Now Playing: Harry Gregson-Williams, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, "Raid on the Castle".

Slept soundly from exhaustion last night and woke before Rachel this morning. I took a shower--I think, I don't remember for sure--and made oatmeal for myself. It was one of those weighted mornings, a heavy morning, facing the burden of the day. I sat down at my desk, wrote e-mails, and worked on writing a prospectus for senior project. At nine o'clock, Bob rang, and I ran down to the car park to meet him. He'd volunteered to help fix the Tank, which has been out of commission with a bad alternator. We wrenched the hood open, and he started to poke around inside. He pulled out the old alternator, we took it to the hardware shop down the street to have it tested, and then bought a new alternator, which he installed, with some trouble. Then we pushed the car out of the space, he pulled his car up, and we jumped it. After he left, I drove the Tank down Yale. The morning traffic was fairly light. Trashy strip malls, dodgy mechanics, and pawn shops gave way to malls, business parks, green spaces, and the towers of a hospital. I stopped at Wal-Mart to buy groceries, then drove the car back to campus. Seems to work alright.

I spent the rest of my morning working on senior project and praying for John, who went into surgery for his broken ankle today. (Right now there's a smell lingering in here that smells just like the Wilsons' house, and it's bewildering my subconscious....) At half twelve, Rachel came back from her exam. We ate leftovers together for lunch. At one o'clock, she went to class, and I went to Tyrrell to practice my flute. The practice rooms are all under construction right now, the ceilings being torn out, the ducts being covered with new tiles. Most of the rooms were off-limits, so I went into a coffin-sized room, most of the free space of which was occupied by a derelict piano, and practiced for forty-five minutes. Then I went to PHIL 2113 at two o'clock. Professor B was crazy as always--emphatic, rocking up and down on his feet like Humpty Dumpty so that the brown fringe bounces at the front of his balding head.

At four o'clock there was a session on building study abroad experience into your resume at the CGE office, so I went to that. Ms. B, the secretary, patted me on the shoulder and called me "Sweetie" when she called me come in, and Ms. S greeted me in her Portuguese-inflected soft voice. Alex, Don, and I were the only ones who came. Ms. M, the head of the office, the sort of woman who's so courteous that she scares me, laughed that she felt incredibly uncomfortable presenting to an audience of peer advisors. It was helpful, though, to hear about opportunities with businesses and volunteer overseas. The excitement builds, thinking about all the possibilities: places in Japan and Australia, where there are RP churches....

On my way back to the apartment, I picked up tea from the caf. I randomly decided to sit on the balcony outside our apartment to eat, and as I was taking the first bites of baked chicken, Rachel Jr. texted me to ask if I wanted to come to her apartment. So I dumped my backpack in our apartment, grabbed my basket of scrapbooking materials, and walked across the car park. Nicole and Rachel were both in the apartment, Nicole studying. Rachel heated up pasta, and she and I sat on the slouchy green sofa and chatted away.

After we finished eating, we began the real business of the evening: baking chocolate chip cookies for the Knorrs and for the RUF potluck tomorrow night. Rachel had two different recipes, one the basic recipe, and one with oatmeal. I worked on the basic recipe, for the Knorrs, while she made the oatmeal cookies, for the potluck tomorrow. After I'd put my first batch in the oven, I sat down at the coffee table to make a card for the Knorrs. Rachel made a wee mountain of her cookies in a pan as they came out of the oven. There were three dozen of my cookies, quite an impressive batch. We put them in plastic bags, and she and I drove over to the Knorrs' house.

As we were opening the back gate to go into their back yard, the dogs came wagging up to the fence to greet us. Both of us had our hands full with bags of cookies, so of course Shaq, the big, fluffy, black, dumb dog, wriggled between us, slithered out of the gate, and bounded gaily down the street. "Run!" shouted Rachel, so I dropped my cookies on the trampoline and took off after him. Charis and Di, paddling in the swimming pool in the back of Di's house behind the Knorrs' house, watched me go. Shaq loped ahead of me, tongue lolling, slaver roping out of his mouth, stopping to sniff the neighbors' bushes. A leather-skinned man stepped out of a house and shouted at him. I was suddenly afraid because it's a bad neighborhood and any one of the neighbors might decide to pull out a gun, but I kept running and eventually caught up with the stupid dog. I'd had my leg workout chasing him, and I got my upper body workout hauling him back to the Knorrs' house since he probably weighs about as much as I do.

Rachel and I met back at the Knorrs' house, went up to the back door, and stepped inside. Everyone was sitting in the front room, watching "The Office" on TV. John was in the recliner, as usual, but now with his leg in a new cast--a whopping thick thing. We gave them the cookies and the card. Rachel sat down on the loveseat between Rachel and Kali, and I sat down on the sofa between Josh and Ben. Things were fairly quiet for awhile. Long silences would begin to congeal in the room, until Josh would start to laugh. "Someone has got to break this silence, and now it's broken into pieces, like Hershey's chocolate," he said. "With nuts?" John asked groggily. "With nuts," Josh said, "and cherry flavoring." "Oh, gross!" Kali objected. "Well, it has to taste gross because it was a bad silence," Josh replied, and we all laughed. Things got more lively, though: Di and Charis came back from swimming. Ange and Alisha joined us. Denise appeared--she'd been out shopping for painkillers and Chinese take-out for John.

Rachel Jr. and I left at half eight or so. I stopped by her apartment back on campus to pick up my things and to borrow her vacuum cleaner. While we were at the Knorrs' house, Pastor Parnell had rung me, so when I got back to my apartment, I perched in one of the windowsills and rang him back. We talked and prayed together.

During our conversation, Rachel Sr. had come back. After I got off the phone, I talked with her briefly. I started to vacuum our apartment, but while I was in the process of doing so, Logan rang, so I chatted with him for a little while. I was just finishing vacuuming our bedroom when Nicole showed up, at ten o'clock, for prayer. She had a bar of organic choolate with chai and crystallized ginger mixed in--deliciously sweet and spicy. Katie and Alyson came, too. It was a good group. We spent the first half-hour or so just talking, joking around, laughing about school and going to the opera. Then we shared prayer requests, and then we prayed, and then spent more time talking and laughing. Alyson left to study stats, but Katie and Nicole stayed for a full hour more--discussing food, mainly--vegetarianism, wines, and the like. I enjoy their oddball sense of humor, especially Katie's, and their different perspective on the world. Katie told us about her crazy Irish grandmother from whom she learned curse words and kitchen gossip in Irish when she was a wee girl, and that made Rachel laugh very hard. I sat cross-legged on the floor, typing up this entry.

They left at midnight. I finished vacuuming and returned the vacuum cleaner to Nicole. Rachel is in our room now, studying. The evening is unusually cool. I hope the days become cooler after this. I'd far rather have the windows open than run the air conditioner, and I'm ready to begin wearing hoodies and sweaters, especially since our classrooms and the practice rooms are cold enough for that kind of clothing, and then when I step outside I have to strip off layers because it's so warm.

I've gone around all day with "Is. 26.3" written on the back of my hand.

Now Playing: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack. Track 11, "Shelob's Lair".

Last night the Rachels, Alyson, and I had Bible study on Acts 3-4, focusing on 3:1-21 and 4:18-27. It was one of those times when the ability of the others to come up with ideas that hadn't even crossed my mind was pretty amazing (not that it would be hard to come up with ideas that are above and beyond me, but hey...).

The beggar sitting in front of the temple looked at Peter and John without knowing who they were or knowing Christ, 3:4-5. He wasn't seeking healing. In fact, the text says he was just expecting "something", whether that was money or whether it was the mockery that beggars sometimes get, it certainly wasn't what he actually received. By 3:9, he is walking and leaping and praising God, not only healed physically but completely renewed spiritually as well. His tiny expectation became eternal life.

Peter's sermon in Acts 3 is rather peculiar because in it he accuses the Jews directly of having murdered Christ. As someone pointed out, this accusation recurs again and again in Acts. It's not quite the evangelical m.o. that we would expect to be most effective. But the people responded in huge numbers.

Perhaps one reason for this is that Peter is preaching in this specific example in the temple, where people were coming to offer sacrifices. His preaching vividly demonstrates the fact that the sacrifice has already been offered--Christ Himself.

Also, for a devout group, this meditation on our need for forgiveness and the depth of our sin could be even more convicting. Usually we think of ourselves as "pretty good", or just repenting for daily sins of thought and word, and taking for granted the forgiveness that covers these offenses. When we stop to meditate that these offenses killed Christ, and that we are in effect the murderers of God, God's grace to us, the "times of refreshing" in 3:17-21, take on a whole new meaning.

And while realization of the depth of our sin is important, Peter doesn't let the gathering sink into the despair of that depth but instead points them directly to God who is miraculously and amazingly merciful.

The other part of this passage that we focused on was 4:18-37 and the picture of community it presents. Rachel jr. immediately asked after we'd read the passage if this is a picture of communism that we are meant to emulate. Rachel sr. answered that by saying that this "communism" is driven by love and trust in God, an understanding of His love that leads them to physical action. The pattern of prayer, the descent of the Spirit, and the communal life recurs in the text, which made us think that communism has a "Do Not Attempt This Without Divine Supervision" sign hung on it.

Even for believers, though, the notion of communism has to be tweaked if it is to be made into a fitting definition of the community described in this passage. The NIV translation has the phrase "From time to time..." to describe the selling of property, emphasizing the idea that as the church had a need, the members met the need. People realized that their goods were not their own, so they shared with one another.

Of course the question becomes whether this should translate into our church community, and how. We talked about how we need to be willing to give and not to let things have a hold on us. Particularly, though, someone brought up the idea not necessarily of financial giving but more generally of spiritual giving (and spiritual giving should probably come first anyway...). As university students, the giving of time and emotional energy may actually be more sacrificial in some ways than the giving of money (though we are called to that, too). Being willing to share spiritual encouragement, to invest in relationships with others, may be even more important than the question of actual tithing. We tossed around ideas about getting together, particularly for prayer, more frequently.

Now Playing: U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".

Right now, that is dishonest.

I feel as though I ought to write a blog post.

People are going to try to comment and figure this out. It's not a maths problem. Sorry. Even if Escher was a mathematician, his lithographs don't resolve into perfect equations.

Today I talked to people on the phone, some here, some there. It was good at the time, but makes the tension more difficult now.

Bach is running through my head, pointlessly, teasing me with the endless complex intricate beauty of the music, the patterns of fingerings on the keys of the flute.

Right now, I wonder if life will turn out to be one long dissonant chord without resolution.

I think I ought to go to sleep. Two weeks ago the nightmares were unbearably horrific. I think they will return tonight, unless someone is merciful.

Now Playing: Mark O'Connor, 30-Year Retrospective, Track 26, "Stone From Which The Arch Was Made".

Our apartment was actually cold when I got up this morning. Clear sunshine moving quickly over the walls. I sat down to do my devotions as usual after having eaten a bowl of oatmeal. The distractions through which my mind gyrates whenever I sit down to worship are appalling. Worship becomes something like an Escher drawing: consciousness crawling up out of two-dimensional clutter into living, breathing three-dimensional space for a moment, then morphing back into that clash of patterns and problematic black-and-whites. The nagging frustration became a pressing realization that this is preventing my relationship with God, and led to a renewed resolution, to "let the Word of God dwell in you richly", or as richly as possible in this fragmented human mind. When I consider focusing this intently, moment-by-moment, on the Lord, I am reminded of HON 1013 and Dr. A's drawing on the chalkboard of the medieval idea of the cosmos as the unfolding pattern of petals on a rose, drawing closer and closer toward the center, where they resolve into a unity--in this case, to God Himself. Focus becomes an intense decision, a discipline more difficult than forcing myself through forty-five minutes in the gym.

Practice of it isn't easy, though, as I found today as I stepped out of our apartment to go to practice my flute. As soon as I begin to walk down the staircase, my mind moves ahead into the day, into whatever work needs to be done--or starts to think about people, or begins to relive the past, or daydream.

After class today, I ended up eating a sandwich in ACAC with Amy S--f. Then I went to the CGE house at half two for a meeting to find out what to do with this new job. The people in the office are all nice enough. The secretary is a pert, dark woman, who chatters away. After waiting for nearly half-an-hour, I went into the office of the advisor for A&S, a new personnel member from Brazil, a beautiful, friendly, softspoken woman. She and the head of the office, who's always talkative, spent half-an-hour or so explaining the task at hand, which involves writing the CGE newsletter in the next two weeks...! Toward the end, the dean of study abroad stepped in. She's the sort of woman whose gentility and perfect poise are terrifying, whose polite blue eyes and polished smile somehow make one very afraid that she'll become suddenly extremely angry, though I'm pretty sure that's not her intent.

Anyway, I was happy to be out of the office, and trying not to be overwhelmed with the impending work. As I was walking back to the apartment, I stepped into Sharp Chapel to see if the sanctuary was empty. Every time I've gone into the chapel to pray, someone has been using the sanctuary, and today it was the Cappela choir. I slipped into the much smaller prayer chapel beside the main sanctuary and sat there for a long time, thinking. I don't understand why God has put me here. Perhaps I don't need to understand. I know that He has only put me here because He loves me, but I struggle to believe that.

The afternoon was lovely, though. On my way back to the apartment, I ran into Rachel. We stopped and chatted for a few moments. Turns out that the package slip we received in the post yesterday is for a package for me--who from, I have only a slim idea. Probably the people at "The Oklahoma Review", flyers for me to distribute on campus.

I left our apartment when I'd dumped my things and took the Tank to try to find somewhere to buy cheap silverware. I ended up at Big Lots, had success, and then made a stop at a dodgy wee convenience shop to buy a half gallon of milk (which turned out to smell as dodgy as the shop where I got it, but anyway...).

Back in our apartment, I had one little crisis after another: stains on new trousers, no detergent for laundry, a cockroach crawling over the sofa, piles of things to put away. To keep from being frustrated, I put on Nickel Creek and set to work to right things. Then I curled up on the red sofa and wrote a letter to Catherine. Just as I was finishing, Rachel came back for tea, at about half six. We ate some of the bread Laura had baked for us over the weekend. Laura's bread is the essence of what good bread ought to be, soft, warm, a little bit sweet and spicy at the same time.

At half eight, we went to RUF in the SAC. I stood in the entry area and chatted with Tara, Katie, Nicole, and Mary for awhile. John preached tonight on Ruth 2:1-13 and about how God sends salvation from unexpected places, about how God uses suffering to bring us into fellowship with Christ. This stung me after last week's resolution not to admit or think about suffering any more. I'm tired of being the gloomy person who's never doing well, but life is not right. Is this how Christ felt all the time? Uneasy, displaced?

After RUF, I spent the whole time talking with Jenny H., sprawled on one of the big chairs. She told me funny stories about her work, and we laughed over the fact that Spencer cares more about interior decorating than she does. After she left, I ended up standing outside and talking to Philip. While we were talking, Jenny M. and Andrew walked up. I chatted with Jenny, who was wrapped up in excitement about the TU choir singing Mozart's Requiem, while Andrew kept Philip entertained with something else. Jenny showed me her score, humming through it, translating in broken Latin. It was beautiful to watch her.

And now I'm so tired that my vision is fuzzy, and I desperately want to sleep, but there's so much to do, and Rachel staying up late makes me feel obligated to do the same. The night outside is clear and cool. The moon riding high in the sky, though full, is just as bright as one of the streetlights, and so adds no light to the night.

Now Playing: Laura and Stephen on the piano, "Prometheus" overture by Beethoven. (And me sitting on the sofa, miming furiously. Sandy is sitting on a chair with her chin on her paws, pretending not to be terrified. The piece changed key, randomly--just for fun, of course.)

Rachel was up before me this morning, as usual. Now I know how Emmaline must have felt, except that Rachel doesn't usually throw a pillow at me and then slam the door. Rachel was just leaving to help out at a debate tournament on campus as I was coming staggering out of our room.

I dressed and ate breakfast and worked on my ENGL 4973 preliminary bibliography. The difficulty is that the project is still so nebulous that I can't really judge what to add to the bibliography and what not to add. So I sifted through a stack of tomes of Beowulf. The morning was grey and tired. After I washed my dishes, I hauled my backpack, wee suitcase, and dirty clothes hamper down to the Tank, loaded up, and drove to Stillwater.

The drive was interesting. It poured rain on the interstate. Samuel Morrison, Matthew Curry, and Simon Curry could have thrown water-containing objects at my car to their heart's desire, and I wouldn't have noticed at all. I listened to one of my father's Sabbath school lessons on Leviticus, the first of a two-part series on the Sabbath day, the seven-year Sabbath, and the year of Jubilee.

In Stillwater, the rain had become a modest downpour. At my house, everything was green and dripping. My father was the only one home, with the cats to keep him company. Laura and Stephen were out helping their robotics team sell concessions at the OSU football game, and my mother was grocery shopping.

So I sat and chatted with my father for a little while. He asked if Logan was coming with me to Edmond to visit Phil Alcorn, who's over from Northern Ireland visiting a friend at Oklahoma Christian University. I accordingly got on Skype and invited Logan to come along. I went over to his house and picked him up at a quarter past eleven or so, and we set off on the drive to Edmond, on the north side of Oklahoma City.

Edmond is the "fancy shmancy" part of OKC, huge gated communities scattered among thick woods and big broad boulevards through newly-built shopping areas. We met Phil at Starbucks near OCU. It was brilliant to see him again.

None of us had eaten lunch, so we drove round for ages looking for somewhere to eat. We ended up at a Quizno's (funnily enough, as Phil pointed out, because there's a Quizno's in Botanic--and he had thought the same thing about that Quizno's as I had originally thought about the one in Stillwater, that it was just a wee local shop--both of us have since been disillusioned). For most of the afternoon, a straight steady rain fell, so we ended up sitting in the restaurant for three or four hours, talking about everything--Renwick, small group weekend, films, music, jobs, tornadoes and hurricanes, the States, politics....

After awhile, we drove back to the OCU campus. It was raining again, steadily, and I was chilled to the bone. The campus is fairly new. Sturdy brick buildings, plantings of marigolds and ornamental pear trees and crepe myrtle bushes. We ended up sitting under a huge awning, a giant pavillion covering a concrete platform with picnic tables on it. We just chatted there for awhile, laughing.

At about five o'clock we left Phil off at Starbucks again so that he could buy a chai vanilla latte. Said good-bye in the rain. "It was good to hear a Northern Irish accent again! Keep well! Cheerio!" he said.

Logan and I drove back to Stillwater. We were back in Stillwater in time for tea, and though my family had already sat down to eat, we joined them for the meal and the usual "Three Stooges" episode afterward. Outside, the sun was setting through a rift in the clouds and made a rainbow, the first one I've seen here, very faintly, across the eastern sky.

I drove Logan back to his house at eight o'clock or so. We said good-night. I drove back to the house, listening to the end of my father's sermon, watching the livid light fade in the west. My father was reading Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis to my mother and Stephen in the living room. Laura bounced downstairs and brought out the guinea pig and fed it carrots. We had family worship. Philip rang, and Laura, my parents, and I took turns talking to him. Now my mother and I are sitting in the living room, having a drawn-out and difficult discussion about the future.

Crickets chirp outside, and the ceiling fan whirls overhead.

Next question: Do I go to sleep now, or stay up revising for another hour?

(N.B., just for you, Rosemary, since you said you wanted a glossary for all my big words:
"Preliminary" means "the first one, usually a bad copy".
A "bibliography" is something you put at the end of a whopping long paper to tell all the people who have nothing better to do what books you read.
"Fancy shmancy" means posh.
"Lunch" is the meal before tea in the middle of the day, skipped if you have a) been driving for a long time or b) haven't had time between lectures.
And, one last definition for you. "Rain" is the cold, wet stuff that falls out of the sky, usually only in Northern Ireland, and that tends to flood motorways and things, and has come over here just to make Phil feel at home.)

Now Playing: "Kyrie" from the medieval Mass (Gregorian chant or plainchant).

A year ago this week I was fumbling my way round Belfast with the assistance of Rachel and Daphne's "no-go" map, attempting to cram a pile of rather useless information about abstract Northern Irish culture into my head thanks to IFSA orientation, and hiking the Mournes with the Lisburn CY. That first night in Renwick, awake until past two in the morning because I wasn't used yet to the noise of the people going up and down the street to The Parlor, shifting the furniture and prowling into every room of the empty house.

And, of course, the fun of meeting Claire and the church family at Trinity for the first time.

I find it somehow ironic that the weather here today is almost exactly the same as it was there: chilly and wet.

apartment

Our room.
Our room again. (Yes, Rachel sleeps on an air mattress....)
The living area and my wee desk with pictures, quotes, letters, verse from Catherine, and tag from Belfast marathon on the wall.

Looking from the living room toward the kitchen.
Looking into our apartment from the front door.

hodgepodge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

no white rabbits for me

Now Playing: Johannes Brahms, Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77 - Track 1, Allegro non troppo.

Last night, RUF had a campout at Lake Skiatook, about an hour north of Tulsa. At six o'clock, after I'd eaten some tea, I packed up the venerable Tank, which goes ten miles an hour faster than listed on its speedometer, and set out to join them. The early evening was beautiful, rich colors on the hills, sleepy greens and blues fading away into hazy distances as the sun began to set.

Off the interstate, driving down more tiny winding roads between high shoulders of grass eventually took me over a bridge over the lake, then down another gravel road, then to the campground, a thickly wooded peninsula (black oak) lined with campsites. Puttering slowly through the campground was an experience not to be forgotten. I scanned each campsite to see if I recognized the people, and at nearly every campsite I was greeted with the stares of tribes of quintessential rednecks: cut-offs, beer, cigarettes, fresh sunburns over old tans, faded baseball caps. I was exceedingly thankful finally to recognize the group standing round the campfire on the east side of the peninsula. Here dusk had already fallen. Ange and Alisha were eating hoboes by the picnic table. John was finishing cooking on the grill. Everyone else was gathered round the campfire on camp chairs: Joseph Tyree, Allison, Hannah, Jenny H., Philip, Matt, Josh Clutter, Rachel and Amy Scholz, DMac, Charlie, Spencer, the Knorr kids, and others. Eventually Asher and Leslie joined us.

Dusk fell quickly. The fire in the center of its ring burned hot and bright. Josh took the kayak out onto the water and paddled out to the big island east of the shore, a fair distance. From along the shore on either side came the noises of other people's camps--the generator of the RV next to us; the talk from the group on the other side. DMac, Spencer, Josh, and Charlie brought out instruments. A mandolin, a harmonica, a couple of guitars. They strummed for awhile, and the group round the campfire talked, faces becoming flushed in the firelight.

I sat back in the shadows at the picnic table with Jenny H., Alisha, and Charis. Alisha dozed off in one of the chairs, but Charis sat on Jenny's lap and wiggled for about two hours, pretending to dance, eating chips and cookies, singing pop songs and hymns along with Jenny. I sat beside them on a box and laughed. Slowly the sky turned from blue to black, and stars flowered, one by one, then in clusters, then in hundreds and thousands: the Milky Way was arching right over us, and the sky, just before the trees blocked it, teemed with stars, nameless millions. It was astonishingly beautiful.

So the evening passed. The guitars and mandolins strummed away; people drifted away to take the kayak out on the dark water or sat round the campfire and sang. For awhile, I sat with them and listened to the hymns they were singing, "For All the Saints", "The Sands of Time", "Be Thou My Vision", "There Is a Fountain". Alisha suggested a couple of Psalms from the RUF collection, but because they hadn't been sung in so long, Spencer had difficulty remembering the chords, and because I don't usually sing these versions, I had difficulty remembering the words.

I sat for a long time, and then I walked a little bit, though not far, for I wanted to stay in the darkness between the firelight from our camp circle and the lamplight from the people next to us. In that dark space I could see the stars. As a miracle, I slowly began to notice that the stars were actually reflected in the water. Jupiter's reflection danced on the tiny waves, and around it the other star reflections gathered. I had seen such things in a painting from The Silmarillion, but thought of them as only being something from a book--now, I was astounded by the sheer loveliness of the long starlight on the water. Superfluous beauty, in the face of God's eternal attributes of truth, goodness, beauty, purity, holiness--yet He chooses to sustain and support it. I, too, am infinitely superfluous, and so deserve nothing that He gives me. Looking back over my shoulder at the campfire, I could hear John telling everyone good-night; looking ahead out over the dark water, I could see the little red gleam of someone's headlamp where Alisha and Ange were out paddling the canoe.

Satisfied, I quietly walked back to the campsite, skirted the campfire, and lay down in one of the big tents in my clothes. I'd unrolled my sleeping bag earlier in a corner, and as it turned out, I was right next to Charis. Charis, also, had just crawled into her sleeping bag. We lay and pulled faces at each other for awhile. Then, just as we were both drifting off, someone passing by put one of the guitars down on my head. I bounced up, rubbing my head, and Charis and I both laughed.

It took awhile to get to sleep, of course. Voices, the flicker of the campfire, shadows going past outside the tent. Alisha and the Knorr girls, whose friend Arianna is with us, crept into the tent awhile later. I drifted off eventually.

This morning, it must've been about half six or seven o'clock when I woke up. At first, I could just see the pale silver of morning beginning to seep through the tent walls. Then I began to hear people moving around, Ange starting to try to find food to cook for breakfast. Someone started a jet ski down the beach. I wriggled out of the tent. I found Jenny H. We took Charis out in the canoe. The water was still quiet, the sunshine warm, beginning to be hot. Our campsite was quiet, too, Ange and John just starting to fix breakfast. Josh had already taken the kayak out. Jenny paddled for awhile, but then Charis insisted that she be allowed to paddle, so we let her stand in the middle of the boat and paddle away. We didn't go very far very fast this way, but it was still fun. Out near the island, we ran into Josh (literally), who splashed Charis (and Jenny and me in the process) because she had splashed him. We mucked about out on the water. Charis nearly paddled us in circles. After awhile, she turned us around, and we made our way very slowly back to the camp.

Josh finished with the kayak, so Jenny took Charis out in it: it was very amusing to see Jenny sitting in the stern of the little yellow kayak while Charis stood in front of her and poled as though she were a backwards gondolier. They inched slowly out onto the water, leaving a silver wake trembling behind. I went up to the campsite. Nearly everyone was up, though as Josh remarked to me, Philip is always the last one. Ange and John had cooked eggs and bacon for breakfast in three enormous metal skillets on the fire. I ate my share as well as a little bit of instant oatmeal, and finished in time to take the kayak from Jenny and Charis when they came back.

I'd been wanting to try the kayak since I'd arrived. It was lovely to be out on the water, surrounded by the quietness of the morning. I paddled out and all the way around the island and back again. The sun was rising white hot and bright in a heat-bleached sky. Boats were beginning to come out on the water, speed boats, jet skis, and little flat-bottomed fishing boats. As I paddled myself round the edge of the island, I spotted an osprey flying slowly low above the trees. I watched the beautiful endless patterns the water made around the kayak blades.

For awhile back at camp I sat under the trees with Matt and Alisha and listened to them talk about their work. Then I walked with Philip and Charlie over to "the rocks", a spot on the other side of the peninsula. Most of the rest of our group was already over there. We had to scramble down a sandy trail through straggling oak woods to get to "the rocks", and then we ran out onto a huge boulder and jumped into the green water below. The shock of hitting the water took my breath away, and my loving little brother helped so much by dunking me twice after. I swam, gasping, to a long narrow shelf of sandstone jutting just under the water's surface and perched there with everyone else: the Knorr girls, Rachel Scholz, DMac, and others. Charis was bobbing through the water like a little fish. Allison and Hannah came swimming up, having swam all the way out to the far shore (a low green stretch of land above which the far cliff rose, crowned with trees) and back. Alisha, Ange, and John joined us after awhile, coming slowly down through the trees. Alisha and Ange perched up on the big rock.

The Knorr girls, Rachel, and Arianna took the kayak out a couple of times, but they always managed to tip it over (five is way too many for a kayak), to the great amusement of the guys, who invariably had to swim out and help them tow it back to shore and empty it out.

I swam out into the lake and lay on my back. Tipped my head back: two hundred seventy degrees of hot blue sky above and around me, then the edge of green shore, then the flat expanse of water, blue where the sun hit it, green close by. I could watch everyone from here. Sky, then the thick oak woods, then the slouch of fallen sandstone tumbling down to the water, where everyone was perched at the water's edge. On either side of this fall of stone were two big sandstone boulders, and John was diving off the one on the right--beautiful compact dives and tight muscular flips. Josh and Charis were following him. Alisha and Matt were both trying to learn how to dive, and failing humorously. DMac and Joseph T. were skipping stones off the flat water. Most of the boys practiced skipping stones. DMac managed to skip a great big flat rock, about four inches thick, three times. We clapped for John's dives and laughed at Matt's belly-flops.

We spent all morning there. It was beautiful. I saw an osprey dive onto the water and then flap slowly back towards the sky again. Speed boats and boats with water skiers went past, casting up great green waves that crashed on the smoothed sandstone. The water out in the sunshine began to be hot, but in the shade it was still cool.

Around noon, people began to be tired and hungry. Back at the campsite, we ate lunch: bread, meat, mayonnaise, oreos. John sat in a chair in the sun and declaimed a long monologue about the wonders of oreos, while we all sat sleepily in the sunshine around the campfire circle and laughed. Far out on the water between the shore and the island, Jenny and Spencer were swimming toward shore. We spent a very relaxed hour lounging in the bright sunshine, eating oreos, talking quietly.

At about one o'clock, we started to pack up. Then I said good-bye to everyone and drove Hannah, Rachel, and Allison back to Tulsa. It was less than an hour's drive. Suddenly the big pale silhouettes of the skyscrapers loomed out of the bleached sky.

fall term 2008, day 2

Now Playing: Snow Patrol, "Chasing Cars".

26 August 2008.

Rachel left at half six again this morning. I persuaded myself out of bed half-an-hour later, dressed in the usual shorts and Belfast marathon T-shirt, ate a bite of breakfast, and sat in the corner, doing my quiet time. Rachel had come back and was doing her quiet time when I finished and left for the gym. The day was hot and sticky already as I was walking back to the apartment. Rachel was in the shower, so I curled up like a cat in a pool of sunshine on the carpet and read That Hideous Strength until she finished. Then I took my turn, and, washed and dressed, stuffed flute and textbooks into my backpack and walked over to Tyrrell to practice my flute.

The basement in Tyrrell keeps getting worse and worse. Today nearly all the practice rooms were full; many of the pianos in the practice rooms are broken, which makes it difficult for voice and piano majors to practice. While I was practicing, I kept hearing something scratching and banging in the ceiling above one corner of the room, which wasn't exactly the most conducive to maintaining concentration. Halfway through my labored rehearsal of the first movement of a Bach sonata, Philip banged on the door. He'd just come from a piano lesson. We stood and chatted for awhile. He says that he wants to learn something other than Classical piano; I, on the other hand, the more music I play, the more I love Classical, particularly Bach. Playing Bach is one of my greatest delights right now. The difficulties of the sonata intrigue me; they present challenges to overcome, an opportunity to beautify the piece as much as possible.

Anyway, after I finished my flute practice, I went upstairs for Music History I, MUS 3253. In this class at least I encounter amusing and complete familiarity. Dr. P is just the same as he was when teaching Music History II sophomore year: slightly ponderous, mellifluous bass voice, half-asleep eyes, camaraderie with all th students, yet behind all that precision of knowledge and expectation. I recognized a rogues' gallery of familiar faces from the music department. Music students are like a shoal of dolphins, happy-go-lucky, noisy, friendly. One guy whom I scarcely know leaned over and said, "Wow! You completely changed your haircut! Nice! Very Audrey Hepburn!" When Karl came into the classroom, everyone clapped and cheered, while he sat down near me and gave me a shamefaced smile.

Dr. P finished nearly half-an-hour early, unused to the TTh hour-and-a-quarter schedule, so I had time to go to the caf and get a wrap before Honors, HON 3003, started at half twelve. I sat outside under the sycamore tree in front of Lottie (its crown sadly defaced by last winter's ice storm, but still providing a lushly thick pool of shade) and read That Hideous Strength with an almost unpleasant intensity while I ate.

At half twelve, I went to HON 3003 in Chapman. Another one of the cookie-cutter Chapman classrooms--this time, the same classroom as I'd had for that dreadful freshman comp class ages ago. Honors classes tend to have the same group of people in them every time as each year moves up together, but since I'm behind a year from studying abroad, I recognized far fewer people in this class than would be normal for an Honors class. The professor, Dr. B, is a big, red-faced man, very friendly, straightforward, and interested in everything the students had to say. We had an amazing discussion and very nearly ran over our allotted class time.

So Honors was satisfactory. I walked back to the apartment, thinking. Rachel was away. I settled down on the floor and furiously finished That Hideous Strength with its eerie, nearly nightmare-like conclusion. Then I sat at my desk to fill my planner with a frightening list of papers and exams gleaned from all the syllabi so far, and then to read for Honors. I listened to Bach organ pieces.

At about four o'clock, Rachel stepped in to tell me that Nicole had invited us to her apartment to study. I packed up my laptop and massive music textbook and went with Rachel to Nicole's apartment. Nicole, Rachel Scholz, and Laura P. share the apartment. It's quite a jumble of furniture at the minute. Rachel, Nicole, and I nestled ourselves in the confusion and spent a very quiet two hours studying. Nicole dozed off. I dug through two onerous chapters of music history, writing down all the definitions I could find (Dr. P's quizzes are notorious).

At six o'clock, I packed up and walked over to ACAC. Philip was just getting off work at Carrello's, the wee coffee shop in ACAC. Allison, one of his friends, was hanging out with him. I hadn't met her before. I met Crystal and Laura for tea in the "hut", the restaurant/bar in ACAC. Crystal and I ordered our food to go.

We took our meals and walked in the direction of the apartments so that she could consult me on her senior project proposal. I had to keep mentally smacking myself to stay focused on the conversation; my mind kept drifting, half-expecting to see someone I recognized from Queen's. Outside Sharp Chapel, in the library plaza, we ran into Asher and Bob, and then, on the steps of the chapel, into John. Crystal and I decided just to sit in the plaza and eat since there was only half-an-hour before RUF was supposed to start. Evening sunshine was warm on the concrete benches running round the trees in the plaza. We were sitting and talking about something--ekphrastic poetry, I think--when Crystal's face, looking past me, changed. I turned to follow her look, and there, very dark against the bright sky, and very close, was Logan, all of a sudden. He sat and chatted with Crystal and me, and then with John when John came out to say hello.

We went to RUF at half seven. The atrium in Sharp Chapel was full of chairs in rows and of the RUF crowd. After the service, everyone stayed, as usual, for at least another forty-five minutes. There was ice cream. The few freshman who'd come were made welcome. I talked to Jenny Hellman about getting together; talked with Tara a little bit about Invisible Man; listened to Holly laugh about the trouble with water damage she and Kevin have had as they've been trying to settle into their apartment; said hello to Jenny McConnell. I stepped outside for a moment to say good-bye to Rachel, away from the noise in the atrium. Asher came by, full of energy, and made Rachel and me laugh. Back inside, I stood in a corner and talked quietly with Hannah and Tara.

When Logan left, I walked out with him to his car, parked over by Lottie.

After we said good-bye, as I walked back to Mayo, I was giving thanks with an outburst of spontaneity that has eluded me for awhile. I went up to Crystal's apartment, which is on the end of the building across from ours. Katie and Grant were studying in the living room, so Crystal and I went into her room. She showed me her photographs, and I read her project statement. I suggested that, since her method is fairly plain, she look for a theme to pursue with that method. We had a really good conversation, from artistic methods to the relationships that have been happening in our lives over this past summer. It was midnight, and I was sleepy. We stood on the balcony for awhile, talking.

I went back to our apartment. It was dark and quiet, except for Rachel snoring gently in her corner in our room.

fall term 2008, day 1

Now Playing: Sufjan Stevens, "Illinoise!"

I woke up this morning before Rachel's alarm went off. Our wee room is very light: though the venetian blinds may keep prying eyes from seeing in (not too likely on the third storey anyway), they don't keep the sunshine out. I hadn't slept well, and the strangeness of this new place keeps nagging at the fringes of my consciousness. In one sense I know that it will probably evaporate eventually, but in the meantime it's distracting.

Rachel was up at half six and went out to go running. My alarm went off at seven o'clock. I got up, put on running clothes, and curled up in the wingback chair in the corner by the windows to do my devotions. Rachel came back from her run as I was finishing. We spent a very quiet forty-five minutes or so. I brewed Earl Grey tea for us both; while she sat at the table and did her quiet time, I sent e-mails. She left at nine o'clock for class. I worked on e-mails and such until about half nine and then walked to the gym.

Entering the gym was eerie, like rewinding a film. The same old smells, the same old sounds and sights, the same sense of the place opening like an enormous flyway to the left above the basketball courts. With those memories was a sharp sense of loss, strangely honed, missing the QUB PEC even as I settled into the familiar routine, half-an-hour on the treadmill, fifteen minutes on the rowing machine, starting to memorize Isaiah 40 on the former and listening to Psalms on the latter.

The apartment was empty, warm, sunlit when I returned. I took a shower. At about eleven o'clock, I went to Tyrrell Hall to practice my flute. The morning was surprisingly cool for the burning clarity of the sunshine, but all that was swallowed up as soon as I stepped through the heavy wooden door. Tyrrell flooded badly this summer, and the place reeks of mold. The air is almost too thick to breathe. After forty-five minutes of practicing in one of the basement practice rooms, my throat was sore and my head swimming.

I went to the caf and stood in line for ages to order a sandwich, surrounded by complete strangers. On a campus as small as TU's, such a sensation is rather unpleasant. As I was leaving the caf, I nearly ran into Jenny H. leaving the ID office. Seeing her was an incredibly welcome taste of familiarity. She had twenty minutes left in her lunch break, and a sandwich in her car, so we went and sat on one of the concrete benches in the sunshine outside the caf and shared our lunch together.

We parted ways at one o'clock. I went back to the apartment, collected my things, and worked on reading for HON 3003 tomorrow. At two o'clock, I went to my first class of the term, Philosophy of Art, PHIL 2113. It's in Chapman Hall, the catch-all Arts and Sciences building, on the second floor. Long rows of narrow tables, floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. A full classroom. I sat down by the windows and read That Hideous Strength until the professor began to try to put the class in order.

The professor is a burly man, very emphatic when he gets in full swing, but easily sidetracked. He reminds me of the big red-furred badger we saw at the Oklahoma City Zoo on Friday. He likes to make the class laugh (I've decided that the main goal of most professors these days is to do that). "The philosophy of art is like a vampire. It will suck your blood, so by the end of the semester, you'll be all pale and pasty," he said, after commenting on how clean and tan we all looked after the summer. He introduced the course textbook by saying, "This will stop a 357 magnum if you're looking for body armor," and made the requisite blunt jokes about President Bush, which made my ears tingle. (A car alarm just went off outside. Emmaline, remember how they'd go off on Elmwood Avenue randomly in the afternoons?)

The class was rather badly behaved, I thought. Everyone seemed to keep talking even while the professor was speaking, like being in a bad highschool. The professor hadn't gotten halfway through the syllabus before a young man in the front row started to ask all sorts of huge questions about art, the idea of art, why we were only studying Western art, whether the professor thought Eastern art had just as many religious ties, and so forth. The professor made the whole class unnecessary by declaring, "There is no such thing as art!".

When class was over, I was glad. Clean afternoon sunshine. I lay under a tree near Tyrrell Hall and read That Hideous Strength until it was time for my flute lesson at half three in one of the abominable basement practice rooms. Professor Rush greeted me with his usual rotund cheerfulness, and we launched almost immediately into the Bach sonata I'd been trying to learn all spring in Belfast.

After my lesson, I returned to the tree outside and lay there for a full hour, reading. All the tricks of the institution seemed stripped bare by C.S. Lewis's "fairytale", and the vivid blue sky above the slate roofs and green oak leaves seemed all the more precious for the rubbish I'd been hearing about Art earlier in the afternoon.

I walked back to the apartment and found Rachel there. We ate tea together. We actually had to walk over to ACAC to snitch some plastic utensils before we could eat the leftover shepherd's pie I'd brought from Stillwater since we don't have any silverware in our apartment. We told each other about our respective days: economics senior project for her; art for me, and the puzzling ways of professors.

At half six, Rachel and I walked over to the plaza by the library to help Alisha chalk messages about RUF on the pavements. Alisha gave both of us big hugs, and we sat on the steps of the library and talked until Crystal came. We chalked a big message on the plaza, then split up to chalk on the pavements around campus. The evening sunshine was warm and heavy, like molten gold. Mosquitoes buzzed incessantly around my arms and ankles. After we finished chalking messages, we regrouped at the library, and Alisha came back with Rachel and me to our apartment for a little while.

At eight o'clock, Alisha and Rachel left, Rachel for an APO meeting. I listened to the Prince Caspian soundtrack, Dvorak's "Serenade for Strings", and Sufjan Stevens while I read homework assignments for HON 3003 and PHIL 2113. I turned out all the other lights and worked in the small pool of golden lamplight on the floor. For some reason, that's where I prefer to work, has been since freshman year, as though that small cone of light is safety and solace and skill.

Rachel came back at about half nine or ten o'clock. She's working on her laptop at the table, and I work on mine in the corner by the windows. I'm already beginning to feel sleepy.

gypsy caravan ongoing

Now Playing: My father reading Trustee from the Toolroom by Neville Shute to Stephen and me.

This morning I woke up at a quarter to eight. At first I was baffled because not even Stephen was up when I went downstairs for breakfast. I sat down at the table to eat and read That Hideous Strength, and eventually, Laura and Stephen appeared. About five minutes later, at twenty past eight, the doorbell rang. "I know who that is," Stephen said with a grin. I laughed. "I knew this would happen. Logan would be here ten minutes early, and Sarah would be here ten minutes late."

When Sarah did arrive, we set to work loading her pickup truck and the minivan. The minivan had already had all the seats taken out of it and the mattresses and box springs loaded in. Logan, my father, and Stephen got the pickup truck bed loaded with desk, chairs, and plants; Sarah, Laura, and I, with help, filled the back seat inside the cab of the truck with suitcase, pillows, blankets, and stack of drawers. Two lamps were stowed in the minivan. The four of us said good-bye to Logan and Stephen and set off for Tulsa.

The morning had been warm, humid, and sunny in Stillwater. Sarah, Laura, and I trundled down the motorway, squeezed into the front seat of the cab of the truck, listening to old radio shows. Mist hung above the low hills in the humid sunshine. The mist gradually darkened ahead of us until, about halfway to Tulsa a great dark cloud like the distinct curve of a wave or the outspread wings of a raptor suddenly loomed above us, and behind it, the sky was darker yet. Rain came down. I sat and prayed hard for the rain to stop, then laughed at myself for being stressed because after about five minutes the windshield cleared. It rained intermittently until we were fairly beyond Keystone Lake and down into Tulsa. The lake was beautiful: dark grey clouds, dark grey water, but a motorboat on the water leaving behind a white wake, and a white egret mirroring the wake as it circled near the shore.

In Tulsa, the sunshine was heavy and hot. My father was far behind us, and when he pulled into the car park between the apartments, I knew why: the driver's window was gone. He said that it had shattered just beyond the lake, leaving behind a puddle of green glass beside the driver's seat. I went inside the small student centre in the middle of Mayo Village to pick up my apartment key. The apartment complex was fairly quiet, though across the street, there was the bustle of freshmen moving into Twin Towers dorms.

Apartment #3338 is at the top of three flights of stairs on the centre block of Mayo Village. I rapped on the door and opened it, and there was Rachel Shafer. I gave her a big hug, exclaimed over the cleanliness of the apartment, and then went downstairs to meet everyone else. It didn't take us too long to move in. Philip and Rachel Scholz were there to help, as well as a burly four-man Hispanic moving crew from the university, who made the process go faster by trying to out-muscle each other and carry mattresses up the stairs single-handed.

While the Rachels and I tried to set up the furniture in our apartment, Sarah, Laura, and my father helped Philip move the last few things into his apartment. Then, at about eleven o'clock, we went to lunch at Panera. Philip had to go to work in Carrello's in ACAC at noon.

After lunch, my father took Rachel and the minivan to pick up Rachel's things from the families that have been storing them all summer in Broken Arrow. This left Sarah, Laura, and me in the apartment. I set Laura to work disinfecting the kitchen cupboards, Sarah to work disinfecting the bathroom counter, and myself to work putting everything away. We discovered in the midst of this bustle that we were in need of a broom and dustpan, dish detergent, and toilet paper. So we hopped into Sarah's truck and drove down to the shop on 15th Street for the requisite supplies.

Back in the apartment, we set to work again. I cleaned the bathroom; Laura washed dishes; Sarah swept the floor. We christened the broom Fred and the dustpan Filbert. It was good craic, though it would've been better if we'd had some Nickel Creek to keep us working. When Rachel and my father arrived, we scampered downstairs to help them move Rachel's things in.

My father, Rachel, and I screwed the table together. Then my father left for Stillwater. Sarah, Laura, and I stayed. Laura wanted to put the maps and posters up. She insisted that Rachel and I hang a map from the high expanse of wall above the kitchen bar, where the vaulted ceiling slants up. Rachel, in her delicately forthright manner, convinced Laura that no such thing was going to occur. Rachel described in lavish and theatrical detail her summer's work, a performance of King Henry IV, while we put tape on the maps and posters and hung them round the living room. She and I each took a wall of the wee sitting nook, where my desk and the two armchairs are, and put up postcards and photographs. The wall above my desk became a collage of verses, quotations, and pictures from Renwick weekend, formal dinners, and weddings, while the opposite wall, under Rachel's serious and methodical hands, was slowly hung with a variety of postcards from her travels and mine.

Sarah, Laura, and I left at about four o'clock. We drove back to Stillwater with the windows rolled down, all three of us sweltering as the full blaze of the afternoon sun beat through the windscreen. We listened to music on my MP3 player--Bob Marley, Sufjan Stevens, Coldplay, Snow Patrol. Laura fell asleep with her head half out the window; Sarah and I talked about the semester ahead.

Back in Stillwater, Sarah dropped Laura and me off at our house. I answered some e-mails, most notably a hilarious one from Rachel M. about the woes of attempting to post my forlorn QUBCU hoody. ("So we rang Emmaline, who of course was at Castlewellan and doesn't carry your address around with her...." I was just proud she hadn't typed E-- instead!)

Laura and I fixed tea tonight. I made shepherd's pie, and she baked soda bread from a recipe in an old cookbook. When my father asked me later what I thought of the soda bread, I said that it was like looking at a postcard of Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" when compared to Mrs. Wilson's soda bread. Anyway, we were in the midst of this (and Laura, being tired and hot, was rather snappy) when the phone rang. "Hello? May I speak to E--?" said the voice on the other end of the line. "This is E--," I said, starting to grin hugely at an accent I thought I recognized. "This is Daphne," said the voice. "Daphne!" For about five minutes I was regaled by a rather sleepy Daphne and Emmaline (and Charlotte, Heather, and others in the background), until the notorious Donegal connection cut out.

Laura and I finished our work. We ate tea rather quietly.

We watched the "Three Stooges". While my father washed dishes, Laura and Stephen practiced their duet on the piano. Laura came to lean her head on my arm for awhile. I sat in the living room for a long time, typing yesterday's journal entry, with no sound except the rattle of the ceiling fan. My father quietly went into the study to work on tomorrow's Sabbath school lesson. The light in the study became distinct from the silvery dregs of sunshine slanting through the stairwell window above the study, until dusk became night, and my father and Stephen came into the living room and turned on the lamps. My father read, and we had family worship. My mother, who's in Pittsburgh right now, rang to say hello.

Now Laura and Stephen have gone to bed, and the cats are prowling round the house. I've chatted a little bit online with Logan and Syneva this evening, but I'm completely exhausted myself. This heat does not agree with me. I would rather like to evaporate for a week before having to start university, but life would be boring if things always went according to our likes.... It still hasn't fully sunk in that I'm not going back to Queen's. I miss the camaraderie there. The thought of eating in the University of Tulsa cafeteria again is rather repulsive to me. Small things....

God is good.

(N.B.: My father pointed out that there was something possibly offensive in this post. I have removed it, and I do apologize if anyone was offended. I honestly meant no harm.)

22 August 2008

Now Playing: Laura and Stephen on the piano.

At a quarter past one, Logan arrived, to take Stephen and me to the zoo. On our way to campus to pick Laura up, we dropped my father off for his meeting. Campus was crowded, thick with students going hither, thither, and yon. In the course of the ten minutes we spent trying to wade through the pedestrian traffic, we saw Dr. E, Rachel, Henry, Anna, and Laura’s nutrition professor.

The drive to Oklahoma City to meet Logan’s family at the zoo was uneventful. The zoo was easy to find, and almost deserted in the heat of mid-afternoon. The Wests were waiting for us in the car park under a big oak tree. Mr. West was wearing a white cowboy hat. We went down into the broad open plaza at the front of the zoo, purchased tickets, and entered. We walked between beds of lush plantings, zinnias, calla lilies, daisies, and thick bushes. Dakota and Mrs. West quickly planned a route. We visited the pachyderm house first, where rhinos and pygmy hippos are housed in a building with a variety of exotic birds. The two kookaburras obliged by laughing hysterically for a good two minutes, and the tawny frogmouth amused everyone by yawning with its huge pale mouth.

From there we walked into the island house. A glass tank full of cockroaches brought suitable groans of disgust from everyone. In a big cage nearby, a monitor, probably five or six feet long from snout to tip, was attempting to climb a tree much too small for it. The tree, one of the rather wimpy office variety, was bending drearily under the big lizard’s weight while the lizard rather stupidly flailed its enormous splayed claws. Outside, Galapagos tortoises sat with all four legs splayed in the shade, their heads retracted under their monstrous shells. We walked down behind the pachyderm house and laughed at the rhinos, some of which were outside, wallowing in a mud pit.

We walked up a short hill, past an expansive shady enclosure housing five different kinds of deer, as Kady pointed out. Around this enclosure, near the top of the hill, was another shady enclosure housing three or four beautiful velvety okapis, and beyond that was another broad expanse of grass, this time nearly treeless, where giraffes, ostriches, and zebras stood motionless in the heat. Behind us, an okapi gave a strange, donkey-like cry; before us, an ostrich, blind in one eye and trailing its huge frayed wings like the fringes of an old feather duster, was herded toward the giraffe building by a keeper. Further down the hill, we came to more big fenced enclosures. In one of these was a wild ass, which, as soon as it saw us, started to produce the most ridiculous donkey bray I’ve ever heard. It trotted down the fenceline as we walked beside it, braying the whole time and sticking its head between the wires of the fence. When Logan, Laura, Tanner, Stephen, and Kady started to run back up the fenceline, it cantered beside them, braying enthusiastically. A keeper drove past in a golf cart, and the ass ran beside the golf cart; when the keeper reversed the cart back down the hill, the ass ran beside it. It was hilariously funny. The ridiculous creature made the whole zoo echo with its frantically friendly braying.

We also visited maned wolves and a cheetah and another broad sunny space for kangaroos. It was incredibly hot. Whenever we came to a water fountain, Laura and Kady would start to splash each other. There were also faucets mounted on tall poles at intervals along the sidewalk; the faucets put out a musty-smelling mist when a button as pushed. It was funny to watch Tanner, Laura, Kady, and Stephen playing with the mist until their hair and eyebrows were beaded with tiny white drops like frost.

From the top of the hill, we came to the primate area. Chimpanzees were sitting outside. In the primate house, we watched four or five silverback gorillas, which had just been fed. The youngest of the bunch was an incorrigible showoff: it scrambled to the top of the telephone poles in the enclosure, slid down a length of old fire hose, rapped its knuckles against the glass after it had seen Mr. West do so, and ran round the cage smacking the older gorillas with its big wrinkled hands. Logan commented that the orangutan, sitting wisely in the next cage with its bearded chin on its chest, looked like the sort of old man who might play Go with Philip or Jonathan. The keepers had just put the orangutan in a new cage with some old blankets and sheets, and Laura and I collapsed into giggles when the orangutan, maintaining its dignified bearing, wrapped one of the sheets around itself. “It’s a Jedi!” said Stephen. We spent a long time in the primate house: the afternoon had reached its hottest point, as the sun was turning toward the west. Outside near the chimpanzees, Tanner had caught a small lizard. He let it scamper across his shoulders, and when he held it belly-up in his hand, it lay perfectly still while he stroked its belly. He lost it in the primate house, but with Stephen’s and Dakota’s help, he managed to recapture it. In a nearby outdoor enclosure, we saw three or four medium-sized lion cubs. All of us were beginning to be tired.

The next big exhibit was a new one, made up of native Oklahoma plants and wildlife. In one of the first cages were deer and turkeys. Beyond them in a separate enclosure were two magnificent mountain lions. From there we entered a wire-covered flyway, where roadrunners, quails, and native ducks were housed. Beyond that was one of the best exhibits in the whole zoo: a nighttime exhibit. We entered the cool twilight through heavy wooden doors. Set up to look like an old barn, the exhibit housed a big glassed-in flyway full of bats zooming in endless circles. They hung from the rafters; they stopped to take great mouthfuls of fruit from bowls on the floor; their wings flapped translucently in the pale purple light. It was mesmerizing to watch them. Across from them were two big glass cages, one housing a pair of regal great horned owls, the other housing a pair of barn owls, which reminded Stephen of little old Japanese men. There were the requisite snakes, amphibians, and insects. In another cage were a skunk and a possum; beside them was a ring-tailed cat, and beside it were two screech owls.

Back outside, we walked on a bridge above an enclosure housing a badger, which was running in circles; above it on the hill were prairie dogs and bison. A big waterfall splashed over rocks in the enclosure of two gigantic brown bears. The red early evening sunshine was slanting warmly over the red earth as we entered another building, this one housing fish, snakes, amphibians, and, at some point in the near future, beavers, otters, and alligator snapping turtles. It was relaxing to sit in the cool air conditioning, watching the enormous streamlined shapes of catfish, perch, and guar sliding through green water. Back outside, we walked down the hill, pausing to admire a bald eagle on a perch. The last enclosure housed four or five Mississippi alligators, lizards lying lazily in the long grass.

From this area, we strolled down the hill further, and came out of the thick trees that had clothed the lower slopes of the hill onto the margin of the lake. To our left were the old bear pits, cut into the side of the hill, with trees growing above them; to our right the blue expanse of water stretched warm in the sunshine. Paddleboats shaped like swans bobbed at a quay. The old bear pits now house a variety of animals, from a colony of fat (but alert) meerkats to a giant anteater, pacing in a figure eight, its elongated snout and fan tail reminding me respectively of a caricature artist’s attempts and the plating of a baleen whale. “God is amazing,” breathed Mr. West as he half-laughed at the anteater. We walked past the butterfly garden, late sun glancing off the petals of snow-on-the-mountain and black-eyed susans. Our last stop was the aquarium, but it turned out to be rather disappointing. The huge tank that usually holds seals and sea lions had only one lonely seal swimming in it, occasionally poking its sleek dappled head above the clear water. We walked down past the eerily empty dolphin tank into the aquarium area under the auditorium, and looked at tanks of fluorescent coral reef fish, African lungfish, four-eyed fish, stonefish, and other oddities.

Wearily, we climbed the hill to the gate again. We said good-byes in the scorching evening heat of the car park. As we climbed into Logan’s car to start the drive back to Stillwater, I was absolutely exhausted, but my impression of the afternoon was one of incredible richness.

Oklahoma looking unusually green: my house and garden

Question: Is this layout easier to read, i.e., with these colors, than the old layout?

good times

Now Playing: Cherish the Ladies, "Woman of the House", Track 1, "The Jolly Seven/The Rascal on the Haystack/Bonkers in Yonkers".

This morning when I woke up, the world outside was remarkably cool and moist. I'd been dreaming about flying all night.... I sat downstairs and ate leftover blueberry muffins (courtesy Laura) and drank tea and read The Mind of the Maker. Philip joined me, unusually early for him, but he was busy reading directions for making lattes since he's just been hired at Carrello's, the coffee shop in ACAC at the University of Tulsa. As soon as he'd finished breakfast, he left for Tulsa to start training.

I opened all the windows, sat upstairs, and did my devotions. Missy was supposed to show up at eleven o'clock for a visit, but she rang me just after eleven to tell me that she'd slept in far later than she'd meant and was running a full hour late. I didn't mind: I spent the extra hour working frantically at the arm-length list of tasks I've set myself for this week.

At about noon, Missy showed up. My mother welcomed her inside and exhibited to her the small menagerie of wooden figurines Heather had given her as a hostess gift: tiny wooden turtle, crocodile, giraffe, rhino, hippo, impala, and cheetah. Missy and I sat in the living room and watched the eighth Truth Project lesson, skipping ahead since we won't be able to watch all the DVDs before both of us have to go back to university at the end of this week. It was an excellent lecture about God dwelling in His people. My mother and Stephen quietly ate lunch in the background. After the lecture, Missy and I talked for awhile about the awesome wonder of God's indwelling Spirit, of our participation in the fellowship of the Godhead, of the power of God at work in us, of our responsibility to maintain unity with other believers.

We went for lunch at half one. Missy was driving one of her family's old cars, which has a stick shift. She stalled it right after the light turned green at a major intersection. I couldn't help grinning. We went to lunch at Chipotle, the new Mexican restaurant on Hall of Fame. The afternoon was still cool and overcast, so we sat outside at a little metal table under an umbrella. After we'd bowed our heads and prayed, as we were beginning to eat the enormous burrito (which we split), one of the workers came by and asked us what church we went to. He introduced himself as Orlando--an enormous Black man, very friendly. He sings in the Gospel choir at Mount Zion Baptist church. Missy and I looked at each other and shook our heads in amazement after he'd gone inside.

It began to rain, a thin, persistent mizzle. We drove downtown to Murphy's to look around for a gift to give the people who've been storing Missy's belongings in Geneva all summer. We browsed through Murphy's, admiring the colorful utensils and kitchenware. Missy bought a cookbook of Oklahoma recipes, and then we drove up the street to Aspen to spend the rest of our afternoon.

As we stepped into the coffee shop, we saw Pastor Parnell sitting in the corner by the door, so we stopped to talk to him. Then we went to the counter and ordered. We ordered hot tea, and we both amused ourselves by sniffing the containers of tea bags: vanilla almond, raspberry quince, mango ceylon, Earl Grey, British breakfast, blackberry sage. We sat down at a small table on the far side of the coffee shop, snuggling our hands round our hot mugs. Tinglingly aromatic steam rose from my mug of raspberry tea. We laughed about how wars have been fought over tea as we watched the rich color slowly seep into the clear water at the bottoms of our cups. The rain fell slowly outside.

At about four o'clock we drove back to my house. Missy dropped me off there, and we said our final good-bye. She leaves on Friday to return to Geneva. Laura was back from her first full day of school, MTC plus OSU. I sat in my room and typed up Saturday's journal entry, listening to Flook and The Wailin' Jennys, while Laura looked out my windows and told me about her day. One of her friends from last year's ASL class is in her nutrition class, which is a very good thing.

At half four, I left for the Fishers' house, to listen to the last John Piper sermon in the series "Battling Unbelief" with Anna. At the Fishers', Mrs. Fisher and Christa enthusiastically showed me their house's new lay-out. It's all very cozy and comfortable. Anna told me about her first day of classes, laughing about her history and chemistry professors and about Dr. E. Then we spread out on the shaggy carpet in her new room and listened to the last sermon together.

As we finished talking about the sermon, the smell of chicken steaming in olive oil was coming from the kitchen. We said good-bye to Mrs. Fisher, busy working on tea, and Anna, Ruth, and I drove over to Logan's house, on the other side of town, listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. The evening was becoming grey and misty, the sort of evening that ought to come at the end of November, though it wasn't quite cold enough.

Logan had tea prepared for us--sandwiches and pizza--when we arrived. The four of us sat in a row on the sofa in the living room and, since there weren't any interesting matches on TV, watched clips of old matches on the NBC website. We stayed until half nine. Jonathan came in at seven o'clock, and after he arrived, the noise level went up considerably. All-in-all, we watched track and field, swimming, synchronized diving, diving, gymnastics, archery, and a little bit of ping-pong.

At about half eight, Elizabeth rang Anna's mobile. I talked to her for half-an-hour and laughed a lot. I talked to Sarah B. some, too--incredibly refreshing to hear her voice. After I talked, Anna took a turn, then Ruth. We finally left at half nine, and I took Anna and Ruth home. I drove home listening to "Digee Dime" from the Burlap to Cashmere CD. The night was so humid that I had to flick on the windshield wipers sporadically to clear the condensation from the windscreen. At the house, my father was checking e-mail in the study. I sat and talked with him for a little while. He's teaching one class this semester with about fifty students in it--not exactly his preference. At ten o'clock, I went upstairs. I'm listening to Cherish the Ladies and to August crickets clicking outside.

nacogdoches cousins, part ii.

Now Playing: "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" soundtrack, "The Call", Regina Spektor.

12 August 2008.

Aunt Lisa, Ross, Andrew, Lillian, Annalee, and Mary arrived Sabbath evening. Today was their second full day with us. Last night, I stayed up until twenty to one finishing Perelandra, so this morning I was tired but up before Ross at any rate. My mother had bought three dozen donuts (chocolate, maple, and glazed) for breakfast this morning, so I sat at the table, drank my tea, and ate a donut while my mother and Aunt Lisa talked. At about nine o'clock, Aunt Lisa and my mother left to spend the day with Grammy shopping for quilting and knitting supplies in Guthrie. This left me with the four girls and the four guys: the girls were all busy getting ready for Jessie's surprise party at lunchtime, while the guys were all upstairs being bored. Mary desperately wanted to go swimming; Ross was in a bad mood at the very idea of having to venture near a pool. I tried to keep peace between the two groups. I hung out with the guys in Philip's room listening to music for awhile, then played outside with Mary, fetching the post, climbing the pine tree in the front yard, and, as a final treat, blowing the conch shell so that the whole neighborhood reverberated.

At half eleven I went to work for two hours. There's a new girl at work, Erika. I haven't made up my mind about her yet: she's unusual, very pleasant and friendly, eager to work, and I find myself drawn to her, but I can't tell whether she's a Christian. She has thick blond hair and a pleasant, freckled face, and went to highschool in the desert in Australia, she says. After work I walked to the post office and posted a parcel to Emmaline.

In some ways it was good to be back at the house. The house was cool and quiet. The morning's cool cloudiness outside had given way to cool sunshine, an unusually lovely August afternoon. Ross was asleep on Philip's bed, while Philip and Andrew played "Ages of Empires II"; I met Stephen leaving for organ as I came inside. The girls had all gone over to San Born Lake with Angie. Thanks to their cake-baking exploits, the kitchen was a tip, and the breakfast things had all been left sitting out.

I took my books and journal outside and sat on the swingset to do my devotions. The afternoon was gorgeous, sweetly, alluringly, surprisingly gorgeous. A vibrant blue sky; big indigo-and-white clouds; a sweet breeze from the northeast; warm sunshine. Tiny bees and flies buzzed among the big flowering basil stalks. An emerald green hummingbird hovered down to drink from the basil, then swung, scintillating, to within about eighteen inches of my face. It passed over my head twice, so close that I could hear the whir of its wings.

After I finished, I went inside and cleaned up the kitchen. Then I walked over to San Born Lake. It seemed strange to me, going up the neighborhood streets, to be so confident, so normal about this. I tried to remember the last time I'd walked over there, but couldn't. The pain of wanting to see the little steep green hills and tiny crooked hedges burned the back of my mind. At the opening between the locust trees by the water, I sat down to think. Sobering: to sit there, staring across the blue water, under the blue sky, toward the green rim of willow trees, and to be completely unmoved.

I walked on. In the thick grove of juniper trees just past the bridge, I spied Lillian, Annalee, Mary, Laura, and Angie climbing in the biggest juniper tree. They were all wearing cloaks (Mary had a ragged towel pinned around her shoulders), and Laura and Annalee scrambled eagerly up to the top of the tree to impress me. We walked back to the house after awhile.

My mother, Aunt Lisa, and Grammy were all home, busy fixing tea. The boys were at Boomer Lake playing ultimate football. I sat down at the table with the knitting from Mrs. Rees and listened to them talk about their day. Annalee and Mary kept popping in, complaining about how bored they were. So I got up abruptly and took the two of them over to Mrs. Orr’s house. We asked Mrs. Orr if we could walk her new dog, Moochy, a young shepherd pup. Moochy bounced excitedly as I slipped through the gate into the yard and found her leash. Annalee, Mary, and I walked her up the easement, scurried across the highway (holding hands), and let her on long leash as we jogged down the hill to the lake. She’s fairly obedient, has a problem with jumping (bounced up and popped Mary a kiss on the eyebrow), but generally did a good job of listening to our commands. Such a happy wee dog I haven’t seen in a long time, with a beautifully soft and glossy coat. We walked down over the first bridge, then round up and over the hill where the frisbee golf course is. The evening sun lay warm and long on the green grass. Annalee and Mary took the leash for awhile. Annalee ran with Moochy over the grass, the dog streaking out in front on her leash. We went back down the hill and over the bridge to the park. I sat with the dog under the shelter so that Mucci could cool off, all four of her legs splayed out on the cool concrete, while Annalee and Mary went down the slide. We hurried back home for tea.

After tea, all of us except my dad piled into the cars to go swimming, but the city pool and the YMCA were both closed, the city pool for the season, the YMCA pool for the night. So we went back to our house, and I dragged the old wading pool out into the low garden by the swingset and filled it with water for the girls. My parents, Grammy, Aunt Lisa, and I sat outside on the back porch, while the girls splashed in the wading pool. The evening was cool, and after half-an-hour, Mary was shivering. Laura and Lillian climbed up the small silver maple tree in the corner of the back yard while the gloaming fell. I was wading in the cool water with Mary when Philip, Ross, and Andrew appeared on the porch, asking me to come play spades with them. Reluctantly, I went inside to join them. Ross and I were on a team against Philip and Andrew. I’d never played before, so I was rather lost, but it was fun. After my parents went to bed, Aunt Lisa joined us, chatting with us, and laughing with Ross and me at Andrew, who was completely spaced out.

I declared my last round at eleven o’clock and went upstairs to bed. The nearly full moon was shining through the shutters as I crawled into bed.

Now Playing: The Wailin' Jennys, "Heaven When We're Home".

Some interesting quotes from Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking… as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing…. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then—that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?.... And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back—if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?”

“You and the King differ more than two kinds of fruit. The joy of finding him again and the joy of all the new knowledge I have had from you are more unlike than two tastes; and when the difference is as great as that, and each of the two things so great, then the first picture does stay in the mind quite a long time… after the other good has come…. It is I, I myself, who turn from the good expected to the given good. Out of my own heart I do it. One can conceive a heart which did not: which clung to the good it had first thought of and turned the good which was given it into no good…. I thought… that I was carried in the will of Him I love, but now I see that I walk with it. I thought that the good things He sent me drew me into them as the waves lift the islands; but now I see that it is I who plunge into them with my own legs and arms, as when we go swimming…. It is a delight with terror in it! One’s own self to be walking from one good to another, walking beside Him as Himself may walk, not even holding hands. How has He made me so separate from Himself? How did it enter His mind to conceive such a thing? …. I thought we went along paths—but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.”

Mother dear: I couldn't explain tonight when you asked. Perhaps this will better--a variation on the phrase that closes Psalm 23, "Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me...."


“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.” – C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

Cross-legged on the floor, adrift again
(Though now in pages, journals, scribbled words),
You ask me, “Why read old journals?”

Pointillist patterns, spectrum splitting back
To pure white light: Emma in the kitchen,
“We don’t mean you. We like you, E--.”
Bringing Catherine tea up flights of stairs,
Em and Charlotte laughing at the door—
Yet, I liminal as these margins lined
With words oppressed to page in that dim room—
Read pleasure back, inlay delight on pain—
Where I sat, night by night, locked in by dark,
Shattered into sherds by maddening fear,
Flayed into quivering shreds by sharp despair,
Screaming, crunched and crushed, like broken glass,
Yet prayed and pushed into these other lives.

So came the entering slowly, receiving me:
Rachel and Daphne scribbling "no-go" maps
To narrow streets encrusted with straight-backed buildings,
Linsey and Heather soaked by sudden rain,
The great red building on its massive lawn,
The elm trees burnished bronze by waning day,
The dash across the road of little cars,
The irrepressible, irresistible pull
Of common rooms and kitchens full of light,
Of bitter, carefree humor, fragile-faceted,
Of sudden strike of sunshine on old brick
Outside the kitchen window.

I reread.

The fragments piece together, flake by flake,
Resume their resolution, fall in place,
A pictured promise as they make a peace.