LT13 closing ceremonies

Tears and snot pour down my face as I weep, head in my hands as my Brother and Sister in Christ support me on either side, their comforting hands solid on my shaking back.  Around me - the masses of my friends, singing praises and promises to God, paying little attention to me.  I had been holding it in all evening, ducking into the bathroom to cry and hoping that my friends didn't notice my tear-stained eyes, but here where there was no chance of well-meaning but unwanted comfort I was letting it all out.

"Oh God! Why?! Why? Those arrows, aimed right for my heart, for the deepest oldest wounds. 'You are forgotten.  You are so unimportant those you look up to forget about your very presence.  You are a child.  You know nothing.' They say, they shout to the very rooftops, trumpet to the tops of mountains, proclaiming shame and fear over me. Why?"

"There is a room locked deep in your heart that you haven't given me the key to.  Your victories this summer mean nothing if that room is not unlocked and dealt with now.  Will you trust me?"

Hesitatingly, "Yes."

"Take my hand"

We approach a plain wooden door, leading to the dungeons of my heart, where all of the deep evil lives.  I hand God the key, and watch as he fits it into the lock.  It is as he turns it that I realize I had been wrong.  It isn't a door to the dungeons, but to the treasury, and rather than being plain and wooden it is made of gold and encrusted with jeweled flowers and birds.

***

'The door slid open.  A blast of grief, of the deaths of children, of crippling diseases that took beauty at once but withheld death; of unconsummated love, of love lost or twisted or grown to hate; of noble deeds that proved useless, that broke the hearts of their doers; of betrayal without reason, of guilt without penance, of all the human miseries that have ever occurred; all this struck them, like the breath of a slaughterhouse, of the blow of a murderer... just this she had feared, had half-expected; yet the reality was much worse than what her tired mind had been able to prepare for her.

'Greetings, said Maur's head.  I did not think to have the pleasure of seeing you again....

'She opened her mouth to gasp, and despair rushed in, bitter as aloes.  Tears filled her eyes, but she pushed herself away from the threshold... "This---is why---we've been---so---tired---all along."

'"Yes." The sibilant hissed in the silence like adders' tongues...

'"We must get rid of Maur's head...." She walked purposefully up to the low platform where Maur's skull lay; the shadows in the eyesockets glinted... She set her shoulder in one of the ridged hollows at the base of the skull and heaved.  Nothing happened but that Maur laughed louder; its laughter crashed in her head like thunder, and her vision was stained red...

'You shall not bully me again! Aerin said, and, almost not knowing what she did, pulled Gonturan free of her scabbard and slapped the flat of her across the base of Maur's head where once the backbone had joined.  Blue fire leaped up in sharp tongues that lit the entire vault, with its many shelves and cupboards and niches, and doors into further strongrooms.  It was a ghostly unhealthy color, but the skull shrieked, and there was a crack like a mountain splitting, and the skull fell of its pedestal to the floor....

'Maur had lost its ascendance once Gonturan had struck it, and while the skull still stank, it seemed almost an organic stench now, under the open sky; no more than the faint rotting smell of ancient carrion.'
~The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley

***

Lies instead of truth, despair instead of hope, darkness instead of beauty, were in the treasure places of my heart. The dragons' heads that I put in places of honor still send out whispers of lies, but it's different now. They are losing their ascendancy in my heart as they are attacked by the Word of God, which is the sword of the spirit. And that gives me hope.

On heros (and heroines)

I've been thinking about the concept of the hero, recently, thinking about what heroics mean, who heros are. I've spent much of my life reading stories, and much of those stories are about heros. Granted, some were bildungsromans (coming of age novels), but many of the books I've read over the years involved a hero. And those books and stories are all well and good. The hope, the wish to be a hero is a good one. We are all unique, and we all have a unique role to play in the story that God has created, and who's to say that I'm not being a hero to someone, just by living my life the way I am, just by keeping to the course that I've set for myself? Who's to say that my smallest decision will not affect someone's life for good forever?

I've turned my back on the classical idea of the hero. I can never be that kind of person, who is so certain and sure about their mission, who sweeps in with strength and courage and saves the day in a flash of glamor and prestige. I'm not the protagonist in a typical fantasy novel, who has adventures and is constantly within an inch of their life, but in the end is victorious, like you always knew they would be. I just am not. I am too unsure, too full of messiness, too tired, too something to be that kind of hero. But. But, there is a kind of hero that I can be.

I've read most, if not all of Robin McKinley's books, and I would recommend them to you if you like fantasy (not Sunshine, or Deerskin, though. Those have bad parts). Her heroines (as well as the hero or two she's written about) are not in the typical hero mold. Not strong, in the typical sense of the word. Not confidant (in fact, often small and insecure). Not certain, or glamorous. The people they help often see them with distrust at first. They are outsiders, they are different. And they only do what they can because they must; there is no one else there, no one else to even try to save the country, village, dragon, world, community. They do what they can, because they must, and it turns out to be enough. They endure, because it is the only thing they can do, and they act when it is the only thing they can do.  In their heroics, they utterly expend themselves. They give up every last bit of their energy in pursuit of their goal, and if it is not enough, then they are dead, but the goal was important enough to them to warrant their last strength. I can't be a typical heroine, but I can be a Robin McKinley heroine. I can't face my fights with certainty in my own prowess, but I can face them with courage and because I must. I can't fight my battles with hope of winning every single one of them, but I can fight them. And I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, but that's okay. God has made me to be me, and my actions flow out of my character, and I have to hope that is enough. I have to hope that my actions, even actions filled with uncertainty, will be enough. And if I am tired all the time, then that is the price I pay.

Who's to say that my life, living quietly for the ones I love, is not more heroic than a man who rescues someone from a burning building? Who's to say that every time that you chose to deny yourself and do the harder thing, you are not being a hero? Who gets to decide?

Who is more heroic, the man who does one courageous deed one time and is forever hailed as a hero, or the man who lives a quiet courageous life, holding out hope in circumstances that tempt him to despair?

There are so many unsung heros in this world, and many who deserve awards and accolades and plaques from their local authorities never receive them. But they are still heros.  James, who has a plaque from the city of Kalamazoo honoring him for his heroic actions (if you don't know the story, ask me about it sometime), doesn't believe that he was the real hero in the situation. He applauds another, who didn't get recognized, but who, he believes, did more to save a life than he did.  The thing is, he was just in the right place in the right time, and did the right thing. And got called a hero for it. His friend, who was also in the right place at the right time and did the right thing, didn't.

How do you know that you are not a hero? It takes courage to face your demons over and over again. It takes courage to live your day-to-day life without despair.  

Old Books

Thinking about wisdom and love and old books tonight.  Did you know that a whole bunch of my favorite books from my childhood are free online?  Louisa May Alcott, L.M. Montgomery, Hugh Lofting, etc.  It's simultaneously fantastic/slightly bad.  Because I just want to read them instead of studying for my tests next week.  So yeah.

Omm nom nom

I'm totally eating peanut butter straight from the jar right now.

I stayed up till 2 last night because I discovered that a lot of L.M. Montgomery's books are public domain now, and so are all free online.

I have no regrets.

Adventures in acquiring textbooks

I had a fun time this morning.  I decided that time had come to go buy my textbooks.  So I braved the heavy rain and walked the ten minutes to the campus bookstore.  After some searching, I found my textbooks and got in line.  At this point, I had a nagging feeling I should check and make sure I had my debit card.  I didn't.  I had left it on my desk after I ordered books off of Amazon yesterday.  So I left my books at the customer service desk and walked back to the dorm in the rain.  I got my card, and went back to the bookstore.  At this point, I'm pretty wet, umbrella notwithstanding, but I'm not upset.  It's just kind of "oh well."  I get my books from the desk and get in line.  I'm next in line when all the registers in the store and the adjacent store crash at the same time.  I just start laughing at this, because it's just rather ridiculous.  They fix the problem, and the guy checks out my books, I pay, and he starts putting them in bags and telling me about their return policy.  At this point he notices that one of my books hasn't rung up ("It looks like the store tried to give you a free book!").  But all of the debit/credit card readers are down because they are resetting them.  I wait a few minutes, and they're able to get everything set and I finally go back to the dorm with my books that took me an hour to get.  It was ridiculous, and I wasn't even mad.  I just find it funny that there were so many problems.

I always forget that no matter how worn out and tired I feel, curling up with a good book will always make me feel better.

Books occasionally make me go Bwahahaha!

Sometimes, when I finish a book, I'm just happy. Also, as I was reading the last chapter of the book I just finished, I came across a paragraph that made me laugh really hard and go "Reading all 300+ pages up until this point would have worth it just for this paragraph!" Also, I'm sorry if my sentence structure is kind of weird right now; the book I just finished had very interesting sentences, and now I'm thinking in the same sort of weird structure. Yeah. If you're interested, the book is called Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley. I would recommend it.

RIP Diana Wynne Jones. I didn't read many of your books, but I absolutely adored Howl's Moving Castle. You will be missed.

RIP Redwall

A small piece of my childhood died on Saturday. I can remember listening to the audiobook of Redwall with Jesse and my mom, breathless with excitement as Matthias fought the evil snake in the quarry. As I grew older, I actually read the books, and continued to check out audiobooks to listen to while making bracelets. I've listened to some of those audiobooks so many times that now when I read the books, I can hear Brian Jacques' voice in my head, reading to me. And while the plot lines followed the same pattern, I still enjoyed reading the new Redwall novels every couple of years. Brian Jacques, you will be sorely missed.

Thanksgiving!

I'm so pumped about Thanksgiving. I'll get to see my family, and eat delicious food, and be around my family, and not worry about schoolwork. I'll be able to go shopping and buy Christmas decorations and everything! I'm excited! I'm also sleepy right now, so I'm going to add a thing that's been appearing on Facebook, so this will be longer.

I've read 34 of these, and started 5.

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo