really, really, really, really...

I miss these people so much:

heritage...

Whenever I find a check out slip left carelessly into a library book, I notice the person and the date of checkout. I always wonder if they actually used it as a bookmark and only made it this far, or if perhaps the bit of paper was tucked inside pages which were never opened. I momentarily indulge in literary fantasy and wonder if they enjoyed these words as much as I do, and then replace the paper and return the book. Sometimes I leave my own check out slip in the pages. It almost feels like a good kind of graffiti.

book smart...

I am highly amused:

She bought a copy of the New York Review of Books and looked through the Personals. Brains, brains, everywhere... Among dozens of these condensed portraits Puttermesser could not recognize herself. ...As for the examined life - enough! She was sick of examining her own and hardly needed to hear an Eskimo expert examine his. It was all fiction anyhow - these columns and columns of ads. 'Vibrant, appealing, attractive, likable' - that meant divorced. Leftovers and mistakes. 'Unconventional, earthy, nurturing, fascinated by Zen, Sufism, music of the spheres' - a crackpot still in sandals. ...Every self-indulgent type in the book turned up in these ads.
Literature was no better. The great novels, rife with weirdos leading to misalliance - Isabel Archer entangled with the sinister Gilbert Osmond, Gwendolyn Harleth's troubles with Grandcourt. Anna Karenina. Worst of all, poor Dorothea Brooke and the deadly Mr. Casaubon. All these bad characters - the men in the case absolutely, and many of the women - were brainy. Think of Shaw, a logician, refusing to allow Professor Higgins to wed Eliza, in open dread of foreordained rotten consequences. And Jane Austen: with one hand she marries Elizabeth to Darcy, clever with clever, and with the other she goes and saddles Mr. Bennet with a silly wife. People get stuck. Brains are no guarantee. Hope is slim.
[the puttermesser papers - cynthia ozick]

gilead...

Allison has hopefully already persuaded you to read this beautiful crafted and moving book, but I'd like to add my own encouragement:

Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as an aesthetic rather than morally judgemental in the ordinary sense. How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance do we perform it? ...I do like Calvin's image, though, because it suggests how God might actually enjoy us. I believe we think about that far too little. It would be a way into understanding essential things, since presumably the world exists for God's enjoyment, not in any simple sense, of course, but as you enjoy the being of a child when he is in every way a thorn in your heart.
[124-125]

It strikes me that your mother could not have said a more heartening word to me by any other means than she did by loving that unremarkable book so much that I noticed and read it, too. That was providence telling me what she could not have told me.
[133]

Seriously, how cool is that?! I want to encourage and challenge people through the books I read and recommend. Check off another point for the English Majors!

contradictions...

i shall never grow up
make believe is much to fun
can we go far away to the humming meadow
[eisley]

i grow old... i grow old...
i shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
[prufrock]

if growing up means it would be
beneath my dignity to climb a tree
i'll never grow up, never grow up,
never grow up,
not me!
[peter pan]

we should no longer be children,
tossed to and frow and carried about
with every wind of doctrine,
by the trickery of men,
in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting,
but, speaking the truth in love,
may grow up in all things
into Him who is the head: Christ.
[ephesians 4:14-15]

uk tour: glasgow...

kelvingrove museum

i thought of you, milicent, and all the stupid jokes we would make about this sign

one of the most charming streets: hip pubs, music, and art

the glasgow botanical gardens liked the rain more than we did...

uk tour: london...

our neighborhood: kensington, w11

the view from my window reminded me of The Magician's Nephew

neighborhood church

sunset from my window

the real world...

I'm incredibly inspired and overwhelmed right now after lunch with Dr. B. H. Fairchild, a poet and literary scholar. As one pursuing a liberal arts education and constantly battered by the pressures of "what about when you graduate?" and "what exactly do you want to do with your life?", I am excited to hear intelligent people who support a pursuit of knowledge and a passion for learning. He talked about the lack-of-importance of a good SAT score and the incredible importance of a hunger for learning [i eat books].

I don't get the best grades [especially from impossible but amazing professors at hillsdale], I don't win English Department awards, I won't graduate Summa Cum Laude. But because I have studied here, I am overwhelmed by literature. I am passionate about life discussed through words on paper. I am fascinated by American themes and the concept of the novel. I want to learn where language has taken us and where it's leading. I am captivated by poetry [like Dr. Fairchild's. brilliant and beautiful]. I recognize more and more obscure references. I am more and more frequently overcome by a rabid desire to experience the Greats of literature. I celebrate myself, and sing of myself, not because of what I have done, but because I am able to use the mind and opportunity so graciously allowed me.

What, as Dr. Fairchild expressed today, is more The Real World than this?

about the last time i saw you
you said, 'call me pandora, call me a fool'
and i'm thinking this view could do you some good
so drop these scales and take a look
[40 acres]

uk tour: london...

the crazy cool london eye, which we did not ride

for my bride and prejudice fans, my london eye fans, and my river thames fans

mary and i, millenium footbridge over the thames

for my telephone booth fans and my green scarf and grey sweaterdress fans

uk tour: london...

westminster. pretty much the most impressive building ever

the london eye [which is across the river] and big ben

my apologies to the founding fathers, but parliament is just way cooler

particularly around the high security areas, one must constantly supress all sorts of wooster-ian urges

uk tour: london...

peter pan and i, kensington gardens

princess di memorial, hyde park [i never think about water having texture, but this fountain totally made me think about it differently. it was so cool, ask me about it in person]

buckingham

sometimes you run into old friends in the strangest places

uk tour: london...

king's cross station, for all my harry potter lovers. the cart is cut in half so it looks like it's already gone partway through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10.

yay!

the italian fountains, kensington

an ominous picture. i hope the baby doesn't fall out of her buggy!

uk tour: london...

probably my favorite street picture ever, despite the gross abercrombie bus ad

that's shakespeare, love

cool footbridge between st paul's and the tate modern

five stories of slide art in the tate modern [all the tickets were gone so we didn't get to go. pout]

uk tour: london...

mary with the unfortunante butt bus

a creepy raven at the tower of london

tower walls and tower bridge

tower of london, complete with the moat