a miscellany

Well met, fair friends. I’ve missed you. I’ve been swamped with school (in fact, I still am), but I decided to take a small bit of time out of my day to say hello. How are you?

Here are a few miscellaneous happenings…

We had false spring here in southern Michigan a few weeks ago. Then we had a few days of bitter cold. It’s been back and forth for a while. It’s looking like next week will be nice and lovely… and I’ll be home with my family! I miss them a great deal. The past two months have been full of much emotional, spiritual, and intellectual growth, and I’m very glad to be here at college, but I am also ecstatic to see my siblings and parents again for a week. Y’all, college is kind of… draining? Who would’ve thought?

So fare thee well, my own true love
When I return united we will be
It’s not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me
But my darling when I think of thee

I have had almost no time to read for fun lately, but I almost don’t mind, because I have read the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Confessions, Republic, Nicomachean Ethics, and parts of the Metaphysics, Livy’s Histories, Horace’s Odes, The Abolition of Man, the Consolation of Philosophy, and Problemata De Creatione (a book of Renaissance Jewish theology). And it’s a load of fun to read these. Some bookish thoughts:

• I think the Iliad is a masterpiece, but there is just so much death, so I get exhausted reading it. (Yes, Achilleus, I realize you are very good at hitting people in precisely the right place to kill them efficiently. That’s enough, thank you.)
• The Odyssey is even more masterpiece-ly. I need a movie. Now. I have already fancast Oscar Isaac as Odysseus. The SCENE in Book 19 where he meets Penelope!!!! *incoherent fangirling* Somebody better know what I’m talking about and comment about it, because *flails* who knew an ancient epic could make me so happy?
• Vergil’s understanding of the gods is moving slowly closer to the way that Christians understand God, but also he gets so much wrong. And the Aeneid feels very artificially structured. I still like some parts of it, and I appreciate it as literature, but you’ll never hear me squealing about Dido or something.
• MONICA THOUGH. I underlined half of everything in Confessions. “Nothing is far from God. There is no danger that at the end of the world he will not know where to find me and raise me up.” CHILLSSS
• ‘Tis really fun to sightread Renaissance Latin with a learned history professor explaining it all to you as you go.

By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young man calling
“Nothing matters, Mary, when you’re free
Against the famine and the crown
I rebelled; they cut me down
Now you must raise our child with dignity.”

Also I have now officially decided to declare my major as classics (with a possible change to a double Greek/Latin major later on, depending on how much Greek I decide to take) AND I’ve been accepted by the faculty advisor I most wanted, so I am very happy! I’m going to spend the next three years poring over ancient languages that no one speaks any more and it’s going to be marvelous.

But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I’ll gently rise and I’ll softly call
Good night and joy be to you all

Another random thing is that I love a lot of the clubs I go to here. I speak Latin at lunch every Tuesday, and on Fridays I read Old English and share my writing at a Tolkien club, and Saturdays I read Chesterton. I am hoping to start attending Shakespeare club after break. I think my favorite is Poetry Saturday, though. We read one or two poets each week for about an hour, and then we stand in a circle and sing folk songs.

Why weep for me, for I’m anxious to go
To that haven of rest where no tears e’er flow?
And I fear not my fate when it’s time to depart
I will sail with the sun in the old churchyard

PoeSat has rekindled my love for folk music, which began thanks to Grim and now shows no sign of letting up. I think my favorites right now are “The Leaving of Liverpool,” “The Fields of Athenry,” and “The Parting Glass.” “The Old Churchyard” is a Glorious Thing of Beauty as well. (Quotes in this post are from those songs.)

Anyway. I think that’s most everything I have to say for today. College is making me into a better person and I have Great Aspirations to be a Studious Student and get Good Grades (yes those all need capital letters; yes I have studied Turabian extensively, and I assure you that it is required for random important words to receive capital letters in academic essays) — which means that I must bid you adieu and Study Studiously.

Until next time, remember Whose you are.