The ocean has not been so quiet for a long while; five night-
herons
Fly shorelong voiceless in the hush of the air
Over the calm of an ebb that almost mirrors their wings.
The has gone down, and the water has gone down
From the weed-clad rock, but the distant cloud-wall rises. The ebb
whispers.
Great cloud-shadows float in the opal water.
Through rifts in the screen of the world pale gold gleams, and the
evening
Star suddenly glides like a flying torch.
As if we had not been meant to see her; rehearsing behind
The screen of the world for another audience.

-- Robinson Jeffers, Evening Ebb

"You know what used to be one of the most embarassing things in the world? Watching white boys dance. But I think they've gotten better!"

(this insightful commentary on the skills of white boys is brought to you by a 49 year old woman that I work with at the little donut shop of horrors

Assorted Memories from the end of Junior Year:

cooking for the Junior/Senior dinner with Amy and Nicole--we absolutely destroyed the kitchen and ate the most perfect avocados straight out of their shells with spoons, everyone dancing ("freestyling" even) after the dinner to Ace of Base's It's A Beautiful Life, napping after the math final in my room with the windows open and the afternoon sun pouring in, walking wobbly-legged out of the Newton final with the sweet knowledge that the hard part was over, partying after the philosophy final at steckel park--drinking cold beer in the heat and chain-smoking camel silver cigarettes, dinner at the Ranch House later Friday night with my family and my sister's fiance's family (they have some of the best creme brulee I've ever tasted and there are little purple flowers that shower down onto the tables from the canopy of vines), the large and awesome party at Mr. K's house on Saturday night (there was dancing outside on a rented dance floor, and cheese, and candles and plenty of beer), dinner at the F.'s house on Sunday evening with the sun filtering through the leaves of the live oak and plenty of wine, homemade bruschetta and good cheer (we, of course, sang hymns from the Heavenly Highway Hymns hymnal after dinner and I was so happy that I started crying), dancing and singing at the top of my lungs with my roommate and my bestie while packing up my things for storage over the summer, driving back from LBA with K-money while the sun was slipping behind the mountains and leaving behind a haze of blue and purple, stopping to eat massive quantities of Taco Bell and washing it down with diet Coke and cigarettes...

This is beautiful:

I announce to you what is guessed at in all the phemomena of your world. You see the grain shrivel and break open and die, but you expect a crop. I tell you of the Springtime of which all springtimes speak. I tell you of the world for which this world groans and toward which it strains. I tell you that beyond the awful borders imposed by time and space and contingency, there lies what you seek. I announce to you life instead of mere existence, freedom instead of frustration, justice instead of compensation. For I announce to you redemption. Behold I make all things new. Behold I do what cannot be done. I restore the years that the locusts and worms have eaten. I restore the years which you have drooped away upon your crutches and in your wheelchair. I restore the symphonies and operas which your deaf ears have never heard, and the snowy massif your blind eyes have never seen, and the freedom lost to you through plunder, and the identity lost to you because of calumny and the failure of justice; and I restore the good which your own foolish mistakes have cheated you of. And I bring you to the Love of which all other loves speak, the Love which is joy and beauty, and which you have sought in a thousand streets and for which you have wept and clawed your pillow.

-- Thomas Howard, Christ the Tiger

I'm home again! I got in at about midnight last night and woke up this morning to find that the torrential rains that've been drenching new england cleared up just in time for my arrival. The little things are what make it pleasant to be back home: being able to make a killer chicken sandwich for myself, in my kitchen, at midnight and wash it down with some beer, for example. I didn't do anything terribly exciting on my first full day back (I mostly unpacked and cleaned my room), but I have all sorts of plans for the summer. Short term plans include starting work on Monday (back at my old jobs) and looking for new jobs that I don't dislike. Bottom line: it's hard to believe that it's summer again, but I'm glad that junior year is done and I'm all kinds of amped to attack my thesis all.summer.long.

It is Tuesday.

There are only eight class days left until finals begin, I am in charge of cooking for approximately 200 students for the annual Junior/Senior dinner this Sunday, and there are things of an extracurricular nature going down on Saturday afternoon (last free Saturday of this semester, since, as I was reminded today, we have a music final the Saturday after this one)which will probably prevent me from getting a jump on prepping for the dinner on Sunday. During all of this mayhem I am fairly certain that the one thought running through my head (okay, maybe the one thought other than "don't screw up all this food, don't screw up all this food") will be: I should be studying for finals!

On the other hand, the dinner will probably turn out well (and God knows that I like a challenge) and I probably won't fail all of my finals (despite the fact that at the beginning of every finals week am I always firmly convinced that I remember nothing) and all the worrying will have done nothing for me. Except maybe take a few years off my life, or something.

The menu for the dinner:

Appetizers cheese and crackers, crudite platter, stuffed mushrooms
Salad butter lettuce and arugula with goat cheese, strawberries, red onion, and toasted almonds
Main Course steak with mushrooms and onions in a red wine reduction, asparagus with hollandaise (from scratch)and roasted new potatoes with herbs and garlic
Dessert puff pastry triangles with vanilla custard and raspberry sauce, topped with mixed berries

Christus surrexit! I love Easter. I'm pretty sure I'm smiled like a giddy child for the duration of the Easter Vigil mass, and when the choir sang the Gloria in Excelsis Deo and all the bells were ringing I was beginning to fear that my face might crack due to a surfeit of smiling. After, we smoked cigarettes, ate Cadbury eggs and brunch food and then hit the road to have celebratory drinks at K-stein. Unfortunately, it was misting/raining lightly when we got there, but it cleared up around 5 a.m. I headed back to campus (the cold and the sleep deprivation were finally starting to get to me), arrived in time for one dance at the post-Vigil dance and then when to bed just as the sun was coming up over the mountains. Several hours later, nine of us drove to a friend's house to celebrate Easter some more with brunch food, napping, white wine, cigarettes, soccer and music. This lasted until about 7 p.m., at which point I went to another friend's house where my sister and her fiance were, so I could congratulate them on their engagement! What an Easter.

I can hardly believe that it's the end of March already. I was thinking about where I was last year at this time and it feels like it was yesterday. And now here I am and the jasmine is in bloom again and the oranges down below taste like the sun and the air smells like spring...all of this means that the end of second semester is nearly upon us. This next month and a half (give or take a little) is sure to fly by and then it will be summer and I'll have senior year to look forward to, which is mind-boggling to me. Where did the last three years go? Kant is (as I was warned) insufferably dense, Newton is tricky, but enjoyable, the junior math manual (ah, The Great Manuals program) is utter chaos (seriously, the page numbers don't even progress as they should), tonality is interesting when we have any idea of what's going on (composing our sonatas is nifty, I'm pretty sure it makes more than a few of us feel awesomely accomplished), theology is dependable (objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies to the objections), and philosophy has apparently stopped sucking since we started the Politics. That's classes in a nutshell. Everything else is a tiny bit harder to sum up so tidily.