dulce et decorum est

It's Wilfred Owen's famous WWI poem about 'the old Lie.' I read it in the 10th grade. Now i'm studying Latin (or maybe glancing at it for about 5 minutes 3 days a week) and random words pop into my head, such as 'cenam parat' and 'fessa est,' et cetera, like lots of times when i'm learning a new language.

I'm going to tie that in to the Fall of Man somehow whenever i dig my notes back out. I'm going to talk about the childlikeness of blaming one another, the serpent eating dust, consciousness and dependence, and lots of other deep thoughts from the beginning of Genesis. I won't leave you lost in the middle of a deep, dark journey without leading you to the end, like i did last time.

I'm also going to make these curtains match someday, put oil in my car, stop eating lots of cooked food, and put rubber bands in my braces for the last week. Like Amber, i'm going to have a date with Writing.

circles

Today i was struck by the wonder of the gift of literacy. Reading and writing really are not necessary to life and breath; but they enrich them to the nth degree. Besides all the uses for written communication, it is just downright pleasurable to look at marks on a page (or screen nowadays) and know what they mean. Thanks, God. (Maybe i should be thinking about Gilgamesh in World Lit, but it's more fun for me to think about words.)

I think that a lot of life happens in circles, and this is reflected by some different things. In certain kinds of Psalms, the organization is not centrally based on line or meter or rhyme, but on meaning. The writer takes you down a path, but at the end you find you're back at the beginning. Here's an example. And in Dante, everything is or is related to a circle. Scientifically, matter organizes itself into spheres and circles. Seasons cycle. And when i look at my life and its seasons, the various and sundry states that my heart has found itself, and the lessons that i've had to learn "the hard way," it is very evident that i am on a road that goes in circles. I get older every time, but i have to learn similar lessons ridiculously often. Daily routines are circles. What this means, i don't know, but i think it has something to do with we're all here, circling. There is significance to being and doing.

Peace!

pain

I know that hardly anything is written, anywhere, anytime, without some mention or hint of pain. It is the Great Similitude between all humankind. And i have physical pain in my gums from the newfangled torture method commonly known as orthodontics (today they clamped some more ironworks across the front and then rubber-banded my jaws together so that i can only hum and drink through a straw for 21 hours a day--only 7 more weeks, praise the LORD). But that pain is not my subject; it is just what reminded me that i have a nebulous happening in my brain meaning "blog about this." That came into being while i was in France, reading C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain (which i highly recommend).

My very dear friend just came home from China, and i have a feeling we're going to cry together more than we laugh together, at least for a little while. She is one of those precious souls that is motivated by pain for others a good portion of the time, and another good part by compassion. (How does one obey "Bear one another's burdens" without taking them on like the weight of the world?)

The book is a hard read, intellectually at times, but also because Lewis tells the truth. He's honest. And it doesn't sound pretty to say that "The creature's illusion of self-sufficiency must, for the creature's sake, be shattered; and by trouble or fear of trouble on earth... God shatters it 'unmindful of His glory's diminution'... And this illusion of self-sufficiency may be at its strongest in some very honest, kindly, and temperate people, and on such people, therefore, misfortune must fall." This only scratches the surface of his point, but it is so true. There is pain in the fallen world because of the bare fact that we were not created to be independent, but to wholly live through surrender to the Creator in His perfection; honest, humble, Like Christ. His suffering was as great as his compassion--which was all-consuming. In worldly terms, it's grossly unjust. But so was the Cross. And so it goes.

I used to never cry--or only very rarely. Maybe i was too proud or hard or self-sufficient. Then i went away for five months, in the middle of which this blog was born. Somewhere during that time, something happened, and now i cry lots more easily, for which i'm so grateful. It's such a wonderful, honestly human thing: it says, "i'm overwhelmed and totally dependent."

So, as my mouth won't be open very much, i hope my ears and heart and tears will be all the more.

smiles

Today my mom suprised Lindsey and me by bringing Miss Betty over for lunch (which, for her, was ice cream). Miss Betty said every 5 or 10 minutes, as we sat and ate and smiled and looked at the bird feeder, "Don't you ever wonder why God made birds?" and "Now what do you girls want to study in school?" But she also said once, "Life is always fun. You just have to look at it from an angle. Y'all remember that."

I finished Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf today, and i think i'm going to like it better as i keep thinking about it. For some reason, one of the gladdest bits for me was when she compared a character to a harpy, and i knew what she was talking about from reading Dante in high school. I think Virginia Woolf is one of those authors who Goes There: using words to describe things that are not physically real, just a wild mental state. I feel funny about doing that in this blog, however slight my attempts are; i think i am afraid that you wouldn't be able to relate, and then think i was off my rocker. Woolf does it a lot, unabashedly, it seems, because maybe she was trying to be a relentless artist.

Sitting at the kitchen table today, i was looking up raw-food recipes and information, and i had a Sean Hayes station going on Pandora, and my hair was in pigtail braids, and i felt like a true person.

As i was waiting at a red light today, a car came up next to me with its windows down, blaring Bob Dylan with his piercing harmonica. I didn't look over, but i should have given him at least a thumbs up or something. Whenever i'm loudly listening to something classic with my windows down i always wonder if people recognize it.

a man of constant sorrow

You know when a blog entry is a big blob in your brain and you don't know what it looks like until it comes out--and you need to write it or it weighs heavier and heavier? Well, this one isn't like that. I just started with a title that came from the song lyric in my head at this moment. And here i go with my thoughts.

I'm thinking about all my friends who are very far away, about to be very far away, or just returned from being very far away. It's a large number. I think i'm really glad about that, because that means that i have friends who know (or are discovering, or have discovered) the value of being someplace utterly and completely different from home, and of getting to know the people and ways of that someplace. Sometimes it's not fun when a lot of them are gone simultaneously, though.

I'm also thinking about change, and how it is sort of like rain: when it's here, there is no end to complaint, but when it is absent it is longed for. Many times it is welcome and then becomes uncomfortable, or it just comes at inconvenient times and then is praised in hindsight. I think this is where we're supposed to learn to praise the Lord in every situation, whether it feels good at the moment or not.

Since i just finished reading The Idiot by F. Dostoyevsky (an excellent book and phenomenal author) i am also thinking about compassion. But that takes a lot more wrestly sort of thoughts that i may write about later, but maybe not.

And here is where i will leave you. Remember that Christ had constant sorrow, and constant compassion. And that's good.