-A smushed piece of dialogue from Incredibles.

I am very tired.

Physically exhausted from running about campus and then running about dancing and just running around in general.

Mentally exhausted from thermodynamics and middle voice and congressional procedures.

Emotionally exhausted from researching/thinking about abortion. And from a long week of being, for the most part, rather alone. I'm just beginning to realize what an abhorrent loner I am at school. The belatedness of this realization is also making me realize how dense I am. The combination is very tiring, perhaps more to the ego than the emotions.

Conscience-ally exhausted from the fact that I've been putting minimal effort into my government class and still scraped an A out of the first exam (purely by the good grace of the teacher. Yes, there's a great big pile of smoldering coals on my head right now. Boy, does grace sting.)

Spiritually exhausted from thinking about myself. A few days ago we read Romans 12 in family devotions - "be not conformed to the world." As I look at various options in my life or even just ways to live the present situation, all I find is more worldly conformity in myself. I'm ready to put my head down and cry. Oh wait, I've already done that.

For all that, I'm really not depressed. Tired, yes (I should think that comes across pretty clearly) - but I'm starting to actually like being tired. It's better than feeling full of energy which I know should have been spent on something productive.

I'm precenting Sabbath. Someone told me something about that day which will affect my attire, but I won't say what.

I shall leave you with a quote from Eliot:

"As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing."

Inky just solved 3/5 of tonight's selection of impossible Chemistry problems - on her own. Booyah. Eat that, usually-thick-regarding-Chemistry brain.

Inky also missed three successive Greek classes due to sickness and then recovering in other classes due to sickness. Inky puts head on table and sobs. Fortunately the material covered was comparative/superlative adjectives and more genitive/dative uses. She thinks she'll survive. Inky will be going to Greek class tomorrow.

Inky has two advisor appointments tomorrow. Her tentative schedule for the next fall definitely includes Analytical Writing, Greek 3, Animal Biology, and Physics I or Genetics. In addition to that she may take Intro to Music (that's honors w/ Speed... woot). She may have to take Chemistry 2 this fall, although she is going to get on her knees and beg to postpone it 'till Spring '10, 'cause otherwise she has to take it with a clothes-wringer-like professor (I'm having flashbacks of Chem 1... oh wait, I'm taking Chem 1) and she'd really like to take it in the Spring when she can at least choose... oh, and taking Chem 2 in the Fall would almost completely nix dance. Inky sobs yet again.

Inky should fill out scholarship applications but she's considering just gritting her teeth and paying what she's already paying next year 'cause she's too tired to think about scholarships and she probably won't get anything anyway. Someone please come and kick her...

Inky saw August Rush. She approves with much enthusiasm. Soundtrack = awesome too, by the way.

Inky's best grades are in her Greek and Philosophy classes (although the latter is Logic, which Keith would tell me shouldn't be in the Philosophy department). The fact that these are the least related to her major is mildly disconcerting.

Inky needs to get off and get back to work. Ta!

I went outside for a bit of a stroll around quarter-to-seven this morning. It was beginning to be light, but still rather cold - the cars outside were frozen over and the grass was a little stiff with frost. I was wearing a poncho/cloak-like coat which was brown and made of some fuzzy stuff you usually find in blankets (hence its awesome status in the realm of coats). I say this not to provide you with a Suedepthian description of my attire, but merely as a possible explanation for what followed: because no matter how comfortable the coat, I look rather funny in it.

Anyway, so out I go, whether to clear my head or just blatantly avoid homework stuff you can decide. I am halfway down the road that runs the length of our property when I realize that there are six or seven deer in the neighbor's yard and half of them are crowding in the road, skittishly eying me. Well, I'm feeling in a good mood (benevolent towards the critters and all that) so I decide, 'ah, may as well just walk about on my property and not go chase them off.' So I turn off the road and begin wandering about on the flat part of our land which we've dubbed The Soccer Field (not in any way to be confused with The Gully, which is on one end of our property, or The Trees, which are nearest to the house). Mostly I look at the ground, now and then looking to the sky to (jealously?) stare at the half-moon which is blue with early-morning fog. 'Midst my musings I get the crawling sensation I'm being watched, so I whip about (oh the hair-whipping coat-swirling drama!) and BAM.

Messrs Deer, Deer, Deer, and Whitetail (the only one of them who was not an immediate family relation) with a few of the Deer sisters are all lining the border between our property and the next and just staring.

I don't mean 'yeah, they're sort of facing my direction, so if I play this up in my mind a bit they could all be looking at me...' When I say staring, I mean STARING.

I could feel their malice even with The Gully between us. Weren't they just...all the way over...there? Aren't deer supposed to...run away? Like, as in, 'FEAR THE HUMAN!'?

I was so startled I took a step back (to better assess the situation, of course), and they each took a step forward! Sensing that something dramatic was about to occur, I took two more steps backward and held my breath. Two steps forward took the deer.

My dramatic-occurrence-sensor pulsing wildly, I glared at the deer with all the 'fear me! I am human!' sentiment I could muster. The words You shall not pass! lingered in my throat, ready to spring from my lips, but I had no staff to kathunk in defiance, no weapon at all save my mp3 player and a nearby soccer ball. It seemed that the words Er, now, I'm sure we can all be reasonable here were more ready in the coming...

"Or perhaps, you know, equal opportunity for man and beast to traipse about these grassy hills, surely that's a noble sentiment... Er, yes, quite noble, and I'll be going now," I said aloud to the looming deer, who merely took a few more steps toward me. The Gully was still between them and me, but their malice was felt even across that distance. "Mind The Pit," I said helpfully, gesturing towards the six-plus foot deep cavern my brothers and I had labored on over the years. With any luck, one would fall in, and I could interrogate him later (hopefully Messr. Whitetail, as he looked to be the most skittish of the lot). That would make for an impassioned scene, and maybe I could get one of my siblings to play the good cop...

My mind buzzing with battle plans and in no way adopting a retreat mentality (of course), I turned and walked calmly toward the house, keenly aware of eyes following me. When I was to The Trees, I turned and found the deer slowly retreating as well. Perhaps I had intimidated them as well - but I think not, for I could see their smug faces and almost hear their equally-smug remarks:

"Ha ha! We showed her! No one's gonna mess with the deer again!"

"Yeah, that showed her--"

"Shut up, Whitetail, you were on the verge of bolting the whole time!"

"Was not!"

Chasing deer seemed better than the chemistry that awaited me inside. I sighed for a pair of good running shoes and an electric cattle prod as I made my way slowly beneath the trees and into the garage.

(The events given in this story are true, if perhaps dramatised or even (though improbably) exaggerated.)

[for context, here's something from the blurb on the back of the book: Having a guardian angel as a house-guest can be a little awkward at times. After all, how do you introduce him to your friends? But when a poor mortal gets caught up in the Cold War between the Celestial and Infernal Powers, there's no telling what will happen next. Like finding yourself in an elevator with its control stuck on DOWN!

Tricked into betraying his guardian angel, our valiant narrator from The Devil's Hunting Grounds (book one in the trilogy) finds himself in spiritual hot water--with his very own copy of the Beginner's Guide to Hell to peruse and a decidedly peculiar assortment of fellow guests in a very strange hotel.

His frantic efforts to receive a Celestial Visa out of Hell seem doomed to failure... as shown by this conversation with two of the 'Powers' of the place:]

"...[Getting to Heaven from Hell] is, as I said, the task of an artist. And you must never cease for a moment to think of the work upon which you are engaged. Yourself must be your only study, as you strive to create your greatest masterpiece of all--a self patterned within and without to the demands of your own soul's urgent need; a self cleansed of all extraneous interests and irrelevant preoccupations; a self stamped through and through with the single-hearted will to submit and be saved. You have got to make the purest thing you ever made, unsullied in its passionate integrity by the perversions thronging around you--the utterly devoted, utterly given, seventimes purified self; of your own devising, of your own fashioning, of your own cherishing; the product of your toil and the fruit of your torment; the one, true, pure, immortal sacrifice, ever, in His Mercy, acceptable unto Him."

"But this is impossible," I said. "It can't be done."

"It is weakness to shrink," said Coffer.

"I don't mean that it's difficult, when I say impossible," I cried in some consternation. "I mean that it's inherently impossible. The whole recommendation is self-contradictory."

"That may be so," said Jaffer, "but I warned you that it was a way for exceptional men only."

"For lunatics," I shouted. "Self-willed self-conquest is impossible. If it's self-willed, it isn't self-conquest; and if it's self-conquest, it isn't self-willed. The unaided self can't will self-abnegation. You can't rely upon yourself in transcending self-dependence. You can't yourself create a sacrificed self; for the self that would do the creating is the self that has to be sacrificed. Language and logic are outraged in your advice. It's nonsensical."

"But it's the only way," said Coffer.

"For Hell," said Jaffer, "is the domain of the self-reliant."

"And you are in Hell," said Coffer.

"Hell is wholly inhabited by the self-dependent."

"And you are in Hell," repeated Coffer.

"There is no escape from self-service, where the attempt to escape is the greatest self-service of all."

"That is what Hell means," said Coffer.

"There is no refuge in submission, where the search for a refuge is the rebellion of the will."

"That is the nature of Hell," said Coffer.

"It's intolerable," I said, almost screaming the words, driven desperate by their oppressive iterations. "There must be something to turn to."

"There is nothing to turn to," said Jaffer, "For nothing exists here except isolated, unresponsive, independent selves; individuals who will take nothing and who can give nothing. For practical purposes, only the self exists."

"Were it not so," said Coffer, "it would not be Hell."

"There can be no self-disciplines where charities are impossible--"

"And where worship is self-indulgence."

"There can be no self-transcendence, when you are locked in an eternal isolation of self-hood."

"Which is what makes Hell Hell," said Coffer.

"On the Earth, you can flee to the Church in penitence."

"But here all penitence is self-seeking."

"On the Earth you can cry for mercy--"

"But here the cry is rebellion.

"On the Earth you can seek to nourish the soul by hearing the word, by sacrament and by prayer--"

"But here you are cut off from Grace--"

"Shut out from salvation--"

"Numbered among the dead."

"Stop, stop!" I cried, utterly overwhelmed by the pressure of their comminations. "If I can do nothing else, at least I can reject your teaching."

"You cannot even do that," said Jaffer.

-Oscar Wilde-

I got my hair cut today - nothing drastic or modish or stupendously striking, just took off the dead ends, etc... but our (lovely) chatty hairdresser and just the general event of bothering about appearance prompted the quote.

I'm sick. I've got some sort of wretched variation on a head-cold.

(That should so be a musical piece. I can see it already:

This Thursday! At! The! Seretean! Random Sponsor of OSU! Is! Presenting!
Themes And Variations On A Head Cold
(feat. B.L. Frogge, tuba soloist.)

Anyway, being a sick is nasty and horrible when you've got to sit through classes and you realize you forgot kleenex and then the nasty sensation that your nose is about to drip sets in... I shall not elaborate on that any further, but suffice it to say the moderate aching-head-pounding makes Chemistry and Political Science half as enjoyable as usual (and since their enjoyability level was minimal already, you can imagine the pleasantness level...) My Greek teacher let me sit and observe today, which made me deeply grateful, because that hour brightens my day but I felt very much unfit for translation.

You may ask why I bothered to go to class since I was feeling so miserable. Well... a little of it comes from my itty-bitty scrap of a stoic's nature. (Hey! It isn't hurting all that bad! is something I tell myself and then presently that thought change to Hey! It really isn't hurting all that bad! so I've this funny feeling that my pain tolerance is all skewed simply because I've experienced certain forms of pain more than others.)

The truth of it is, none of today's classes require attendance, so technically I could have stayed home. But I couldn't miss chemistry - we have homework due every day and it's already tough enough without getting behind - and chemistry involves a lot of math, which I can handle as long as I keep doing it and don't fall behind. Chemistry is ten minutes before Greek; Political Science is ten minutes after. I had to go to Political Science because my teacher didn't give us any sort of schedule in the syllabus - we have managed to pinpoint an exam date! ...well, if "either next Wednesday or Friday" counts as pinpointing - and so I determined to go to that class just in case he actually got around to telling us something about the exam. (He did, to his credit, and I'm very glad I went.) Having determined that I would go to those two classes, I was left with two options regarding the fifty minutes between chem and polysci: a) go to Greek class and get a day brightener regardless of whether Mr. E listens to my pitiful pleas for a quiet day, or b) go sit in the library and sniffle and feel generally miserable and useless and a nuisance (because I'm disturbing other people with my disgusting, cold-related noises). I went to Greek and was much cheered by the abundance of dork-friends and indirect verbs.

Sickness is also nasty and horrible when you're walking around campus and your head starts swimming and breath won't come and your throat starts burning...

But the funny thing is, I'm almost glad that I'm sick. It's harder to enjoy most things, yes, but the things you do enjoy are much more enjoyable than they ever seem on healthy days. Taste of a good, spicy soup seems stronger and more savoury - the green tea with ginger and peach was much more soothing than ever before...

...

That's all I have to say.

The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God.

Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you."

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it. No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the LORD will return.

They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee.

I think it speaks well for itself--especially the emphasis on the glorious goodness of God to His people, the "ransomed," whom He bought from the Way of Wicked Fools, mercifully placed on His Way of Holiness, whose clinging tatters of sorrow and sighing (and sickness and sin and death) he utterly vanquished, and whom he hounds with his gladness and joy ("goodness and mercy shall follow me all my days," says Psalm 23).

Mondays are supposed to be depressing and dreadful, but mine is full of a hope and joy borne of these precious words from a loving heavenly Father, and I pray yours is also.