I don't ever want to be a teacher!!!! No offence to all of you who happen to be teachers, I think you are awesome and I really don't see how you do it. But I would simply go insane. All that paperwork, I couldn't handle it. I have seven students now, and I only talk to them over the phone and correct some of their work. But to have to do all it, for upwards of 25-30 students... No, not for me. I figure if I pay my dues now, I will not end up in the small private Catholic school in the Midwest...

~ ~ ~

On another note, Henryk Gorecki is amazing. One of my tutors lent me Gorecki's Symphony No 3, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. I must have listened to it three or four times that first day... I sat at my desk, watching the rain pour down, consumed in the pain, the sadness, the sheer beauty of it. And at the same time, it is also full of hope. The very ending of the symphony, an A major third (I think), leaves you with a feeling of, I don't know how to express it...its almost a feeling of life, the indominatable spirit of man. And the text for the songs is heart rending.
Right now I am listening to Gorecki's Miserere. There are seven Polish folk songs on the album, and I am completly in love. I wish I knew more about my Polish ancestry. I suppose that is one downside of being an American, it is so easy to loose track of where you are from and who came before. Some day, I will learn...

The moon was so beautiful last night. Clouds had rolled up the valley and the hills were slowly being consumed. As the cover thickened, the moon would slip out and cast a clear and brilliant light down on grounds. The real world seemed to end just beyond the light up buildings, beyond was dark, shadows with texture and dimention. Gradually though, the clouds massed and the moon was no longer able to find the thin spots, and the darkness took on a different quality. As I paced up and down the only sidewalk on campus that seems to get a clear signal, I listened to a dear voice relating problems and heartache, choices and oppotunities. And I wanted to echo my request of the previous night, "Let me help. Please, give me something to do." There is little enough I can do, pray and keep watch. Why does this seem to not be enough? Indeed, it is all Our Lord asked of His own diciples on that night in the garden. So, with a heart heavy with love-shot longing, I prayed. Last night, today, hardly even conscious of it at times. I am trying not to think of what will happen when this longing abandons me, no need to seek out trouble before it comes to you of its own accord. Perhaps this, in part, is the answer to my questions of "why now..."

I just found this quote from JRR Tolkien, and it rang so true...
"I put before you the one great thing to love in earth: the Blessed Sacrament... There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretasts) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, taht every man's heart desires."

Something drove me off campus yesterday, an errant feeling of urgency come to find me perhaps. It was still raining, and cold-ish, with a wandering wind that seemed to reflect my unsettledness of spirit. I headed out to the hills behind campus, the old familiarity ensuring that I'd be able to walk without seeing and not risk wandering off a cliff. The churned up mud brought to mind tales of man's creation and earthly end. "Remember man that thou art dust..." "And the Lord took some clay..." I'd forgotten how different the very smell of nature is when it rains. I could smell pines, and something sweet and unseen. The stream was strangely sounding melancholy, though, which at the time did not strike me as odd, but now I wonder what was troubling it. The footprints of the hosts of hikers had been washed away, and I could loose myself in the wandering story that sprang to mind without reminders of the "real world." As I walked back, I stopped in the middle of the stream, letting the rain fall. It seemed to respond to my unknown request and gradually grew harder. Looking up to the trees and hills that surrounded me, I felt at one and the same time, completely foreign and perfectly in place. And so it goes...
~ ~ ~
Last night I walked outside and looked up, expecting to see the same fog and clouds which have covered the sky for the last few days. It was gone. I saw the stars, clear, bright and completely unexpected. They were absolutely breathtaking. As I continued walking, I saw that the fog had ringed the campus, was climbing the hills, and filling the valley off to the west, but for whatever reason, had cleared overhead. It was like the campus was wreathed with the fog and crowned with a cap of stars. The air was cool, but not the clinging, chill damp of the earlier day. It was such a delicious feeling to wander the sidewalks (avoiding the puddles filled with drowned worms) and see the fog drifting through the trees and look up and see the stars. You could almost feel the starlight drifting down, mingling with the fog.

It's raining here for the first time in months. And I think the wet, cold, gloom of it is making me depressed. This is very sad. I was estatic when it began, but now I am beginning to wonder if being here in the land of the almost perpetual sun had not in some way messed with my head. At home it rained nearly all the time and I loved it. Too much sun was boring and I would long for the rain. After living here for a year, and still longing for the rain, now that I have it, part of me wants the sun back. The sun came out for a bit yesterday, and caught the prism I have hanging on the window, sending faerie rainbows dancing across my walls. I was at one and the same time, thrilled to see the sun and my faeries, and sad to see the rain stop and the clouds breaking up. This is a wretched conflict to have in one's self...I don't think I'll be able to live somewhere it does not rain more often.

I wrote this last night, and had forgotten about it until just a few minutes ago...

Sitting on the outside
always looking in
Peter Pan without the safety
of Neverland to fly back to.

Think back, concider
am I guilty of the self-same fault
my heart accuses another of?
Feeling forgotten
glanced at and passed over.
"What does not happen
is simply not meant to be."
Would that my lonesomeness
believed this simple reasoning
No this is no more true
than to say "What is, ought to be."
For this is not always so.

Waiting, watching
listening, longing
there is naught to be done
quiet acceptance is all that remains.

The rain is falling all around...

I was sitting in class this afternoon and I made the mistake of looking out the window behind the tutor's head. The hills were completely swathed in fog and the rain was falling just hard enough to be heard on the roof...needless to say my concentration was shot. so I made the most of a sorry situation, and this is what came out.

 

The rain is falling

soft and steady

stilling all my haste.

 

My thoughts rise up

with the clouds in the valley

their object far, far away.

 

They wend their way

along the coasts, seeking

the sea - sad, dark, and low.

 

A cry, sharp and clear,

longing and freedom

personified in a single sound,

brings me back to the valley.

 

thoughts in the fog...
the wanderlust is growing in my heart, along with the ache of loneliness. ah, this familiar of mine, surrounded by gourps of people, laughing, talking. I know any of them would welcome me, but the sense of belonging is lacking.
i wish i could wander into the fog, through the fog, and come back somewhere new. i wish there were some way to hold the fog in myself...the calm, impassive quiet- i want to hold it close.
the shapes of the trees are bluring and melting. the oaks seem to possess a secret they will not share. they hold it secure in the branches with the fog to give them strengh.
there are roses in bloom all around me. their sent is perhaps on the air, but the faintes breex jsut woke up and is now making the flower heads to sway and nod.
what is the fog? the scientific account does not satisfy, is not enough. there it too much to be felt in the fog- damp, chill, stir of air, settling of sound, diffusion of light. it calls and calms, inviting confidences and introspection. everything is muted, life- its problems an pains- become less important.

~ ~ ~

So for a week I've been avoiding the paper I roughed out Sunday night. I was mad at the world and stung by the injustice of everything when I wrote it and I wanted to wait until I could reaproach it with some objectivity. The objectivity came last night sitting in the fog that blanketed the campus and is just now beginning to break up. I sat and scribbled, curled up in a patio chair, listening to the wandering conversations and random snatches of music...
Later hearing the warm voice of a friend excitedly telling me about the concert of the evening and the week-end's plans, I found the world shifting, ever so slightly, back into a more tolerable frame. The longing is a good thing, it keeps you searching and waiting and watching, never too settled in this life.

I was thinking about getting old today, of the possibility of someday having a husband and children, and grandchildren. It seems like such a strange and foreign idea. I remember when I was a very small girl, perhaps four or five, thinking that the eighth graders in my school were so very big. My circle of friends has always been made up of people older than me in age, but equals in other ways. But, I don't feel grown-up, I don't seem to think and feel in any way differently from how I recall thinking and feeling as a small child. Its so odd to think of having changed and not realize it...and that this unrealized changing will continue for as long as I live.

Goldfish are going to bankrupt me!!! I love fishes, they're so delicious! Cheezy I know, but so are the crackers....

My fancy was caught by a collection of Arabian poems in an anthology that my roommate picked up at the library book sale. I think I might be able to get it back if I post some of them. Things get rather lonesome without one's fancy...

Tears
Tears, ere they death, for many a one I shed.
But thine are all my tears since thou art dead.
To comforters I lend my ear apart,
While pain sits ever closer to my heart.

Thy Garden
My thoughts are as a garden-plot, that knows
No rain but of thy giving, and no rose
Except thy name. I dedicate it thine,
My garden, full of fruits in harvest time.

To Lighten My Darkness
To lighten my darkness,
I look for the red crescent of her lips
And if that comes not
I look for the blue crescent
Of the sword of death.

Oh, joy of friends gathered upon the cool meadow
To drink wine handed by white hands!

Flowers of Spring in the meadow
Between spread slim fingers!
You sit drinking the tulip-coloured wine
In the midst of this green earth
With all her waters.

Love
Love was before the light began,
When light is over, love shall be;
O warm hand in the grave, O bridge of truth,
O ivy's tooth
Eating the green heart of the tree
Of man!

And an Irish one for good measure...

Ideal

~Padraic Pearse

Naked I saw thee,
O beauty of beauty!
And I blinded my eyes
For fear I should flinch.

I heard thy music,
O sweetness of sweetness!
An I shut my ears
For fear I should fail.

I kissed thy lips
O sweetness of sweetness!
And I hardened my heart
For fear of my ruin.

I blinded my eyes
Any my ears I shut,
I hardened my heart
And my love I quenched.

I turned my back
And the dream I had shaped,
And to this road before me
My face I turned.

I set my face
To the road here before me,
To the work that I see,
To the death that I shall meet.

~ ~ ~
2 am is such a random time. One thinks the strangest things...and music sound better.

the one frustrating thing about this, is that you still cannot write everything here. you will still run into things and events that you just can't put up. and that's all i have to say right now.

My familiar has returned. I thought I could loose it in the bustle of school and work, but it found its way back to me. It prompts me to think cynically that when all others fail me, when they go off and leave me standing wondering where everyone has gone, it will still be here, tenderly caressing my already sore heart with thorny and bitter thoughts.

I am sitting here in my computer haunt with my tea cup Barker before me, staring
at the opening of a three day week-end with nothing in sight but a paper. The tea burn on my arm throbs, but the angry red streak is slowly subsiding. The public radio station, coming in over my little radio placed on the desk across the room, is having their fall pledge drive. Someday I will be in a finantial position to support public radio, but now I can only listen and be greatfull. I owe much to public radio, it was my introduction to music of all sorts - classical, jazz, blues - as well as a host of random programs and old radio shows.

I have decided to admit that I am not, or rather have not been, feeling well, and have actually been fighting off a cold or flu or something unpleasant all week. This convieniently explains the
aches in my back and legs and arms that make walking across campus with a bookbag full of Aristotle and Augustine and Ptolemy such a tiring chore. I don't think being in denial about more than one thing is healthy for mind, body, or soul. Of course this leaves the question, "What am I in denial about now?" but if I told, then I wouldn't really be in denial, now would I?

What do we mean when we say that time is dear, or that something costs to much time? Do we simply mean that we don't want to devote however much time we think it will take to whatever it is we were thinking about doing? I highly doubt that we are thinking about the fact that we have a limited amount of time in this life and there for must use it wisely. Time is our allowance from eternity, portioned out to us while we are here in this unglorified mortal body. And it really is limited, when you think about it. A friend of mine was telling my about his plans to hike the Pacific Coast Trail from Mexico to Canada the summer after he graduates here. He is expecting it to take four months and he is so very stoked, he positivly glows while he is talking about it. But he knows that if he does not do it that summer, then he never will. Time is funny like that, it never comes back to where it was, and while there is more of it in front of you, as far as you can tell, but you can't keep pushing back the things you want to do.
Tempus fugit, take it, live. If you are willing to take advice from one who is still figuring all this out.

I saw the Therese movie with my father this evening. It was very will done, and I enjoyed it very much. I admit that I cried at several scenes, particularly Therese's death, which was very beautifully done. I can't think of anyone I'd have rather seen Therese with, it made me remember again how much my own father loves me.