bags and clothes behind in the common room. We pinned our numbers on each other’s shirts and got ready to leave. The girls are in two teams, Run Fat Girl Run (CMAM, Rachel, Naomi, and Daphne), and Go For Renwick House (Sarah, EMM, me, Lindsey, and Charlotte). The first team was supposed to have Sarah R. on it, running the first leg, but she had to work, so her brother was going to run the leg instead and hand the bracelet on to CMAM (her brother David and her father were both running the full marathon). Since Lindsey, Rachel, Naomi, and I were running legs that started far away from the city centre, we set off together in a hurry to catch the bus to our starting points, while Sarah, EMM, and CMAM made their way in a more leisurely fashion to the city centre, and Daphne waited for Charlotte, who wasn’t out of bed yet.

We stepped into a grey, moist morning. Fog hung thickly over the Queen’s campus. We walked up Stranmillis Road, not exactly sure where we were going, found a side road, and took it down to the River Lagan, where we crossed and walked up toward the football pitches—a long walk. Lindsey and Rachel were sure we were going the wrong way; Naomi was sure we were going to miss the bus, so she pushed us to run. We jogged along Ormeau embankment. The water was dark and still in the river below, one swan moving up the water. We crossed a main road at a bridge and jogged on toward Ormeau Park, and finally reached the buses. They were starting to leave. Rachel and I scrambled onto our bus with a sigh of relief. The ride through the city was excruciatingly slow. Traffic was bad because the marathon route mostly takes main roads, so the bus had to go around through neighborhoods and estates. Cave Hill was shrouded in deep cloud, and as we climbed the rises toward it, the city centre down in its depression was hidden in mist also.

We finally reached our destination, a stretch of road near a shopping centre, where people were lined up on either side of the road. Thick crowds of people. I was amazed by how many are involved in this event. Rachel said that last year about 14,000 were listed as participating, and there were plenty of other people along the way to give out water, first aid, etc. We pushed our way through the crowd to find our section, the 4440s, where we were to stand and wait. Rachel’s team was 4440, mine 4441, and both of us were Cs. The first marathon runners began to go by, wearing their red number badges. Everyone was shouting and cheering, clapping, encouraging them on. Then masses of relay runners with blue numbers, searching frantically for their partners through the crowds, stripping off the little yellow bracelet, and handing it on. Some of the relay runners were dressed in crazy costumes—a guy in a Superman suit, boys in fairy wings, people wearing unusual hats, like a carnival.

We looked frantically through the crowd for our partners. Rachel was busy texting people: there had been a mix-up with her team’s bracelet. David R. had run on with the bracelet since he hadn’t seen EMM or CMAM; CMAM had run after him, then come back after ten minutes, then been sent on by EMM, without the bracelet. While we were trying to sort this out, Mr. R ran past us, shouting my team number—I ran after him, calling his name, but he didn’t hear me, and since I wasn’t sure what was happening, I let him run on. Turned out later that he had actually been the one carrying the bracelet—he managed to hand it on to EMM and CMAM on the final leg, when they were standing and waiting by the finish line, so that they could give it to Daphne to finish with. In the meantime, though, everything was in shambles, and Rachel was confused. A cold wind had started to blow down from Cave Hill, beginning to lift the fog. CMAM finally found us and sent Rachel running on. CMAM was pink, but not too out-of-breath, and together we stood and waited anxiously for EMM.

Runners went past… and past…. Philip M. went past, pushing Matthew in a wheelchair, to everyone’s amusement (Matthew was wearing an enormous helmet, and the wheelchair was decorated with plywood painted pink). More runners went by. Walkers went by, and stragglers, here and there. Almost everyone was gone from the stop by now, having run on. CMAM and I were both worried and started to pace down toward the nearer end of the road. At last I spotted EMM, running slowly up the hill. CMAM and I shouted her name and cheered her on as she jogged up to us, panting, red in the face. She took off the bracelet, I strapped it on my wrist, and was off, with their cheers ringing in my ears. I put on my MP3 player and listened to the FOTR soundtrack as I jogged up the hill… and on… and on….

It actually didn’t seem to take that long. Up through little pockets of village, through neighborhoods, past petrol stations and corner shops. People were standing in little knots at corners or behind garden gates, watching, cheering us on. The whole community seemed to be in evidence. Once or twice children stood in the middle of the road with arms wide so that we could give them high-fives as we passed. I jogged past water stands, where Styrofoam cups littered the road, tumbling white paper scraping the street. The route wound through neighborhoods, then finally hit the Antrim Road, and the long, steady climb up Cave Hill. Belfast Castle came sooner than I’d expected, looming overhead against the dark trees, rearing up forbidding battlements. Then the long stretch under the beautiful overarching sycamore trees to the left, and the steep drop to the right, Belfast Lough hidden in fog. I stopped to walk for the length of a track, then jogged on. At last the route turned off at the peak of the hill, and I was running down through neighborhoods. Down and down and down, until at the bottom of the hill, the route took an upward turn—I had to walk again there, briefly, but at last the route turned into Gideon’s Green, wound through the park, and took me to the relay trade-off, where Rachel and Lindsey were waiting. I handed the band on to Lindsey, and she ran on.

Rachel called EMM to tell her that I’d arrived; I paced, breathing lightly, my muscles unwinding. We finally started to walk toward the place where the buses left to take us back to Ormeau Park. We walked along Belfast Lough, the path right by the lough, the small waves lapping against the shore. The fog was beginning to lift, and the sea shone pale silver-yellow under the white wall of mist. We walked up through the green, through little lawns scattered with daisies surrounded by birch trees, and to the buses. We sat and sat on the bus before it left, and the ride itself took for ages as well. Rachel and I were both exhausted. I split a Mars bar between the two of us. By the time we got to Ormeau Park, the sun was fully out, and the day was fine and hot. We got out near the finish line. The route before the finish line was lined with people, and all the way up through the park, through the gates to the finish line, people were standing, clapping, cheering, urging the runners on. Rachel and I found EMM and CMAM sitting on the sidewalk in the sun, and joined them. Naomi and Sarah W. showed up, too. Beyond the finish line, well inside the park, a carnival had been set up, with stands for food and amusement rides and such. People were picnicking on the grass. We cheered the runners on as they went past us. Daphne came by, and Rachel ran with her to the finish line. Amy went past, running for a medics team, and CMAM hurried to meet her at the finish line. Charlotte flashed past also, and EMM, Sarah, and I ran to find her.

Once we were all joined up again, we all went to sit in the sun on the sidewalk, Naomi, Charlotte, Sarah W., Rachel, Daphne, CMAM, EMM, and I. We ate jelly babies and wine gums and cheered people on. Sarah W. had been ill on her leg and wanted to go home for a shower. So Naomi, CMAM, EMM, Sarah, Charlotte, and I finally said good-bye to Rachel and Daphne and walked back to RH. The afternoon was gloriously beautiful. Blue, blue sky behind young leaves, vivid yellows and greens and blues. Along the Stranmillis Road, everyone was outside, sitting at the cafes and restaurants, talking and eating. Back at RH, though, things were pretty quiet. Most of the windows and doors were open, as though the house were breathing. The boys had gone out to Pizza Hut. The girls were taking showers or resting. Rosemary and Andy L. were in the common room watching snooker on TV.

We went our various ways. I took a shower and then had lunch (at 4:00 or so), then lazed about for awhile. At about five o’clock, though, CMAM, EMM, and I went downstairs to the kitchen to start working on the barbecue. EMM washed dishes; I sliced and fried peppers and onions; CMAM grated cheese. We listened to music. The warm afternoon sunshine slanted in through the open windows and doors. We worked fairly quietly, the three of us. Eventually Rosemary and Rachel started to heat the barbecue and cook the meat in the ovens. Then people started to arrive. There must've been between 30 and 40 all told, and there were plenty of boys who’d been on various marathon teams who came for the barbecue, whom I didn’t know. Boys drifted through the kitchen, where all the girls were hanging about, talking and preparing food. Sarah, Charlotte, and I ate early, in the midst of all the preparation chaos, burgers that had been cooked in the oven.

Anyhow, as all the uproar was going on, the girls taking the food outside to the buffet table and the boys hanging about talking or getting in the way generally (useless!), EMM, Sarah, Charlotte, and I left for the QUB centenary celebration at half seven. Andy L. came with us, randomly. The evening was spectacular, clear, aquamarine and pale green. Tonight was just the dress rehearsal of the centenary celebration. We went into the Great Hall, where we were put in a group together. A costumed actor came out eventually and spoke to us in the style of a high steward, looking down his nose and being very elegant, welcoming us, etc. In our small group we began the tour of the various performances. The whole tour was punctuated, between each performance inside one of the stuffy, dim rooms of the Lanyon Building, by walks around the campus, as we went from performance to performance—beautiful walks, made lovely by the warmth of midsummer eve, the pure sky hanging over us and the sunshine lingering in the chestnut trees along University Road. The choir performance in which Sarah and EMM were singing was the grand finale of the tour. We returned to the Great Hall for this—a piece written specially for QUB, to celebrate the centenary. The acoustics in the hall were brilliant, the voices echoing clearly around the high rafters, which were borne on the backs of wooden angels. It was a good piece, unusual, sung accapela.

Afterward, we left fairly promptly to get back to RH for the Psalm sing. The house was still in a crowded tangle of people, but Rachel managed to get everyone upstairs to our room. Beulah said she’d never seen our room so full before. Phil led us, with Sarah R. and EMM precenting. Afterward, I chatted with Joel about summer plans. Said good-bye to him, the first good-bye…. Talked with Phil and Naomi about LOTR (everyone always gets very excitable in these conversations!). Downstairs people were having tea and finishing off the last of the desserts.