montana

I'm currently surrounded by history paper sources, rough drafts, comment sheets, chocolate covered raisins and peanuts, a mug drained of the best hot chocolate known to man, and soaring mountains.

I'm in Montana.

Sometimes a change in environment is a very beautiful thing, especially after a week of extraordinary proportions. Exhaustion is invading every corner of NSA. Quivering knees are commonplace, Americanos (think espresso) are my new best friends, sleep is coveted above anything else.

My official reason to be here in another time zone from my dear old school is to look into a work possibility for this summer, but to be frank, driving away from Moscow was pure heaven. Despite the fact that I've been doing homework all day, regardless of location.....

solitude

Sought by many, gained by few,
Loved, yet hated, with room to breathe.
Found is lovely, kept is death.

when i grow up

There's something about music that sends shivers running up and down my spine. I can't pinpoint what it about it that makes me want to throw my hands in the air and spin around in elated circles, makes me drunk on sound. There's a movement, a balance, a wealth of stories and ideas swelling around the room. It can turn moods around, plaster a ridiculously huge grin on my face, or can make me feel very pensive, or, hopefully, profound. (Especially when writing a history paper.)

I am partial to singing. When I sing, I forget who I am, what I am, and where I am. All I can think about is the feel and taste of the notes, shaping them, seeing them flying away, hopefully where I wanted them to go. Twisting a phrase this way or that way. Being amazed that placing the emphasis on this note instead of that one can change the impact of an entire line. Even though I am very new to this world of invisible motion, I find that it's beautiful.

When I grow up, music will be involved in every part of my life. That's my hope, at least.

green sweaters and sweaty socks

The first and last 100 words of my hypothetical bestselling novel by the above title.

There was a lot of blood. An awful lot of blood. Rodney sat quietly on the porch and surveyed the damage. A drop of sweat made its way down from the reddish brown shock of hair that tumbled over his freckled forehead and found itself in the company of many other similar drops gathering on the young boy’s face. How, exactly, was he supposed to explain this to his mother?

The rough wood dug through his faded jeans, the sharp green of the lawn hurt his eyes. She would probably go into hysterics. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen.

.

.

.


She glanced over at him, sitting there on the old porch, his chin resting on a work worn hand. The shadows made the long scar look deeper than it really was.

“Rodney?” She broke the silence.

“Mmmm?”

“Have you ever wondered what your life might have been like? If, you know. ”

He turned laughing eyes in her direction. “Boring. And tragic. I never would have met you.”

The grass was very green; it mocked the coming of winter. It held onto the promise of spring, of life. Of renewal. A drop of sweat glistened on the side of Rodney’s face.

as i was saying....

So I wrote my last post, finished today's Greek homework, then read the contents of the link below. You should read it. It's that good.

http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2008/03/jesus-and-his-trick-questions.html

a very, very, very long day

The subject says it all. I'm back at NSA after a spring break full of horseiness and being outside in lovely spring weather, and riding and touching horses, and breathing horses, and reading fiction; generally NOT doing anything school related. Now I'm back. Break is over.

Emphatically over.

I've done enough homework today to last me the rest of the term, yet I haven't even scratched the surface. Greek is a ginormous mountain casting its dark shadow over my every step. It has been my major task of the day, but according to Mr. Schwandt, everything I've done so far is merely "homework prep." *blink* It was raining all day. That probably had something to do with it. But there comes a point when some place you once loved becomes wearisome because of hours and hours you've spent there doing homework. And more homework and more homework. I go to Bucer's, buy coffee, then leave and study elsewhere. I've spent a year and a half studying there. No more, my friend. I now haunt One World, the coffee shop on the other side of town. Its walls are not stained with memories of Latin, Lordship, History, Greek, Rhetoric, Natural Philosophy. Not yet, anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very much enjoying the things we're going over this term. Theology has already enraptured me (not that doing so was especially difficult), History is looking good. But my lands. The homework is - interestingly challenging. And this is Day 2. Not Week 2. Day 2.

Onward forward. Thank God for music.

soaring into finals week

I'm sitting on the floor surrounded by notebooks, papers (both loose and stapled), books, power chords for laptop, printer and cell phone charger, my jacket slung over the bedpost, messenger bag slumped awkwardly against the dresser where it was dropped on Friday evening; my sanity is slowly being bent to my will.

Math will come, ere I perish. I will know the formulas inside out and backwards by Wednesday or I'll, I'll, I don't know what I'll, because I will know them.

So will Greek, History and Theology. I'm not sure how it happens, but finals come every term and so far I've come through 6 of them and I'm still alive, albeit feeling a bit like a veteran of some sort of bizarre war with weaponry that consists of bombs made of study sheets and empty coffee to-go cups.

Laugh not. Rather recognize that beneath the calm exterior of apparent confidence and laid back assurance, we are all frantically cramming in the last bits of knowledge that will enable us to dazzle our professors and enter yet another term of NSA.