Covenant, Covenant, Covenant

[Laura Marling - "I Speak Because I Can"]

A week and then I will be at Covenant. A wonderful week at home during which I am anticipating long talks, lots of coffee, drives to Shreveport, movies, etc. Delicious.

And then -- The MOUNTAIN! It's been hovering like a hazy journey's-end all summer. I know I went back for a week after England, but a week is nothing and I am really just ready to get my butt back up there.

I can't wait for:

-My new room. Evaluating, deciding, decorating. Making it rad-awesome, is what I meant.

-Every. single. person.

-Chi Alpha girls. WOAH. Why yes, new party hall on campus, coming right up.

-Jackson Pond.

-Campfires.

-The walking bridge at night with the lights sparkling on the water and the city on both sides and the feeling of summer and freedom and life ahead.

-The river.

-THE YELLOW DELI.

-New things in Chattanooga I have yet to discover.

-Items on my bucket list to be ticked off. (I don't actually have a bucket list yet. I probably won't ever actually make a material one. But . . . hypothetically . . . .)

-O-TEAM! NEW FRESHMEN. I am burning with curiosity.

-Tea breaks. With all them Oxford girls.

-Kate Harrison's house.

-My dearest friends in the world.

-Oh yeah, we take classes at school --- mkay, I'm kinda excited about that, let's be honest. Everyone knows I like school.

-Walking into the Great Hall: the corner-eye glance to strategize where to sit without looking like a friendless fool. The feeling of realizing the PERFECT table of the PERFECT people does, in fact, exist, right there in open view (not behind the freaking pillars -- WHO SITS THERE?? SNEAKY PEOPLE.)

-Yup, even work study. I like the people who work there. :)

-Off-the-wall conversations after midnight.

-Mid-morning naps with Nat.

-Coffee breaks with people at inexplicable times.

-The Psych Commons.

-The oncoming of Autumn. Yeah, I know I'm a loser for already looking forward to it, but YOU CANNOT CRUSH THIS ENTHUSIASM.

-Figuring out how to not stress. (Riiiiiiiiiight.)

-Forcing professors to become my life mentors.

-O-team professor: Huffines. I almost died of happiness.

-Everything about it. How can I be disappointed when it's Covenant? I can't.

All manner of thing shall be well.

Why must it be that there are so many thoughts but so little skill to express them?

If one thing has defined my summer (other than heat, youth, fun, BR, etc.), it has been the swirling mass of thought processing that has been almost constant inside my head. Sure, my head is almost always like that, but there are times when I'm so occupied with the occupations (yeah, occupied...occupations...) of the outer world that I'm not so hyper-aware of what's happening inside my head. This summer it's like my thoughts have been screaming too loudly to ignore them any more.

Maybe it's because I have a lot to process. That's true. And when I have fewer people to hang out with, I suppose it allows me to talk to myself more. (College is just a barrage of people: who can introspect when surrounded by a couple hundred friends all the time?)

Am I alone in the way that I consistently stop, look, and evaluate my life?

I am holding half an acre / torn from the map of Michigan. / And folded in this scrap of paper / is the land I grew in.

What is it about the past that it walks with you? How and in what way do we allow ourselves to be defined by something that no longer exists? Or maybe never existed in reality? Is it a prison or a door to a path toward freedom if we could only unlock it? A secret garden of nostalgia or Pandora's Box?

Will I always wonder why I ended up here and how I got the way I am? Will I wish it had been different or will I be glad for every experience? Will I learn to let it go in wisdom and time or will I continue to draw wisdom from the past itself holding on and not forgetting? Or is there a middle way?

And what about the people? Can we pass on from them or will they always be a part of us and have a part of us in them? Is God restoring the years that the locusts have eaten in those lives?

Think of every town you've lived in / Every room you lay your head. / And what is it that you remember? / Do you carry every sadness with you, / Every hour your heart was broken, / Every night the fear and darkness / Lay down with you?

How are we so defined by our pasts? Or is it just some of us? I've been talking with a girl in my youth group whose past has been blown open and every ugly, frightening, hurtful part of it is running wild and free wreaking havoc on her life. Ultimately, the fact that it has come to light and she is dealing with it is the path to freedom. But right now it's only scaring the hell out of her and leading to self-destructive habits.

I'm thankful that my past is not such a monster. But at the same time, mine, too, can so often have a death-grip on my present life. I was talking to Jessie about this girl and she gave me wisdom as always:

"Do you think it would help if she realized that this is only a small portion of her life? A small blip in the huge picture of her existence. There is so much hope. Storms never last forever, you just have to have enough courage to continue to sail through them . . . . The devil likes us to think when we're in the troughs that this is what life is made out of. In a couple months your girl will be a new person, by the grace of God."

I told her thanks for the advice about that other girl, I'll take it for myself.

The ultimate reality is God's sovereignty and our relative ability or inability to trust Him with all of what defines us. Sure, everything would be easier if we knew why and what for but then where would be the need for dependence? And without the need for dependence, where would be the relationship - the one thing that makes it all beautiful in the end?

Life is a continual uplift of the eyes, upturn of the hands - a continual cry: "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You." (2 Chron. 20:12) The past is behind us down the long lane covered by trees leading into obscurity, dark and still. My fluttering worries and panicky grasp for control in the dark can be transformed into an exhilarating release.

Of course T. S. Eliot has the beautiful words for everything. :) I read through The Four Quartets and my mind is blown because he asks the same things but with so much more breadth of understanding. "Time past and time future" and the still point that is the dance. For us on earth it's all hints and guesses - we don't know why or what for, but we are a part of the music after all, being led by the great conductor. Sometimes we need to just shut the thinking down for a while and remember dependence. The past is darkness and stillness.

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."

OVERACTIVE IMAGINATION.

Collette just dropped me off at home after watching Inception. I was in post-movie daze with the added semi-stupor of Inception's twisted plot. Grandad's car wasn't in the carport. At 11:00 p.m. After staring at the forbodingly empty space in the carport, I had the presence of mind to remember that he went to pick Gran up at the airport. Mind still slightly boggled, I walked courageously into an empty house.

Lights on. TV set on the classical music station. Volume up. Grandad's blanket casually lying on the couch. Things sitting around like people are home. But everything is TOTALLY STILL. Because no one is home. Seriously, my skin started crawling.

I - literally - thought for a moment: "Is this real life??!?"

It's kind of cool what movies can do to you, huh? It is the most deliciously dreadful feeling. It doesn't even have to correspond to the actual facts of the movie: just a feeling.

A song just came on the TV station and I was like "I swear I know this song! I think I've played this song! HOW DO THEY KNOW?!?!?" Paranoia/they're following me/etc. Then I realize: it's Fur Elise.

People seriously need to come home. The movie wasn't even about serial killers.

HOLY ------, the toast just popped.

Guiding Principle Number 2:

(Sarah drew me a diagram)

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

etc.

Try --> die.

>>Success.

is NOT being perfect.

is being a glorious imperfection in the Kingdom of God.

[Diana Panton - "If the Moon Turns Green . . ."]

"Hannah and I have to go to church and let this church group in at ten. They're from .... from .... what's that .... big .... place called? . . . . . . . . San Antonio!"

^^ Sarah's conversation on the phone with Collette as I'm typing. I laughed really hard at her because she sounded dumb, but it's also a pretty good description of our lives. Church, church groups, and having random tasks to do for them at exceptionally random times. Flexibility is the keyword of summer.

Latest update on my flexible summer schedule: According to all original plans, I'm supposed to be on a beach somewhere in Texas right now at YCM's Fun in the Son conference. (Clever title, no?) However! Because we had such a large group in Jamaica, none of the kid's parents wanted to fork out another $500 bucks on another youth trip so soon. (Understandably.) So only two girls signed up. AND plans were rearranged and Hannah is not going. Hence me being online updating my blog.

Probably one of the best turn of events this whole summer.

I'm tired of running around and around and going out of town all the time. Yes, I know that's shocking to people who know me really well and how NOT a home-body I can tend to be, but I'm not a total travel junkie, either, I'm beginning to realize. I was subconsciously dreading having to pack and leave for yet another wonderful-yet-emotionally-draining trip. (Actually the dread was totally conscious I just didn't tell anyone other than myself.) Especially since when I got back from Fun in the Son, I had less than twenty-four hours in Baton Rouge during which I would sleep, repack, teach Sunday School, and then hop on another bus for yet another youth trip. The prospect was daunting to me.

Instead I have a week to recoup, do things that have been neglected because I've been so on the go (like write LETTERS), etc. I am very much relieved and looking forward to more of a down week to process summer and the coming end of it.

Things I shall be thinking about/doing/having fun with this week:

-Barnes and Noble. Sarah's and my favorite place to escape. White mocha, poetry, journal, novel -- presto, a good day.

-Have you ever tried on various personalities? You know, to see which ones fit? Well, I am fascinated by the concept of personalities and I don't really understand the Myers-Briggs thing all that well. SO, I try those on. This week it's INFJ. It's interesting but I don't know . . . .

-Letters.

-A specific crafty project I have under construction. I am hitting some hideously jolting roadbumps as crafty projects DO NOT come naturally to me. But I feel very much like the mom in Elizabethtown, staring down her car's engine, declaring, "You will not defeat me."

-Hanging out with Collette and Sarah, of course. Doing ridiculous things that seem totally normal at the time.

-I'm pretty sure some of the girls in youth group want to have a movie marathon sleepover. After a pool party. Oh yeah.

I miss Covenant.

"Get yourselves sorted out and shut up."

-Michael Caine, 1969 version of The Italian Job

I was at TCBY tonight and as I waited for the guy behind the counter to finish my chocolate Shiver-ma-jig with Butterfinger swirled in, I found myself perusing some boring calorie chart taped to the plastic divider. My eyes skimmed over it and suddenly locked in on "Less calories then--" and that's as far as I got. I jabbed a finger towards the offending sentence, sputtering, "SARAH, LOOK!!" ::sigh:: It's what we call the curse of the English Major. We should all be consigned to an eternity of proofreading as penance for our insensitivity. I mean, this TCBY chart was as well-meaning as a Salvation Army Santa and all I can think of is "SOMEBODY HAS NO IDEA HOW TO USE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!!!"

How often do I meet life in general with criticism? How often do I want things to be different from how they are and endlessly move to make it so? How often do I forget to just throw my hands up at the kinks and bumps (even if sometimes they hurt) and just soak up the joy itself alone. Like in The Darjeeling Limited when Francis and Peter and Jack are stranded in the desert night and Jack says, "Wouldn't it be great if we heard a train go by in the distance?"

Peter: "Not really."

Francis: "It'd probably be annoying."

I can so be like Jack, just waiting for the train to come back, to take me on, instead of waiting and watching and sitting in silence as Clair de Lune plays in the background. (OK, so maybe minus the personal soundtrack.) I rarely realize that the train would be SUPER ANNOYING. Just chill out.

I think what I need right now is a lot more starry night and a lot less train whistle. Because of my job, I can't stop traveling, working, pouring out into people. But I can make time to hold the stillness before me and think.

"One's action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be mere rushing on." -D.H. Lawrence

I need to get myself sorted out and shut up. :)

So hot we'll melt your popsicle. (Or, Summer in Baton Rouge)

Baton Rouge is HOT. Like, I'm not just complaining and I'm not just being a wimp. I've been to hot places. And Baton Rouge is one of the freaking worst. The real problem isn't the 100-degree weather, but the fact that you step outside and it feels like you are U N D E R W A T E R. Your lungs desperately attempt to breath air and suddenly you're waterlogged, gulping like a big ol' bullfrog for something other than humidity. Oh! and you're drenched.

However. Baton Rouge also has the most beautiful clouds that I have ever seen. In the late afternoon and evening those puffy masses of condensation are like a panorama of the Old West. And they also bring hurricane amounts of rain which cools things down.

So I'm saying that right now it's only 80 degrees outside and that's a miracle and I'm glad for it. The crepe myrtle buds are drooping and dripping outside the window next to me and even though everything looks soggy, it also looks fresh. (By the way, what's the noun form of soggy? I was trying to figure that out the other day because I said that my cereal had become one big "sog" and then I realized that probably isn't a word at all.)

Sarah and I have a new pastime while we're driving around Baton Rouge: Calling KLSU (the college radio station in town) with song requests. I mean, we get so excited about this you'd think it was Christmas morning or something. (Maybe I'm exaggerating a little.)

Friends seeing Sleigh Bells tonight: I momentarily feel a lot of resentment about this.

Hurricane season is coming -- rather, it's here. AAAGGGH!!! Only visible signs of it in Baton Rouge thus far: every other house on our street is having major trees cut down. That's the worst. I mean, I know you don't want your house getting all smashed down by a giant oak, but seriously, what is all that money you spend on insurance for anyways?? And now you fork out even more to kill a neighborhood tree that's probably been around a lot longer than you just on the off-chance it'll suddenly decided to kamikaze into your roof. Ugh.

Something I really love about Baton Rouge is that nothing is pronounced the way it is everywhere else in the world. Like, every reasonable pronunciation rule you ever learned -- out the window. Think French. It's not "Richard," it's "Ree-shard."

Summer: joie de vivre.

Looks.

This new design template thing is kind of awesome. Kind of dumb. Kind of hard to figure out where the top of a post is. But I'm trying it out.

This is happening.

I am going to the midnight showing of Eclipse tonight.

Even more shocking, I am super pumped.

BAM.

Be Here Now.

After a brief three-week hiatus or something like that, it's hard to know what to blog about when a lot has happened but I'm not really sure how to describe, explain, or summarize it. I mean, there's always your basic: I went on a mission trip to New Orleans and then went straight to a family vacation in Pensacola (sans oil-spill mess!) and straight from there to a mission trip to Jamaica. Now I'm back. C'est tout.

For some reason, I've been feeling generally distracted all summer. I don't know what it is. Whether it's that I'm always thinking of next week or always thinking about something in the past. Whether it's questioning or just not paying attention or just the way time passes and I've never noticed it so much before. Of course, there's always the obvious explanation that I've been back and forth between a dozen different places (countries, states, cities, continents) over the past month-and-a-half. So maybe I'm just understandably a little discombobulated.

At the same time, all this travel has turned into an exercise of "be here now." Because I've been flung far and wide, I am having to make a focused effort not to think about last week or next week, but only RIGHT NOW.

In Jamaica, I felt more focused than I had all summer. More present in my life, I guess, because I never really knew what time it was and even if I did, it didn't matter because it was Jamaica and time doesn't really exist there. You just experience time as it passes and everything just flows into everything else. "No worries, friend. Soon come, man, soon come."

Now that I'm back, I feel more aware of the things I'm doing. Pouring my morning coffee, painting my nails, all those summery things -- I soaked in the lovely extravagance of them for what feels like the first time. It's wonderful -- sitting in a Barnes & Noble, sipping a white mocha, reading whatever book I want, talking to Collette and Sarah between pages. It's luxuriant, rich, delicious. I'm so thankful for the pleasures of my life, and so thankful that I've seen with my own eyes many times what a rare blessed life I lead. But it's not an insulation.

Here's what I'm thinking about today:

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears / while we all sup sorrow with the poor. / There's a song that will linger forever in our ears. / Oh, hard times, come again no more.

Do I HAVE to??

Now that we're in Baton Rouge, with jobs and a car, Sarah and I are apparently going to start living a disciplined life. This involves getting up early every morning (well, like 7:30), working out, running regularly, reading regularly, and --- here it comes, eating healthy. Which, with our summer beach trip only two weeks away, really means eating next to nothing. At least, that's what it seems like to me.

Background: I've never dieted a day in my life -- unless, of course, you count the times I rode the curve of Sarah's sugar-purging frenzies. Those lasted a week at most and were generally just well-intentioned fanaticism. My role in these crazes was typically little more than bemused observation and maybe smaller bowls of ice-cream than usual. I don't even know how to count calories.

But NOW, Collette, Aunt Jill, and Sarah are on a strict regimen of yoghurt and fruit and granola and eggs and I really am pretty sure that's just about it. At my dismayed "But I'll be hungry all the time!!" they stared at me in surprise and said, "Duh." THEN, to top it all off, Collette almost didn't let me eat a bowl of Big O's because "THIS WILL GO STRAIGHT TO WHERE YOU DON'T WANT IT!!!!" I was horrified. My conclusion to all of this is that dieting sucks.

This was all discussed in great detail yesterday, with varying levels of enthusiasm from all parties involved. I'll be honest, despite my misgivings, I can get excited about a new scheme for a new life of health. How bad could it be? Being healthy is fantastic. Resolutions are fun if just to see how long they last. So, the plan was set and had only to be set in motion.

Then, last night, after a day full of healthy and delicious yoghurt and starvingness, Collette, Sarah, and Hannah (third person) drove out to find a movie to watch to celebrate a summer together. When we got to the register to rent the movie, the movie-store guy said, "We have a five for five special and you can get two candies, two drinks, and a popcorn." Five minutes later, we drove off with Cokes, Butterfingers, Nerds, and Extra Butter Popcorn in the back seat.

Oh, summer, I love you with your good intentions and grace to break them from time to time.

[Addendum: I feel I should inform the world, in case it's worried about me -- my ultimate decision about the summer is to eat whatever the heck I want and just exercise regularly, like you should in the summer. :)]

Words for Everything.

You ever sat down to write (specifically, blog) and just not felt the muse? You know, you've done everything else you can humanly think of to do: read for hours, taken the car to get an oil change, made coffee three times, tea twice, watched two episodes of Scrubs, run around screaming in the Texas downpour, shopped for a new phone, made dinner for the family, made a playlist to clean the kitchen, cleaned the kitchen, tried to avoid checking facebook obsessively, sketched a picture, read everyone else's blogs -- I mean, after all that, what else is there to do but blog?

But the muse just isn't there. All you really can do is sit and suck on your spoon of chocolate ice-cream and wish you had something to say. I've been reading a lot this past week -- Kerouac, Neruda, Dillard, Salinger -- and thinking a lot and a lot has happened (even today), but for some reason it's all mulling itself over in my head but not ready to articulate into words. Which is fine, I guess, it just doesn't help me to entertain myself with writing about it.

Part of it could be that I've been realizing how sometimes the most important things don't have words for them (unless, of course, you're Leo Gursky in The History of Love -- that guy had the words for everything).

Like when, after hours of total agony and lawyers and arguments and sobs and yelling and fears, your child is finally returned to you after two months of tremulous despair -- Well, who can really understand the depth of what happens between a mother and child, separated after eleven days of life, reunited, or a father with his three-month-old son back in his arms? I sure don't. When Mom and I were lying, exhausted, on the couches in our living room after Tuesday's court ordeal, all I could say was: "Mom, I don't think I will ever fully understand what the heck just happened. Like there is seriously no way I will ever get how profound that all was." I know only that it was surpassingly meaningful.

Reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard has a lot of words for things, but they are all hints and suggestions that really say, "GET OUT TO YOUR OWN CREEK AND BE SILENT AND WATCH!!!"

I get stir crazy in small towns and long for, say, the Big Apple where ALL OF MY FRIENDS ARE right now. But I think we need these small-town moments to force reflection on our overcharged minds. Or I do. Probably not having words all the time is a really good thing. For me. :)

Little Bambino

Today is the scheduled hearing for our foster baby, to decide whether or not he can go home to his real mommy and daddy. (He was taken from them by Child Protection Services after an accident for which his mother was accused.)

Mommy Ashley and Daddy Barney are here at the house right now, cooing and giggling over the new contraption they bought for Junior -- a little baby carrier that hangs on Barney's chest. Cries of "Oh! my boy! my boy!" are coming from the living room. They are here to get him all spiffed up for the hearing and hoping with tearful strenuousness that their baby comes home to them soon. It's so wrong and awful to see families separated.

If you (whoever you are) think of it today, pray for them and for the judge and for little Bambino.

Summer Reading

There's a new "gadget" on the side of my blog, in place of my old To-Do list, titled "Summer Reading." Reading for fun is probably one of my most-anticipated parts of summertime. What with travel and youth ministry, I sometimes don't have as much time to do it as I dreamily imagine during the school year, but I still can get through a lot.

So I've listed some books I'm thinking about reading/rereading this summer, but I am also SUPER open to SUGGESTIONS!!!

WHAT SHOULD I READ??

Everyday Experiences

-I have drool on both shoulders and my clothes smell faintly like baby formula.

-The bartering system in our house had undergone a few subtle changes:

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Junior has a poopy diaper.”

“And?”

“Will you do it?”

“Is that a real question?”

“I’ll straighten the house before Mom gets home.”

“What about the dishes?”

“I’ll do those, too.”

“Deal.”

So I changed his diaper this morning.

-There are about four half-drunk Fresca cans spotted around our kitchen and living room. They are mine. I don’t know why but I can’t drink a whole can of soda. I’ve tried. I’ve tried asking you people to finish them for me. I know you don’t understand, but I JUST CAN’T, OKAY??!?

-Question: Is it "soda," "Coke," "soft drink," or "pop"? Or some other word I have yet to discover. Soda-pop?? That one's pretty fun.

-IT IS SO HOT OUTSIDE.

The things I did and the things I didn't.

Robbie pointed out I should update the To-Do list that has been on the side of my blog for the past five months. So I'm changing it and in this post I shall assess the damage (i.e. go over the list and see what I actually got around to doing).

"Observe everything." Absolutely done.

"See Paris." Well. I saw it sort of from an airplane......? I guess I'll just have to save this one for some romantic day in the future. :)

"Walk across London Bridge." Well, technically London Bridge was moved to Arizona (DUMB), but I walked across the one that would be London Bridge if London Bridge was still in London even though it's technically not called that. I walked on a bridge IN London OVER the Thames. Boom. That was the point.

"Visit the Kilns." Done.

"But a ticket in King's Cross." Done.

"Buy a drink in the Eagle and Child." Done over and over. I am C. S. Lewis.

"Find Hogwarts." Done, done, done. (See pictures below) I actually even went into the real place where they shot a lot of the movies (the library scenes, the dance scenes, the Great Hall scenes, the staircase scenes) but I don't have pictures of a lot of them for various reasons.

“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

[Billie Holiday]

A week after arriving back in my homeland, I packed up my duffle again and hit the road for the east. A roadtrip is exactly what my American plains-starved soul had been craving. As Claire Colburn said in Elizabethtown, "Everybody's gotta take a roadtrip once in their lives." Or over and over and over again in their lives. Like Sal in On the Road, which I am currently devouring for the second time.

I wound my way up the mountain, hugging oh-so-familiar curves, and wondered. I wondered lots of things, of course, but especially: What will this be like? Will we all be the same or will we all be different? Will we fall into the same comfortably-worn patterns of talking, relating, enjoying one another? Or will there be a big silence made of the gap between December and May? Processing questions like this is always good. But I shouldn't have worried.

The minute I stepped out of my car and was attacked by Nat Weber I knew that I had been really starved for everyone at Covenant who, I came to realize over five months of missing, really are the butter to my bread. I spent one glorious week squealing, squeezing, swimming, screaming, and - I've run out of s words - generally catching up and basking in the presence of Covenant people. Amazing what five months away will do to renew and refresh your love for a place and the people who are part of it. The lovely spires and cobblestone sophistication of Oxford are perfect in the same way that the trees and ponds and wide-open hills of east Tennessee are perfect. The loveliness of the one in no way diminishes the magic of the other. Maybe it even adds to it.

So. On May 22, Sarah and I will be driving the four hours down to Baton Rouge and moving in for the summer: heat, humidity, family, spicy food, and being a summer youth intern with First Pres again. PARTAY!!!! The rest of the summer is mission trips, summer camp, family vacation, and weddings. Until then, I am at home in Marshall, Texas with Mom, Dad, and Sarah, just like it used to be. Except one difference: we have a baby. :) Three-month-old Junior is our foster child for the next couple weeks and he is both depriving us of sleep and giving us an excess of delight we haven't felt for some time. (Right now, Sarah is sitting on the couch in front of me, burping him, and his little wide eyes are staring at me and his mouth is beginning to turn up in an impish grin.)

I feel like a Walt Whitman poem and just getting into the deep down glory of summertime.

"I felt like a million dollars; I was adventuring in the crazy American night."

(I really should read On the Road every summer.)

My back is sunburned.

[Nickel Creek - Why Should the Fire Die?]

He had dark cropped hair, a trim moustache, a big ol' lone star pin, and a comforting Texas drawl -- the kind that is both a reassurance that all is well and a warning to toe the line. He was the man checking my passport before Customs in the DFW airport. To my surprise (grown accustomed to British reserve), he returned my perky smile with that funny half-smile that moustaches make.

"Now what have you been doing all the way over in England?"

"Studying in Oxford for four months!" Or maybe my whole life.

"Well then, welcome home, ma'am. We're glad to have you back."

Ahhhhhh, I've been anticipating this feeling for so long. The wide-open, personal, exuberant, endless-possibilities, frontier taste of America. And the direct look in the eye, the chatty intimacy of strangers. It's actually taking me longer to warm up to it than I thought it would. I forgot that transitions take time. But, gosh, culture is so amazing. And ours is a lovely, vast, many-colored tapestry that I love.

But now I have a few new traditions to add to the book called "My Life." Like tea with milk and sugar. And scones with clotted cream. And cloth shopping bags.

Today when I was on a run, every person I passed looked up, smiled, and gave a little wave. ::sigh::

Transitions are just a part of the rich fabric of life. My life is really blessed.

And my back is sunburned. Thank you, Texas, for sunshine again.

Time flies when you're fun.

Right now I am sitting on the kitchen counter - my usual perch for telling Mom stories - reaching over the guitar in my lap to type stories to cyberspace. I'm at home. Marshall, Texas, where the air is warm and sunny and smells a teensy bit like cows and not at all like Oxford.

I'm home!! It's really blowing my mind. Every night when I lie down in bed, I kind of expect that I'll wake up in the basement of Crick as usual and hear Angela in the shower and Amy breathing gently next to me or typing at her desk. And Genny and Carl talking up a storm in the kitchen above my head. Then when I wake up, I think I'm there for a second and then I hear Mom. It's happy-sad. REALLY happy and REALLY sad.

I had one of the best four months of my life in Oxford. I feel so overwhelmed and filled to the brim with glowing memories, loved faces grown so familiar -- and 10,000 hours of stories. As I walked through Oxford for the last time, I remembered the first time and how everything was so wonderfully new and strange and beautiful. Now the streets, corners, facades, spires, places of Oxford are so familiar -- every little piece of architecture that was once a strange face is now layered with memories.

That monument is where we ate burritos from The Mission and Hutton's tongue burned off. | That curb is where Daniel got falafel every night during Lent. | That corner is where that girl wiped out on her bike and Nick laughed and then felt bad. | That's the lane I walked down every Monday to meet with Josh. | Emily and I talked about life along that river. | That library is where I studied. And studied. And studied. | There's my church. | There's where we got ice-cream almost every night at the beginning of the term. | There's the coach station, there's Sainsbury's, there's Addison's Walk, there's Frewin Court, there's Port Meadow. | There's Crick.

It seems like it just started and yet it seems a lifetime ago I trudged the snowy streets of Oxford wondering what the next four months of my life could possibly hold. Now I have stories to tell, friends to love and try to stay in touch with, a new stage of life to look forward to. Time flies when you're fun. :)

"What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from...."

Not fare well,

But fare forward, voyagers.

Today.

I taught myself to play "Leaving On a Jet Plane" on the guitar. I thought it might be a good luck charm.

Nick transposed "Leaving On a Jet Plane" into a key I could actually sing it in. I taught myself that version (and learned a new chord!).

Emily, Nick, Daniel, and I climbed the tower of the St. Mary's and saw the dreaming spires from their own level.

Emily, Nick, Daniel, and I went to Merton again: the college where I had my Shakespeare tutorial and also the place where people like T. S. Eliot and J. R. R. Tolkien went and worked when they were here. Oh, also: second-oldest college in all of Oxford. No big deal. ;-)

Nick, Daniel, and I went shopping for food and clothes. I am proud to say that with our help, the not-a-natural-shopper Nick ended up with a great new pair of jeans. And I have food.

Now I am making cookies, listening to my "For Fun" playlist (which is currently on Elton John), and enjoying the late-afternoon sunlight filtering through the windows.

"We haven't located us yet."

[Music: Nick playing "Running to Stand Still" on the guitar -- he just taught me how to play it!!]

So the quote is from Darjeeling Limited, one of my favourite movies EVER!! Haha, it's also about stranded people. :) ("How can a train be lost? It's on rails.")

Still in the "wait and see" kind of phase right now. Apparently the volcano started erupting again and my flight for tomorrow was cancelled again. Now I'm supposedly flying out Monday. (MONDAY!) But a few people in the house still have flights scheduled for tomorrow so we're all crossing our fingers that they'll make it.

Today was another "one of the best days ever" in Oxford. We started off with coffee, porridge, and Mario Kart, during which I got REALLY MAD at Shane and Nick who were antagonizing me because I'm not very good (but I ALMOST BEAT NICK ONCE......sort of). Then we ate lunch and then we went out to the University Parks and played a really weird version of Ultimate Frisbee which involved Emily and me playing against Shane and Nick but really just jumping on them and trying to beat them up/get the frisbee from them. It was SOOOO cathartic.

Then we made a big ol' macaroni casserole for the whole house (I guess there's about sixteen of us left) and now we're about to head off to the Vines for some homemade chai tea and Heavyweights.

That's the wonderful news: underneath this, not everyone is adapting quite as well to the waiting game and it's definitely been an emotional up-and-down for a couple people. We just got news that Jen, who took a bus to Heathrow earlier today, had her flight cancelled and is coming back. She's gonna get some major TLC tonight.

"Has anyone said yet that this is a pain in the ash?" -Carl

The Eyjafjallajokull Diaries: Day Four.

It is now the fourth day of my extended stay in Oxford. I'm sitting out in the back garden enjoying the sunshine, wondering where this blasted ash cloud is. If it's causing so much chaos, why is the sky so very blue and the sunlight so very clear? Who knows. Talk about disconnect.

Though I'm getting quite desperate to see my family and eat some crawfish étouffée and drink coffee with chicory in it, I am still really enjoying the extra few days here in Oxford. I guess since I spent so long trying to prepare emotionally to leave right away, now I feel like every extra minute is borrowed time -- little moments magically stolen from What Should Have Been. The city of dreaming spires has never been so beautiful.

Jay left on a bus this morning after reading Wendell Berry's short story "Are You All Right?" from That Distant Land. (It was deemed the best selection because it's about people being stranded.) After he hugged everyone around the circle and walked out the front door, down the little dirt path to the street, and disappeared down Crick Road, Kate said, "A piece of the Crick soul just left." Then we all got really mad at her.

Then the girls decided to watch Friends because it would make us feel better and "In Jay's memory, we'll do something he definitely wouldn't have wanted us to do." :)

There seem to be some positive reports right now about the ash cloud and flights picking up again. We're cautiously hopeful, but ready to wait it out.

Sheer Insanity

(Just try to believe half the things in this post. Try. If it was in a movie, we'd all say, "Yeah, right.")

So here's the thing: There's this volcano erupting in Iceland. And before I even get to the point, let's just consider the this volcano's name. Unbelievable Fact #1: "Eyjafjallajokull." That's sixteen letters. SIXTEEN. Speaking of numbers, Unbelievable Fact #2: The last time this volcano erupted, in 1822, it went on erupting for TWO YEARS. So there's some scope.

Why is this so important? You probably already know Unbelievable Fact #3: We're all stranded in Oxford. Basically every airplane in Europe is grounded indefinitely because of this ENORMOUS cloud of ash that's now covering most of Northern Europe. It's completely surreal. Most of us should have left by now and we're all still here in Crick, trying to get our bearings and figure out how homeless we are. Our program - SCIO - is being magnificent and extending stays and inviting us over for lunch. One of the most incongruous parts of it is that the last two days here have been the absolute best weather we've had in Oxford all semester. Exquisite spring days. It's so hard to believe in this cloud that's casting major shadows over all our plans.

By this hour in American time I should have been sitting on Sarah's bed in her dorm room in Jackson, Mississippi. Instead, I am still an ocean away, crossing my fingers and hoping against hope that my flight that is now on Wednesday will not be cancelled again.

*cue Paul Simon "Homeless"* "Somebody cry why why why??!!"

Honestly, I feel like it's an adventure. It's slightly apocalyptic (you know, ash taking over the world and planes being grounded and thousands or millions of people being stranded without much recourse -- basically nature reclaiming her own), totally discombobulating, and really really funny when we stop to think about it. But a lot of girls have been crying and everyone is going TOTALLY CRAZY. Or, to Britishify it: "Really rather in a frenzy."

And yet. We're all together. All in this together. And it's a blessing to have a few more days with these people I love and this place I've learned to love, too.

But I really hope I can get home. Soon.

The Final Stretch.

This is the current state of things:

1) I have two hours before I have to print off my paper and walk it down to Frewin Court at which point I will be done with Oxford and my junior year.

2) It's doable. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

3) Tonight Carl and Jay are feeding soup to our whole house. One last Crick family meal together.

4) In twenty-four hours almost exactly, I will be boarding a bus at Gloucester Green on my way to Heathrow and, eventually, home. I can't wait to be in Mom and Dad's arms.

5) I am listening to Christmas music. (WHAT?!?) Sing to me, Bing, sing to me.

6) This conclusion isn't going to write itself.

We're all mad here.

[Eva Cassidy - "Songbird"]

Everyone is going CRAZY working on their long essays. Here's the basic assignment: approximately 4000 words on a topic of your selection. Not too bad, right? It really isn't, but what with the trying to pack, clean the house, getting hostels and plane tickets and bus passes, eating, maybe sleeping -- and, most of all, trying to spend as much time together as we can before we NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN.....Well, all that is making 4000 words stretch out like the Neverending Story.

The coffee I'm drinking right now (which I stole from Christine's cupboard) tastes kind of like a combo of coffee, black licorice, and burnt wood. Ugh. I guess that's what you get for stealing people's things.

(Daniel just gave me a piece of beef jerky! That goes with the burnt wood taste of my coffee.)

My long essay topic (which I wrote for myself and got approved by the Oxfordian powers that be -- ie, the head of my program):

In his essay "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said" C. S. Lewis claims that through fairy stories, truth can be "smuggled" into the imagination and "for the first time appear in its real potency." Is myth appropriate in children's literature as a means to approaching truth and why?

Is that not the most fantastically interesting paper topic you have ever heard of in your life? I'm pretty excited about it -- so excited, in fact, that I think I'm going to recycle it and build on it for my SIP (Senior Integration Paper -- ie, senior thesis).

In other news, last weekend, I found my favorite pub: The Perch. It's set right in the middle of Port Meadow, nestled in a cluster of thatch-roofed houses and it has fairy-lighted gardens in the back. It is magical. Other notable pubs in Oxford.

-The Bear, the oldest pub in the city. It's oooolllllld, with really low ceilings (Nick and Sam B-T don't really fit in it) and a wobbly floor. In the cramped back room, the walls and ceiling are covered with the stubs of people's ties. Kind of like those restaurants where people pin a dollar bill to the walls.

-The Turf Tavern: probably the most famous pub in Oxford. It's really hard to find -- the only way to get to it is down an extremely narrow, dark, winding alley near the Bodleian. This is the pub where Bill Clinton didn't inhale when he was here as a Rhodes Scholar. Pretty much everyone famous who has lived in/been to Oxford has visited the Turf.

-The Eagle and Child. Duh. The Inklings met here. However, a less well-known fact is that, when the ownership of the Eagle and Child changed, these old guys decided they didn't like it anymore, so they moved across the street to:

-The Lamb and Flag. Cozy. Fireplace. No tacky music. Awesome.

-Bookbinders. They have board games in one of the back rooms.

We're all going to miss the "pub culture" over here in Britain. There's not really an equivalent to it in America. (I mean, seriously, can you imagine after church on Sunday night, a big old group of people - all ages - "Let's go grab a drink at the bar!!" Just doesn't work like it does here.) Sure, you go there to get some good drinks, but mostly you just go as a place to hang out, talk, chill, be cozy and loud with your friends. It's more down-in-the-earth than a coffee shop and much more family-friendly than a bar. What fun to grab a group of friends and walk a couple blocks down to the Rose and Crown for fish and chips or just sitting around.

When I finish this paper, I will officially be finished with my term at Oxford (and my junior year!). It was one of the best experiences of my life.

"I'm your huckleberry."

[Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More]

Daniel just introduced me to one of the best movies ever of all time. The guy owns Tombstone and BROUGHT IT WITH HIM TO OXFORD. Who does that??? Awesome people. Daniel Menjivar, that's who - the guy who aspires to be Doc Holliday.

DUDE. That movie is SO CRAZY GOOD!!! We just sat there with our jaws dropping and now we're all fired up to ride across the American plain and save people from bad guys. Or just be in love with Doc Holliday FOREVER. But instead, we have to sit in our house here in England and write papers. Shoot.

The thing is, it's our last week here, and even sitting in the common room of Crick writing a paper has taken on a giddy sweet charm. There is the random outburst (usually from a girl) of "Ohh nooo!! We have to leave in a week!!" which is always swiftly followed by a yell (usually from another girl...or Nick) of "I DON'T WANNA TALK ABOUT IT."

Here are some other things that have been happening in Oxford:

-Kate and I joined Jay at the Quaker meeting this morning. It was really challenging and fascinating and I had millions of questions for him afterwards. I really don't know much about Quakers at all, but I'm really intrigued to know more. I've been able to experience quite the gamut of church experiences here. While I've been very well plugged in to St. Ebbe's, I've also managed to visit churches of a lot of other traditions (Catholic, high Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, Quaker, etc.) and it's been both eye-opening, fascinating, confusing, challenging, and encouraging. It has also clarified a lot of vague concepts I had about what the church should be.

-Daniel decided to ask people if he were an animal which one would he be. So I made him pick one for me, and he said a peacock. Because they explode and make loud noises when you get them upset." (In his defense, he also tried to come up with some kind of "and peacocks are pretty!") Now he and Nick won't quit saying "peacock" whenever I get riled up. What can you do to that? It's like when you're in a bad mood and your mom says, "Hannah, you're grumpy." I'M NOT GRUMPY, DANGIT. Your response just proves her whole point. Dangit.

-We went to the Kilns yesterday. I have been where C.S. Lewis lived. Oh my he is my hero. I'll have to tell more stories about that some time. Suffice it to say: I was in a blissful state, soaking in the view and the stories.

-I met up with Nick Elledge and Jared Canfield in London. It was so weird, we used to hang out during all those long tournament hours when we were sixteen. Now we're all in England together. Crazy times.

-Our field trips have been awesome. OH MY. Some pictures are up on Facebook. Stonehenge is pretty legit, guys. :)

-I took a picture with Peter Pan.

-Jay and I played badminton against Christine and Hutton today. Our team: Spartacus. We won. Ohhhhhhhhyeah.

I guess I should go do some work on my paper now. It's due at 12:00 on Thursday and it is a MEGA MEGA MEGA PAPER.

Sun It Rises

["Go" - Jonsi. Oh my gosh I love this album.]

It's 7:03 a.m. on the tail-end of an all-nighter. I'm shivering a bit under a blanket, still cold from the walk I took at 6:00 into the sunrise. But the sun that I welcomed to Today is now peeking into the bay window at the front of Crick and pretending to warm things up. Jonsi is singing in my earbuds the most gloriously sublime music of morning-ness (and northerness). Nick and Christine are in here still writing papers.

OK, so in case anyone gets the wrong impression: I am not an all-nighter kind of person. I don't think I've pulled one all-nighter while in college. I just don't see the point. This is NOT to say I don't procrastinate. It's just that the way I see it, if I'm running that late on getting the assignment in, there's not a whole lot I can do at 4:30 in the morning that will up my grade enough to make it worth staying awake. I might as well not lose both a perfect grade and sleep, right?

But now I'm in Oxford living in a house of people who pull all-nighters (or about four or five of them do). And I'm leaving Oxford in less than (AGHDON'TSAYIT) eight days. So I figure, why not go all-out and do whatever the heck I want? I technically could've finished this paper by 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., but I had waaaaaaay more fun making multiple cups of coffee and tea, rolling around on the ground saying ridiculous, sugar-induced things to distract people, bouncing up and down on the living-room chairs, making paper airplanes, etc. In short, I decided to be super ADD and totally inefficient. For some reason, I never got sleepy enough to make me change my mind and go to bed like a normal person. And so I finished my paper rather leisurely around 5:00 this morning. I downed some cereal, sent my paper in, and then grabbed the blanket (that's still wrapped around my shoulders) and headed off to find a spot to watch the sun rise.

It took me a while, but I found a wooden gate to sit on overlooking a football (soccer) field and trees and fields behind it. I sat myself down for the next half hour and thought about my life and talked to God and was quiet and listened to the birds and got Fleet Foxes stuck in my head.

Y'all. The sun. It's a giant ball of liquid orange paint that's on fire. Betcha didn't know that.

(One of my favorite parts about finishing a paper I've been working on is closing all of the web browser tabs that have been open on my computer for days of research. *click* Gone. *click* Gone. *click* Gone forever.)

In approximately ten minutes, I plan on being snuggled in my bed and not getting up until it's a good solid 2:00 in the afternoon.

East Coker - T.S. Eliot

[movement IV]

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art

Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined millionaire,

Wherein, if we do well, we shall

Die of the absolute paternal care

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,

The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires

Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food:

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--

Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

----------------------

It's Good Friday again. And again I am reminded of Love and how little I know it and how little I profess it, but how utterly I am changed by it.

THE ZOMBIES ARE TAKING OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so not exactly zombies, but something just as dreadful if you ask me: NOROVIRUS.

[cue blood-curdling scream]

It's kind of like the stomach flue only ten times scarier. Apparently it's one of the most contagious viruses in the UK because it spreads through touch -- entire schools have been closed down because of it and there's no way to avoid it. Once you have it, it lasts for up to 60 hours but once you're better, your immunity is gone within a few days. And we're pretty sure that's what Daniel has.

[another blood-curdling scream - just for effect]

Needless to say he's quarantined now (poor Daniel!) and the rest of of are living in terror and paranoia. (I mean, as much as we possibly can. You gotta milk this kind of thing for all it's worth.) Every hunger pang, twist of carsickness, or twitter of nerves could be the onset of "Noro." Kate and I have been making puking signs to each other ("April fools'!!!"). I've been pretty fatalistic about it ("Look, Laura, if I'm gonna throw up all night, I want this chocolate bar to be the last thing I ate"). BUT, so far no one else in Crick has gone down. WE ARE SPARTACUS. One girl from the Vines got it, I think.

It's like the Masque of the Red Death. Only no one has died yet. Minor difference. Maybe like the bubonic plague or something. Only not fatal. Whatever.

Pray for the health of your children in England. :)

People I Live With, Episode 3

[The Beatles -- White Album]

So I kind of forgot about this little miniseries on Life at Crick. Seems that I got all the way to Episode 2 - describing a whopping six of people that I live with - and then characteristically totally forgot to mention the other twenty. And we only have three weeks left. (OK, talk about that is freaking me out.)

HOWEVER, the boys in the Tower (aka, the Biola Boys, aka Shane, Nick, and Daniel) really seemed to want to be featured, so they kindly reminded me. And, in gratitude for their gentle reminders, I chose to skip over two floors of Crick and go straight from the basement to the Tower!!

So: Crick House, Tower, Room #2: Daniel Menjivar, Shane Martin, and Nick Dalbey. All three of them go to Biola in Southern California. Shane is actually from Houston (yay for Southerners!) but Daniel and Nick are die-hard SoCal snobs. (I love that I get total control over what is said in this space. I hope you're reading this, Nick Dalbey.)

Daniel: Just look at that picture. That picture. Says it all. He's sitting across from me in the living room right now playing "La Vie En Rose" out loud and just said, "If I had a song I would always walk in the room to, this would be it." Basic facts about Daniel: He's into history, classy things, and board games. If he ever asks you to play Ticket to Ride with him, don't be fooled -- he will crush you. He is almost a part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and when asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he says, "A good man." Also, I have never met anyone who can make up a more outrageously hilarious story on the spot than Daniel. The other day, he came into the living room, sat on the couch next to me and - with no other introduction - said "So once I was fighting this wildebeest." The thing about these stories is that they always come at exactly the time you need something to cheer you up. Daniel's good at that.

Today, tragically, Daniel is sick. In his honour, we shall remember only the strong and strapping healthy Daniel Menjivar. As he said when he found out I was blogging about him: "LET POSTERITY KNOW WHO I WAS!!!! Remember me in my GLORY DAYS!!!" Daniel, we will never forget.

Lastly, Daniel has a wonderful girlfriend back at Biola, Karrie, who sometimes sends him cookies which he will from time to time share.

Shane: Interesting fact about Shane: He is old chums with Sam Townes (one of the most awesome guys at Covenant :))!! OK, so, first of all, I think at least my dad should know that Shane was, in fact, named after Shane from the old Western flick of the same name. "Shane! Come back!" That Shane. Dad, the name continues to haunt my footsteps. :)

How does one describe Shane? He is an almost-Catholic, overly-analytical Romantic who loves poetry, writing couplets of rap songs, and all things that are Beautiful. He gets that pensive look on his face and you know the next question he asks is going to pin you to a wall and you're gonna have to mentally engage. Yesterday he was writing a paper (by hand) and trying to craft the first sentence with the utmost love and care. He was debating over the placing of one of the words -- "Well, if it goes before the clause, it's harder to read but the other way is just not as beautiful. I'm going with the beautiful option." And I thought, That's Shane.

Also, he will do almost anything for a Coke. Unbelievable.

I give him advice about girls. ;-)

Nick: Well, Nick goes by a lot of nicknames around here (nicknames -- HA! -- get it, NICKnames??!! BAHAHAHAA.), some of which should probably not be repeated because they are just too awesome. But, let me just say, he stars in many knightly tales, usually told by Laura Hutton, of kicking the butts of evil goblins and saving princesses (once I got to be the princess in the story -- very exciting). He has been known to randomly say, "I want to slay a dragon" and is fondly referred to as "the 70's god" by the girls, due to the way his hair falls fabulously across his forehead. We also like to refer to him as our North Star because he is 6'4" so anytime we get lost in London, we just look for his "70's god" head. It has never failed. (Though he did get lost in Paris at 2:00 in the morning a few weeks ago. I did NOT just publish that on the Internet. No worries, his mom already knows.) Nick is just one of those guys who makes you feel like bad things won't happen to you.

If you say the word "Dante" in Nick's presence, he might fall into a lovelorn swoon. If you say the words "Dante isn't all that great" in Nick's presence, he will probably cry. Or kill you with his dragon-killing skills. "Beatrice" would also be an interesting conversation-starter. He is another connoisseur of beauty and can be stopped in his tracks by a beautiful line of poetry.

The Biola Boys are the kind of guys your parents want you to be friends with. Sincere, witty, fun, easy to talk to, gentlemanly, and - most importantly! - a little outrageous. Sometimes, when Emily and I need a change of scenery, we'll climb up the narrow stairs to the third story (or "the Tower" as we have fondly named it) and read in their room for a couple hours. Good conversation, good laughs, good fun. The stuff of good memories.

I should be writing a Case Study....

...which is why I'm blessing the Internet with my presence!!

Actually, I've been working on this case study solid for the past three hours so I figured I'd take a break from my writing and do some more writing on here! Our "Case Studies" are basically just 2500- to 2750-word papers on a topic from something in British history. I picked William Wallace as my topic and here's the question I selected to answer:

"Are most representations of Wallace 'sheer fantasy, where history breaks almost entirely loose from its moorings' (Summerson)? If so, does this matter?"

So, in my case study, I'm going to argue that, yes, most representations of Wallace are sheer fantasy and, no, it doesn't really matter at all. The point being that there is a historical Wallace (the real guy whom we don't know terribly a lot about) and a literary Wallace around whom myths and folktales have been created -- folktales that inspire Scottish national identity in a way that is almost unmatched in history. Yay for inspiration. Don't take our heroes from us, man.

France: So, I've been gearing myself up to blog about my escapades in France during Spring Break, but I haven't been able to get up the energy to do it. First of all, I put up two photo albums on Facebook which tell the story pretty well. Second of all, I just want to blog about what's in my head right now which is Oxford. BUT, here's a little summary, because it was fabulous and deserves mention.

Hunt and I flew into Marseilles and met up with Lara Berger and Will Lutz (friends from Covenant). While there, we went to the harbour, got on a boat, and motored out to the Chateau D'If which, if you are a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo, you will recognize as the prison where Edmond Dantes meets Faria and from which he later escapes. Though I'm sure Edmond wasn't a huge fan of it, the place is beautiful. We watched the sun set behind it.

After Marseilles, we took the thirty-minute bus ride to Aix-en-Provence where Lara, Will, Elea Geerlings, and Matt Pillsbury (also Covenant friends) are living and studying this semester. I stayed with Elea who is renting a room from Monsieur Ganet, who is this wonderful elderly Frenchman who speaks very little English. The first day I was there, he told us in rapid French about how he had gotten hit by a car earlier that day. To our SHOCKED responses, he merely waved his hand dismissively.

It was SO wonderful to stay with Elea and just be able to hang out with dear friends for a few days. We drank in every minute we all had together.

We spent the next couple of days climbing Mont Sainte-Victoire, hiking around the village streets and coastal cliffs of Ciotat, and exploring the cafes, boulangeries, and shops of Aix. I practised my French a little and had my first real French crepe and ate through a bajillion baguettes. We also made legit American chili for the French family that Lara and Pills live with and spent the evening with them -- the kids performed magic tricks and played their instruments for us, and then we all played a game together around the table. Which Hunt lost mostly because he was the only one who couldn't understand a word of French.

Everything was so utterly French. Exotic and Mediterranean and luscious and tasty. The architecture was tall and tilted, the narrow windows reached from floor to ceiling and had real shutters and wrought-iron balconies on the top floors.

Flowers and poodles and fountains and food and crazy alleys.

Also, the women in southern France all look like my extended Gautreau family. Gran, Mom, and Aunt Jill especially would look right at home there. We ARE French, after all!!

So, that's France. Now I need to get back into Scottish mode and talk about my personal hero William Wallace. ;-)

Je vais en France!!!

#1 - I am done with Oxford tutorials FOREVER. Right now, all I feel is relief. Soon it will feel much more bittersweet that such a challenging, fascinating, miserable, exciting, unique, difficult, INCREDIBLE period of my life is over. But right now -- oh, right now I just want to sleep for four days and NEVER write another paper ever again ever.

I survived Hilary Term in Oxford.

I feel like I should get a T-shirt.

#2 - I AM GOING TO FRANCE!!! (In case you didn't get the translation of the title.) Tomorrow morning at 6:30 I'll begin my trek to the coach station to meet Hunt and then we'll be off to the airport and then to MARSEILLES!! Lara Berger is meeting us there and she's going to show us around and then it's off to Aix (or Aix-en-Provence) to chill with Lara, Pillsbury, Elea, and Will for a coupla days. I feel like I'm going to want to sleep a lot. But something ELSE I'm going to do is put my foot in the Mediterranean. Awwwwwyeah!!

----------------------

"'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." (1 Peter 5:6-7)

In our small group at church this week, we talked about Philippians 4 and anxiety. It was so ridiculously appropriate for 8th week frenzy. Imagine exams week pressure only with papers instead of tests and in Oxford with Oxford professors and you will maybe have some conception of how overwrought we've all been this week. I can't even believe it's over, but God has been utterly faithful, as usual.

That verse up there is beauty. "Humble yourselves." Boy, that's a tough word in a place like this. But forget it: be humble, don't worry, He loves you. Wow.

"Watching the River Run" - Loggins & Messina -- Just listen to it. Your soul will thank you.

Only three more days to go . . . .

[Music - The Dodos]

Since the morning is still new here, I figured I can update my blog without feeling too convicted that I should be doing something else. It's the last week of full term. That means that the regular Oxford students are going on holiday soon and we have Spring Break and then our British Landscapes course. Ultimately, the whole structure is going to be different now. No more tutorials (bye, Josh and Emma.....sad day). This second half is more like what Americans are used to -- lectures every morning Monday through Friday. Fewer papers. Etc.

We're just all ready for our brief Spring Break -- it's like the end of an academic marathon. I just have to finish my last C. S. Lewis paper and write my last Shakespeare paper (on King Lear). Then I will be done with Oxford tutorials forever. Weird.

So last night I made jambalaya!!!! Mom sent me some REAL jambalaya mix in the mail and I cooked that stuff UP. It was like a little taste of heavenly home. My food group was delighted by the taste of real Cajun food and everyone was happy, New Orleans style.

The other day I accidentally left my driver's license on the kitchen table and Sam Brewitt-Taylor (our Junior Dean) found it the next morning. He made sure to tell me about it and said, "Yes, well, I found a little identity card that said 'U.S. Department of State' and had your face on it. All I could think was 'What has she done now?'" HAH.

Thom Yorke lives in our neighborhood. For those of you who don't know him, he's the lead singer of the band Radiohead that in the '90s pretty much changed rock music forever. It's basically like living next door to Bono or something. (Only better.) We haven't sighted him yet, but hope never dies. Also in our neighborhood: Richard Dawkins. We have sighted him. And the neighborhood next door to ours is where Tolkien lived when he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

So this house we live in, being full of people who are crazy enough to want to study at a place like Oxford, is, as you may imagine, interesting. I keep a Word document open most of the time to write down things people say that make me smile. Here's a sampling. Hopefully you'll get some idea of what it's like here.

Me: "Everyone in this house is eccentric in some way."

Kate: "Yeah. Sometimes I'm just like . . . this place is so weird."

Nick: "Listen to what I'm studying this semester -- how B.A. is this??! *reads a piece from Beowulf* I can read that to you in the Old English, too."

Katie Powell: "Boys are people, too!"

Hutton: "No. They're different."

"Calm down, it's not like it's Oxford or anything." -Everyone

"I'm gonna do Sporkle while you finish editing my paper." -Hunt (and only if you know what Sporkle is can you fully appreciate the utter nerdness of that comment)

"That's what makes this country so great!! And when I say this country, I mean America." -Daniel

"I swear I'm more articulate than I seem." -Daniel

"Jen, I need your help pronouncing this Latin. I have to read it in my tutorial tomorrow and I don't want to sound like a dingo." -Jay

"I almost just told Dr. Kreuze that I love him." -Hutton

"Except the more I look at him the more I don't think he's attractive. Because I think I hate him." -Alison about her tutor, Tom (it was a bad day -- don't worry, she got over that outburst)

"I'm watching a video on how to make meatballs." -Nick (oh, the adventures of college students trying to cook meals for each other)

"Has anyone seen Augustine's Confessions lying around?" -Jay

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Tim Keller (a personal hero of mine) was in Oxford last week and we went to hear him speak in Town Hall. Two things:

#1 - His American accent and Americanisms were music to our ears. It was so great to finally be on the "I get this" end of things. The Brits said when he read quotes sometimes they couldn't understand him at all. WE COULD. Wow. It's amazing how the same language (i.e. English) can be in so many ways a foreign 0ne. At one point he was like, "Oh, am I being too American? I'm showing my feelings, I'm sorry." I laughed so hard.

#2 - His message was glorious. He talked about faith and reason (so appropriate in this bastion of reason), arguing that it takes just as big (or bigger) a leap of faith not to be a Christian as it does to be one. He talked about the faith it takes to doubt God and the rational problems of explaining life without God. But then he was like, "All this is great, but reason will never ultimately move us. Only beauty and love will ultimately draw people in." And then he goes on talking about the beauty of the Christian story and the exquisite and intoxicating love of the Creator who wrote himself into our story. He quoted C. S. Lewis saying that it would be like Shakespeare wrote himself into Hamlet and then died to save them all. I was like, "He's speaking my language." C. S. Lewis + Shakespeare = My Life the past two months.

Ultimately, I am a Christian not because the prophets have shown me the way to find God but because Jesus says instead "I'm God come to find you." Hallelujah.

A break from "Hamlet in Purgatory"

So I needed a break from homework and decided to be a minor creeper and google my Shakespeare tutor, Josh. Since he was the one imposing homework on me, I thought I would impose my break on him. Little did I know, I would spend my five-minute break being imposed-upon by his accomplishments. What I discovered did NOT surprise me, but it definitely blew my mind a little bit. I should title the rest of this post "Amazing Fantastic Things I Have Learned About Josh, My Shakespeare Tutor."

#1 - He graduated from Harvard. (Yeah, the old "I'm from Boston" -- I knew it had to mean something.)

#2 - He is a Rhodes Scholar. (Which is how he ended up in Oxford.)

#3 - The man who taught him Shakespeare is Stephen Greenblatt. As in, Stephen Greenblatt, arguably the greatest Shakespeare scholar alive. Also the guy who happened to have written the book I'm currently taking a break from reading and that I'm writing a book review of, the guy who is quoted in almost every undergraduate Shakespeare paper ever written since 19-something.

Here's Josh: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/11.30/99-rhodes.html

And here's something he wrote that I found interesting: http://www.oxonianreview.org/issues/7-2/billings.shtml

All this to say:

#1 - I knew he was a genius but I didn't quite realize exactly how genius he is.

#2 - All I want to do in our last tutorial this Monday is ask him to talk to me about himself. That would be sooooo interesting.

#3 - I am now only one degree of separation away from the greatest living Shakespeare scholar. WHOOHOO!!!

#4 - I'm intimidated. AGAIN.

[Note added later: I just wikipedia-ed Stephen Greenblatt and he apparently jammed with Art Garfunkel at summer camp and was invited to join him with "his friend Paul Simon" making music. But Greenblatt decided to go to college instead. He also used to do casual performances with the group that later became Monty Python. CRAZY.]

Wildness and Wet....

This morning four intrepid souls from Crick Road House adventured their way to Port Meadow to see the sunrise. Kate, Nick, Jay, and I woke up at 5:30, stumbled our way to the kitchen for coffee, and set out in the dark to see the sun rise over the fields, leaving the others blissfully asleep and blissfully unaware of the mad adventures they were missing. It was gloriously dripping, muddy, marshy, wild, and - when the sun came out - all glittering. We came home three hours later with soaking feet, covered in mud, flushed, and exuberant.

This poem, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, could not more perfectly describe this morning (especially the last stanza):

Inversnaid

THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth

Turns and twindles over the broth

Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,

Are the groins of the braes that the brook tread through,

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.