A few pictures here.

Now Playing: The Decemberists, "Picaresque", "The Engine Driver".

The last day of October. I've spent most of the evening working on senior project and have six pages of unpolished poetry-prose thus far.

Psalm 27.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.
For He will hide me in His shelter in the day of trouble; He will conceal me under the cover of His tent; He will lift me high upon a rock.
And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.
Hear, o Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me!
You have said, 'Seek my face. My heart says to you, 'Your face, Lord, do I seek.'
Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger, o you who have been my help. Cast me not off; forsake me not, o God of my salvation!
For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.
Teach me your way, o Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
Give me not up to the will of my adversaries; for false witnesses have risen against me, and they breathe out violence.
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!"

God is light who dispels fear, who shows reality, who brings warmth and peace, who enables creativity and fruitfulness. No peace outside of this light. Not only do we not know ourselves, but we don't know others, stumbling around a dark room.

The safety and peace for which David prays are for the purpose of worshiping and serving God. David does not seek God's favor for his own sake merely but for his sake in God's glory. One of the most amazing truths about salvation is that Christ has chosen to make our happiness His glory.

"We must value God's power so highly that it puts to flight all fear," says Calvin, even fear from our consciences, Romans 8, especially vs. 34. The fear of God enables more trust of Him. The more powerful and sovereign He is, the more understanding comes of His authority to forgive sin completely, and the more weight the assessment of justification has.

In verse 12, the believer can ventriloquize Christ's words. The witnesses against Him were false because He was perfect; the witnesses against the believer are false because the believer is perfect, too--in Him. Pastor Jones preached at RUF this week to the effect that the believer is so closely united to Christ physically and covenantally that it is as though we ourselves knelt in the Garden and wept tears of blood in obedience.

That sounds like blasphemy to me because I know I'm not capable of that obedience. The Gospel knows I'm not capable of that obedience, too--which is why the union is so close. Just enjoy it.

The union can't always be sensed, though. God commands His people to seek Him, but He enables that seeking, too. He is the God of salvation: His love is irresistible and unchanging. By His character He must draw His people to Himself.

Someday that will happen eternally. The feeling of lostness is no wonder. If we are united to Christ physically, we are also disembodied with Him physically--our bodies, with His, are scattered all over time and space, awaiting the final union, the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I get impatient for that.

"Wait for the Lord."

Now Playing: Brahms, Requiem, Track 2, "Behold, All Flesh Is As The Grass."

Just a post to let you all know that I'm not actually dead yet.

Highlights from this week.

On Monday evening, Rachel Jr. and Tara both came over for tea at our apartment. Tara brought over this enormous wedge of Dutch cheese to share. She hung out in our apartment until it was time for prayer, while Rachel Sr. and I both studied industriously.

Tuesday, I permitted myself to become far too engrossed in my senior project. Rachel Sr. was out all evening, so I ended up reading one of the translations of Beowulf that I'm studying while I ate my tea, and then settling from that into a deep daze for at least forty-five minutes until I came out of my stupor in time to go to RUF.

Wednesday was spectacularly cold and wet. In the morning it stormed riotously, and not only was my umbrella broken, but my jacket wasn't waterproof, so by the time I got to the library and to lectures, I was almost soaked to the skin. That evening, though, Nicole came over, and in the process of the evening, with much labor and travail, I managed to write a decent five-page summary of my senior project, thanks also to the help of The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack.

On Thursday, instead of doing Bible study in the evening, my small group, minus Rachel Jr., who was at a concert, went to see TU's production of Hamlet. It was quite excellent. The acting was really good. Karl, one of our RUF friends, wrote the incidental music. Rachel Sr., of course, was all ablaze with excitement afterward. Russ, an acquaintance from freshman Honors classes, who'd somehow joined our group in the course of the evening, made fun of Rachel Sr. and me: he calls us "Team Study" and "Team Good Grades" whenever he sees us, which makes both of us uncomfortable, for Rachel blushes and I laugh at him.

Friday evening, Kevin and Holly invited Rachel Sr. and me to their apartment for tea, which was very relaxing, a good break between study sessions for the GRE. We played Taboo (American version of Articulate), and Kevin loaned me a Decemberists CD that I'd not heard before.

Saturday was THE DAY OF RECKONING: i.e., the day I buried myself in a random office complex in south Tulsa at a testing centre to take the GRE. It was alright. Laura, Anna, and Sarah were supposed to visit from Stillwater this evening, but they couldn't come, so Rachel Sr. and I spent a quiet evening at Nicole's apartment with Nicole and Tara, watching the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility film.

Today I went to Christ Pres for church in the morning. Afterward, Tara and I took sandwiches to Woodward Park and ate a picnic there in the rose garden. The day was gorgeous. A brisk north breeze was roaring through the oak trees at the top of the hill just to our right, sweeping the smells of the roses to us and scattering our napkins across the little grassy plot where we were sitting on our jackets in the sunshine.

Now Playing: Football game at the stadium next door.

I'm so tired that I'm about to fall asleep at my desk, but I'll attempt to be coherent.

Today was a good day up until the point at which, just now, I looked at my planner and realized that I take the GRE next Saturday, a five-page paper for senior project is due the following Monday, and a MUS 3253 trimester exam is that Tuesday, followed in short order the next Monday by a letter of response to a peer's senior project paper, and the Monday after that by ten pages from the senior project itself.

Needless to say, I'm going to go into hibernation for a long time....

Anyway.

So today Rachel and I both took a little bit more time in the morning than usual, which was pleasant. I sat down and studied for the GRE while I ate my breakfast. Then I did my devotions.

Rachel left at nine o'clock for an economics research colloquium. At ten o'clock I walked over to Nicole's apartment. She's having an RUF party tonight, instigated by a combination of Tara, German class, and desire to make currywurst (bratwurst with extra spices, I gather), and the two of us were to spend the day getting ready for it.

Nicole and I, both tired, took her Hummer to Reasor's on 15th Street. It was crowded with the usual Saturday morning rush. We bought the sausages she wanted, and I bought things to make cookies with. Then we went back to campus, put away our shopping, and went to the caf to pick up lunch to go. We ate in Nicole's apartment.

After we finished lunch, Nicole did an amazingly fast cleanup of her apartment before she and I went shopping for other things. We drove down to Target on Yale and shopped for winter clothes. Then we drove down to the Promenade Mall and walked through JC Penney to find a casserole dish for Katie. It reminded me so much of Debenham's down in city centre in Belfast, all the counters of perfumes and jewelry. Nicole managed to find something for Katie, and after she did, we wandered around in the mall for a little while.

We found a funny wee shop that was like a magician's box. The ceiling was hung with paper Japanese lanterns. Nicole had been looking for Eastern-style silk trousers and found a rack of them, shimmering bright colors and floral patterns. While she looked, I wandered, in awe, delighted by all the pretty things. There were beaded earrings, canes, bags, scarves, saris, all sorts of random colorful things. By the door there was a whole stand full of masks, all feather and glitter and gaudy paint. Nicole bought a green-and-copper one to go with her silk trousers. I tried on a baby-blue-and-gold mask shaped like a cat's face. There were plumes and feathers and all sorts of strange fantastic combinations of shapes and colors.

After a couple of other stops, on campus, I went to my apartment to put things away before hauling the cookie-baking materials back over to Nicole's apartment. She had already started to grill the sausages on a George Foreman grill, which sat on the kitchen counter and spouted grease. I whipped up the cookies and put them in the oven. The apartment was hot and smoky with the grill and the oven running at once. Jacob, his roommate, and Nicole's parents all arrived. Then RUFfians started to show up: Amy and Rachel Jr., Laura, Hannah, Holly and Kevin, Jenny M., Rachel Sr., Bob, the Tyree brothers, Brandon, James and Eleanor, Tara.... The apartment was full of people sitting in groups, at the small dining room table, on the floor in the bay window, on the old battered green leather couches around the TV. I finally ended up curled pleasantly on the floor behind the sofa with Tara, the two of us talking quietly underneath everyone else's banter.

Tonight's TU football game started at seven o'clock. The sun was already going down and the evening growing cold. People began to leave. Tara, Rachel Sr., and I were among the last to leave. Tara had ridden her bike, so Rachel and I said good-bye to her and walked back to her apartment. I spent an hour drinking tea and working on a GRE maths practice problem set before hurrying over to ACAC at eight o'clock to study with one of the guys from PHIL 2113 for our midterm on Monday. He's Lithuanian, I think, and on the track team. He genuinely seems to want to learn the material and do well.

We studied for an hour, and then I walked back to the apartment. The night was noisy. Halftime was just finishing in the stadium. The noise of the music blaring over the PA system and the announcer's voice bounced off the buildings, disorienting, echoing between the library and the chapel. Crowds of people were moving up and down the footpaths. The lights of the stadium blazed on the southeast side of campus, but to the northwest, a few stars were shining clear and cold in the black sky. I longed to get away somewhere quiet.

So tired. In the apartment, Rachel was sitting on the sofa researching amendments to the Colorado constitution so that she can fill out her absentee ballot. I sat down at my desk, too tired to study until the moment mentioned at the beginning of this post. I had thought my schedule was crowded--until now. Let's hope I make it through to Thanksgiving....

"Lift up your heads, o ye gates!
Lift them high, ye ancient doors,
That the King of glory may enter in!
Who is the King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle."

Now Playing: Mozart, "Requiem in D Minor", "Agnus Dei".

Rachel just got off her mobile and is glowing, having solved a problem with a jump bidding spreadsheet with her father's help.

Today I sat through an hour-and-a-half seminar about applying to graduate school with Rachel and about fifty other students. One comforting thing was that I already knew a lot of the things that were said. It's always mildly reassuring to realize that one is not quite clueless, though that sensation was just barely enough to restrain the usual panic I begin to feel when embarking on any such venture.

It was more encouraging, though, to realize while I listened to the Dean speak that I am actually looking forward to this opportunity. It would be so pleasant to be able to set aside Philosophy of Art, Honors, and even Music History to be able to focus completely on senior project right now. Dr. S lent me a lovely book about book history a couple of weeks ago, full of samples of manuscript and print from Roman times to the present. Unlike some scholarly historical books, this one actually takes an unashamed stance for the idea that form and meaning are intimately united and that the form does convey a certain specific range of meaning. Refreshing, and a beautiful read.

Considering graduate school, it's tempting to start to get bent out of shape. In fact, that's usually what happens as soon as I start contemplating the reams of paper that will have to be consumed to fill out applications and all the stiffly polite e-mails that will have to be sent to professors and advisors.

I was wondering tonight why I ought to bother with this anyway. I've wondered about it many times. I've vented on here so much about how much I've hated certain English classes I've been in. Perhaps it would be better to quit and find a nice quiet sinecure somewhere to keep me occupied. I find, though, that the job market is my refuge, a place of escape whenever I decide that graduate school is just too hard.

Tonight as I was walking back from the gym, thinking about these things, I was reminded of Psalm 23, "He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake." Whenever I contemplate the truth in the verse from Galatians 2, which God brought to my attention this past Sabbath morning as I was skimming through the book, where Paul speaks of Christ as "He who loved me and gave Himself for me", I am motivated to seek this goal as a way to reflect that glory. Truth and beauty, and the Word made flesh.

I certainly won't attain it on my own: the fear and lack of skill and opportunity that are natural to this nature would be more than enough to keep me back. But as Rachel reminded me wisely, desire, aptitude, and opportunity are gifts of God, and when those three come together, they often demonstrate His guidance.

Last night I was talking with Elizabeth on the phone and realized, with a sort of silly blinking amazement, that life has been rather dreadful lately. All sorts of pieces that I thought were fairly stable have come apart; the future is uncertain; assumptions that I had made are being proved wrong, and usually because of sin. Sin is unpleasant to have to deal with, and even more unpleasant is the realization that this disgusting sin nature actually likes sin and prefers to sit and enjoy it, no matter how painful it is. One has to be hauled kicking and screaming away from that.

Away from that, and towards something else. Learning lessons over again, perhaps. Last March in Ballyclabber I heard a sermon on Psalm 46 and was reminded of it tonight. Christ is not named Prince of Peace for nothing. Even further back, there was a moment when Psalm 84, "Blessed is the man who trusts in you," overwhelmed my mind with a sense of the Lord's love. Repentance and recognition of God's grace makes that blessing real. Since some hideous days, things in outside "life" have actually gotten worse, but things in inside "life" have somehow curled up into a childish complacency.

I certainly don't believe it enough, but God is sovereign, loves us, and gave Himself for us. It's odd to find oneself clinging to that with a sort of resignation: "Oh, look, everything is way too much for me to carry. Well, I guess you can have it, then." It's really ridiculous in a black way how much ugliness has to happen before that resignation and repentance can begin.

One thing for which I am very thankful: I am not supposed to be Christ. Pastor O'Dowd preached last night on Ephesians 2, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you...." I had always thought the "fear and trembling" bit meant fear and trembling that I would somehow not do something God had foreordained for me to do, and that it would lose me the richness of the reward. But that's again ridiculous. The fear and trembling is that people would think we're able to do this on our own, without God who works in us and Christ who "became obedient to the point of death".

The Gospel doesn't expect us to be perfect; in fact, it expects us not to be perfect--so that Christ can be perfect and forgive us. Sin keeps people from mistaking me for Him. I want to glory in my perfection; I ought to glory in my imperfection, and the fact that Christ keeps loving me anyway, despite my stark blindness and insistent refusal to believe any of this.

Well, it's tomorrow now. Bach's "Passacaille and Fugue" has just ended, and on that note (haha, pun--Asher was making dreadful musical ones in RUF last night) I shall go to sleep.

Now Playing: Chris Thile, "Stealing Second." Track 1, "Ah, Spring".

Last night, Nicole, Katie, Rachel, and I went to the Tulsa Opera to see La Boheme. Somehow, the apartment complex had managed to buy tickets so that people from the apartments could attend the performance for free.

At about a quarter past six, Rachel and I, dressed and brushed, scurried over to Nicole's apartment. She and Katie were there, thoroughly dressed up. Nicole had on a pair of the most awesome (and uncomfortable-looking) sandals I've ever seen. We clambered into her Hummer and drove downtown. The evening sun was just above the horizon, striking directly into our eyes as we crossed the highway and turned down onto the surface roads, low bumpy streets between old buildings. The downtown area has suffered economically for years. Many of the old shops and warehouses on the fringe of the area are empty. We went past McNellie's, the Irish bar, and past the Blue Dome district, an artsy area that has refurbished and used several of the more unusual old buildings.

We parked in a lot near the PAC, right downtown. The PAC is an enormous cream-colored concrete building, right in the heart of the downtown area, surrounded by skyscrapers, with the green steeples of churches down the street. The sun was still far enough above the horizon to strike down over the faces of the skyscrapers looming over us, flashing on endless rows of plate glass windows, glowing in the fabric of the Stars and Stripes waving on the roof of a building across the street.

Inside the PAC, we were welcomed by rows of well-groomed ushers in yellow jackets. We had no trouble getting tickets, so we stood around for the hour or so until the performance started. Nicole and Katie ordered champagne from the bar. The lobby quickly began to fill with people. Most of the opera-goers seemed to be wealthy older people, very well dressed, though there were a few younger adults with children, and of course a large contingent from the apartments (free anything tends to draw students, whether they like the free stuff or not). Grant came, and Crystal with Kyle, and several other people I recognized, many of them voice students from the music department.

We all stood around in the lobby, talking, our small circle being compressed into a very tight knot by the press of the crowd. Overhead, a big glass-and-metal sculpture sparkled in the open air between us and the balcony of the second level. Katie told us a story about the artist who'd made that particular sculpture. We just stood and chatted until a quarter past seven, when they opened the house doors and began to seat people. Our seats were, of course, in the "nosebleed" section, so we had to climb endless flights of stairs to reach them. Katie, Nicole, Rachel, and I had seats together. There was a full empty row off to one side, though, so at intermission we moved over there and sat with Grant, Crystal, and Kyle.

At half seven, the lights went down and the crowd went silent. In the pit, the orchestra thundered their feet on the floor to applaud the conductor, and the audience applauded. Then the music began, the curtain went up, and the performance began.

La Boheme is by Puccini, an opera about a community of artists struggling to survive in 19th century Paris. The story is basically a brief, tragic little love story. Peculiarly enough, though all the characters are French, the opera is in Italian, which was slightly disappointing to me (hearing someone speak French always reminds me now of Christmas in Paris and of Emmaline and Catherine chattering away in French on our way to city centre one afternoon in the spring).

I'm not a huge fan of opera, having never been to one before, but somehow this opera managed to poke fun of itself while still being sympathetic to its characters. The opening scene, where four of the artists are talking in their garrett, is absolutely hilarious, and Rachel kept cracking up beside me. The music was beautiful--the orchestra and singers did a magnificent job. As Nicole commented during one of the intermissions, "It's one thing to hear them sing on a CD. You kind of say, 'Oh, yeah, that's neat,' but when you actually watch them producing those notes for real...!" It was pretty amazing to see what the singers were capable of. My flute professor actually plays for the Tulsa Opera and the Ballet, so it was fun to get to see him perform.

The sets were lavish, beautifully painted and decorated. Since it was a story about poverty, the costumes weren't necessarily that spectacular, though the silly rich diva girl, Musetta, had some pretty amazing dresses now and then. The music was the best part, though, of course.

So I enjoyed it. I had been so tired this afternoon that I'd thought I wouldn't go, but I was glad I did. Afterwards, we applauded the singers and the orchestra thoroughly. Then we sat in our seats and talked until one of the ushers politely asked us to move on so that they could lock up the house. We moved out onto the balcony and were again asked to move, so we went downstairs. Everyone was pouring outside into the chilly night. Overhead, the skyscrapers glowed like enormous ice crystals, green and blue, lights striking up their mammoth flanks.

Nicole, Rachel, and I went back to TU. Grant and Katie went out together. Back on campus, we went to ACAC and bought smoothies at the Hut. We parted ways to change clothes, but Rachel and I went over to Nicole's apartment after we were more comfortably dressed. Rachel Jr., Amy, and their sister Rebecca were watching Leatherheads, the three of them tumbled snugly together on the sofa. I'd brought over the remains of Tara's birthday cake, which Nicole and I served together to anyone who wanted it. Then Nicole, Rachel, and I settled down to watch the film, too.

I nearly fell asleep. Both Rachels actually did fall asleep. The film ended at a quarter to one. Rachel and I said good-night, went back to our apartment, and went to bed.

pictures

See pictures of campus here.

Now Playing: Flook, "Haven". Track 1, "The Tortoise And The Hare".

Tortoise and Achilles, if you ask me: read Godel, Escher, Bach, Emmaline. Or don't read it but look at all the cool Escher sketches.

These days are interesting. If I permit myself, I shall begin to philosophize, and we all know how fun that is.

Our apartment was chilly this morning, but bright sunshine was streaming through the eastern windows. Yesterday was as cloudy and cold as one could wish, but today the weather had swung back to being gloriously fair. October, magnificent, so stunningly beautiful that it is frightening, awesome, remote, the year in its fullness receding to a majestic splendor.

I wrote some rapid e-mail and Facebook answers, then walked over to the chapel. In the main sanctuary, people were setting up for an event later in the day, so I went into the small prayer chapel and shut the heavy doors behind me. The prayer chapel was dim and cool. For the first time in my life, I knelt on one of the red velvet kneelers in front of the great stained-glass window where an angel with golden wings and a white robe kneels on a blue field. As I knelt in prayer, the sun rose slowly behind the window, filling the chunks of glass with color, striking sparklingly off the odd chips and edges, dazzling.

After the hour, I walked back to the apartment, and spent an hour or so working on senior project. Then, at half eleven, Rachel Sr. and I met outside the caf. We picked up sandwiches to go and drove to Woodward Park to eat them. We sat on a wall in the sunshine by the rose gardens. A fat squirrel crept along the wall behind me to within less than six inches of my arm, and even when I waved my hand at it, it refused to go away. Rachel laughed that it looked as though I was trying to cast a spell on it because I kept flicking my hand at it, and it kept scampering back, then creeping closer.

When we finished eating, we walked among the rose beds for awhile. Then we crossed the lane and walked down the hill under the oak trees. We walked along the muddy paths on the hillside between the azalea bushes. Flat ponds at the bottom of the hill, marshy places full of reeds, shimmered under the shadow of the trees where the sun struck them.

I drove Rachel back to campus in time for her one o'clock class. I went to Tyrrell and practiced hard, Bach and Vivaldi. At two o'clock, I went to PHIL 2113. When the madness ended, I walked over to Zink and met with Dr. J. Since Dr. G is gone, Dr. J is the only poetry professor at TU. He resides in a dim office in a back nook in Zink, one of those offices lined with books, with a slouchy old couch on one side and a desk stacked with papers under the windows across from the door. He always reminds me of an odd combination of hippie and cowboy, somehow, black jeans and suit jacket and trim greying beard. Very friendly. We talked about poetry and translation theory and all the wild and woolly ins and outs of paratextuality and intertextuality and Genette and Susan Howe and Beowulf. He also gave me some advice about applying to graduate schools.

As usual, upon stepping out of Zink, I felt a desperate urge to clear my head of all the nonsense it had absorbed while I'd been in the building. I love English and talking about English, but Englishy-ness also does my head in, no right angles or ups and downs but all loops and curves. Going dizzy by watching a kite fly for too long. So I walked around campus and took pictures of the buildings basking in the late afternoon sunshine. Then I went over to ACAC to meet Nicole for tea at five o'clock.

I was early, so I stood by Carrello's, the wee coffee shop, and chatted with Philip. We were fairly deep for awhile, but then one of his coworkers, busy in the coffee shop, called him over to draw a monkey on a piece of notebook paper. He obliged, and conversation descended (or ascended) into silliness.

Nicole came by not long after. The two of us went to The Hut (sports bar in ACAC) for tea. We sat in a booth and ordered pizza. We spent a couple of hours talking there. It was refreshing. By the time we were walking back to Mayo apartments, dusk was falling. In the west, Venus burned through the elm trees, and in the south, Jupiter was glowing near the brilliant half moon. The sky was pellucid, ringing with color like a deep bell. On the new U, the fountains were going: jets of water splashing sky-high, spraying color into the air as the lights at their feet changed color. Psychedelic green, aqua, purple, teal, blue, red, orange, magenta, gold. The jets of water are on a long stone paving maybe twenty or thirty feet long by maybe ten feet wide, shooting up in big patterns. Nicole and I pulled off our shoes, rolled up our trouser legs, and splashed onto the pavement between the water. Cold and wet underfoot. We danced and ran and skipped through the water. It was such fun. Nicole and I finally splashed our way back to our shoes again and walked to the apartments.

I went to my apartment and worked on CGE stuff for an hour. Then I went to a (typically dull) Mortar Board meeting. Their ideas about social times are all for pub crawls and casino nights, not my style.

I went to Nicole's apartment to study. She was there by herself, and we sat down to spend a couple of hours working. I worked on CGE stuff for another hour or hour-and-a-half. They want their website information for incoming exchange students (that would include Erasmus) updated. It's good to be on the other side of administration and to be working on application materials for other people to fill out instead of having to fill them out myself.

I'm away to sleep now.

03/10/08

Now Playing: Not much.

I got up at about eight o'clock this morning, dressed, answered e-mails, ate breakfast, did my devotions, said good-bye to Rachel. I dumped my things in the car, then walked over to Oliphant to turn in my HON 3003 paper, then to the library to record my hours for study abroad work. The morning was cool and clear again, another of these unbelievably beautiful days. I took the Tank to QT on 11th Street, filled her up with petrol, then started the drive to Stillwater. On the way, I listened to one of Ricky Jones's sermons on Ephesians from Redeemer PCA. The hills are beginning to look brown and red and gold, bronzed, sunburned.

In Stillwater, I spent an hour or so running errands, going to Wal-Mart to buy a few things, then to the bank, then to the post office to pick up a box. After that, I drove to my house. Everything was quiet, the quiet of a normal day, of settledness and peace. Mandy was sitting on the windowsill outside the study. I picked her up, and she purred and kissed my face. In the back yard, my mother was cutting ripe peppers off the pepper plants. I said hello to her, went upstairs, and surprised Stephen, who was doing school on the computer. He showed me the miniatures he had painted most recently, including a large and grotesque model of Shelob.

In the half-hour I had before I had to leave to eat lunch with Logan, I managed to get almost everything done on my list: threw a load of wash in the laundry, collected a stack of books to take back to TU, opened my post, scribbled down expenses from my checking account in my wee notebook, tossed a few cool weather clothes into my clothes hamper, and made lunch for myself. With my lunch in my satchel, I biked to OSU. The day was perfect for biking. Campus was crowded, of course, at lunch time. I rode to the oak tree on the lawn between the Seretean Center and Old Central and sat there for awhile, waiting for Logan. He came at about half twelve.

We ate a pleasant lunch together, not talking about anything in particular, which was perfect as far as I was concerned. All sorts of strange tiny insects were crawling or flying through the afternoon, odd shapes and colors, like miniatures from a "Star Trek" episode. We spent a couple of hours sitting and chatting, and we prayed together before we said good-bye.

I biked back to my house and spent the first part of the afternoon sitting in the living room, talking with my mother.

At four o'clock, Laura and I drove to Ross to meet Sarah and Rachel for a shopping expedition. Sarah and Laura made each other more and more hyper, as usual. Rachel was skeptical and disgusted at having been made to join a shopping trip; I was mildly amused by the whole proceeding, but troubled at the back of my mind by the afternoon's conversations. Sarah and Laura were ridiculously silly, of course, sorting through the juniors' girls' section, waving shirts in the air for each other to try on. The clothes in Ross tend to be the scouring of designer brands--the weird, wild, and whacky. Mustard yellow, black, grey, odd shades of purple and blue. When we went to the fitting rooms to try things on, Sarah and Laura went through their routine of swapping clothes with each other and showing off all the resulting outfits.

Rachel wanted to go home afterward; Sarah wanted to come to our house for tea. So Rachel took the truck back to the Spitlers' house, while Sarah came downtown with Laura and me. They left me off at The Greenery to get my hair cut. Dusk was falling, and the little hole-in-the-wall hair salon, in the back corner of the little court behind the main row of buildings, was quiet. Mrs. H was slightly more subdued than usual, listening to them. She busily washed, trimmed, gelled, and dried my hair. I thanked her, then rang Sarah and Laura. They were down at Hallmark, nosing around among the cards and gifts.

The three of us went back to our house for tea. My mother had cooked a delicious corned beef for tea, with carrots and potatoes. My father was home from work, and it was good to see him. Sarah and Laura kept us laughing a little during the meal, and afterwards, they settled down to watch "The Three Stooges". I said good-bye to everyone, walked to the car alone, and drove back to Stillwater.

Dusk fell quickly. Sumac and goldenrod are turning red. Keystone Lake was an opalescent periwinkle, reflecting the last light in the sky. Back on campus, I rang Philip to tell him that I'd returned the car. He was taking Alyson out tonight and asked for advice. I went up to the apartment, where Rachel was working on real analysis. Sat and chatted with her for awhile before going down to the SAC to meet the Hellmans. Jenny and Spencer pulled up in Jenny's car at about a quarter past eight to go to the Tulsa State Fair. Before we went to the fair, we drove up to north Tulsa to pick up Jenny's "little" (she's in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program), Alison. Alison turned out to be a slender little fourteen-year-old, very blond, with a definite feisty streak but also something of vulnerability staring out of her big pale blue eyes. Spencer rocketed us back through the streets, bumping over potholes. The fairgrounds are down on 21st Street. We parked in the Lowe's car park and walked to the fairgrounds from there. We walked through acres and acres of parked cars, bought tickets, and entered the fairgrounds.

See pictures from the fair here.

The fairgrounds were absolutely enormous. We walked up a broad thoroughfare between two big barns, one of which had a show arena in it. Tonight was a draft horse competition, and the gigantic Shires and Percherons stood in their harnesses, gleaming and stamping and jingling. We wandered into one of the exposition buildings, where people were selling rodeo trinkets, and from there out into the main open area. The place was just huge. Colorful lights blinking everywhere. Booths with dart- and ball-throwing competitions. Jenny and Alison played at throwing darts at balloons, the grand prizes for which amounted to a felt rose for Alison and a rather ugly pink teddy bear for Jenny.

There were vendors selling corn dogs, cotton candy, funnel cakes, soft drinks, and there were tiny enclosed spaces housing oddities: "World's Largest Alligator!" "World's Largest Pig!" "World's Smallest Woman!" Spencer and Jenny went into the "museum" of oddities, outside of which garish canvas paintings announced "Come see the Monkey with a Human Head! Come see the Weird Wolf-boy! Come see the Baby with Elephant's Skin! Come see the World's Fattest Man!" Alison and I stood outside uneasily and waited for them to come out.

We wandered through the area where most of the rides were. All sorts of twisting, turning, flying contraptions, that whirled you into the air and sent you spinning in ten or twenty different directions all at the same time. Jenny wanted to ride a thing like a big crane with baskets on either end that whirled you round and round into the sky. The rest of us weren't so keen.

We went into the biggest of the exposition buildings, a place at least the size of Noah's ark. Vendors were selling everything from shiny new Jeeps and Chevrolets to embroidery and sewing machines to hot tubs and swimming pools. The Tulsa Police Department had a display, as did other organizations. There were stands where people were selling woodworking tools or displaying their balloon-making art. The place was gigantic, the ceiling lights lost in a haze of dust.

Outside, we wandered down to the foot of the building, where most of the food was located. Booths selling hamburgers, gyros, margaritas, Mexican food. Spencer and Jenny both bought corn-on-a-stick, which had been Jenny's one goal for the night. We walked past airbrush tattoo artists and fortunetellers, past stands sparkling and chiming faintly with jewelry as people paused to finger necklaces, bracelets, belt buckles, and rings. Tents housed bars from which live music poured into the night. Back near the animal buildings, we saw not only the requisite pony ride but also, astonishingly enough, a big tank with sea lions in it. It seemed very strange to me....

The fairgrounds were packed with people. The strangest of strange people. Highschool students, Goths, cowboys, and an incredibly vast ethnic blend, shocking to me with my eyes adjusted to the homogeneity of northern Europe. So many sad-looking people, though, people whose lives seemed to center on this sort of drab amusement. Cigarette smoke and beer, dust, diesel fumes on the air. Pushing through thick lines of people waiting to get onto the rides, smelling the sugar and oil from the food vendors, dazzled by lights and noise.

We visited the animal buildings last. Inside one of them was a petting zoo, complete with a small but genuine giraffe, a couple of camels, a tiny and very fuzzy yak, a couple of llamas (one of them had been shaved with a poodle cut so that its head was a mop of tangled fur), rabbits, chickens, peacocks, sheep, pigs, a variety of African deer, and goats. There were lots of wee baby goats, with which Jenny and Alison fell in love. "They're so cute! They're so tiny! Can we take one home?" Jenny laughed as one of the wee flop-eared things nudged her fingers through the bars of the pen. Nearby there were farrowing pens, where a sow was giving birth to piglets.

Our last stop was the horse barn, where the big draft horses from the night's competition had been put into stalls. They were absolutely beautiful. Huge, gracious, perfectly-groomed. They nosed the bars of their stalls to let us stroke their faces.

We walked back to the car eventually. We took Alison home, and then Spencer and Jenny dropped me off in Mayo. Rachel was still awake, but she stayed up just long enough to say hello and hear a little bit about the fair before she went to bed. I took a shower and then went to sleep myself.

On my way to sleep, so tired that I'm seeing...

... WHITE RABBITS.

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.