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Okay, so I took this Harry Potter quiz and my results were too hilarious not to post.
http://www.quizilla.com/quizzes/3379204/what-kind-of-hogwarts-witch-are-you-gorgeous-pics

I am *ahem* The Lonely Witch.

Who needs other people? Not you, that's for sure. Uncommonly intelligent, you find most company to be intolerable and can't stand the inane chatter of your classmates. You don't do small talk, and you don't open up to many people at all. Fashion is not something you're fussed with. Same goes for sports (who on earth cares about Quidditch anyway?) and social events. You spent the night of the Yule Ball wandering the corridors of the isolated South Tower, hoping for something interesting to happen to you, which it didn't.
House: Ravenclaw
Ambition: to travel the world
Boyfriend: none, though you hope for like-minded person to come along someday
Distinguishing feature: your long, beautiful hair, which goes down past your waist
Blood Status: half-blood

Except for the hair, that is SO TRUE. I basically fell off my chair when I read this. I had no idea anyone else was like this. Alas, femininity must wait for another day.

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Found this essay online somewhere...the BPL linked to it and it's really interesting so I'm posting it here. Yay. Also, hopefully my next post will be a little essay about the popular conservative Christian ideal of femininity, and why I think it's both inaccurate and un-Biblical. Basically, I'm tired of Christian teen girls being valued mainly by their virginity and their submissive nature. Femininity according to the Bible really has nothing to do with white wedding dresses, pink teacups, fancy handwriting, the ability to make a mean apple pie...you get the idea. It should be, ah, interesting, considering most girls on HSB probably disagree with me on this. Anyway, on with the essay, lol.

The Child in English Literature
Nevile Watts

A woman of my acquaintance once confessed to me that she had never tasted the breast of chicken because, she said, "When I was a child it was always kept for the grown-ups, and when I grew up it was always kept for the children." The middle-aged adult of to-day has lived through a half-century which is for many reasons the most momentous the world has seen, but in nothing is it more momentous than in the revolution of thought and manners indicated by this casual remark. Man's passage from age to age has revealed a continually widening expanse not only of the range of his control over matter, but of the scope of his thought; he has charted the globe and exploited its uttermost resources, while his speculation plumbs the infinite and pries into the infinitesimal. And it is precisely this modern man who, at the very apex of his knowledge and his power, has become profoundly and acutely aware of the simplest and weakest embodiment of humanity, the child.
    Once before in history has this paradoxical revolution of thought found expression. In the pride and height of the Roman dominion, in a world which had not only ignored childhood save as the inevitable prelude to manhood, but had actually viewed child-exposure without horror, an obscure teacher of a despised race had, in the presence of a handful of ignorant peasants, taken a child and set him in the midst with the words, "Unless you become as this child, you cannot enter the kingdom." But the world heeded Him not. Year after year it has paid annual lip-service to the Babe of Bethlehem, yet year after year the astonishing warning uttered by the Babe himself has been ignored. Sixteen centuries (for the cult of the child dawned faintly and transiently three hundred years ago) were to pass before it occurred to anyone to treat the words as other than a flourish of epigram, an arresting paradox. And when the sovereignty of the child did at length receive recognition, his title to kingship was derived not so much from the words of Christ as from a theory propounded four hundred years earlier by a Greek philosopher, Plato.
    Plato's doctrine of Recollection, which inspired English seventeenth-century poets and Wordsworth a century and a half later, was an attempt—the first in human history—to answer the questions, What is the Soul? What should men live for? Why do they take pleasure in Goodness and Beauty? His answer is that the soul is the true Ego, is independent of the body, and has existed from all eternity in the world of spirit, which is the world of reality. In this spirit-world too, abide the supreme essences, the Good, the True, the Beautiful, of which things good, true, and beautiful on earth are faint and imperfect copies. The soul, transiently resident in a material frame, is born with no memory of these essences with which she has been in communion, having, in Plato's poetical figure, drunk before birth of the waters of Lethe, river of forgetfulness. But not finally nor irretrievably has the soul forgotten; at the promptings of the imperfect goodness and beauty which she sees on earth she resumes contact with that other and real world, and her divinely ordained end is finally to achieve full reunion with reality by communion with goodness and beauty and rejection of evil and ugliness here on earth. The true education, in Plato's view, is a deliberate cultivation of such recollection, a removal of veil after veil until the soul once again sees and dwells with Truth, Beauty and Goodness pure and unalloyed, and is finally assimilated into God. Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Childhood, to which I shall recur in its due place, contains this same idea of pre-existence, with a strange difference from Plato's view. To the English poet the heavenly memory with which the child is born, "not in entire forgetfulness" dims as life proceeds; to Plato the rightly progressing soul is for ever being more acutely reminded; the shades of the prison-house recede as he travels daily nearer to the East.
    Plato is the chief inspiration in the strong though intermittent vein of child-mysticism in English literature. The child is nearer to Paradise than the man; he cannot but remember something of it, albeit unconsciously. So we watch the child's every movement and every glance and dash down his idlest remark into our note-books, as if we were reporters interviewing some august foreigner. So Wordsworth interrogated, and no doubt terrified, the urchins of the Grasmere countryside:

         And five times to the child I said,
         "Why, Edward? tell me why."

    We can picture the consternation as the gaunt figure appeared in the offing. "Hi, Ted! slip thee into yon hedge! Maister Wudsworth be a-coomin'!"
    Apart from Wordsworth's mystical treatment, which derived partly from Plato, partly from the seventeenth-century poet Vaughan, and partly from his own emotional experience, of which more anon, there has been the sentimental treatment, which chiefly preceded his influence, and the psychological, which developed from it. Chaucer gives us in the tender tale of the Prioress the "litel clergeon seven yeer of age", singing his Alma Redemptoris in Our Lady's honour and murdered by the Jews, but he is no more than a figure in a stained-glass window. Shakespeare's children are pretty stage-properties, tear-compelling appendages to heighten the pathos of the adult. Before the seventeenth century there is no interest in the working of the child-mind, no hint that the child is endowed with any peculiar wisdom, any immortal light.
    The first intimation of the new vision of childhood appears in Earle's Microcosmographie, a series of brief thumb-nail sketches of human types published in 1628:

      A Child is a Man in small Letter, yet the best copie of Adam before he tasted of Eve or the Apple. ... He is purely happy, because he knows no evil nor hath made meanes by Sinne to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evil to come by for-seeing them. ... The elder he growes, he is a stayre lower from God. ... Could he put off his body with his little Cote, he had got eternitie without a burthen, and exchanged but one Heaven for another.

    Here are the first clear notes, as of a solitary thrush, that foretell the dawn (though it was to be long deferred) of Wordsworth. And in two other writers of this century, Vaughan and Traherne, the note swells into a broader chorus. Henry Vaughan, a Welsh physician, published in 1650 a volume of verse mainly religious, which includes the immortal 'Retreate':

         Happy those early days! when I
         Shined in my angel-infancy.
         Before I understood this place
         Appointed for my second race,
         Or taught my soul to fancy aught
         But a white celestial thought,
         When yet I had not walked above
         A mile or two from my first love,
         And looking back at that short space
         Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
         When in some gilded cloud or flower
         My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
         And in those weaker glories spy
         Some shadows of eternity;
         Before I taught my tongue to wound
         My conscience with a sinful sound,
         Or had the black art to dispense
         A several sin to every sense,
         But felt through all this fleshly dress
         Bright shoots of everlastingness.
         O how I long to travel back
         And tread again that ancient track!
         That I might once more reach that plain
         Where first I left my glorious train;
         But ah, my soul with too much stay
         Is drunk and staggers by the way.
         Some men a forward motion love,
         But I by backward steps would move;
         And when this dust falls to the urn
         In that state I came, return.

    In 1897 a Mr. Brooke bought for a few pence at a street bookstall a bundle of manuscript which proved to contain some remarkable outpourings in prose and verse of a visionary interpretation of childhood based on the author's own memories and intuitions. This author was one Thomas Traherne, who was born at Hereford or Ledbury, probably in 1636, and served for some years as curate at Credenhill. The poetry is but a lame metrification of the far more powerful prose of the Century of Meditations:

      Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had in my infancy and that divine light wherewith I was born, are the best unto this day wherein I can see the universe. By the gift of God they attended me into the world and by his special favour I remember them till now. ... Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world than I when I was a child. All appeared new and strange at first. ... I was a little stranger which at my entrance was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys. ... My very ignorance was advantageous. ... All things were spotless and pure and glorious; yea, and infinitely mine and joyful and precious. ... Is it not strange that an infant should be heir of the whole world and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold!

    But the poets and the philosophers by virtue of their visions stand aloof from the common herd. What of the rank and file in this age? Are they infected with the same indifference to childhood which blinded all mankind for so long after, and for so long before? Here is the Tinker of Bedford, leading his pilgrims through the Valley of Humiliation:

      Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a boy feeding his father's sheep. The boy was in very mean clothes but of a very fresh and well-favoured countenance, and as he sat by himself he sung:

         He that is down need fear no fall,
           He that is low no pride;
         He that is humble ever shall
           Have God to be his guide ...

      Then said the Guide, Do you hear him? I will dare to say that this boy lives a merrier life, and wears more of that herb called Heart's-Ease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet.

    And here is our good friend Samuel Pepys, taking a jaunt upon Epson Downs:

      W. Hewer and I walked upon the Downs where a flock of sheep was; and the most innocent and pleasant sight that ever I saw in my life. We found a shepherd and his little boy reading, far from any houses or sightof people, the Bible to him; so I made the boy read to me, which he did, with the forced tone that children do usually read, that was mighty pretty, and then I did give him something, and went to the father and talked with him. ... He did content himself mightily in my liking his boy's reading, and did bless God for him, the most like one of the old patriarchs that ever I saw in my life, and it brought those thoughts of the old age of the world in my mind for two or three days after.

    His fellow-diarist Evelyn, after the death of his little son of five years, writes:

      Such a child I never saw; for such a child I bless God in whose bosom he is. May I and mine become as this little child, who now follows the Child Jesus that Lamb of God in a white robe. ... Even so, Lord Jesus, fiat voluntas tua. Thou gavest him to us, Thou hast taken him from us, blessed be the Name of the Lord!

    With the coming of the Age of Good Sense, the age of Dryden, Pope, Addison, Swift and Johnson, of the powdered periwig and the embroidered brocade, the darkness of oblivion settles again upon the child. But in 1751 appeared Thomas Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard which, still moving stiffly as it does in its classical garb, is yet turning its head with kindling eye upon the world of nature. Gray is a poet who would fain have been romantic, but lacked the courage. "He never spoke out." In the Elegy the most significant stanza for our purpose is one which is not there, because the author rejected it, perhaps as introducing figures—flowers, birds, children—below the dignity of verse:

      There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
        By hands unseen are showers of violets found;
      The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
        And little footsteps lightly print the ground.

    We pass to the age when childhood at length not only had justice done to it, but was made to sit upon a throne which, as its chief courtier Wordsworth sang, had "more power than all the elements." We have not leisure here to inquire why and how the movement arose, if indeed it can be called a movement at all, seeing that its two earliest voices, Burns and Blake, represented no school and were in touch with no current literary influences. It is not sufficient to say that the Romantic Revival was a return to nature; every literary or artistic movement claims to be a return to nature, and in particular the movement of a century earlier, of which Dryden was the leading figure, and from which the Romantic Revival was a conscious and violent reaction, also wrote the Return to Nature upon its banners. It was rather a harking back to earlier and simpler standards and forms of expression, and children, along with trees and animals and rustics, were its chief mentors. The philosophers and political theorists like Rousseau and Voltaire had led Europe into disillusion and war; perhaps the children, who had only instincts and intuitions, would prove better guides.
    So it was that Wordsworth, shattered in mind by the outbreak of war between the England he loved and the Revolution to which he had pinned his hopes, retired with his sister to a remote Dorset farm-house and set himself to build his life anew. And into the void of his heart came crowding pictures of his youth. Those adventures of his among the mountains and the lakes, rowing at night on Ullswater in a stolen boat, robbing the snares of another and fancying retributive footsteps padding behind him along the fell, appeared to him, at twenty years' remove, like visions direct from heaven. He would recover that childhood; he would preach to the world that only through the eyes of a child could the truth be seen. For some ten years he laboured and dreamed, conceiving a vast work, of which The Prelude stands as a mere vestibule, which should enshrine his dreams.
    And then a dreadful thing began to happen. His power of vision weakened. He was only thirty-five. Was this fading the universal lot? Did maturity confer nothing to compensate its loss?
    He wrote his immortal Ode to answer these torturing questions, to convince himself that if one glory had faded, another better one had taken its place. The child has glimpses of a miraculous past. True, but the ageing man has glimpses of a miraculous childhood, and those glimpses kept the chain intact. The mature man had forgotten heaven; but at least he remembered that he had once remembered it.
    The soul in its life on earth is like a prince who has been sent away from his father's palace to be brought up in a distant land by a foster-nurse, who does her best to make him forget his regal childhood, plying him with toys in order to habituate him to his exile.
    And in time he does become habituated. Use and wont lay their frosty fingers upon his eyes and he no longer lives in careless familiarity with the truths which grown men toil laboriously to attain. But he is not unhappy; he remembers how as a child a sudden shock of strangeness would come upon him, when he would ask himself, "How did I get here?" "Am I in a dream?" And this memory is a proof to him that the world of time is an illusion and the world of eternity alone true. So, in tranquil intervals, although he has travelled far inland, his vision can pierce back to, and his ears catch the roar of the great deep whence he came, and see the children still playing upon the beach. The vision may have grown dim, but he will love nature not less but more, because the meanest flower by the wayside speaks to his soul a message of tremendous import.
    I have paraphrased this great poem at some length, because it is the pivot on which our whole theme turns. It is the cue for the entry upon the stage of legions of children, no lay figures now, but principals. The Marchioness and Little Em'ly and Tiny Tim, Jo and Pip and Jenny Wren; Maggie Tulliver and Richard Feverel and Alice and Jim Hawkins and Jeremy and Michael Fane and Huck Finn and Christopher Robin; and with them come their interpreters, Charles Lamb and Robert Louis Stevenson and Edmund Gosse and Katherine Mansfield and Walter de la Mare and a host of others. The emancipation of the children has been won, and William Wordsworth is their William Wilberforce.
    But a crusade had yet to be fought to assert the children's new-won rights. In the mills and the mines children were being treated worse than any slaves. Workhouses and schools and magistrates' courts were dark with ignorance and cruelty. And the man who was to lead and to win this crusade was a man of no ideas, no culture, no deep insight into life, but of abounding charity and high spirits, and of an imagination so intense that he compelled his readers to see through his eyes. And those eyes were the eyes of a man who had never grown up. So, being himself an eternal child, children alone appealed to him, whatever their age in years; men and women with adult minds seemed, as Clutton-Brock said, to be playing some stupid game. Every adult whom he means us to love is an over-grown child—Pickwick, Old Peggotty, Tom Pinch, Joe Gargery. But in spite of all his charity and his chivalry, it is almost equally true that the children whom he means us to love are undergrown adults—Paul Dombey, Little Dorrit, Agnes Wickfield, Jenny Wren. For he always sees the pathos of childhood, and it is when he is pathetic that he fails, and fails outrageously. What he hated above all was pretentiousness—the snob, the humbug, the canter, the pompous authoritarian. His greatest child-characters are the poor maid-of-all-work the Marchioness, and Jo the crossing-sweeper, who epitomize in concrete form all the Beatitudes. If Dickens had had the ruling of the state, he would have indented at the outset for a large supply of millstones.

      "This boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to, won't move on."
      "I'm always a-moving on, sir," cries the boy, wiping away his grimy tears with his arm. "I've always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever since I was born. Where can I possible move to, sir, more nor I do move?"
      "He won't move on," says the constable calmly, with a slight professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his stiff stock, "although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and therefore I'm obliged to take him into custody. ... He won't move on."
      "O my eye! where can I move to?" cries the boy, clutching desperately at his hair.
      "Don't you come none of that, or I shall make blessed short work of you," says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. "My instructions are that you are to move on. I've told you so five hundred times."
      ... Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to anyone else that the great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed ... to set you the great example of moving on. The one grand recipe remains for you—the be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth—Move on!

    He could not paint a normal child; his children are either characters (in the sense of being freaks) or they are characterless (in the sense of being plaster casts). But there is one quality in the vision of Dickens which gives him a title to be the great revealer of childhood. We all remember how a children we possessed the power of vitalising and humanising the things that made up our environment. Patterns in carpets and wall-papers came alive to us; the letters of the alphabet had personalities; the knobs of our cot were gnomes that winked solemnly at us in the fading light. Dickens retained throughout his life this eerie realism. His world was alive with inanimate things. Door-knockers, tall-boys, gas-lamps, house-fronts, arm-chairs, take on an elfin humanity; they leer or grin or scowl; they are benevolent or disdainful or sardonic. To Dickens everything is gloriously alive; it is only living men and women who are sometimes dead.
    After Dickens the treatment of the child in literature branches into a dozen different channels, and the various streams grow to so great a volume that any complete analysis becomes impossible. George Eliot's Mill on the Floss is perhaps the prototype of the autobiographical novel in which the author dives into his remote consciousness in the endeavour to fish up life. The later nineteenth century, shaken to its foundations by the evolutionary theory, was obsessed by origins; it studied childhood as it studied the primitive types of the horse revealed in fossils; its literature is a museum stocked with specimens of infantile experience duly pinned and labelled. The novel becomes autobiographical and the autobiography partakes of the novel, until they are distinguishable only by the persons in which they are written. Samuel Butler's Way of All Flesh and Edmund Gosse's account of his own childhood in Father and Son both appeared at the dawn of the twentieth century; each portrays the clash between the grim and humourless puritanism which was dying and the spirit of childhood which was insisting on its right to delight and liberty.

      All these matters (writes Gosse) drew my thoughts to the subject of idolatry, which was severely censured at the missionary meeting. I cross-examined my father very closely as to the nature of this sin, and pinned him down to the categorical statement that idolatry consisted in praying to anyone or anything but God himself. Wood and stone, in the words of the hymn, were peculiarly liable to be bowed down to by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed my father further on this subject, and he assured me that God would be very angry, and would signify his anger, if anyone, in a Christian country, bowed down to wood and stone... I determined ... to test the matter for myself, and one morning, when both my parents were safely out of the house, I prepared for the great act of heresy. I was in the morning-room on the ground-floor, where, with much labour, I hoisted a small chair on the table close to the window. My heart was now beating as if it would leap out of my side, but I pursued my experiment. I knelt down on the carpet in front of the table and looking up I said my daily prayer in a loud voice, only substituting the address, "O Chair" for the habitual one.
      Having carried this act of idolatry safely through, I waited to see what would happen. It was a fine day, and I gazed up at the slip of white sky above the house opposite, and expected something to appear in it. God would certainly exhibit his anger in some terrible form, and would chastise my impious and wilful action. ... But nothing happened; there was not a cloud in the sky, not an unusual sound in the street. Presently I was quite sure that nothing would happen. I had committed idolatry, flagrantly and deliberately, and God did not care.

    The reality of progress may be doubted, if by progress we mean that men become with the passing of time better, wiser and kinder. There is a current illusion of progress at those periods of history that recur with an almost rhythmic regularity, when humanity is lifted upon a crest of achievement; men eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and deem themselves as gods and lords of creation. But man never eats of the fruit of that tree without being banished from some Eden; and between the wave-crests of exaltation lie the deep troughs of despondency. The later Victorian age was one of pride and hope; its achievement was portentous, but it was thought to be a mere earnest of what would be achieved. Then the crash came; and the disillusion was as hell-deep as the illusion had been heaven-high.
    In its bereavement the age turned to the child to draw assurance from his untroubled serenity, to divert its vision from the hideous present to the brighter future that the child would inherit.
    All the greatest writers—Kipling, Barrie, Belloc, Wells, Mackenzie—wrote of and for children. Only Hardy, Galsworthy and Shaw, who had never suffered the illusion, and therefore were immune from the disillusion, remained unrepentantly adult. In the past twenty years we have wandered yet deeper into the Valley of Humiliation. The children of 1914 became the cannon-fodder of 1939. And what of the children of 1939? For nineteen centuries men have ignored the solemn warning that only by becoming children can they enter the kingdom; and the inevitable and accumulated nemesis has fallen. And it will fall yet again, and fall more heavily, unless the world will heed the warning. It is futile to psychoanalyse the child, to patronize the child, to sentimentalize the child, for that is to assume superiority over the child, and not to take him as a pattern. It has been said that the wise teacher teaches more than he knows; it is equally true that the wise teacher comes in the end to learn more than he has taught. To be a teacher is to have opportunities of learning that are denied to ordinary men. Ordinary men may reject the lesson, you cannot reject it save at the peril that yours will be the greater judgment. The Wise Men saw His star in the east, and came to worship Him—Him, for whom no room was found at a poor inn in the meanest of all the cities of Judah.

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Saw Kit Kittredge in the Cobble Hill Cinema. It was really cute, obviously. I drooled over the period costumes and all that jazz. And aaah that little boy who plays Stirling is just the sweetest thing, I want to scoop him up and eat him on a cracker. But that would be cannibalism. So I won't. Also Kit's dad is more adorable than a pile of adorable things, except he also happens to be over 40 with 5 kids. Life is so unfair, lol.

(Bit late but this is a picture of the Little Mermaid, in honor of my last entry.)

It's magic, today I actually have a topic to discuss instead of just posting poems or quotes! What next, managing to cook an omelet this morning all by myself without burning the eggs, the butter, the cheese, and myself? Oh wait... Hehe, my sister always warns me that I'll end up "like Betsy Ray" with only a rudimentary knowledge of culinary arts i.e. eggs, cocoa, and brownies. To which I say, pish, I don't care two cents about the feminine graces. I can survive on brown rice and lettuce just fine.

Anyway, there is this condition called Synesthesia. Tesla had it...actually, the only reason I know about it is The Prestige, that movie with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, in which Bale is insufferably nasty and whiny and Jackman is very very handsome despite also being slightly manic and evil. Tesla featured as a minor character and I read up about him after the film, just because I was curious. So.

It's defined as a condition in which "stimulation of one cognitive or sensory pathway leads to automatic, involuntary in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." In other words, someone with synesthesia might see the letter B as light purple or the number 81 as burnt orange. They might hear certain notes and envision certain corresponding colors or taste certain corresponding tastes.

And in case you're wondering, no, I don't actually have synesthesia. But in some ways, my brain does work that way. For example, I see 56 as a ruby red color. 1 is either soft cream or grass green, depending. Even numbers are usually cool and odd are usually warm, but there are exceptions (like 56). Actually I think 56 is my favorite number, just because it's unusually beautiful and vivid. Or 8, which is navy blue.

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You have tamed me, now you must take me
How am I supposed to be? I don't have my thorns now
But I feel them sprouting- they'll grow right through if I don't watch them
They'll grow right through even if I watch them and a sunset couldn't save me now
These baobabs, and baobabs, and baobabs some more...
But you can't out-wait fate

(Can you tell I've been reading The Little Prince? It is incredible. Above lyrics are from Regina Spektor's song Baobabs.)

I just realized how nerdy my friends and I are. Like, all we've done this summer so far is hang out in Barnes and Nobles and/or the park and/or the mall and/or the museum, and eat Starbucks junk and watch scifi movies and complain about our lives. It's fun though.

Recently made two rather silly purchases within two days of each other...new eyeshadow (which isn't necessarily silly but I just hate spending money on makeup, seems kind of pointless) and a book of poems. Poems of the sea. Full fathom five thy father lies and all that good stuff. I am hopelessly besotted with everything related to seafaring folklore...Moby Dick, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Seabird, The Odyssey, myths about Poseidon, even the POTC movies. This is probably because, as I have said,  when I was about 8 my greatest ambition in life was to grow up to be a siren and lure sailors to watery, bone-scattered graves. Old habits die hard. Here, I will share some with you.

The Tuft of Kelp
Herman Melville

All dripping in tangles green,
Cast up by a lonely sea
If purer for that, O Weed,
Bitterer, too, are ye?

Sea Change
Genevieve Taggard

You are no more, but sunken in a sea
Sheer into dreams, ten thousand leagues, you fell;
And now you lie green-golden, while a bell
Swings with the tide, my heart; and all is well
Till I look down, and wavering, the spell-
Your loveliness- returns. There in the sea,
Where you lie amber-pale and coral-cool,
You are most loved, most lost, most beautiful.

The World Below the Brine
Walt Whitman

The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle openings, and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us who walk this sphere,
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.

So now all I need is to read this book out loud on a cruise ship in the middle of a stormy gale. *evil grin* Also, I am now officially a compulsive Hogwarts House sorter. I was watching that John Adams HBO miniseries (stuff like that is basically required watching for homeschoolers, right up there with playing seven instruments including the harp and learning Latin at the age of five) (and anyway, it's quite good so far) and started thinking, okay, so John Adams is Gryffindor and Washington is Hufflepuff and Franklin is Slytherin and Jefferson is Ravenclaw!

And then I was in the library today (I'm volunteering there this summer) and decided that as of now the children's librarian is Hufflepuff and the YA librarian is probably Slytherin.

So I need help, obviously.

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(Am reading This Side of Paradise, by F Scott Fitzgerald, and lol the main character is EXACTLY LIKE ME except handsome and a boy. Which is really weird. It's funny, I more often identify with male characters in literature, yet I'm still pretty traditionally "feminine"... the only female characters I've ever really identified with are Caddy Casson and Rose Mortmain. Hmm.)

This is a pretty amazing meme...just type in your answers to the questions on Flickr and find an appropriate photo on the first page or so.

1. What is your name?

2. What is your favorite food?


3. What school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Who is your favorite Disney princess?

7. Favorite drink?

8. Dream vacation?

9. What is your favorite dessert?
10. What do you want to be when you grow up?

11. What do you love most in life?

12. One word to describe you?

13. What do you dream about?

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Here is a very lovely prayer of St. Francis of Assisi that I found online.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Also, an excerpt from Between the Forest and the Hills.

"This looks to us like a dying age. A last blaze of summer and then the long darkness. But that's not what it'll look like from the other end of the night. Man! to our children's children's children this will be an age of miracles. An age of saints and heroes! The tales are already gathering round us, even while we're moaning about the drabness of everything. How Saint Malleus defeated the Saxons- how about that one then? How the Blessed Ramus and Astragalus marched out to confront them, that's another good one. Then there's the High Deeds of Torcula the Prince- oh yes, he'll be part of Our history too, and can you say he's unworthy of his place? Ye- heavenly powers, we're picking up the gold dust of legends like- like pollen on your feet when you walk through a field of buttercups. And you don't need to worry about whether or not they're facts. They're better than that- they're true!"
Malleus drew in a deep breath.
"Yes!" he said.
The red-tiled roofs of Iscium, the lime-washed plaster and pale honey-coloured stone of its walls, seemed to have soaked up the autumn sunlight, until all its colours were transmuted to shades of rose and gold. Even the deepening blue of the sky was powdered with gold from the western horizon to the zenith, and scattered with flakes of golden clouds. The whole city glowed with light.

That is one of the more beautiful endings to a book I've read. And a funny Shakespeare sonnet-

The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair:
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both
And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;
But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.

All three very summery things, in my opinion.

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Went to Coney Island yesterday with a friend and my sister. This scene was just breathtaking. Like something out of ancient Greece. I wish I had taken a picture, but then that's what flickr is for. Click



Adorable 50s "Space Race" playing cards. Yay!

Am reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This bit made me laugh out loud! About the Babel fish, a creature that translates speech for you:

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own argument, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.

Hahaha. I like it when an author manages to make fun of practically everyone with just one little passage.

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From Astrid Lindgren's book Bill Bergson and the White Rose Rescue, just because it feels like summer to me-

The war between the White and the Red Roses had broken out two years ago. It was still raging and neither of the fighting parties seemed to get tired of it. On the contrary, Anders pointed out the Thirty Years' War as an example worth following.
"If they could keep on that long in the olden times, so can we," he declared enthusiastically.
Eva-Lotta looked at the matter more soberly.
"Just think what you'll look like when you're a fat old man of forty and still crawling around in ditches after the Great Mumbo. That'll be something for all the kids in town to snicker at."
This was an uncomfortable thought. To be laughed at and- still worse- to be forty years old at the same time there were other fortunate people who weren't more than thirteen or fourteen! Anders felt a deep dislike of those youngsters who would some day take over playgrounds and hiding places and wars between Roses, and who furthermore would have the nerve to laugh at him- at him, the leader of the White Rose during a glorious past, when those unlicked cubs weren't even born yet!
Anders was disturbed. Eva-Lotta's words made him realize that life was short and that you had to play while you are still able to.
"Surely no one will ever have as much fun as we have," Bill said comfortingly. "The war between the White and the Red Roses, that's something those little kids will never match."
Eva-Lotta agreed. Nothing could compare with the War of the Roses. One day, when they had become pitiful forty-year-olds, like the ones she had talked about, they would still remember their wonderful summer game. And they would never think about it without remembering how it felt to run barefoot over the soft grass of the prairie during the early summer evenings, how warm and pleasant the water of the creek felt on their feet as they splashed across Eva-Lotta's bride on their way to some crucial battle, and how brightly the sun shone in through the open shutters of the bakery loft, making even the wooden floor of the White Roses' headquarters smell like summer. Yes, the War of the Roses was surely a game to be forever associated with summer vacations and mild breezes and clear sunshine!

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I have made an executive decision. From henceforth until an undetermined date my blog will be a "stuff" blog, which is to say it will be entirely devoted to posting cool poems, quotes, reviews of books and movies and music, links, commentary on said links, and other miscellaneous goodies. I do not really have the time to write insightful essays with each entry, so I think this format will be much nicer and encourage me to post more often. To begin:

The general pause which succeeded his short disquisition on the state of the nation, was put to an end by Catherine, who, in rather a solemn tone of voice, uttered these words, “I have heard that something very shocking indeed will soon come out in London.”
Miss Tilney, to whom this was chiefly addressed, was startled, and hastily replied, “Indeed!- and of what nature?”
“That I do not know, nor who is the author. I have only heard that it is to be more horrible than any thing we have met with yet.”
“Good heaven!- Where could you hear of such a thing?”
“A particular friend of mine had an account of it in a letter from London yesterday. It is to be uncommonly dreadful. I shall expect murder and every thing of the kind.”
“You speak with astonishing composure! But I hope your friend’s accounts have been exaggerated;- and if such a design is known beforehand, proper measures with undoubtedly be taken by government to prevent its coming to effect.”
“Government,” said Henry, endeavoring not to smile, “neither desires nor dares to interfere in such matters. There must be murder; and government cares not how much.”
-Northanger Abbey

 
Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: `But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?'
`You can draw water out of a water-well,' said the Hatter; `so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well--eh, stupid?'
`But they were IN the well,' Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.
`Of course they were', said the Dormouse; `--well in.'
This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
`They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; `and they drew all manner of things--everything that begins with an M--'
`Why with an M?' said Alice.
`Why not?' said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: `--that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness-- you know you say things are "much of a muchness"--did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?'
`Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, `I don't think--'
`Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter.
-Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

See? Just happy things that make me smile. And hopefully you. Ladeda.

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I finished The Brothers Karamazov.

I'm depressed. Finishing a beautiful book is one of the most difficult things I can imagine doing. You want it to go on and on but it doesn't. I'm still in love with Alyosha. I'm more like Dmitry than I thought. I read Ivan's Nightmare and the Devil with my mouth hanging open in sheer awe at Dostoevsky's brilliance.

So now I'm reading To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. My mom said it was depressing and horrible and made her want to kill herself, but my friend Rachel raved about how sublime it was (and absolutely full of the Oceanic Feeling) so I have to give it a try.

The very first page had this amazing passage-

Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling- all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he had already his private code, his secret language...

Does it sound proud and silly to say that reminds me of myself? Or at least, myself when I was six.

And now I conclude this absurdly bookish entry.

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Two things you must know about:
Coldplay's new song Viva la Vida. I know nothing about Coldplay except that I like their song Yellow. But now I like this song too. www.youtube.com/watch
When it comes to Disney princes and/or male characters, I always thought none could surpass the majesty of Prince Philip. But alas, I was deeply wrong. Phoebus is where it's at, yo. He even has a beard. www.youtube.com/watch


So first off I have a lovely poem to share with you. I'm compiling a document of all my favorite poems and this is like my new FAVORITE ever.

On the Porch
Donald Justice

There used to be a way the sunlight caught
The cocoons of caterpillars in the pecans.
A boy’s shadow would lengthen to a man’s
Across the yard then, slowly. And if you thought
Some sleepy god had dreamed it all up- well,
There was my grandfather, Lincoln- tall and solemn,
Tapping his pipe out on a white-flaked column,
Carefully, carefully, as though it were his job.
(And we would watch the pipe-stars as they fell.)
As for the quiet, the same train always broke it.
Then the great silver watch rose from his pocket
For us to check the hour, the dark fob
Dangling the watch between us like a moon.
It would be evening soon then, very soon.

Isn't that just the clearest, most delightful poem you've ever read? And finally, an article I wrote for my sister's and my magazine, True Girl. Because I am lazy like that and do not feel like writing a whole new one just for this blog. Of course, if you get the magazine then this is a bonus little sneak peek into the August issue! Yay! It is still an early draft so it is a bit rough in spots but whatever, I hope you enjoy.

"The Joys of Children's Literature" (tentatively titled, because I am very very bad at thinking up titles)

There is a short passage in JM Barrie’s classic Peter Pan that, even now I’m 17, gives me pause. “‘Smee,” [Hook] said huskily, “that crocodile would have had me before this, but by a lucky chance it swallowed a clock which goes tick tick inside it, and so before it can reach me I hear the tick and bolt.” He laughed, but in a hollow way. “Some day,” said Smee, “the clock will run down, and then he'll get you.” Hook wetted his dry lips. “Ay,” he said, “that's the fear that haunts me.” I read it first at the age of 11 and thought I understood it perfectly. A crocodile is a crocodile, what else could it be? Reading it again from a more mature perspective never fails to send chills down my spine. For of course, the crocodile is a metaphor for mortality, ticking down the days until death.

 A simple thing? Maybe, but it shows why the novel remains a classic. The best children’s books seem more oblique with age. What 8-year-old, reading Ozma of Oz for the first time, will notice Baum’s subtle theosophist philosophy? I know I was occupied with the sparkling world of clockwork creatures and pumpkin-heads. And what child will detect the satire of Victorian society in Alice in Wonderland, especially in the subtle chapter Pig and Pepper? Even Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, may be interpreted as an example of the German tradition of “Totenkindergeschichte,” or “tales of the death of children.” Despite the wealth of scholarly opinion on this genre, I often hear a disparaging view towards children’s books from my friends. It’s the “comfort food” of literature, many people say. Yet who can make such claims in the face of bold novels such as Huckleberry Finn? It’s considered a children’s book, yet the outdated terms keep many from discovering Twain’s delicious satirical skills. Or consider the recent clash over the Harry Potter series. Like it or not, children’s literature is every bit as serious a field as adult fiction.

 Today at your local Border’s, children’s fantasy series jostle against each other, seemingly clamoring for attention. Who can tell Inkheart from Eragon from the Spiderwick Chronicles? It may be difficult to believe today, but the genre of children’s literature is still a new development. A typical Roman child would have been enchanted by Aesop’s fables. But children generally had to make do with adult stories. Medieval children sat by the fire in the great hall and enjoyed minstrels’ renditions of The Song of Roland or Beowulf, as well as miraculous fantasies like King Arthur and the often-didactic retellings of Bible stories. By the time of the European Renaissance, the most popular children’s book was a pleasant little humanist tome entitled The Book of Martyrs, a bloody anti-Catholic rant complete with pictures of gory saints. And the ever-popular morality tale resurfaced in books like The New Puritan Primer. Reading it I can imagine little gray-bonnetted girls sitting in rows, chanting “in Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” Finally, we come into the golden late-Victorian age of children’s literature, with wild nonsensical fancies like Alice in Wonderland or The Water Babies going head-to-head with more staid, wholesome fare. Little Lord Fauntleroy is probably the most loathsome example from this period. Indeed, Huck Finn himself loved nothing more than mocking sanctimonious Elsie Dinsmore-types.

 After examining its history, we may learn two truths about children’s literature. First, it’s usually didactic; that is, it contains a Lesson, cultural or moral, that children must learn. Harry will eventually triumph over Voldemort; Taran Wanderer will go on a quest to achieve honor and find his father. Of course, modern literature is far removed from the obvious proselytizing of the Secret Garden. (The main message of which, curiously enough, is environmentalism.) Children’s authors of today are skilled at hiding the wholesome intent of their work. They take a page from Emil and the Detectives, the hero of which is a “model boy because he wanted to be a model boy.” Yet what is the moral of the story, as Erich Kastner admitted? That “money should always be sent by money order.” The second truth sits uncomfortably for adults, who’ve recently shown much concern over what is “appropriate for young children.” Controversial books like A Wrinkle in Time are routinely banned from the public library. Yet the idea of the “child,” at least in Western culture, is still a new conception. Children have traditionally co-opted anything they like. Barrie originally intended Peter Pan for an adult audience, and the Grimms compiled their fairy tales as a serious academic work. Subversive themes in children’s literature are nothing new- just think of Seuss’ gleeful Cat disrupting the traditional 50’s nuclear family. Even the cozy Mary Poppins befriends old women with barley-sugar fingers, recalling Hansel and Gretel and the candy-house witch.

 In 1996, Maurice Sendak wrote in an introduction to The Phantom Tollbooth, “1961, that golden moment in American children’s book publishing…there were no seductions because there was not much money, and ‘kiddie books’ were firmly nailed to the bottom of the ‘literary-career totem pole.’” Sadly, the publishing industry has changed since then. It seems publishers care about little but reproducing the Harry Potter phenomenon. Old-fashioned classics like The Secret Language or Betsy-Tacy get lost in the shuffle of Twilight and Eragon. Gathering dust on forgotten shelves, non-fantasy novels are forgotten while young-adult novels like Criss-Cross inexplicably win the Newbery medal. But there is hope yet. In 2005, Jeanne Birdsall wrote a slow novel about four sisters, a dog, and a very interesting boy. No magic, no cell phones, set in an indeterminate time and place better described as “story-book land.” It went on to win the National Book Award and a sequel came out recently. For every poorly-written, insipid Ella Enchanted there is Shannon Hale’s Goose Girl for the balance. And Walden Media, a movie company devoted to filming children’s classics, focuses on high-quality titles like The City of Ember or The Chronicles of Narnia.

 Looking back from my somewhat advanced years (at least, since I was six), I can more fully appreciate the rich literary quality of most children’s literature. Only now do I comprehend that the Walrus and the Carpenter are not mere sadists with astonishingly large appetites, but symbols of Capitalism run amok. Moby Dick warns of the unbridled power of nature, but the Just-So stories did it quite as well- and in clear, unadorned language. And despite its dubious reputation as either Satanic or hype-laden fluff, the Harry Potter series delineates the modern tension between science and faith through the characters Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood. Pick up an old favorite and read it again. You may be surprised at what you discover. After all, as CS Lewis once said, “a children’s story which is only enjoyed by children is a bad children’s story.” May Pippi Longstocking continue delighting- and A Wrinkle in Time challenging- its readers for years to come.

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Right now I am reading The Brothers Karamazov. When I am done I must read The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet; To the Lighthouse; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Big Money; The Wide Window; The Miserable Mill; Lorna Doone; Bad Twin; and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Figures I'd get in a reading mood right when I have the least time for it. Hmph. This is how I feel-


SATs in a week but I'm deliberately avoiding thinking about them. Also, I've been listening to three songs over and over-

Sea of Love by Cat Power
Bye Bye Blackbird by Peggy Lee
Corduroy by Jaymay

Don't bother with the videos, unless you like James Dean in which case definitely watch the Corduroy one.

And one of the best poems ever w ritten about Christianity maybe.

“God’s Grandeur”
Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
        It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
        It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
        And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
        And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
        World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I like to make connections. And in a weird way-

God's Grandeur (this poem)
The paper I'm writing on Kierkegaard and ethics
The Brothers Karamazov
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Powder blue (the color)
Earl Gray tea
Sea of Love and Bye Bye Blackbird and Corduroy
Odysseus and Penelope
Desmond and Penny
Romans (the Bible)

Are all connected in my mind. In a kind of quiet, soft, melancholy way. You know.

This is a sad excuse for an entry but I need to go read now. Bye.

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Look, it's Cinderella's carriage!

Not much, just to say I'm reading the Brothers Karamazov and love it so far. It's about a thousand pages, which is a bit intimidating, but it's pretty fast going and I think I can knock off a hundred pages a day. And I came across this passage which I thought was really interesting-

...but I don't think that miracles ever confound a realist. Nor is it miracles that bring a realist to religion. If he is an unbeliever, a true realist will always find the strength and ability not to believe in a miracle, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact, he will rather disbelieve his own senses than than accept that fact. Or he may concede the fact and explain it away as a natural phenomenon until then unknown. In reality, it is not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles. Once a realist becomes a believer, however, his very realism will make him accept the existence of miracles. The apostle Thomas said he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: "My Lord and my God!" Was it a miracle that made him believe? Most likely not. He believed only because he wanted to believe, and possibly he already believed in the secret recesses of his being while he was saying, "Except I shall see, I will not believe."

Which of course made me think of this Bible verse, John 12:37-38-

Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: "Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"

Which is cool. And to finish off, I've been thinking of doing a media fast for the summer (no tv or movies or internet) just because I'm kind of tired of having my life sucked out of me by American Idol and AccioBrain. I'm not decided on the details yet but if I am quite suddenly silent for a long time you know why. :-)

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Isn't this a pretty picture? Apparently it's from an illustrated treasury of children's stories. I found it on Flickr. (Flickr, along with Etsy, is the epitome of all that is good on the internet.)


I have not posted in almost a month. this is unforgivable. But I am lazy. So here are some fun tags to remind me to post again. I have a ton to say but very little time to say it in, sadly.

The Movie Version

1. One movie that made you laugh:
Meet the Robinsons. Wacky surreal humor is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly is mine! “I know! I’ll turn him into a duck! Ooh, it’s so evil!”

2. One movie that made you cry:
Finding Neverland makes me tear up every time. Especially after learning more about Barrie’s real life story…that poor guy. No wonder Peter Pan was originally titled “Peter Pan: the boy who hated mothers!”

3. One movie you loved when you were a child:
Robin Hood, both the Disney version and the Erroll Flynn version.

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once:
Pirates of the Caribbean, probably about 20 times. Can practically quote verbatim the first fifteen minutes.

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it:
High School Musical 2, better than the first, just makes you happy all round!

6. One movie you hated:
The Wizard of Oz. Creepy, like a drug trip almost (not that I’d know what this is like), with unsympathetic whiny characters and a very weak narrative structure. Also, flying monkeys.

7. One movie that scared you:
The Sixth Sense. But in a good way.

8. One movie that bored you:
Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers. There has never been a more overrated series of movies. I liked the first and the third, and if you watch them with a rabid fan they can be quite enjoyable, but really, Helm’s Deep? Ew. That is all.

9. One movie that made you happy:
Stardust, though I’m not sure why. But it just gives me major warm fuzzies every time.

10. One movie that made you miserable:
My Boy Jack, if that wasn’t just the most dismal thing I’ve ever seen well I don’t want to know what is.

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see:
Alien, I am never watching that movie. Ever. Ever ever ever. No.

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with:
Mr. Thornton. Squee! “I do not wish to possess you, I wish to marry you because I luff you!”

13. The last movie you saw:
Prince Caspian (It was good. Prince Caspian isn’t really my favorite Narnia book, though, so I viewed the whole thing as an extended teaser for the real good stuff, Dawn Treader. Also Ben Barnes is more adorable than a pile of adorable things.)

14. The next movie you hope to see:
Wall-E! Epic robot romance, bring it on!

15. What book would you love to see made into a movie?
The Ramsay Scallop would make a terrific film if they did it right, slow and beautiful, but somehow I doubt it’ll ever happen.

The Book Version (edited by me)

1. One book that made you laugh:
Forever Rose, by Hilary McKay. Rolling on the floor is more like it. Also the bit about ribbon-like sea worms in The Code of the Woosters.

2. One book that made you cry:
Along Came a Dog, by Meindert de Jong. It had a happy ending but the tone throughout was so painfully bittersweet and nostalgic…not necessarily a tearjerker, but so sad it’s painful to read.

3. One book you loved when you were a child:
The 21 Balloons was my favorite for a few years. Also The Pushcart War. I was literally convinced it was a true history of the war.

4. One book you’ve read more than once:
Um duh. Everything. Specially I Capture the Castle and the Harry Potter series.

5. One book you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it:
Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog! Awww I love Pigeon!

6. One book you hated:
David Copperfield. Reading Dickens is like trying to wade through a marsh of caramel and marshmallow sauce.

7. One book that scared you:
The Westing Game. It isn’t really scary but at the young impressionable age of 11 it spooked me out.

8. One book that bored you:
Um. Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility. Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey are proof that not all 19^th century literature has to be dull…so they were very disappointing.

9. One book that made you happy:
Regarding the Fountain is very warm-fuzzy. The Winnie-the-Pooh series, Paddington Bear, Alice in Wonderland, Alfie and Annie-Rose, etc.

10. One book that made you miserable:
Of Nightingales that Weep. She marries her stepdad, okay? After her boyfriend leaves her and her friends all kill themselves. Lovely.

11. One book you weren’t brave enough to read:
None. I am brave enough to venture all.

12. One book character you’ve fallen in love with:
JOE WILLARD from Betsy-Tacy, also Mr. Tilney from Northanger Abbey.

13. The last book you read:
The Aeneid. It’s basically the Odyssey except less exciting and more Roman. Yay.

14. The next book you hope to read:
To the Lighthouse, my friend assures me it is absolutely chock-full of the Oceanic feeling.

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"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought unique and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."
-Alan Bennett


My sister and I had a very long talk a few nights ago (long indicating it stretched for several hours and I did not fall asleep till the next day) about very nearly everything. Mainly we talked of our romantic futures (she told me that I am very passionate but not at all romantic. I am the kind to resemble Eve Casson from the Casson series, and wander vaguely in and out of my husband's and children's lives, with a "there darling" now and then to make up for my scattered tendencies. Which is sad but true.) and of our childhoods.

(I am sure there are some mothers reading who roll their eyes at this- after all 17 is still technically a child- but I'm also sure you'll agree there is a bit of difference between a child and a teenager. So yeah.)

We talked of the imaginary worlds we inhabited when we were little- most children do. You probably remember...for instance, simply eating breakfast before school was not enough, you had to be a condemned prisoner on her way to the gallows, eating her last meal before staging her daring escape. My head was in the clouds about ninety percent of the time. Looking back, I remember being a shockingly bloodthirsty girl. My imaginary world was filled with dark murky oceans and harpies singing their ruthless songs to lure poor lost sailors, and quiet coral grottos and mermaids with strings of pearl and bones in their hair; basically it resembled a cross between Moby Dick, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the 2nd and 3rd POTC movies with regards to the fantasy. Good thing I was not introduced to these things at a young age. I think my little brain would have broken.

Then there was an unlikely but very loved side filled with Paddington Bear and Pooh Bear and Brambly Hedge and Shirley Hughes and other cuddly marmalade-and-cambric-tea British children's literature. Also Dorling-Kindersley first-word books, which trained me for Anglophilia at an extraordinarily young age. I don't know; is this making any sense? I think JM Barrie explains it better...

"I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

  Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have each other's nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles [simple boat]. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

  Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real. That is why there are night-lights."

From Peter Pan. (It gets better the older you get.) This is very definitely the way it was for me. And still is, except I'm less likely to imagine being invisible and more likely to imagine a lovely husband and babies and home of my own (complete with library, window seat, and tea service). Alas. My younger self, upon meeting my current self, would roll my eyes in disgust at this silly lovey-dovey nonsense (before popping off to slit a couple of throats). What can I say, I have become Domestic. And remarkably do not mind a bit.

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Above, concept art for Cinderella by Mary Blair. YAY DISNEY GOODNESS! Also, yay frozen blueberries, Amplifico, Bill Bergson and the White Rose Rescue, and soy chocolate milk! It's funny, I'm not crazy about soy products but soy chocolate milk is definitely highly superior to the usual variety. I think it's something about the bean-ness of the soy and cocoa.

(You know what would be pretty awesome? If someday, some random stranger walked up to me on the street and inquired, "Who are you?" To which I could reply, "I am an Erstwhile Lotus Eater," because how awesome would that be? V. awesome, is what.)

So I am 17 years old now. My birthday was a few days ago. I feel irrevocably old. However, when I really think about it, being a Mature Teenager is not so different from being a 6-year-old, with two key differences.

1. Boys (not necessarily romance, but one notices them more)
2. Worries about Life, the Universe, and Everything

Probably in that order.

I had a lovely birthday. Traditional Birthday Meal, being Puerto Rican Stew. Traditional Birthday Movie, being Back to the Future (very funny, bonus points for being partly set in the 50s) and Total Recall (very exciting, but way too bloody so I had to hide a few times). Traditional Birthday Cake, being rum cake with vanilla ice cream. How sophisticated. Presents, being

-Pink pajama bottoms from Aeropostale, from my little sister, interestingly enough they're decorated with angelic bunnies. With wings.
-Jewelry from my little brother, also a card saying Davy Jones wishes me happy birthday, which made me absurdly happy because I luff Davy Jones muchly (you know, Davy Jones from POTC, with the cute little tentacles and the sad broken heart and the goddess girlfriend)
-Alice in Wonderland Dream Notebook from my sister, which I am going to start using tonight, actually
-Jaymay cd from my parents (my sister once told me that if I were a music artist, I'd be Jaymay, which was a lovely compliment. She'd be St. Vincent. Which is an even better compliment)
-Assorted books from my parents, being: The Willoughbys, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Bill Bergson and the White Rose Rescue, and The Code of the Woosters. All very good books, obviously.

Then I went into Manhattan with my dad (spending a day out with dad is a another birthday tradition in our family). Got Forever Rose from Barnes and Noble, because Hilary McKay is a genius and I NEEDED IT BADLY because I've been waiting for this book since LAST YEAR and it's been out in the UK for AGES and thank goodness it's finally AMERICA'S TURN for her BRILLIANCE!

Stopped at Books of Wonder, which is easily the Very Best Place in the city. It's a children's bookstore which specializes in rare and classic books, which means they have all the goodies (E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Eleanor Estes, the works) plus a whole section in the back of vintage Tom Swift novels and first editions of The Wizard of Oz and the like. I am generally an expert at talking myself out of spending money (well, except on food, somehow much of my money ends up towards gratuitous nonsense like cinnamon buns and McDonald's Snack Wraps whenever I go to the mall with friends), but this place hypnotized me into purchasing The Magic City, The House at Pooh Corner, and Rhymes for Annie Rose (which is the ideal book for any little girl, and if I never have children myself I'm planning to hijack my friends' kids to read it to them). Really, if you like children's literature this place is A VERITABLE TREASURE TROVE. I can't wait to go back. And spend more money, obviously.

Stopped at Urban Outfitters to buy the Alice notebook (cause my sister hadn't had time to buy it for me herself, she gave me the money towards it) and my dad ended buying these adorable Star Wars nesting eggs which cost 18 dollars but were still adorable.

Went to Central Park, walked the Mall cause it's pretty, and sat by the boat pond for about an hour and read all of Forever Rose. Which was bliss. Then visited the Shakespeare Garden, which is creepy and excellent in April because many mysterious ferns grow there. And checkered, square, purple flowers. I do not exaggerate. Ate lunch near the lake...chicken soup and a lemon poppy seed muffin, which is a strange combination but I happen to especially like both those foods. Went home and had cake.

Altogether the best birthday in a while. I'd originally planned to go to the Guggenheim, but this was much more relaxing. Even with a cold. If you've made it this far in this post I congratulate you heartily.

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Not a Proper Post, but I'm writing an essay on Odysseus and wanted to post this bit from the Odyssey as translated by Robert Fitzgerald. I can honestly say I think it's one of my favorite books now.  Also to explain a new variation of Scrabble I played at youth group last night.

This is known as Cute Scrabble. There is exactly one rule: every word you spell out must be cute. To determine a word's relative cuteness factor, there must be a general vote. Other than that, you can do whatever you please. You can steal letters from other words, you can spell words in any direction, you don't have to utilize letters of other words in your word (so the words are scattered across the board), and you can spell off the board. Among the lovely contributions last night were Sir Bunnie Sir, Glee, and Huggles.

Also, I looked it up this morning...did you know Agape, the Greek word for love, is actually considered part of the English language? At least according to Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language.

So anyway, as for the Odyssey quote...

...he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for
       as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.
The rose Dawn might have found them weeping still
had not grey-eyed Athena slowed the night
when night was most profound, and held the Dawn
under the Ocean of the East. That glossy team,
Firebright and Daybright, the Dawn's horses
that draw her heavenward for men- Athena
stayed their harnessing.

Two amazing metaphors in one short passage. I am not sure how much of this is Homer and how much of this is Fitzgerald and how much of this is an unidentified Greek scribe, but I do like it.

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So there is an annoying ad on Photobucket for THE AMAZING CHINESE TEA DIET which kind of made me laugh. Also, here is a lovely picture from an illustrated version of Cinderella, from the 50s of course. I did some Very Genius Photoshopping to fix up the picture, which originally had a gigantic crack down the middle.


You know what? I'm really just sad. I haven't posted in like two weeks. And we're going off to Disneyworld soon, which means I won't really get back until the middle of April. Oh well.

What's new? I'm reading Sophie's World (very enjoyable, kind of like what Chasing Vermeer tried to be but failed) and some of Plutarch's Lives (rambling, almost stream-of-consciousness, I can't find a real structure to any of his biographies which is Rather Annoying) and I just finished The Libation Bearers (one word: BLOOD) and unfortunately I shall have to read Oedipus Rex soon. Yuck. Gouged eyeballs are not my idea of fun.

But anyway. I've also been listening a lot to St. Vincent. "All My Stars Aligned" is an exquisite song. Go find it somewhere. And I've been watching American Idol and so far I like Brooke White the best. Let no one demean this show as mere fluff, for it is not. It has provided me with my first true example of the rumored parent-child age gap. Remember Danny Noriega, the little emo boy with the skinny jeans and dyed hair? It's kind of funny, because my sister, I, and pretty much all my friends thought he was the Cutest Thing in the Universe and all our parents looked at us like we had seven heads. Because, in their opinion, he was not the Cutest Thing in the Universe, he was simply an obnoxious kid with skinny jeans. Anyway, I think he has a great future career as an online celebrity. Like on Youtube or something.

And the real point of this entry...to repost a brilliant joke I found on someone else's blog. I realize it is pathetic of me. But I don't care. It was still brilliant. Her blog: http://paperpiano.wordpress.com/

How Does a Homeschooler Change a Lightbulb?

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Isn't this picture divine? I love mid-century children's book illustrations. Reminds me of Edgar Eager.

This past Saturday I unearthed all my old choral sheet music- and spent the morning alone, with the rest of my family at art classes, in my bathrobe with a cup of pomegranate raspberry green tea, warbling Sing Dem Herrn at the top of my lungs. It was a v. refreshing experience. I'm a soprano, but tend to be very wobbly and breathy in the lowest registers and harsh in the highest ones...I haven't really sung in ages, unless you count shrieking the theme song to Snow White and various other silly imitations. So it was encouraging to hear I do have an okay voice when I really try.

Also, a few nights ago I watched Much Ado About Nothing from BBC's ShakespeaRetold, a modernized adaptation set in a tv studio. It was surprisingly funny, and the guy who played Benedict was hilarious. He and Beatrice always remind me of Ron and Hermione. I like the fact that, although Beatrice is the typical "shrewish old maid" she isn't punished for her behavior, actually Benedict loves her for it.

"Oh that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place."

But anyway. This will be a short entry. I just wanted to note a disturbing trend in, specifically, the Christian homeschooled teen girl community. I know, I know, it's such a specific category, but my friends and I do fit pretty well into it.

Idolizing the past. You know what I mean. "Oh, if only I lived during the Regency era, back when men were chivalrous and gentlemanly, when women were genteel and spent their afternoons playing piano or arranging flowers, strolling about the verdant English countryside." "Oh, back in the 50s, the irrevocable superiority of the nuclear family...the rosy-cheeked tots, the strong-jawed clean-cut fathers, the slender homemakers who labored for hours over the perfect meatloaf and apple pie...." "Ah, but during the Civil War, society was so different. Southern women, with their elegant manners sitting on the porch stitching and sipping sweet tea, powdered and sweet, not a hair out of place. A slower, more comfortable time." This usually leads to a treatise on the foibles of modern society. Women aren't sweet enough, submissive enough, accomplished enough; they no longer spend their afternoons perfecting the buttermilk biscuit or engaged in quiet conversation with their fellow ladies. Men are no longer the models of chivalry, decked out in greatcoats and bounding through the forest to hunt, their numerous hounds accompanying them.

Ah, but I'm different. I know it. My very soul belongs in the past. I do not belong in these harried, modern days of iPods and American Idol and McDonalds. I am a child of another generation. I would fit right into the Edwardian society of pompadours and powdered cheeks and puffed sleeves. No wonder my favourite books are Betsy-Tacy and Anne of Green Gables. (And of course, I forgot to add, the British spelling is absolutely essential. It's so lovely and old-fashioned, after all. So quaint.)

I think you get my drift. It's so ironic, to read blog entry after blog entry written by girls desperate for a little escapism, and channeling their discontent by complaining about, say, the dearth of really chivalrous men out there. "Alas. I'm still waiting for my Mr. Darcy." (Who are we kidding, really? Dress up the average teen guy in a cravat, throw a few rifles and hunting dogs at him, and he'd do perfectly well.) Why this romanticizing of the past? Why the incessant talk of LM Montgomery, Emily Dickinson, and other authors that naturally only you, a true Bibliophile, can appreciate? Why use an English phrase when French does it so much better? Why do so many girls let their longing for love or their discontent with mundane modern life lead them to proclaiming, "I'm not your average girl. I've got a horrid crush on Heathcliff instead of Orlando Bloom. I'd rather read Louisa May Alcott than JK Rowling. I'm not like my peers. I am a rose amongst the daisies. I'm different- just like everybody else."

Please. I understand their difficulties- after all, I'm the first to start boasting about my penchant for tea, my rabid Anglophilia, my love of classic literature. The wall above my bed is plastered with vintage postcards, a 50s advertising calendar, a poster of James Dean, and my favorite romantic quotes. I love Northanger Abbey as much as the next person. But the whole thing is rooted in dissatisfaction. It's all about coveting what you can't have. It's about presenting a false "persona" to the world. Not to mention the whole ridiculous idea that you're oh, so alone in your deepest soul longings for Beauty and Gentility and an Old-Fashioned Lifestyle.

It's time to stop dwelling in an imaginary, idealized past- one that likely never existed- and start finding fulfillment in the present. We need to stop victimizing ourselves as the poor-little-misunderstood-teens whose souls truly belong in the 19th century. Believe me, I'll be trying right along with you.

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