"Terrible and Beautiful"

“‘Who are you?’ asked Shasta. ‘Myself,’ said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again ‘Myself,’ loud and clear and gay: and then the third time ‘Myself,’ whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.
Shasta was no longer afraid that the Voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost. But a new and different sort of trembling came over him. Yet he felt glad too.
The mist was turning from black to gray and from gray to white. This must have begun to happen some time ago, but while he had been talking to the Thing he had not been noticing anything else. Now, the whiteness around him became a shining whiteness; his eyes began to blink.
Somewhere ahead he could hear birds singing. He knew the night was over at last. He could see the mane and ears and head of his horse quite easily now. A golden light fell on them from the left. He thought it was the sun.
He turned and saw, pacing beside him, taller than the horse, a Lion. The horse did not seem to be afraid of it or else could not see it. It was from the Lion that the light came. No one ever saw anything more terrible or beautiful.
Luckily Shasta had lived all his life too far south in Calormen to have heard the tales that were whispered in Tashbaan about a dreadful Narnian demon that appeared in the form of a lion.
And of course he knew none of the true stories about Aslan, the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-over-the-sea, the King above all High Kings in Narnia.
But after one glance at the Lion’s face he slipped out of the saddle and fell at its feet. He couldn’t say anything but then he didn’t want to say anything, and he knew he needn’t say anything. The High King above all kings stooped toward him.
Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, was all round him. It touched his forehead with its tongue. He lifted his face and their eyes met.
Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared.
He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing.”
–C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy in The Chronicles of Narnia (New York: HarperCollins, 1954/1994), 281-282.


Thanks, Nick Roark for this post.
We serve an awesome God.

This Fall

Stuff I'll Learn:
-Literary Analysis
 Designed for majors. Emphasizes theoretical approaches and critical strategies for the written analysis of poetry, fiction, and drama. Writing intensive. Required for the major.
-Intensive French (101 and 102)
  Beginning French. Learn conversational French quickly. Meets every day for 6 class-hours per week plus meetings with an assistant teacher (AT). Completes two semesters of French in one semester. Equivalent to French 101 and 102. Counts as two courses and prepares for French 201.
-Seeing Images, Writing Texts: Writing Studio
  A Writing 101 course designed to teach writing that draws upon both your intellect and your imagination. This course seeks to open up new ways of seeing and channels of creativity that will enable you to read, analyze, and communicate more effectively. Our inquiry will focus on texts that crow genres and disciplines, draw upon the arts and sciences, and combine words and images in innovative ways. Writing assignments will invite you to draw upon your own creative and critical faculties, using both words and images to create clear and compelling arguments.

Summer Reading:
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, by Neil White.
Excellent read, totally worth it. A memoir about a prison sentence and the US's own personal leper colony in Carville, LA.

Where I'll Live:
Cannon Dormitory, 4th floor

Roomie:
Ellie from LA! She is interested in Biology and Art, and I am so looking forward to getting to know her.

What I'll Be Doing:
Right now the only definitive plan is changing the world with my new friend Aric. We have a legitimate plan, and I'll be keeping ya'll updated on that. It's gonna be awesome.
I'll hopefully be getting into a campus ministry and some sort of singing group, whether it's choir or acapella or something else.
And having a blast with my new friends.


Excited?
Absolutely!!

Never Let Me Go

"I was weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old, kind world, one that she knew in heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you, and it broke my heart. And I've never forgotten...
You poor creatures."
--Madame, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The End of an Era

Today is the day.
Tonight I will be attending what is likely my last official Harry Potter event.
For those of you who aren't Harry Potter fans, you may not understand how big a deal this is. So let me tell you (and if you don't care to read my love letter to Harry Potter (ahem, Jon Horner. RUDE.) then just don't. and let me ramble in peace):
I remember my first Harry Potter experience vividly. I was in second grade, and we were in Grafton, Vermont for Thanksgiving. I had a fever and had to stay in the house all day, and, as was usual for me, I had completely run out of books to read. I was a reading fiend as a kid, and I went to my mom tired and bored. She was reading Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone. I looked at it, asked what it was about, and said, "Hey, can I read this?"
And so it began.
I was fascinated by everything. By Harry and his story, by the magical world of Hogwarts, by the friendships in the story....I could go on and on.
Harry Potter hasn't been a bandwagon thing for me. It's been a part of my life. I grew up with the characters, waiting for the midnight opening of each book, waiting to spend all night reading.
I think there are so many great things about these books:
The relationships between the many characters, whether it's Harry, Ron, and Hermione, or Harry and the Weasleys, Snape and the students, or Hagrid and the creatures he cares for--they are all full of ups and downs, but they are real. They're relatable.
The humor--sometimes I just laugh out loud when I read these books. There are these moments that are just priceless.
The way the characters grow. They are so imperfect. They make mistakes, they are tempted, they don't always do the right thing. But they learn from it, they apologize, they love each other through all the ugly things.
And lastly I love how good triumphs. It's an age old story, but J.K. Rowling does things in a way I absolutely did NOT expect. Don't worry, I won't spoil it. There's a really redemptive aspect to this story, and it isn't subtle, it's clear and for me it was shocking.
Call me dramatic, but today is a big deal. It's like a coming of age moment (for my 7th grade class, I'm having a Bildungsroman moment....thanks, Mr. Henderson!). My childhood ended awhile ago, but it's like I have to actually face it today.
Bittersweet.
Feel free to laugh at this post, I know who you are. :) I am laughing at myself! Books aren't normally this big a deal to people, but hey, that's why I'm becoming the Literature professor, and you're not!
And for those of you who haven't read Harry Potter--give them a chance! Clearly, I think they're wonderful. :)

Part One: Life, X

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,

His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.

His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;

What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty,
And Sophocles a man;

When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified,
Facts, centuries before,

He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true:
He lived where dreams were born.

His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.

--Emily Dickinson

Please Take Me There...

"There is no Frigate like a Book/ To take us Lands away..."*

Book: The Magician's Nephew
Author: C. S. Lewis
Quote:"Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it...cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second sound was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars....One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out...The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing."
Thoughts: I know that was a long quote. Forgive me. But this book, which is actually the first of seven in Lewis' Narnia series, is one of my favourites. Lewis give us the creation story of Narnia--before it was spoiled by the winters of the White Witch. He uses beautiful imagery; the Lion, Aslan, creates the world of Narnia through song. Lewis cleverly provides backstory for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: he not only shows how Narnia was created and how the White Witch came into being, but he also tells us how the Wardrobe was made and why it leads to Narnia. It's short, easy, and definitely worth the read.

Book: Half the Sky
Authors: Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Quote: "It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely
because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth
century. More girls are killed in this routine “gendercide” in any one-decade than
people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.
In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the
twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in
this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender
equality around the world."
Thoughts: This was part of the TBB library for India, and I am so glad I read it. Kristof and WuDunn, long-time journalists, shed light on many problems that women face worldwide: from maternal mortality, to sex slavery, to female genital mutilation. It is an easy read, with story after story of women who are impoverished, have been rescued from sex slavery, and have had fistula repairs. Not all the stories are happy and successful. There is no sugarcoating the issue here. But Kristof and WuDunn make it clear that these are not impossible problems to tackle. In the back of the book, there are a number of remarkable organisations working with women all over the world. Some were started by women who faced and conquered these issues, others were started by school kids. In the end though, Half the Sky makes you want to DO something. And it makes it clear that you actually can.

Book: A Crime So Monstrous
Author: E. Benjamin Skinner
Quote: "Immigrants, the lifeblood of America, usually come into the country only if they have the means to pay for the journey. Now, some human smugglers offer the chance to immigrate with little or no money down. The offer always comes with strings attached, however. And sometimes, it comes with chains."
also
"This is an act so unnatural, a crime so monstrous, a sin so God-defying, that it throws into the shade all other distinctions known among mankind." -William Lloyd Garrison
Thoughts: Another find from the TBB library! This book is an interesting review of modern-day slavery and the steps that have been taken (or NOT taken) to abolish it. It is again filled with personal stories from Skinner and different slaves he encounters. He looks at sex slavery which is the most obvious or globally known form of slavery, debt bondage, child slavery, and many other instances of forced labor. Skinner defines slavery very clearly. There are some sections where Skinner talks about US efforts to stop slavery, and I wondered, "Why is this relevant, and why are you continuing to talk about this?" Ultimately, however, this was an eye-opening book demonstrating that slavery--true slavery--is a reality for people all over the world; there are more slaves today than ever before. And I just had to ask myself, "What am I going to do about it?"

Book: The Namesake
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Quote: "Gogol says nothing. He has not read the story himself. He has never touched the Gogol book his father gave him on his fourteenth birthday. And yesterday, after class, he'd shoved the short story anthology deep into his locker, refusing to bring it home. To read the story, he believes, would mean paying tribute to his namesake, accepting it somehow."
Thoughts: I loved this book (also from the TBB library). It was an interesting novel about an Indian family living in America. The parents grew up in India, but their children grow up surrounded by American culture (and they clearly prefer it). It made me ask myself how I view foreigners in America, how I view my surroundings in another country (aka someone else's home), and what makes something "home." The characters are relatable, and it was an easy read. I felt like I'd gotten to know Gogol throughout the course of the book. It was definitely a good read.

*The title of this blog is from the first two lines of Emily Dickinson's poem "There is no Frigate like a Book." It's one of my favorites. :)

Good Stuff

I love being able to talk to people about issues and things with substance. One of my professors on my trip to England two years ago called it "ruminating conversation." I am going to miss many different people while I'm gone, but there are two people that I find particularly understand my interests and tastes in...well everything. And we always have ruminating conversations. I'm sure I'll find other people on my trip to have deep and intellectually stimulating conversations with on a regular basis (when we're not having seminars of course), and these conversations will certainly sharpen me. But I always find it a joy to discuss things with people who have the same worldview and similar ways of thinking.
So I will miss those conversations and people a lot!
Anyway. Here are some things from the past few weeks (mainly books and music and such) which have raised discussions between me and some of my friends. I hope you find them somewhat interesting!
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. This book is excellent. It's thought-provoking, interesting, well-written, and eye-opening. It has really made me think about what I believe and how I view the world that God has given us. I personally think it's worth everyone's time.
Ben Folds. He's making a new album apparently and Jaron Moore (click on the link to check out his blog--it's pretty great!) posted this video on my Facebook today. I really like this song, as well as the spoken bit. And the video is cool too!
Artist a Day. This website comes up on my google homepage, and I love it. Some of the art isn't my favorite, I guess, but every once in a while, a piece comes up that I just sit and stare at. I love that about art. When we're in NYC for TBB, I'd love to go to the Met for a day. I didn't take the chance to do that when I was last in New York, but I should have. If I had time to just do what I want (wouldn't that be wonderful?), I would spend time going to museums and learning about art. Right now it's more interesting to me than music. (If you know me, that's a big deal-ish.)
columbinus. One of my best friends, Victoria Oliver, was in this play this summer. She's a senior in high school at UNC School of the Arts this year. She's marvelous. Anyway, a friend of hers who is also going to UNCSA as a senior this year directed this show. It's about the shootings at Columbine. The cast was young (17-21 years), but they did a fantastic job. I was really impressed, and I saw it twice. columbinus is a powerful show. And everyone should see it. Literally everyone. It's raw and emotional, and exposes the stereotypes and labels we subconsciously (or even consciously) give each other. It's humbling, terrifying, and heartbreaking, all at the same time. But it was completely worth it for me.
Last, but certainly not least, I will leave you with a poem I found a couple weeks ago. It's by Emily Dickinson. I found it randomly--I believe a friend of mine brought up Emily's poetry (yes, Emily and I use each other's first names), and I just googled her. A website came up with her poems, and I saw this one.
"There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul."
I love the language she uses and the way she capitalizes certain words. This is basically why I want to teach English Literature. Books and writing can say so much. :)

Thanks for reading my random thoughts!
One week!

Work, Shots, and the BEACH!

So...I realized today that I'm leaving in a little less than two months......as an Italian Tyler Lucas would say..."FWHAT?!?" This is insanity.
I've gotten some responses to my support letters and I'm still working on all that. But I recently got a job at Aeropostale! My good friend Kelsey Wiggs works there and she recommended me and basically got me the job. I'm really excited, everyone I've met so far is really nice. I've only worked one day, but it was good!
TBB sent me my departure prep package! I got all the information about where I'll be and when. I'm getting so excited. But I have all these forms to fill out. So I've been filling out visa applications and signing things and all that jazz. Great fun.
One of the things I got from TBB was the list of SHOTS I need to get before I leave. Yay. Haha. I have received 7 shots to date, and I will probably be getting 3 more, and I have to take a pill for one vaccine. I have my malaria prescription. So I'll have had 10 shots by the time I leave--worth it if I don't get sick though!!
I also have my reading list, and I've started reading the first book: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It's a little strange, but very interesting.
So the family's been at the beach since Friday--we're at Holden Beach and it's so nice. Caitlin and Carson were able to come down for a few days. They left today. I've been reading the whole time. Joshua is having the time of his life--kayaking, fishing, swimming, spending time with the family--he is loving every minute of it! We haven't been to the beach in about 4 years, so we are really enjoying ourselves.
Next post will be my itinerary for TBB--it's sort of exciting. :)

Ah Summer...

I love summer. I love being able to sit at home and reread books (that I've already read ten times...). I have rented six movies from RedBox (I love that thing)& watched all of them (I didn't rent all 6 at once though). I love being able to randomly go to Starbucks with my friends throughout the day.
So I still have TONS of Italy pictures that I'm still going through. I think I have....3 albums on Facebook, and I'm not even done with Day 4 of my trip!
Anyway, here are some more of my favorites. I was really happy with the pictures I got from this trip. (I feel like I'm starting to sound like a blogger...) (I know I am after that comment!)

These are 3 of my best friends from school, Annetta, Kristin, and Sarah Beth. We're on top of the Duomo in this picture. I'm not really sure what I'd do without them. They have kept me sane (mostly) through the years at Trinity.

This is me and my good friend Kelsey at the Trevi Fountain. Kels was my first friend at Trinity. We both started in 1st grade. I will miss her so much next year. Kelsey has so much joy and always finds a way to make me smile. She also is REALLY funny when she's tired: she cries every time she laughs and gets really punchy. Love it.

This is me and my friend Daniel in the gardens at the Pitti Palace in Florence. Daniel is hilarious (isn't his laugh just precious?!), and there's an inside joke in my class that he and I are married. So I call him Hubby and he calls me Wifey. He's mad that I'm not going to UNC with him next year.... :/

This is my good friend Tyler. We decided our Senior Superlatives as a class (because there were only 14 of us...it's not that difficult), and Tyler's was "The Butt of Every Joke." Which is doubly amusing because one of our favorite jokes was that Tyler (affectionately called Ty) has no butt....No but seriously, Tyler is one of the funniest people I know, and he's super sweet. I will miss him a lot next year!
OH about this picture....Annetta, Sarah Beth, and Daniel shaved Ty's head while we were in Italy and had the BRILLIANT idea of doing the Martin Luther look before it was all gone...They brought Tyler in wearing a sheet and carrying a Bible. Daniel had everyone sing the Doxology and then Annetta "unveiled" Tyler. It was SO funny. Definitely one of the best moments on the trip. :)

So I have sent out my support letters! And I am getting my TBB information soon (they call it a departure prep packet). Today I had the sudden desire to just GO, which was really exciting for me because...well between a wedding and graduation and Italy, I haven't had much time for it to really sink in that I am actually doing this. And it's finally starting to and I'm so excited! Which is a relief! I was pretty homesick at one point in Italy and I kept thinking, "What if I hate it? What if I shouldn't go? What am I thinking?"
No worries though. I'm looking forward to it so much, even though I know it will be an intense challenge.
More pictures later. :)