Stability, sort of

I am settling in at my writing job. I brought my thesaurus and my soup bowl to work. I also brought in one of Brianna's old china plates, not so much because a paper plate gets soggy as because a china plate lasts a long time.

I am learning that in a writing/editing job there are good days and not-so-good days. There are days (like Monday) when my prose looks as exciting as a damp saltine. And on days like that there is nothing for it; you drink a cup of coffee and keep writing. There are other days (like today) when words and sentences come more easily, when I throw a joke into a paragraph and my editor revises the joke. He thought the humor was a good idea. Score.

But settling in is a process. When I started writing this post, the first line read "I took my thesaurus to work." Then I replaced took with brought. I'm still not sure which is the better word.

Poem of the week

My November Guest
Robert Frost

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

The Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Random House, 1946), page 7.

Musical rooms

This was The Grand Move weekend. On Friday, we shuffled three bedrooms, which meant toting boxes into and out of crowded hallways, taking apart two bunkbeds and putting them back together in different places, getting one bed onto the landing before realizing it wouldn't fit, filling the living room with stuff we all threatened to get rid of, and a new bookshelf for my room.

As one unintended consequence of The Grand Move, each of the four bedrooms that open onto a central landing has its own (vigorous) stereo system. So by merely walking upstairs you may hear Switchfoot, Nickel Creek, Aaron Copland, or the Kings College Choir—or all of them at once. My brother, now in the room across from mine, has the most powerful speakers. I'm glad he has good taste in music.

Gratitude

Almighty God,
Father of all mercies,
we thine unworthy servants
do give thee most humble and hearty thanks
for all thy goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all men.
We bless thee for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for thine inestimable love
in the redemption of the world
by our Lord Jesus Christ,
for the means of grace,
and for the hope of glory.
And we beseech thee,
give us that due sense of all thy mercies,
that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful,
and that we shew forth thy praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives;
by giving up ourselves to thy service,
and by walking before thee
in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost
be all honour and glory,
world without end.

Book of Common Prayer

Married

Thomas and Carrie are now man and wife.

I first got to know Carrie, and she first got to know Thomas, as we all worked on As You Like It four years ago. I'll never forget the endless piles of costumes, the late nights, the coffee, the Shakespeare jokes, Corey's tie-dyed beard and muddy clothes, the bloody napkin, and the three nights when that story came alive on our little stage. Nor will I forget the chemistry between Orlando and Rosalind. Nor the closing moment of the closing performance, when Orlando swept Rosalind into his arms and whirled her around, her white dress floating in dreamy circles, before carrying her offstage.

Nor will I forget Carrie's faithful friendship since then, the long talks and long papers and acting that scene from Midsummer Night's Dream in Shakespeare class. ("O wall, show me thy chink!")

Orlando and Rosalind "married" each other twice in every performance of As You Like It, once when Gannymede "pretended" to marry Orlando while Celia officiated the vows, and once at the play's climax, in a ceremony officiated by a peace-sign-flashing Jonathan Krull. But last Saturday there was no acting about it. The rings, vows, and prayers were real. A fairy tale, maybe, but true.

And Oliver was best man.

Home

I still hope to post more snapshots of England, but for now, a snapshot of home life...

Sisters. If you add up everything we've faced today, the equation will include Beltway traffic, a seemingly impossible job, a college research paper, and a broken dishwasher. But now at least some of us are home for the evening, and laughing. Somebody starts the dishes and somebody else turns on a Chieftains CD. Loud. And really, the best way to end a day like this is to do a chicken dance all together around the kitchen, to the music of Irish fiddles and drums. The phone rings and someone answers it while the rest of us prance around nearby, whooping. There wasn't anything like this in England.

Poem of the week

I hope to post more snapshots of Oxford soon. Flying home, unpacking, and starting work again has interrupted my blogging routine.

For now, the poem of the week, with a fitting picture. I couldn't resist.

Duns Scotus's Oxford
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Towery city and branchy between towers,
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded,
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did
Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;

Thou hast a base and brackish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural rural keeping—folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece
Who fired France for Mary without spot.