Macbeth scrapbook

Today I dragged out the Macbeth scrapbook to work on it. :-) Guess what this next page is about? The stabbing. Yup, that's where I left off at Christmas.

So if anyone has a comment to make on the subject, post it or email it to me, and I might include it. :-)

Coffee, Hamlet, Lion King, Much Ado, world travel, used books, and a star-crossed windowsill

I went to coffee with the debaters last night. Josh talked about how his friends analyzed The Lion King and discovered it had the same plot as Hamlet, only with a happy ending. The king's brother murders the king, tries to marry the queen, and sends the prince off into “emotional exile”; an array of friends bumble around; the ghost of the king appears to the prince, says “Remember me,” and convinces him to confront his uncle; and there's a final duel. So then I shared how when my friends analyzed The Lion King we noticed how it was about growing up and becoming what you were born to be, rather than what you irresponsibly wanted to be, and further ended with an arranged marriage that made everyone happy. Quite a movie. We also analyzed our schools' productions of Much Ado and compared them to the Kenneth Branagh one. We immediately decided that our families needed to have a Much Ado fest.

I went to coffee with the Bible study girls this morning. One is leaving for Russia tomorrow, another is going to South Africa within a week, and a third is going back home to Texas with her husband and baby. It's impressive we all managed to be in town at the same time.

After that I spent $2.15 at the library used book store and acquired six books: The Tolkien Reader, Virginia Woolf (to be a well-rounded lit major), Edgar Allen Poe, Alistair McGrath, George Kennan, and the first Dune book. Life is good, though I mysteriously don't have any shelf space again. But I did take three bags of stuff to the thrift shop this afternoon.

In other news, I read how a visitor to a Cambridge museum tripped over his shoelace, fell down the stairs, and shattered an entire windowsill full of Qing vases. Apparently, they'd been there for the last 40 years and never quite made it to a display case. The museum expressed gratitude the visitor was not injured.

Snippets of writing

They're just a first draft. Leofric (from whose point of view this is) is currently in denial about Maiwyn. But I promised you snippets, and here they are.


"O Maiwyn, most beautiful among women, will you come out and show me the constellations?" Had he said that? That was almost as bad as what he hadn't said that afternoon. He had read way too much Wulfred the Rhymer. Too late to get out of it. The offer hung in the air between them.


"Did I tell you about what Bear and I did to Mell with the giant spider?"

"I don't think so." Her voice was perfectly normal. Good. It came out low and smooth, like honey over cornbread. Her hair was the color of honey, too. Enough honey. He was talking about spiders.

"Well, it was back before they got married. She hated spiders, and I came across a really big furry one out by the mines. I caught it in an empty coffee cup, and we flattened it on a piece of parchment exactly the color of her pillowcase and got her roommate Nadder to put it there for her to find."

"How did you know what color her pillowcase was?" Maiwyn demanded.

"She brought it out for a reading-aloud once. It's all right, I promise. So Nadder left the spider there and we hung out in the building after Mell said goodnight, and she screamed so loud she woke up her entire hallway and came running out and yelled at Bear and told him he'd have to wash the pillowcase for her before she slept on it again. It was really funny."

"I don't think it sounds funny."

"Well...then we told her it was on parchment and not actually on her pillow, and she stopped boiling and brought it out and let us ritually incinerate it. I think spiders on Swostor must eat sulfur or something, because it burned bright yellow. But the ashes still looked kind of like a spider, so we burned it again."

Maiwyn laughed. Good. "That was a very male thing to do. Did she forgive you guys?"

"Oh, definitely. I think she took it as a sign of affection."



"I noticed your garden yesterday. It looked great, really green. You must spend a lot of time working in it."

"Well, it's worth it. I grow thyme," she said, with her inimitable I-just-made-an-awful-pun tone.
He hadn't heard her pun for three years. He laughed. "That was very sage of you."

"Thank you. And I commend you on that herbal pun," she reposted.

Not over Pride and Prejudice yet

Today on the radio, I heard a song. It was a good enough song, I suppose, all about grace...

only it was by Phil Wickham. The last name disturbed me.

I decided maybe I wasn't over P&P yet.

Freshman and sophomore pics :-)

Unpacking and writing

Hullo, all:

You've been most patient while I neglected my blog. I'm really home now. And Chrysophylax (my laptop) works and has internet access and everything. (Happiness!)

Saturday: Home! We unloaded the car and truck. They were full. I moved my bed, vacuumed my floor, and promptly put books, boxes, boxes of books, clothes, suitcases of clothes, and tubs of clothes and books on it. I commenced unpacking. The closet became completely unreachable, though the long bookshelves weren't. They were just stuffed with books.

Sunday: Church! Then I unpacked. I set up my nice wooden shelf--the one that held dishes at school--and put books on it. My sister kindly organized my desk so I could get to it (and write DRW thereat). Clean laundry started piling, but I organized the closet enough to sort of get at it.

Monday: My first ten-page installment of DRW for my mentor was due. So I wrote an eight-page outline of my story at a rate just better than a page every two hours and sent it to her, unpacking in the corners. I discovered I couldn't deal with the manuscript itself after that.

Tuesday: I wrote the other two pages I owed her for Monday, sent them in, finished two books, watched Hitch, and unpacked. Mom had an extra shelf in the backyard (I'm still not sure why it was out there), so I set it up and put books and DVDs on it. I think all the boxes of books became empty and put in the hall. The clean laundry piled higher.

Wednesday: Mom and I went shopping. All day. We also did some eating. :-) Em's birthday is this Saturday, if you want to email her, and Dad's is Monday, so Mom and I bought them presents and party supplies. I also got two Chinese lanterns, one defective (sad days), both of which I attached to my ceiling where they belonged. I also unpacked my other Chinese lanterns and put them up, packed away sundry figurines which did not match my room's projected new Asian-beach theme, and decorated a candle to sit (along with a red vase, nice piece of volcanic black rock, and little Chinese doll) on the shelf formerly holding figurines. It is now a decorative and thematic shelf.

Thursday (today): I wrote all day and sent in the first ten pages of chapter 2, and my rate improved to about a page an hour. It was blissful having my books on shelves where I could consult them, besides the double bliss of having my family's library available. I love having books. I named several characters, though my heroine might need a different last name, and my plot is sort of having technology issues. I also seriously misjudged how much paper various events were going to take up. I did get back quite helpful and sensible comments on the outline. I feel revisions coming on. One thing, it's DRW, so I can't get discouraged and abandon the story to the bowels of Chrysophylax.

And we're not home yet

I've been reading this trip.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats--T. S. Eliot
The Four Quartets--T. S. Eliot
Murder in the Cathedral--T. S. Eliot
Deadman Switch--Timothy Zahn
The Book of the Dun Cow--Walter Wangerin
The Once and Future King--T. H. White

Of graduation and many things, including dragons and an island

I'm not even sure where to start.

I guess I should affirm that I did really graduate on Saturday. Yesterday, that would be. That was a good day; I wasn't quite sure it would be, but then various things happened. Drs. Bouchoc, Vanderpoel, and Hake spoke at the commissioning: good words, words of comfort and reminder and longing toward our true home, a reminder that we are going to the country ruled by the True King. I did not cry all day.

The ceremony itself was good. The robe and mortarboard helped: far from feeling silly, it made me feel official, in place, as part of a company of academics who have been wearing such odd garments for the last five or six hundred years and may well continue wearing them. I appreciated the formality. Another good blessing: God kept anything disastrous from happening.

Only as Jonathan or somebody reminded me at lunch, now I have "B.A." after my name. How peculiar.

I did go to lunch; my sister, parents, and grandparents were there, as was my friend Sarah with her husband and baby whom I hadn't ever seen. I was delighted they came. And Jonathan and his family came, as did Guthrie, Thacia, Trissie, Rose, and Kelly-Christelle. All of you, I am so grateful you came. I only wish I could have talked to you each, more, properly, instead of only briefly and in snatches. Not that I have anything really to say, but I wanted to say it to y'all.

In the afternoon I was granted about four hours to do my final packing and cleaning. I needed them. Thanks to Lisa, who helped me throw things away and allowed herself to be bequeathed many things. Further thanks to Jennifer, for further bequeathals. Thanks to Mr. Kanary and to Ben A: they did the final loading. Thanks to my sister and the Ethertons, for they helped the final cleaning, and Eric, who took apart our bathroom shelf for us. :-) These thanks look very dry and rapid-fire, but believe me, they are sincere. It is a very good blessing that I got packed, cleaned, and checked out; I find that far more stressful than finals.

I had a weird blessing while I was packing. I discovered at the last minute a mug which had gotten missed. It was my leopard-spotted mug, which my RA Kerri gave me, and I loved it. There wasn't room for it, there really wasn't. And it was cracked. But I loved it. So I while I wrestled over what to do with the thing, I washed it. And I dropped it. It broke good and proper. I felt like God was reminding me that my time at school is over: He will systematically break all my dishes which I love in preparation for what's coming later, and it will be well worth it. So it both saved me having to pack it and reminded me of my place in the universe. As I said, it was a weird blessing. :-)

The evening brought a contra dance. I didn't know if I'd be able to go at all, and I was. I danced my fair share of the dances and maybe more, considering how scarce PHC gentlemen were. Yet they were all which we could have requested: most considerate about not leaving anyone out. All us ladies were given turns. Thank you, guys. The Bluemont group which organized the dance was so kind: the ticket lady let me in at the student price, and they even had a "Congratulations PHC Graduates" cake. They did not need to do that, but we appreciated it, I think.

And I got to say goodbye to many, many of my friends. I shall not list you all, for you know who you are. But I am grateful, very grateful, to have gotten to say goodbye to you.

Today we got up and came to Chincoteague. It is as lovely as I remembered it; much warmer, which is nice, still almost intolerably windy on the beach and still half-enchanted in its forests. The houses are still cute and the McDonalds right where we left it. It is good to be here with my family, though oh so different, and I think about you from the Red House everywhere on this island. On the beach we found a dead stingray, many disintegrated crabs, a lot of seagulls, and rather fewer good shells than in March; perhaps I shall post more about our trip to the beach later. Beaches were good inventions.

So here I sit, blogging away on my beautiful new computer. Thacia, I've named it "Chrysophylax Turion," after the silver-loving dragon Farmer Giles tamed and after the computer's kind. (Ben, I thank you again for reading that story. I think I know why it suits you to read Tolkien: it is because you love him, and love brings knowledge.) I knew I should call my computer "Turion," because it's a good name, very Narnian and Tolkienian, besides being the model it is, but the first name gave me problems. My sister was the one who pointed out that I should go for a dwarvish, dragonish, or astronomical first name, because Turion would sound just silly with a lot of earthier names. My computer is a lover of metals, not wood.

I must speak to you, my longsuffering roommate. I know I have not expressed to you remotely how much I appreciated your good counsel, fashion advice, compliments, longsuffering while I packed (or stressed) and cleaned (or wrote DRW instead of cleaning), and caritas. Remember, puella: the coffee and grace were sufficient for the time. Now we get new supplies.

And it will be good.

Sentences the first draft of my Milton paper actually included

The protagonist, known as the Lady, is a fictional character and not a historical person, but she was written to be played by the Earl of Bridgewater’s daughter, who was of course a historical person.

They have a discussion in which he tries to be clever and she defends herself eloquently despite being glued to her chair.

This sonnet actually possesses some sonnetly and literary qualities, as opposed to his usual prosy sonnets.

This could be because after he got married, writing poems about the beauty of other women could be problematic, and it is almost certainly due to maturation on his part.

Came the rain puddling

From a gray sky
Came the rain thrumming,
Dripping down windows,
Puddling the walk.

From the dry dorms
Three girls came wending
Along the walk
Through the deep puddle.

In the gray raining
Came three dry girls
To the wet puddling
Where they went splashing.

To the dry dorms
Came the three girls
Under a rainbow
With puddle diminished.