Dad requested a post so here it is :D
To make that face, dad, just type a : and then directly following type a D ;)
So It's the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Something very important is happening today for people who follow the Christian faith. I think it could even be an important time for people people who just like to gather with family.
This is my first year not home for Easter. We usually spend it at Grandma Jo's and we eat ham and all the traditional stuff and everyone plays Euchre. I Really miss playing Euchre. I have half a mind to find 3 people and teach them all how to play. It would take forever and it would probably be rather fruitless. Besides, finding 3 people might be a bit difficult.
Maddy, the girl I've been staying with in London, is leaving for her family Easter today. Pete's in The Netherlands or something until Thursday. Luke is working. I'm on a bus tomorrow night for Edinburgh. It'll be like when I took the night train to NY. Only I'm going to Scotland.
I don't think there's internet on that bus so I'll probably just sleep. Maybe jot down any funny instances as they happen.
Guess what else? I'm house shopping.
3 friends and I are going to get a house and live there. We want to move in in less than 30 days. Can it be done, you ask? Of course. Things just work out for us.
There's really only been one legit prospect put forward and we're honestly running out of time. So I got on line last night about midnight my time and started my own search from a random flat in London. I found 3 really solid prospects. I didn't stop looking until about 4 am. I'm really into it. It's hard to find a good 4 bedroom place. So Lydia's going to investigate. Hopefully this works.
Josh and I are talking seriously about what we're going to do when he's home in 334 days and when I graduate 2 months after that. He'll be home from Iraq in 142 days. I'll be home from Europe in 108 days. Lydia and Lori will fly into London in 30 days. I'm leaving for Edinburgh in 2. I don't know if breaking everything down into how many days left is healthy or not. It helps with some things (when Joshua will be home because I can see the numbers shrink) but it really makes some things more sad then they need to be this soon (leaving Europe).
So my favorite Beatles album is Abbey Road. It changed my 14 year old life when I was in 8th grade and the band director said, "You like the Beatles? Take this." That weekend I went to Kokomo with my mom and I listened to that album back to back the whole 2 hour ride there, back, and most of the time in between. I have not been the same since. Cheesy, I know.
But this week I went there. I looked up directions to that cross walk and I took the Jubilee Line to St. James Green and the sun was shining and there were so many flowers around you could smell them in the air and it was warm and I was listening to "Here Comes The Sun" which is possibly not only the Best Beatles song ever, but one of the best songs to come out of popular music. But I might be partial.
It was a short walk from the tube station and I swear I was getting choked up. Good thing I was wearing sunglasses, huh? But for as long as I can remember the Beatles have played a prominent roll in my musical life and bonding with my dad. Now, I'm not gonna get too gushy here, but you know the only problem with the song Hey Jude? The radio won't play it twice in a row. Anyway I got to the cross walk and I hesitated for a moment and all the cars stopped as I stepped out and I watched my feet pass over the wide white lines. I looked to my right and saw a very different time in a very familiar place.
I wasn't there long. I didn't as a stranger to take a picture of me walking across it. I just sat on one of the short walls for a few moments and took in the atmosphere. Sigh.
That same day I went to the British Library. I saw things like the Magna Carta. A Gutenberg Bible (there's actually one at the Bodleian but I don't think they would have let me look through that. It's a little more special than the complete works of Flavius Jofephus.) I saw hand written scores of The Messiah, stuff by Beethoven (very cool cuz it's just as crazy looking and you'd expect), Chopin, I saw Mozart's marriage certificate. I saw Captain Cook's travel log. Pages from di Vinci's notebook (they look a lot like miiiine ;). I saw star charts from the 900's of Chinese origin. Early recordings of Confucius' wisdom. A note by Sylvia Plath. A small section on the Beatles. Maps. Tons of religious texts from Buddhist to Islamic to Christian. Stuff on the monarchy in England. Shakespeare. Beethoven's tuning fork.
The room was very dim with special lighting for each individual piece. Each case was kept at a specific temperature. No photographs. No food or drink. Preservation is key. It was such a small place but I spent well over 2 hours looking at every single piece. There weren't many people and it was reverently quiet. I could pour over each bit of parchment and revel in the fact that something as finite and fragile as a piece of paper could have as much power as it does. Music. Exploration. Ideas that shock and cause uproar. Contracts. Feelings expressed in private. We can track how the world was shaped. We can track how our minds were shaped. We can track how our faiths were shaped. We can track how the human condition has developed and yet we're still just looking at bits of paper that some individual thought to scrawl all over.
Huh. Paper is powerful.
So. I have some work to do. And I'm hungry. And where am I going? I can't believe where I am.
I eat an orange about every day for breakfast. And I think I've found the perfect way to have it peeled. It's a quite unique and efficient way using a knife. I find I like my orange best when cut into chunks, mixed with apples, Muesli, and Greek style yogurt. I've been having my oranges that way since middle of Hilary term but I didn't realize until now that while I'm here, trekking through England, that's how my orange world would take shape. It's new and fitting. It's delicious and still a bit messy but it's comprehendable, manageable, delightful.
I feel like oranges are finally in season.
No comments:
Post a Comment