Life of Pride
Well, people, if you're reading this, you have lived to see the very last day of 2005. Tomorrow, therefore, is 2006. I always find the turn of the year an odd time. One gets so used to adding a particular set of numbers to the end of a date: "04," "05," etc. Years become a habit. Then the habit has to change. It reminds one that life is a series of slowly changing consistencies.
Then one comes to New Year's resolutions. We've all heard the jokes about resolutions made and broken in the first few weeks. I take mine very seriously, the same way I consider all my official goals. I don't want to lie to myself any more than I want to lie to others or to God. So I made this a time of serious reflection last year, and I intend to do the same tomorrow. Last year, I came to the last page of my notebook/journal on Dec. 31st without even planning to do so. Again, this year I have a single page remaining. I intend to read through the beginning of my journal and record those portions of my character that are different and the same.
One interesting item about this New Year's is that I am not in MO. I am in KY. Both Gabi and I are here, in fact, because we drove to Louisville to spend the weekend with Ashlea D., our former beloved roommate of three semesters. I am sitting in her apartment typing, while Gabi and Ashlea discuss the proper way for Amanda, Ashlea's apartment-mate, to mail her wedding invitations. We've talked, shopped, and watched several episodes of
Smallville. (I brought Season 4 with me, because I was in the middle of it, and neither Ashlea nor Gabi had seen any.) Tonight we are going to watch more, eat ice cream (we each bought ourselves a pint), and each drink a glass of wine. The occasion feels solemn more than exciting, as if we must savor it, because we don't know when we will all three be together again. This is a fitting way for me to end one year and begin another that will be so different from the previous few.
I had almost decided that I was obsessed with blogging. I told myself I should take a week's fast from this enjoyable pursuit. I felt happy and virtuous all yesterday. Today, as I reloaded my blog for the seventh time to see if there were any more comments (of course, there weren't), I noticed the date on the last post was 12/27. That was only day before yesterday. I stared in shock, because I had been quite sure I hadn't written a post for at least five days already. Hm.
I decided that it was silly to take a week off from blogging, because it is harmless. The only reason, I told myself, I had made that goal in the first place was to see if I could do it. That is not a good reason.
I am aching to write a lit-major post about
Gone With the Wind, because I finally finished the book. It left me quite frustrated over the foolish selfishness of Rhett and Scarlett. I want to analyze it from a worldviews perspective. But that would have to wait, because it would take me a few hours to do it properly.
I also want to describe some of the things I've been doing these past few days, which include beginning research on my senior history project. I have found out some interesting stuff already, ILL'ed four books from the local library system, requested about six, and written down a list of ten or so that the Headquarters branch of the St. Louis system has in right now. But all that will have to wait too, because that will take more time than I have as well.
About all that leaves me is to say that I have typed this in less than five minutes, since I am about to run errands. I am just waiting for the deposits to be ready so that I can drop them at the bank. In an hour or so, the family is leaving to see
Narnia at last. I will be watching it for the third time, and I am looking forward to it.
Narnia is well on the way to being one of my favorite movies.
OK, time to go...
I am filled with the desire to type a blog post that is philosophical. Meaningful. Something that will induce many people to write me comments.
But nothing in particular springs to mind. That is, any number of things spring to mind, but none of them quite strike my fancy the right way. So this is what it is like inside my head:
Fancy, a small girl with long blond pigtails and a blue-checked dress, sits humming in a rocking chair and stares dreamily into space. All around and above her zoom varicolored thoughts, shaped like an imaginary Scarlett head from
Gone With the Wind, a grocery cart, lunch, and, well, a heart (hey, I'm a girl). In between these bigger, more obvious thoughts streak small sparkles of concepts and phrases. Every once in a while, these tiny lights run into each other with squeaks and grunts and create a small explosion, from which arises one of the more formed and colorful thoughts. The first thing each of these new ideas does is swoop down and strike Fancy! Since they feel rather like big mushy pillows, usually she just waves them away in annoyance. Occasionally, however, one strikes her just the way. She seizes it in her little arms and hugs it tight.
She must have really liked that one. Hey, it was all about her. What girl can resist?
Anyway, after a while Fancy's momma, Wisdom, comes along with her broom and takes a look at the pet thoughts Fancy has captured. These ideas cluster around Fancy's knees, panting with tongues out, waiting to be scratched. Wisdom has little patience with many of them. She flings them back into the air with her broom. In some of the worst cases, she thwacks a big cushy object many times, so hard that it crumbles into its original particles and disperses. Then Wisdom cautions Fancy only to feed and care for those thoughts that she would like to have grow big and solid. Thoughts are much, much harder to dissipate when they have had time to solidify, she says.
So Fancy cares for a few thoughts until they start to grow bigger than she can handle. Also, usually, she has hidden at least one away where Wisdom couldn't find it - until it is quite large. Wisdom, when she arrives happily to lead away the more mature thoughts, is often saddened by her daughter's foolishness. She punishes Fancy by forbidding her even to look at similar thoughts when they strike her again, unless Wisdom is present.
Then Wisdom leads the mature thoughts away: some beautiful, glossy, and docile; others, fur unkempt, holding back and spitting at the end of a leash. The former she releases into the beautiful lands of Hearing, Seeing, and Speaking, where they will live peacefully, each planting and harvesting its particular crops. The latter she intends to bring to the Incinerator of Inharmony in order to dispose of them, but they are often to strong for her. The foul creatures yank away and escape into the beautiful lands with their more obedient cousins. Here, they spread filth and pull up the good crops until they can be caught and exterminated. It is doubly hard to remove them at that point, because Humility and Temperance, the sons of Wisdom, must not only oust the bad thoughts, but must also repair all the damage they have caused.
In the middle of all her work, Wisdom is glad she has a strong husband, Spirit, who helps her in all she does and instructs her. Not only does he give her strong sons such as Humility and Temperance and lovely daughters such as Grace and Patience, but he adopts Fancy, Wisdom's daughter by a former, abusive husband (now dead, thank goodness!) and trains her up as his own. The more faithful children Wisdom has, the fewer evil thoughts can escape.
---
Goodness! I got a little carried away! Well, yes, I guess that is
exactly what it is like in my head, then. My imagination is always buzzing over stories.
Christmas Day... The house fills with lovely smells as the turkey cooks. The pies baked earlier, and the green bean casserole and sweet potatoes are still waiting to enter the oven. We always eat late on Christmas, but nobody minds, because we are spending some blessed family time. Mom and dad aren't working today, though they slept very late, since they were finishing the latest issue of
Practical Homeschooling magazine last night. That's always nice. It adds peace to the house not to have dashings from upstairs to downstairs and loud conversations through the speaker phone - especially on a combined Sunday and Christmas. So we will probably watch a Christmas movie in a little bit, after we read the Christmas story. Right now, my oldest brother has left his own computer spot in his bedroom to join in a board game on the kitchen table. I'm reading
Gone With the Wind, as I have been for a few days now (hey, it's a long book!), but I'm doing so in the living room instead of down in my "cave." Everything feels warm and cozy, even in the middle of our messy home, with large stacks of shipping boxes and review samples of homeschool products in the center of the living room. I do love my family.
So it is Christmas Eve. It doesn't feel especially like the day before a holiday over here in the Pride household. Magda is working on her violin lesson. I spent the morning listening to my three semesters' worth of Chorale CDs and writing more
Erthe at last. It comes slowly. I enjoy thinking about my other world quite a bit, adding to it and altering it in my head, but it never entirely takes life until I write it.
So people aren't posting to their blogs very much. I guess I should expect that. It
is rather hard for me to remember that a week ago I was on the road still. I feel like I've been at home for a very long time already, and that PHC is far behind me. It is curious how time dilates (B-theory of time) or at least
seems to dilate (A-theory of time). :D
It has occurred to me that I wouldn't be entirely happy living out here in the Midwest, particularly in this area of MO, in St. Louis's suburbs. The area doesn't feed my soul. There's no scope for imagination. Specifically, it is too populated. Whenever I am outdoors, I feel that there are eyes watching. I don't think I am imagining things, either, because I always watch everyone else who is outdoors. Further, when I go for a walk there is nowhere to go. I know every street in my neighborhood - all of them populated by houses with neat, green lawns and well-kept trees. I long for a few of Virginia's rowdy, tall, beautiful trees - like near Joanna W.'s house in Richmond. We're too flat here, and we would never allow our leaves to fall in huge untidy heaps near the side of the road. A neighbor would leave a kindly note (like someone anonymously did for us the time we left our Christmas lights on the house until February) and let us know our lawn was an "eyesore."
So where am I to go to exercise? There is nowhere in pleasant walking distance, because the sidewalks disappear outside of the neighborhood and many cars constantly whisk past on the roads. I can run in the neighborhood, but then again, there are the eyes. And it's getting colder, and I'm out of shape, so I feel embarrassed. I suppose I can run on the high-school track; that is true. But even so, I feel like a caged animal running 'round and 'round with nowhere to go, no destination. I think I need a little bit of Wild, a real forest, a cliff, a lovely river. We have rivers here, but if you wander into them you need a tetanus shot. :D
At least I have Tae Kwon Do classes. We'll be starting those again next month, the same time I kick myself into working/exercising/researching mode. I can hardly wait. I miss doing difficult, beautiful, semi-deadly things with my body. :) Heehee... I tried to do some weights this week, and I can barely walk today. Still, I am glad I began this week instead of saving them for the same days I begin intensive cardio again, or I would not be able to get off my bed.
I'm sorry if this is a complaining post again. Winter, I think, is pressing in on me as well. :) God is still good.
So many things I
could write about, from philosophy to semi-personal revelations, to happenings. When in such a situation, the best thing to do is to "stick to the facts, baby!" :)
So it is now... Thursday. Time passes much more slowly when one is not harried from place to place every minute. On the other hand, it passes much more quickly when one is asleep, which I have been for an average of 11 hours a day. So I'm sure it all balances out the same. In my other 13 hours each day, I have had my quiet times (which I find to be even more essential with the knowledge of my long stay at home), read books, baked over 20 dozen cookies, done my Christmas shopping, and watched two movies in the theatre. I don't start working for my parents until after Christmas, so I have been taking this week as a mini-vacation to rest as much as I need and just decompress.
One of the most interesting books I'm reading right now is Boethius'
The Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius wrote this book towards the beginning of the Middle Ages, in an attempt to explain how philosophy is useful to theology, at least when truthfully employed. He wrote it when he was in prison facing hard times, and his protagonist is in a similar situation. The man deplores his ill treatment at the hands of Fate and men. Then Lady Philosophy arrives and consoles him, showing him that nobody arrives in the world with the blessings of temporal fortune anyway, that we surely don't deserve them, and that therefore we should not base our happiness upon them. Interesting, eye-opening argument:
- All men seek happiness as the highest good.
- We do not look on changeable things as the highest good, but rather, look beyond for those things that do not change.
- True happiness comes from unchangeable things.
These unchangeable things are, for a Christian, his creation and his salvation. We always have these; nothing can take them away.
I read this book only a year and a half ago as well, for Middle Ages class at college, but I wanted to read it again, because it is one of the foundational books for the Middle Ages and beyond. Dante and Milton both reference it. It includes the famous image of the Wheel of Fortune, which creates a regular sine wave of ups and downs in a person's life. The interesting thing about this, says Boethius, is that the "down" parts are usually "up" times for spiritual growth. So there are just multiple sorts of good - one temporal, one spiritual - and we are always receiving one of them.
Later on (though I haven't yet reached that place again), Boethius presents a well-known explanation of the free will vs. predestination debate. I don't remember it in detail, which is the main reason I'm re-reading the book.
In short, I highly recommend
The Consolation of Philosophy to anyone. It is fairly short - 100 pp? - and a very easy, fascinating read. I am amazed, in fact, that we don't get it in Philosophy class at school, because it really was a foundational medieval work. Anyway, I would love to discuss it with anyone, so please do read it. :)
Baking cookies
I picked out three yummy-looking recipes from my sister's big book of cookie stuff. I have made the first one this morning - pumpkin balls with cream cheese icing. They are
so good! I think I have a new favorite recipe.
So my brother, Greg, sniffs his way into the kitchen. "Do those cookies taste as good as they smell?" he utters ingenuously. What he
really means is, "Please spontaneously offer me a cookie, because I don't want to ask." I answer him:
"Yes."
"They sure make me hungry," he hints.
I pretend not to notice. "Thankfully, I went grocery shopping yesterday, so we have plenty of bread and sandwich fixings."
Of course, he knows that I understand exactly what he wants. So what I
really communicate is, "I will give you cookies if and when I desire, but meanwhile, keep your grubby paws off." He gets the message and wanders carelessly away in a slightly disgruntled manner.
Mwahahahaha! I wield the power in the kitchen by weight of my spattered mixing spoon. ;)
I went to see
King Kong with my older brother last night. It was worth seeing once, or probably more than once, after a sufficient lapse. But I just couldn't let myself get into the plot. Part of me, the aged and weary part, held back. I'm tired through and through. I'm not passionate about life right now.
Everything used to matter
so much! I had huge plans for my life, how I was going to Change Culture. I don't any more, not really. All I want now is to learn to write excellently whatever God gives me to write and let Him handle the consequences. I want to let the days drift past me, instead of fighting them tooth and nail for all the things I don't have time to do. I
can't care about every single thing so intensely, because I can't help most things. I'm only one person; I'm not God. All I can do is pray for the rest and let go.
Last summer I was often so sad for the world, looking at what it could be and what it is. The answer to that sadness is joy at my salvation and the salvation of others. We are not imprisoned by the Fall any more. Sin tempts us dreadfully, especially if we have built bad habits, but we need not give in. So the world is a mess, yes - but we are not dependent on it.
I have a hunch these next eight months are going to travel by reeeally fast. I'm going to love being home and resting up in peace with no distractions. My dad is going to run a network cable down into my basement area so that I can sit down there and research without being bothered. I like having a personal area. It makes life tolerable.
Good things about this plan overall:
- I get to spend time with my little sisters.
- I get to write my senior history project here at home, where all my sources for the history of homeschooling are.
- I can sleep enough.
- There is absolutely no way for me to get involved in student government stuff, so I can relax and let other people handle all that junk.
- I can take Tae Kwon Do classes and finish earning my 2nd Dan black belt!!!
- I can exercise regularly, lose my extra 15 lbs, and get into really good physical shape.
- If I want to, I can bake cookies.
- I can write stories when they strike me, instead of waiting for a week or two and losing the incentive.
- Since I will be doing the grocery shopping most often, I can buy whatever I want to eat with somebody else's money. ;)
- I'll see spring come and actually be able to help plant our gardens.
- I can watch movies in the theatre frequently, and it will cost me $6.50 or less (instead of $8.50!).
- I'll earn money to help pay for my last year.
And on that last note, since I'll be paying my own room and board this last year, I can move off-campus if I so desire! I think I will so desire, but I'm not entirely sure. I do have eight months to figure it out. :)
Home at last! Bliss! Joy! I could kiss the ground - or at least my little sisters. :) When Hannah and Nathan Curby and I woke up at 7am on Friday morning, the ground was covered with textured ice. Trees creaked and crackled in the chilly wind. So, slipping and sliding, we loaded up the cars. By 8am we were on the road, slipping and sliding on the ice there. I am very grateful that Hannah told me to steer into a skid, because otherwise I would have gone off the road at one point. :P But then we drove more slowly. By around noon we were out of the icy area, and then all was well...
Until just around dusk. Nathan Curby called me from their car to mention that their battery was shot and all their dashboard lights had died, so I had better lead until we found an exit, because they had no speedometer. Then, after another five minutes of this, I glanced away from my rearview mirror for just a second - and they were gone! Their battery had died the rest of the way, and they had stopped by the side of the road. Thankfully, though we were in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky, their car had conked right between two nowhere exits that were only a mile apart.
Where else but the middle of Kentucky can you find a state trooper who knows the only car shop around, which isn't
really a car shop, because the guy normally fixes up racing cars for personal use and has a wall full of at least five dozen Demolition Derby trophies? And the only reason the state trooper knows this guy is because he is also a member of the local "con-stab-yew-layry." The mechanic shows up with a wrecker and loads up the Curbys' sad little Dodge Neon. He calls ahead and has his wife run their pickup over to the local salvage yard to get an alternator belt (the Curbys' had broken). While we are waiting, she kindly invites us into their house, which is small and smells strongly of different mingled cigar smokes and beers. One whole wall of the living room, however, is a tremendous big-screen TV. The incongruity amuses me, but I don't really know what to say to the old guy with the stained yellow mustache who is rocking in front of the TV. After a few minutes, I feel queasy, so I go sit in my car and try to nap, but really I just want to get away. By 9:30, the car is ready to go. I want to drive the last six hours until St. Louis, but the Curbys' parents want us to stop. We stay the night in a Motel 6 in Lexington.
OK, I'm tired of present tense, so I'm arbitrarily switching back to past tense. :) This morning, we woke up early and were on the road again by 6:45am or so. Driving was uneventful, sunny, and easy - until about 50 miles east of St. Louis, at which point the Curbys' alternator pulley kicked off the new belt. So close! This time, we made it to an exit, and a helpful mechanic charged their battery while I called my dad and found a car place. The newly-charged battery carried them another 30 miles, until they reached the shop. At this point, we had been told by the mechanic who charged the battery that their crankshaft was bent, and that they would have to obtain a part from the dealer - who wasn't open on Saturdays. We were making elaborate plans for how they would stay over at my house for a few days. :) But thankfully for them, that mechanic dude was wrong. It was just the alternator belt again - probably, the guy in Kentucky had put it on wrong. These new mechanics fixed 'em up, and they were off in time to make it to their house in OK today! My sister had driven out, and she mentioned that the traffic through St. Louis on westbound I-64 was terrible, so we took the Curbys on the highway loop around the city instead of through. They stopped in momentarily at my house, and then chugged off west. I hope they made it home; I haven't heard from them since.
As for me, I hugged all my family multiple times and ate some banana bread. Then I went down to my basement "cave" (chair; blanket; bookcases) and tried to read a book. I managed 19 pages before I fell asleep. I slept for six hours and woke up at 1:30am. Now here I am. I'm going back to sleep. :)
I've given in. I'm consuming caffeine. I was hoping to make it through finals without it, but that was a vain wish that has come to naught. I had five and a half hours of sleep last night and four hours the night before. I am stretching out thinner and thinner. Less and less of my consciousness is holding on to this world, like a piece of gum you try to pull off the sidewalk. My last (and worst!) final is tomorrow at 7:45am. I am beginning to study for it now, because I just finished a Latin tutoring session. We will see. I studied all wrong for the Metaphysics midterm; I'm not going to actually try to understand the material this time around. I'm just going to memorize the definitions. That is all I have time to do. Not all of it is important or possible to understand before tomorrow, anyway.
So, wow. A few more days left, then home. All things considered, I will be very, very glad to go home. I will have peace and all that is secure.
On another note, it is hard to spend time with people during finals, especially when my car is also acting weird. I took it in to be fixed. They're going to tune it up and fix something in the motor that I didn't quite catch. :) (You see how much I know about cars.) But this and the oil change are going to cost me $225. Small price to pay for peace of mind before I head off cross-country to MO. The airplane ticket would cost about the same, anyway. So all is good. I have around $600 right now, so I can spare the money.
I'm through the worst of it. No more negativity for a while, I hope. :) I love my friends, and they love me. I am so blessed with the people I know.
I move through my last few days here at school in a sort of fog. I find it hard to think about much of anything. I operate on autopilot by God's grace, staying cheerful, writing papers, studying, taking tests. I turned in my last paper for the semester on Wednesday at 1pm, but it didn't feel special. It was just the next step of schoolwork. I studied yesterday and tutored and drove to see my Narnia prescreening. The movie was awesome, and I forgot myself entirely for those hours. Then I studied all this morning, took a final at 1pm, tutored at 3pm, and did Student Senate stuff until dinner. Again, the day doesn't feel special, like the end of something. But it is. And it's even stranger for the students who are graduating this semester, I imagine. Still, I know I will be delighted when I graduate. This doesn't feel the same. It feels as though everyone else will leave me behind.
I love all my friends who are trying to make me feel better. They're a great group. Sometimes I am quite happy for stretches at a time. Then at others I just feel so weary. Where am I? Where is my joy? Why is my heart so deep and heavy? It's the incommunicability of it all, I think. I don't want to burden people. I'm afraid they won't really care, because they are all so busy also.
Ah, there's a spark of life inside me. A bit of humor, a breath released. A sad heart is good for me, because it brings me closer to God. I thank Him for my sadness. As I'm driven closer and closer to Him, I catch the sudden halfway almost-glimpses of the bigger future that's in store. I am beginning to understand.
This is what wisdom is. Wisdom and understanding is happiness interspersed with sadness, because that's what the world is. Wisdom is the order and structure of the world. So if I pray for and long for wisdom, I can also expect some sadness to accompany it. Makes sense.
I'm more alive now... Still working my way back to the land of the living, but all is well. I turned in my last paper of the semester at noon today. T'was a very, very complicated Metaphysics paper about free will and determinism. I enjoyed thinking about the topic, because I've been wanting to settle it logically in my own mind for a while.
Also in my personal news, I found out that I am being awarded a $100 prize from the school's literary journal,
The Stylus, for a poem I wrote. It is entitled
Why Love, and runs as follows:
I could live
Alone
On a mountaintop, in the chill,
Sunset spread before my wondering eyes.
But if you and I together,
Silent,
Sat dangling our feet over the drop,
And you held my hand,
It would be
Better.
I didn't think it was my best, but it was a thought from my heart. I had originally submitted it anonymously, because I was scared to put my name to something so personal, but they convinced me to give my own name so that I could win the prize. I don't know. I will be happy to have the extra $100.
Reading Day is tomorrow, then finals. Some of us have pre-screening tickets for
Narnia tomorrow evening. That'll be a lot of fun. It's supposed to snow quite a few inches that night; I wonder if finals will be disrupted? We shall see.
Very tired. Stayed up all last night to write two papers. Wrote one and a half; received another day's extension on the other (God bless Dr. Smith!). Chorale concert was last night; went well; was fun. Student senate meeting. Passed five articles of impeachment; I argued against them futilely, but my conscience is clean for the effort nonetheless. I don't know. There's not any precedent, so one could argue either way, but it just didn't
seem right to me. Still doesn't. At least everyone acted very appropriately and kindly.
I am completely confused about life right now, but I have cut loose and given the reins to God. I am at peace. He can have my life. I refuse to be the one who has to figure things out.
Today I finished reading the Bible all the way through, cover-to-cover, for the first time in my life. I began last December 10th, and I had decided a month ago that I wanted to finish before December 4th of this year. Unfortunately, at that point I was way behind schedule. So I've been reading Bible for an average of one and a half hours a day in order to complete it. This has been incredibly good for me, and such a stress reliever too - to know that for a set amount of time every day I can settle down to read something that
I have chosen to read. Plus, all the rules for life are in the Bible. I kept wanting to stop and look things up on the way through this time, but I think of it as an overview. Starting now, I can study more in-depth and go more slowly.
I am very tired, and the next few weeks will be both busy and heart-wrenching. I love my friends, especially the ones I have known for three and a half years, and they will finish up their next semester without me. I have been with one of my roommates for almost six semesters now. As we put it when we were talking this afternoon, we made it through the "honeymoon period," and now we are utterly comfortable with each other. I am going to miss my Gabi!
Oh, life can be sad sometimes, but I trust that God will comfort us and give us new happiness to replace the old. He has blessed me very much with my friendships.
