Now Playing: Bach, Mass in B Minor, "Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Dona Nobis Pacem/Chorus: Osanna."

The first day of April finds me buried under mounds of white rabbits! and schoolwork. Peter, Lindsay, and Laura are downstairs watching Disney's Sleeping Beauty (which is wonderfully dated by the voice of its narrator and the chorus that sings during the first few minutes). But I've been upstairs all evening, listening to Brahms's and Mozart's Requiems, and now finishing Bach's Mass, all in a valiant attempt to impose some order on my extremely chaotic notes.

For the book history seminar this term, I'm writing a paper about Heaney's rendition of Beowulf, which has involved reading all sorts of articles, customer reviews on Amazon.com, manuscripts in the Lilly, press releases, book reviews, etc. 

It turns out that one of the professors who assisted Heaney with the translation happens to be emeritus at IU and donated all of his correspondence about the translation process to the Lilly when he retired. Thanks to him, the Lilly has a large white box full of faxes, e-mails, letters, reviews, newspaper clippings, and endless page proofs, all having to do with Heaney's Beowulf.

So I've been spending afternoons in the Lilly recently, while outside the weather can't decide whether to be warm or cold, and daffodils bloom prolifically under all the trees.

Oh, and other photos here.

Now Playing: Felix Mendelssohn, "Overture: The Hebrides."

Went for a very, very long walk yesterday. Though it was a bit chilly, it was so good to be outside! There are lots of saucer magnolias on 1st St., near the church, and several of the trees are in full bloom, absolutely gorgeous.

I also walked down the southernmost part of the B-Line. This particular corner of this field always makes me think of N.I.

There's a lovely footbridge at the end of the B-Line.

Now Playing: Corelli, Violin Sonata in A, Op. 5.

The race to the finish has begun, so I may not be posting much in the next six weeks. Tonight I made a list of all the big deadlines coming up: the first one is 12 April and the last 3 May, at least if professors leave everything where it is now. Between now and then, I have to lead discussion twice, write three papers, one of them a twenty-five-pager, and potentially take a final exam if the midterm today in Middle English didn't go well, which is a distinct possibility, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

On the upside, daffodils are blooming on campus, on the hillside below Bryan House, which is the President's house and sits like a gem at the center of a small diamond of woodland and gardens. I sat outside this afternoon briefly and admired the daffodils and watched a titmouse. It's wonderful that the weather is mild enough to sit outside again, although that won't last for very long!

Despite the amount of work that lies ahead, I've really been spending a ridiculously small amount of time working lately. On Saturday Laura invited people over for a barbecue, and it turned into a party somehow. She bought a wee charcoal grill a couple of weeks ago, and this was its maiden voyage, complete with marinaded chicken, bell peppers, onions, and pineapple. Quite delicious, as you can imagine.

New spring break photos in this album!

Now Playing: Indelible Grace, "Let Us Love And Sing And Wonder."

11 March 2011. Thick frost on everything this morning, but the day warmed quickly into the 50s. I went to the gym alone after breakfast, listened to a sermon by Pastor D on John 7 (Christ as the bread of life—good), came home, did my quiet time, and ate lunch while reading Middlemarch.   

At two Lisa and I went over to the Hs’ house to help them get ready for their spring break trip to Florida. When we pulled up, Amy was outside, cleaning out their van, apparently as cheerful as ever. Inside we played Monopoly and Go Fish with Anne all afternoon. Amy went to pick Maggie and Grace up from school, and then the scramble really began. While Amy and Lisa made sandwiches for tea, I woke Jane up from her nap and sat with her, making faces while she snacked on cheese and crackers. 

They were out the door by about five o’clock. The girls all hugged us as they clambered into the car; we waved them one last good-bye as we walked out of the garage, and as soon as we had left, we heard them give a cheer of excitement. Laughing, we drove home. Spring break in the air! At home Laura was packing up for her weekend trip to Chicago. We said good-bye to her, too. Lisa and I watched part of Beauty and the Beast while she worked on school and I made cards to send to Anna, Laura, Rach, and Crystal. 

At a quarter to seven, Mary showed up, and the three of us drove out to Scott’s house for another readings night. It turned out to be a quiet wee neighborhood tucked away in the forest about ten minutes outside Bloomington, between Bloomington and Ellettsville, a neighborhood of small, low, cream-colored houses, all fairly new, all almost exactly the same. 

Eric and Carmen were already there; Eric was making the main course tonight, but Mary had brought salad, and Lisa had baked a Bailey’s-and-chocolate cheesecake. The first wee while of such a gathering must always be awkward, I suppose, even when we all know each other fairly well. Perhaps it’s the awkwardness that comes from knowing each other—but not being total strangers, because that would lead to conventional small talk—and not being best friends, because that would make us all at ease immediately. The meal, when it came, was wonderful, though, and Mary kept us entertained by explaining to us the differences between saber, epée, and rapier fencing. 

After tea we sat around the living room and had our first round of readings. Lisa warmed us up with some hilarious Shel Silverstein. Then Scott read some French prose from a 16^th-century novel, and Eric read some Spanish poetry about the sea. Carmen followed that with “My Autopsy” by Michael Dickman and a Philip Larkin piece: beautiful, beautiful, eerie, visceral language. She had a perfect voice for it, too, precise, careful, but deep enough that it’s matter-of-fact, serious, as though she’s speaking to you about very important but very real things. Mary read the portion from Moby-Dick about the painting—which was fantastic. She had the drunken sailor voice down pat, and she put her whole heart, soul, and body into it, so that we were all rolling with laughter; l laughed until my face and my chest were aching. So, so funny. 

When she finished reading, we had some of Lisa’s cheesecake, and then embarked upon round two. More Shel Silverstein from Lisa, some of The Siege of Krishnapur from Scott (an excellent, dark-humour sort of passage), some sea poetry from Eric, and a Saki short story from Carmen, a chilling piece about a boy and his ferret. Mary read us a children’s book about a Siamese cat who thought he was a Chihuahua. That had us all in stitches, too. As a finale, Lisa gave us some more Shel Silverstein. It was midnight before we realized it. 

Now Playing: Bach, Mass in B minor, "Gloria/Laudamus te."

So I've been doing an abysmal job of keeping this thing up for the past couple of weeks, but there's good reason for it: last weekend was an embarrassment of riches as far as live music is concerned.

On Friday night we went to an IU Opera production of Gounod's Faust. To start with, since this was the French turn-of-the-last-century opera, everything was in French, and the music was lushly beautiful. This was a new production for IU, though, with freshly-designed sets and costumes, and I must say that it was quite a work of art. Lighting and backdrops resulted in gorgeous, rich textures and colours that enhanced the story beautifully. Of course the singers and instrumentalists were good, too.

The singer who played Mephistopheles was perhaps the creepiest combination of suavity and menace I've ever seen: I had no idea that a big, burly, round-faced man could be so terrifying, but the way his role was staged and directed, he became a terrifying (but not irresistible) force of evil.

The best part about the production, though, was the story itself. One didn't really focus so much on Faust as on Marguerite, his love interest. Her life ruined because of Faust's successful seduction, and facing tremendous temptation from Mephistopheles to renounce her belief in God's forgiveness, she continues to cry out to God in faith for mercy. Finally, recognizing that the devil is trying to trap her, she refuses to turn away from her faith in order to go with Faust. The opera ended with Marguerite freed from her (literal) prison cell, walking away toward a glorious, light-filled backdrop.

Perhaps what made this moment of redemption so powerful was that throughout the performance, I didn't see how any redemption was possible: I knew the story of Faust, but not this particular version of it; I knew that Faust goes to Hell, but not what happens to Marguerite. Seeing her cry out to God from the pit of despair and then have that prayer answered was just really beautiful.

So much for Faust. On Saturday evening we went to see a performance of Handel's oratorio Judas Maccabeus, put on by the IU choir and Baroque orchestra. It was also very good, but in a completely different way. Whereas a great deal of Faust's appeal lay in the visuals, most of Judas's appeal lay in the intricacy of the music--and in listening for Handel's idiosyncrasies! I couldn't help laughing every so often because he'd do something so very Handel-ish that it was really funny, like bringing in trumpets just when the characters were talking about trumpets, or having an enormous chorus at a particular point in the story.

Despite the nationalistic overtones, this performance also was lovely for its emphasis on God's power to help and save His people when they need it most. The final Hallelujah chorus was delightful for its sheer exuberance.

So that's what I was doing last weekend. This week it's been school, school, school, but on Friday night we're having another reading party, and on Saturday my parents and Stephen are coming for a visit. Hooray!

Now Playing: Bach, Orchestral Suites, No. 4 in D, BWV 1069.

Just for fun, a link to a very interesting blog is here, thanks to Miles.

Now Playing: Bach, "Concerto for Violin, Strings, and Continuo in E major BWV 1042."

Bear with a longer quote from Glorious Freedom by Richard Sibbes, which I was reading this morning with Earl Grey and toast.

Use 3. Let us sustain ourselves, when we walk in darkness, by considering the gloriousness of God's mercy in Jesus Christ.

It is no less mercy than glorious mercy that will satisfy us when our conscience is distressed; and if this will not, what will? Let Satan join with conscience to aggravate our sins as much as he can. But set this glorious mercy against all our worst sins - they are sins of a finite creature. But here is infinite mercy, triumphing and rejoicing over justice, having won the victory over it. Oh, when the time of temptation comes, and the hour of death, and conflict with conscience, and all together that may discourage, Satan will bestir himself. He is cunning and eloquent and will focus completely upon sin, especially in the time of despair. But you, be as cunning to focus upon mercy, glorious mercy. If God were glorious in all other attributes, and not in mercy, what would become of us? The glory of other attributes without mercy leads us to despair: glory in wisdom to find us out, glory in justice to deal with us in rigour. These fill us with dread, but what sweetens all other attributes is his mercy.

What a comfort this is to sinful man, that in casting himself upon Christ and upon God's mercy in Christ, he yields glory to God; that God has joined his glory with our special good; that here is a sweet concurrence between the chief end and the highest good of man! The last end of man is the glory of God, for that is the point from which all came (for he made all for his glory) and in which all ends; so is the chief good.

And so it is in vain for some to think, 'Oh, we must not look to our own salvation so much; this is self-love.' That is true if we sever the consideration of the glory of God's mercy and goodness from it. But we must see that both of these wrapped and indissolubly knit together in our salvation is to God's glory. We hinder God's glory if we do not believe his mercy in Christ to us. So we wrong both ourselves and him. And we wrong him not in a lesser attribute, but in his mercy and goodness, in which he has appointed to glorify himself most of all.

And so I beseech you, let us yield to him the glory of his mercy, and let us think that when we sin we cannot glorify him more than to have recourse to his mercy. When Satan tempts us to run from God and discourages us, as he will do at such times, then keep this in mind: God has set himself to be glorious in mercy above all other attributes. And as this is the primary moving attribute that stirs up all the rest, God will account himself honoured if we have recourse to him. Let this thought be as a city of refuge. When the avenger of blood follows you, flee immediately to this sanctuary. Think: Let me not deny myself comfort and God glory both at once. 'Where sin abounds, grace abounds much more' (Rom. 5:20). Though sins after conversion stain our profession more than sins before conversion, go still to the glorious mercy of God. To seventy times seventy times, there is yet mercy. We beseech you be reconciled, said St Paul to the Corinthians, when they were in the state of grace and already had their pardon. Let us never be discouraged from going to Christ.

'Oh, but I have offended often and grievously.' What does the prophet say? 'My thoughts are not as your thoughts but are as high as the heavens are above the earth' (Isa. 55:8-9). With men, offences often cause permanent alienation, but with God this is not so. As often as we have spirit to go to God for mercy and spread our sins before him with broken and humble hearts, we may receive pardon....

.... And, as I said before, it must be glorious mercy that can satisfy a distressed conscience. In the time of ease and peace we think a little mercy will serve the turn; but when conscience is once awaked, it must be glorious and infinite mercy that allays it.

If you find your conscience at all wounded with any sin, do not hold back from God any longer. Come and yield, lay down your weapons; there is mercy ready. The Lord is glorious in his mercy in Jesus Christ. It is a victorious triumphing mercy over all sin and unworthiness whatever....

A few photos from tonight are in this album now.

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, "The Shelter," "Lay It Down."

18 February 2011. Up this morning with that feeling of disorientation, but I dreamed that someone was singing “The Lord will light my candle so…,” which helped make getting out of bed not quite as daunting. Ate breakfast with Lisa; we sat and talked about Worldliness, the book she’s reading right now. Beth decided to cancel L629 reading group this morning, so I got to have a nice long quiet time before I left for campus. 

IU hosted a “Preparing Future Faculty” conference today, and I went to two of the talks, one at eleven about preparing for the job market and one at two about creating a record of research, teaching, and service. The conference was in the IMU Solarium, an attachment at the back of the IMU, a big nondescript room that opens off the alumni hall. The talks were actually reassuring: it was good to have some clearer ideas about what to expect when going on the job market and about what to do in the meantime (part of the reassurance might also have been the realization that grad school takes a lot of time, and I have several years before I have to worry about this for real!). 

Between the talks I met Mary for lunch at the Sample Gates. The noon was clear with an intense sun and a strong northwest wind. Despite the sun it was actually rather chilly, but no one seemed to mind; a holiday mood pervaded downtown. We walked down to Bloomington Bagel Company and had bagels with smoked salmon cream cheese—delicious. 

After the second talk I drove to the Hs’ house. Lisa and Anne were playing Monopoly, of course. Amy came home from shopping at about four. Lisa and I stayed, hanging out, chatting with Rich and Amy until about five. Love them. At about five Lisa left to babysit for the As; I went outside to play basketball with Anne on the driveway, while Jane pedaled circles around us in her wee plastic car and Breeze loped through the line of spruce trees at the edge of the lawn. 

Anne and I were being silly, passing the ball back and forth, shooting, dribbling, doing all of it absolutely terribly—but the sun dazzled down on us, the fresh wind stirred up the smell of the muddy grass, and Jane giggled and babbled to herself while her car clattered around on the concrete. Expanse of blue sky. I went home at about six when they went to Maggie’s basketball game. At home Laura was on the phone. I wrote a letter to Tara. 

At about seven Lindsay and Peter burst in, laden with groceries, and set to work in the kitchen to cook a fancy meal for us. Lindsay made a Mediterranean salad, while Peter cooked enormous pieces of chicken in a butter-and-wine sauce in a wok on the stove. The luminous full moon glowed through the open kitchen window (though it was really too chilly to have the window open). The smells: butter, fresh parsley, mushrooms, white wine, all cooking together with the chicken; feta, tomatoes, balsamic vinaigrette in the salad; spinach-and-artichoke cheese dip that Lindsay set on the table for Laura and me to eat, piping hot from the oven with a crunchy crust on top; red wine in glasses; sweet basmati rice steaming. 

We had a sumptuous meal, talked nonsense, and afterward sat around talking for quite awhile. Eventually we cleaned up the kitchen, and Peter and Lindsay went upstairs to watch Lost. Laura and I put on The Devil Wears Prada downstairs, but she was playing checkers on her phone, and I was writing e-mails. Lisa came home. 

When the other two finished their episode, they bounced back downstairs, and we embarked upon round two, a monumental banana split. This creation took shape in a big glass baking dish: scoops of fancy vanilla ice cream, crumbled Girl Scout samoas, chocolate chips, bananas (of course), hot chocolate fudge, and whipped cream. We set the epic masterpiece down on the dining room table, whipped out spoons, and devoured it in short order between the five of us. Now everyone has gone to bed, except for Lindsday and Peter, who are trying to finish Lost tonight.

Now Playing: The Decemberists, "The King Is Dead," "Down By the Water."

Hooray for flowers in winter! More pictures here.

"... the Christian should always be conscious that he or she lives before the face of God. There should always be a sense of awe in the life of the believer; a sense of living where we are always visible, always understood through and through, and - amazingly - always loved by the Holy One.

    "This sense of awe produces a special quality in our obedience; it gives it direction (we are not to be men-pleasers, but God-honouring); it gives it integrity (our obedience is tested by a more discerning eye than those of our fellow-sinners); it is an obedience suffused with humility in which self-projection has given way to devotion to the Lord."

Sinclair B Ferguson, Let's Study Philippians (Philippians 2:12-18)

We studied this during small group tonight. Also consider the truth that we are God's children, adopted by Him, named by Him, belonging to Him.

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, "The Shelter," "Run In the Night (Psalm 27)".

Apparently on quite a British history kick these past two weeks: Watched King's Speech with Cindy last Tuesday night and The Queen with her tonight. King's Speech was really well done (despite the language), if only for the beautiful moments where the speech is being read while the second movement of Beethoven's 7th fills the background. A powerful evocation of what it might have been like to be on the edge of World War II? Although Cindy and I both wondered what it must be like for the Queen (or other people who lived through those times) to watch films made about them.

Today I got to talk to Philip and Laura on the phone! Hooray for random crazy sibling fun times! And this past weekend I got to talk to my parents and Stephen, Nicole, and Katie W., so good times. Also this past weekend I went to the opera with Mary, Scott, and Eric. It was Mary and Scott's idea, not mine, but the operas were by Puccini, so the music was gorgeous.

Big day! Admitted to IU's MFA program!

(If I finish, I'll be about as overqualified an English prof as you can get....)

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, "Pathetique".

I've been reading Tulsa people's blogs. Somehow no one handed the memo to Indiana that we were supposed to get lots of snow and have a week off, too! We just had ice, ice, ice, and then a little bit of snow on top to hide the ice so that when unsuspecting pedestrians (like me) were trying to get to class, they would be constantly in danger of falling and dying on hidden slippery spots. And it took a decent fifteen to twenty minutes of hacking at my car to get the ice off--and that was after it had been sitting in the sun all morning!

Enough complaining. The result of our one day off was an evening of eating omelets and watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with the girls and Peter.

To finish the week off well, Mary, Scott, Eric, Mallory, and I had a lovely little soiree last night, during which we ate beef stroganoff and read poetry in lots of different languages. Mary does Italian, so she brought some Petrarchan sonnets; Scott translated some 16th-century French poetry; Eric contributed Pablo Neruda in Spanish and the first chapter of the Gospel of John in Maya, and Mallory read an Oscar Wilde story. And of course we had some Beowulf, too. Yes, yes, we're ridiculous, but what can I say? It was fun.

Now Playing: The dishwasher downstairs.

You know you're in grad school when your afternoon's reading begins like this: "It is easy to see that hypermedia applications are always explicit acts of remediation: they import earlier media into a digital space in order to critique and refashion them."

Easy? Really? Why should it be easy? What are hypermedia applications anyway? What's an act of remediation? And why is said act so explicit? Why should we care about critiquing and refashioning? Why do I feel as though my brain is exploding right now?

Now Playing: Corelli, Concerto grosso in F, Op. 6, No. 4, "Allegro."

One of the good parts of graduate school seminar discussions and (even!) parties: "A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion makes conversation particularly cheerful...." - Eliot, Middlemarch

Now Playing: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack, "The Grey Havens."

First of all: White rabbits.

1 February 2011. Woke up to ice on everything this morning! Ice! This isn’t Oklahoma! But there was a nice slick sheen of ice on everything. Beth and Jason picked me up at nine, as usual, and Beth and I skittered our way to class. The sidewalks on campus weren’t too bad, really. I was so sleepy in class today that I didn’t say anything. 

After class Mary and I went to lunch at Noodle Co. on Kirkwood, which was fun. Good to hang out with her again. We pinged from topic to topic, catching up on almost every part of each other’s lives. After lunch we walked to the IMU together. I checked my e-mail and discovered that G601 had been canceled for this afternoon, so I hurried downtown and caught the noon bus home. 

It was strange to be home in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, and I counted on having a long, quiet afternoon to read and practice my flute. I sat down with a cup of tea and some biscuits (proper McVittie’s biscuits, thanks to Alyson) to read, but at about half two, Lindsay came home, and Laura followed shortly thereafter, both of their offices having been shut down for the day. Not long after that, we got e-mails saying that classes had been canceled, and about an hour after that, Lisa came home—and Peter came over, of course, our “fifth housemate,” ready to be snowed in with us.

By the middle of the afternoon it had started to rain again, freezing rain mixed with ice pellets that accumulated on everything. The clouds were so low and heavy that I couldn’t see campus from my window. Rain and sleet rattled against the windows, drummed on the roof, gummed to every available surface. The pine trees across the street bent whippily, and the deciduous trees creaked and cracked in the wind. I spent the afternoon working on paper ideas for L746, in the course of which I found a fascinating article by Renee Trilling on JSTOR about Anglo-Saxon poetry. I read for L629, too, though by the time I got around to reading Middlemarch itself, I was so sleepy that I could hardly concentrate. 

Downstairs Laura had been baking blueberry muffins and listening to musical soundtracks, and when she finished cooking, Lisa made scrambled eggs with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cheese in them for all of us for tea. Laura and I sat on the stairs like a pair of vultures, giggling, talking nonsense, humming songs (Laura humming songs, that is), and generally keeping Lisa company while she chopped up vegetables and whipped the eggs. The five of us sat down to eat at about half six and ate massive quantities of eggs and toast, and told ridiculous stories and talked about all sorts of absurd and inappropriate things (thanks to Peter, of course). 

Sitting around the table eating turned into sitting around the table drinking tea, which turned into sitting around the table waiting for a batch of brownies to bake, which turned into all of us settling down to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the living room. All very cozy, with the trees tipping and moaning outside. 

When the film finished, at about half ten, I washed all the dishes. Everyone hung out for awhile before Peter left to try to make his way home and the rest of us went to bed. Having said good-night to the girls, I’m listening to the end of the ROTK soundtrack. Sleepy, but I’ve got another half-hour before the dishwasher finishes its cycle—I can hear it loud and clear because my bedroom’s vent is right above that part of the kitchen. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow on top of the half-inch-deep layer of ice.

Now Playing: Antonin Dvorak, Serenade for Strings in E Major, "Scherzo: Vivace."

"And besides liberty in this world, there is the liberty of glory, called 'the liberty of the children of God' (Rom. 8:21): the liberty of our bodies from corruption, the glorious liberty in heaven, when we shall be perfectly free. For, alas! in this world we are free to fight, not free from fight. And we are free not from misery but from thraldom to misery. but then we shall be free from the encounter and the encumbrance. 'All tears shall be wiped from our eyes' (Rev. 7:17). We shall be free from all physical pain in sickness and infirmity, and free from all the remainders of sin in our souls. that is perfect liberty, perfect redemption, and perfect adoption, both of body and soul.

"And by the Spirit we have the beginnings of these in this world, too. For, what is peace of conscience and joy in the Holy Ghost? Is it not the beginnings of heaven, a grape of the heavenly Canaan? Is not the Spirit that we have here a pledge of that inheritance? It is an earnest payment, and an earnest is a piece of the bargain. It is never taken away, but is part of the bargain. So the beginnings of grace and comfort given by the Spirit are the beginnings of that glorious liberty. The earnest assures us of that glorious liberty. For God never goes back on the bargain that he makes with his children. Grace, in some sense, is glory, as e see in the next verse (2 Cor. 3:18), because grace is the beginning of glory. It frees the soul from terror and subjection to sin. So the life of glory is begun in grace. We have the life of glory begun by the Spirit, this glorious life."

Richard Sibbes, Glorious Freedom