so · long · sweet · summer

I'm alive.

I'm also on spring break and frantically trying to finish my senior thesis before the shiny NEW deadline of April 1. Sadly, I had been under the impression that my thesis was due (as all theses have been due in the past) by April 30 and that I did not have to defend it. Then, a month or so ago, there was an e-mail in my inbox that was all, 'Hey guys! Guess what? You have to defend! AND your thesis is due April 1! Okay hurry up & finish!'

But, you know, I'm on chapter 3 out of 5 and, God willing and the creek don't rise, I'll finish this chapter tomorrow. The whole thing's outlined, so that's doable, yeah?

So how are you guys?

this terrifies me beyond reason. and, if you have easily shocked sensibilities (i.e. you don't want to see people cavorting around in their underwear and cheesy sexual-political puns), please don't click on that link.

however, it does make me curious: will the promise of a guaranteed booty call lure people out of political apathy?

one of the dreadful parts benefits of my program is that, to graduate, we have to pass an oral exam over a set of books we read. this exam, called the exit interview, takes place the spring of our junior year. we select the books, with the generous help of an advisor, from a really long list of every book that the people in the great texts department consider a 'great text'. each book is assigned a point value; our list must be worth sixty points, roughly divided over three time periods. that is, twenty points for ancient, twenty for medieval, and twenty for modern.

my exit interview will occur this spring. i have twenty-seven books to read. i have, as of this post, not read any of them. that means, sometime between now and april i must read, outline, and take copious notes on twenty-seven books. in hope that it will motivate me, i'm posting my list below. i'm planning on keeping track on livejournal of which books i've read and which i haven't, and posting when i finish a book. hopefully when i DO read something, some of you lot will be able to discuss it with me (if you've read it) or just say something along the lines of: "one down, twenty-six more to go! go get 'em, tiger!" (if you haven't).

without further ado:( the LIST. )

People always ask me what I’m doing this summer (people generally being other people’s mothers, at church or in line at the grocery store) and I sort of foist them off with a sheepish, “Oh, nothing.” So here’s the real answer to the question:

What have I been doing? I’ve been practicing resurrection.

I’ve been re-learning (or rather, learning, because I’m unsure that I ever knew how to begin with) how to pray. I’d forgotten (or maybe never learned?) that praying, like writing, is sweaty, backbreaking work: that it involves patience and attention and discipline, all the things I lack in full these days. I wish I could say, like Jacob, that I wrestled with the angel in the watches of the night and found Him to be the Lord. More frequently, I wrestle with the darkness and find it to be myself. I’m learning though. Good Lord, I’m learning.

I’m listening to too much Snow Patrol and to Gillian Welch on repeat. I’m saturating myself with other people’s words (mysteries, theology, cookbooks, grammar textbooks) and emerging with some idea of what was broken in what I wrote last summer, and how to fix it.

I’m learning (little by little, inch by kicking inch) to live more purposefully, to listen more fully, to talk less selfishly.

So what about you: what have you been doing? Not, where are you working and how was your vacation, but how are you? What are you doing?

i'm looking for something in the way of mystery novels to read. any ideas? to clarify: i'm a bit picky. mysteries generally bore me unless i find the characters interesting in some way.
past ones i have enjoyed:
dorothy sayers' peter wimsey
the amelia peabody series by elizabeth peters
martha grimes' emma graham books
sherlock holmes
laurie r. king's mary russell series

any recommendations? any awesome books besides mysteries that i should be reading also?

and aha! today i gave my first ever conference paper ("love and tradition in chretien de troyes' knight of the cart") and, though i was late to my own session due to some misleading signs, i neither said anything abysmally stupid nor flubbed any of the questions during the Q&A.

yes, i so rock hardcore.

quote from the footnotes of our edition of paradise lost, commenting on a passage where Eve tells Adam she is going to store fruit: Too philosophical (i.e. scientific) for Eve, thought Thyer. But it is quite appropriate for a superintelligent prelapsarian woman to know about food storage. Eve stores only food that improves by keeping.

yesterday was my birthday, and it was a good one. thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday on phone or facebook...especially those who called long distance! you are all very sweet. also, i recieved both haircut, cappuccino and the new joan didion book, so i'm a lucky girl.♥

i hope all of you have a blessed and merry christmas, so here's some flannery o'connor to help you out:

God told the world he was going to send it a king and the world waited. The world thought, a golden fleece will do for His bed. Silver and gold and peacock tails, a thousand suns in a peacock's tail will do for his crib. His mother will ride on a four-horned white beast and use the sunset for a cape. She'll trail it behind her over the ground and let the world pull it to pieces, a new one every evening.

Jesus came on cold straw, Jesus was warmed by the breath of an ox. "Who is this?" the world said. "Who is this blue-cold child and this woman, plain as the winter? Is this the Word of God, this blue-cold child? Is this His will, this plain winter-woman?" The world said, "Love cuts like the cold wind and the will of God is plain as the winter."

no pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

you want to know what's weird? i have kept all of my clothes i brought home from school neatly segregated from the clothes that i found in my closet here when i returned. there's no reason in particular for this, except that i think i'm just strange.

eleven things i want, in no particular order:

one. some james joyce to read.
two. a cup of truly excellent cappucino.
three. very depressing post-war hp fic, heavy on the literary pretension.
four. my fountain pen, which i left in waco.
five. baylor friends. here. now.
six. some decent red lipstick.
seven. joan didion's newest book.
eight. a haircut.
nine. the willpower to write something, rather than moping around reading dorothy sayers.
ten. a jack johnson cd.
eleven. t.s. eliot. (in a box, with a bow on top)

i am torn between a desire for t.s. eliot and one for artificial sweetener. and maybe depressing minor character-centric hp fic. i won't be getting any of them, because i need to go to bed. last night i wrote two pages of a creepy little story set in a sort of alternate victorian period. sometimes my subconscious even freaks me out.

i have five finals, three projects, and three papers to do in the next three weeks. my life=ninth circle, but somehow i'm not as upset as i should be. for my med lit final project, i talked my prof into letting me write poems: one for each of the nine circles of hell, and seven for each terrace of purgatory. black dress will be for the terrace of the envious. now that i've gotten myself into this, i have to actually write the dratted things...

i'm tired; i think i'll go to bed.

emilytheodd, i am glad you had a lovely birthday. i mailed you a present, but since it's me it's going to be late. oh well... sorry dear. at least you have something to look forward to!

it's cold. like, 50 degrees outside, which to those of you who live in the north is probably nothing. to me it's christmas weather, because this is texas and it hardly ever snows. valentine's day my senior year it snowed for about an hour and the schools let people out early. these things just don't happen here.

in any case, i'm sporting cowboy(girl?) boots and a peacoat. we're throwing a surprise birthday party for a friend this evening, so i'm going with luis to get a cake after french class. i <3 surprise parties. i also have pictures of san antonio from our crazy weekend, but i haven't uploaded them yet.

/boring entry