Soon to Sydney, Mate!

We're quickly gaining on the end of June and the start of July, and I can hardly believe it.

Well, to be perfectly honest, the fact that summer is 1/3 of the way over doesn't bother me all that much. Also, the quicker June goes by, the quicker our trip to Sydney for WYD will arrive.
Though my excitement for this trip was previously, let's say, sub-par, the faster the days go by, the more pumped I get! I'm sure my family has gotten tired of my pessimistic attitude about some of the people I'll be spending time with on this trip (my sister included) but I've somehow become determined to make the best of it. Hey, there's a first time for everything, right? I'm convinced this is going to be an awesome experience.

I continue with the stress of figuring all of the stuff out for Ireland, especially the stress of finances. Though some where along the way I fully decided that I wasn't going to kill myself with worry. If that Great Man Upstairs wanted me to go through with this trip, and I'm pretty much convinced He does, then He'll continue to see me through. All I need is to store up a reserve of self-confidence to get me through my time there. I'm pretty sure I can do it.

And I finally have a job. It isn't much, but it's something.

Pending Decision to use Bad Grammar

Have decided that I am too sentimental.
Also, laugh waaay too loudly and too often overly-caffeinated.
Need more sleep. Less sugar.
Should wear glasses more often.
Could use more sun.
And definitely, definitely ready to be done with this studying crap.
Definitely.

Ode to an Apple Tree

It's true I spend too much time lamenting, but it's sad to see you go.

Your blossoms are all freshness and joy. They are the assurance of pleasure and of hope. They bring to mind all that the future holds and the lovely renew of promise each year.

But as the wind blows your petals away, each one caught to the ground like so many pale stars in the green grass, I am reminded of the journey ahead of me. That hope often fades; resilience to life's great changes is the key to self-preservation. The sun continues to shine and the rain falls to erase your very existence; it will be alright. But it won't be the same. Over anything, the ability to pause, to capture, to press tightly to my chest this tiny moment in time, is what I want; also what I will never have. So instead I compromise, to sit beneath your branches, soak it all into my skin with a kind of mad obsession.

You'll be gone soon and it may be a long time before I see you again.

Corner Coffee

Coffee Shop Open

They charge $4- for a small blended (Fair Trade) coffee, but you really can't beat the atmosphere, (sometimes) conducive to productive studying. Here is something I'll miss. Lordie, I've really got to stop missing the things I'll miss before they're actually gone.
But people tend to ask me how I stand going to school in such a small town. And I could very well tell them that small, homey coffee shops are a very good reason. Who can beat your own table, chair and patch of sunlight?

Lost brain. Missed badly. If found, please contact.

I honestly don't know what's wrong with me.

Finishing up the semester shouldn't be this hard. But today I felt very near a break down-- it just kind of hit me out of no where. When I'm here in the apartment I have absolutely no motivation, and end up doing everything at the very last minute. And then, it all accumulates until I'm about ready to scream. So as I scrambled to finish a paper today and realized with terror that some important paperwork was supposed to be sent in three days ago... and finally I made it to a professor's office to hand in an assignment... I have a bad feeling that he could tell I was very close to tears.
This happens every year! I really should be used to it by now, I should be able to handle it. But instead, I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off, completely disorganized and bewildered. My head is in the clouds, my mind is far off somewhere else. I can't concentrate. I can't finish anything. I'm sloooowly losing my grip on reality. And I've no idea just how I'm going to make it through this summer.

And it doesn't help that I keep reading the handbooks they send me from the Burren, and getting lost wishing I was anywhere but here.

Five-year-olds

Okay, seriously.
One of the assistant profs who happens to teach my Arts Management class keeps starting off with the line, "when I was your age..." and the dude can't be any more than 28. Honestly. It's almost like he's ASKING his students to make fun of his age. I keep thinking he's going to continue with the "... I had to walk to school up hill both ways in a blinding snow storm" or something like that.
Maybe I've gotten horribly uppity in the last three years, but it's starting to feel a bit belittling. I know this professor has a heck of a lot more experience in the art world that I do, but the phrase within its context gives me the impression that he thinks he's addressing five-year-olds. We are adults, after all.
Yep, that does sound really uppity. I guess I've grown quite a large ego. But I mean, seriously guys! You want college students to act like adults? Then treat us like adults, please! I'm really getting tired of the lazy, irresponsible, partying and drink-until-you-pass-out stereotype! I actually do study and work for good grades! So there! (as I cross my arms and pout like a kindergartener.)

Initially...

So here I go!
Officially accepted to the Burren College of Art in the Republic of Ireland.
The initial excitement has faded into a sort of "ohmygosh I'm-actually-going-to-Europe-and-
now-I-need-to-figure-all-of-this-international-stuff-out! Aaah!" (though the excitement is still there, just accompanied by skin-crawling nervousness.)
As long as I know where I'm going and what I'm doing and can sort-of figure out the currency exchange deal... I think I can handle it. Finances are a problem, as always. But I knew that when I initially decided to apply. ---and hey, finances are ALWAYS a problem.
I don't really want to ramble on about this. And anyway, there will be a lot more rambling in posts when I actually get there.
And besides that, there's so much to do between then and now that it'll be a while before the really scary-nervousness catches up to me.

Oh, Ireland.

Why, oh why, oh why?

Where are you?
Because I am honestly getting impatient.

Lonely, Lonely

Water water on the seeds
To my left they rose and leaf
To my right cross Seven Seas

Maybe maybe they'll stay true
My seeds will cross and then take root
And leave you to an empty room
Lonely lonely that is you
Lonely lonely that is you

Paper paper obsolete
How will you reach out to me
I thought you'd ask me not to leave
Lonely lonely that is me
Lonely lonely that is me

Distance makes the heart grow weak
So that the mouth can barely speak
Except to those who hide their needs
And I have read the golden seal
That tell of how the seedlings feel
Reminds my heart what love can yield

By my only things are clear
Baby boy I'm staying here
Lonely lonely that was you
Lonely and so untrue

-Fiest

Abandoning Society

So here I am, asking the question that I've asked more than a dozen times since becoming a college student.
What is this world coming to?
When an "art student" at an Ivy League college can "artificially induce miscarriages" and use it (whatever part of it-- film? Photography? Hell, I don't care) as "ART" is the day I would rather crawl into a hole somewhere and not come out again.
I am seriously considering becoming a hermit.
It would be very lonely, but at the moment it appears the lesser of two evils.

This is what the art student, Aliza Shvart, is quoted as saying about her project:
"The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming -- an authorial act. It is the intention of this piece to destabilize the locus of that authorial act, and in doing so, reclaim it from the heteronormative structures that seek to naturalize it." (courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.)

I'm just not going to comment on that at all, actually. My point with this post was simply to state my terror (not shock or outrage, I've already covered that; this is outright fear) caused by this one incident in general relation to today's culture.

This affects me deeply. It affects me deeply because I can see quite clearly how hurtful and destructive it is to other people. Of course, the obvious response from this individual is, "I wasn't hurting anyone" and she wasn't; not physically.
I just wonder why, when we have wars, school shootings, murder, suicide, hate crimes and children starving to death in third-world countries, why we have to harm each other emotionally this way too. This has the potential of being physically damaging to a number of people. I want to know why this Yale art student thinks it's necessary.
Perhaps there's some deep, underlying concept that I'm just not grasping.

I won't rail on and on about it, I promise. But as an art student, constantly submerged in the idea that art should be "shocking" (a word usually associated with the term avant-garde, which to me is just utter nonsense) and "provoking," I start to feel like I'm drowning in it.
I want to know what happened to art, that though challenging, was stimulating, that was constructive to society and culture-- that, I don't know, call me crazy-- actually reflected the good in ourselves? You know, the kind that held up a mirror to our souls and reflected an inkling of truth and beauty?
Pshah. Far be it from today's society to be at all interested in truth and beauty. That's so last century.

But I mean, if you want peace, happiness and tolerance--the kind of things that are currently considered chic to today's activists-- it CANNOT BE A ONE-WAY STREET. We can't just promise to not blow each other up. Respect for life includes respect for each other's sensibilities. Why do you demand acceptance and tolerance from me but then turn around and slap me in the face with this shite?

Okay, I can handle Duchamp and his urinal "fountain" and Piero Manzoni's crud-in-a-can, but honestly, this is on an entirely different level.
And, though I hate to say it, because far be it from me to judge what should be considered art, this really makes me want to give up on the whole thing. If I'm to be associated, as an art student, with this stuff, than you can forget it.

Alright, alright, alright. I know.
It's childish and impractical. And abandoning my one passion in life would mean losing a voice against this nonsense in the art world.

Lord have mercy on us all.

A Delicate Reflection on the Various Facts of Life

Why do bad things happen to good people?

My roommate's grandfather died today, very suddenly. A sadder thing couldn't have happened to a nicer person.
It makes me realize what kind of a person I am. I mean... it's important to know yourself, right? Not that I do, really... but let me tell you, I'm really really bad at knowing what to say in tragic times. At funerals, I mostly just cry. I usually choke on my words. But how many times can people say 'I'm sorry?'
I remember early this school year a memorial I attended in the campus chapel. Some friends and I gathered to lead a rosary service for the family of a student who died. I didn't realize who the person was until I saw her picture. I didn't know her--not really, but she and I lived just down the hall from each other our freshman year. Yet, sitting and listening to the things people said... the tears came down my face and they wouldn't stop. I mean... I wasn't sobbing or weeping; in a strange way, I didn't feel I had the right to. But still it was like someone turned on a faucet behind my eyes.

Relay for life was this past weekend and for the kick-off, a girl (whom I also happened to live down the hall from freshman year) gave her testimony of her fight with cancer. She said, something to the effect of, we as twenty-something young people, we know we're going to die, eventually. It's a fact of life. Still we don't actually realize it until something really happens to remind us. (She got a standing ovation as she left the stage.)

So today, right up to when I found out about what happened to my roommate, I had been worrying and complaining about all of the papers and presentations and projects I had to finish; all that work. And then I felt so ridiculous for fussing about it all-- how stupid are all these little minuscule things that everyone has to deal with, when such bigger, life-shaking and heart-breaking things are happening. It makes me wish I could put things into perspective like this more often. Especially when bigger things are happening to the people I care about, and I'm too self-centered to notice.
I told one of my friends earlier this year that I didn't make a new year's resolution; I never do because they're stupid. But actually I did... it just sounded too self-righteous to say aloud. But I want to pay attention more, talk about myself less, notice when my friends and family are upset or hurting, and learn to be more easy-going. I want only the important things to affect me. Because in the long run, why get upset about-- for example, just today in class-- a person who regularly sits next to you and her obnoxious eating habits? Pshah.
Oh yeah, and here's a big one: praying more. And reaching out to others. And... pulling them in with you. (hey, you can reach out to people, but you're still just reaching. And you can reach out and "touch" people. But that's just a touch. Sometimes-- especially in college-- you gotta reach out, grab hold and not let go. If someone were drowning and you were on shore, would you let go?)

So I made a cookie pie for my roommate.
With frosting.

Denying Your Age

It occurred to me the other day-- while watching The Office-- just how crazy human beings are. This reaction was a response to an Avon commercial for some kind of "Age-defying serum" or the like. The make-up industry has effectively taken advantage of a woman's fear of getting older. Not just getting older, LOOKING older. And I really can't pretend, at my young, inexperienced 20 years, to know what that's like. (For heaven's sake, my cousin's husband thought I was 14. MY issue at this point is looking too YOUNG for my age.) But that's just it; at my age, and nearing the summit of my college education, I will very soon be thrown down the mountain into the crazy jungle of real life. For which I feel slightly ill-equipped.
And while watching these constant, obnoxious "lie about your age" and "keep them guessing" age-denying serums and foundations and lotions and facial treatments... I keep thinking, what wouldn't I give to be one of these women? And why are they trying to hide their age? To have the life-success, the life-security, the life-experience... that's all I want right now. I want to KNOW where I'll be in twenty years. I want to be confident, flourishing, secure. Heavens. I want to be past the initial suffering and struggle. I want to know where I am, know where I'm going, know where I've been.
It's a double standard. Women want to BE older without LOOKING older.
Pshah. I could easily start railing on about this ridiculous culture's misconceptions about beauty, (I mean, for heaven's sake, the strength, confidence and intelligence of so many women today, how is that not beautiful?) but I'd really rather not. It's like beating your head against a brick wall, and it makes me tired.

Ireland?

So this is it.
One major crisis averted, and now there's no turning back.
I'm going to Ireland. Next fall. (If it kills me.)
Deep breath.
I would like to be able to express all my anxieties right here on the page and leave them, and be done with them. I know that's not happening.
I know this is what I've wanted to do for the longest time.
It's just now that I know it's more than possible, that now I am in fact obligated to the program... that as long as I'm accepted, I'm going, that's it,
it's suddenly become... really scary thing to think about.
I mean, a whole semester. Three months. In another country. Knowing nobody. Never having traveled so far away before.
I think I'll be able to stave off my fears by reminding myself what an amazing adventure this is going to be.
Still I can't help being scared. I know I can handle it... but I'm still terrified to do so.

I'm constantly reminded of a famous English sculptor of the 1920s, Barbara Hepworth. She was an incredibly independent artist (especially for a woman of her time.)
I desperately wish I could emanate her confidence. Her confidence in herself and in her work.
But, of course, those were different times, when students were veritably forced to make a way for themselves, by themselves. Here and now, we are babied and supervised by virtually everyone.
Well, I suppose here's my chance to see just how much I can rely on my independent person. It'll develop, I'm sure. It'll develop along with the reason I'm doing this: for my art. I will be my own person, and I will comfortable and confident in her.

This will be an amazing journey.


(I might get to live in a cottage!)

The Gabriel Hounds

So here, treading on the ghostly heels of Isis and Ishtar and Astarte and the Great Mother herself who was Demeter and Dia and Cybele of the Towers, came Aphrodite to fall in love with the Syrian shepherd Adonis, and lie with him among the flowers. And here the wild boar killed him, and where his blood splashed, anemones grew, and to this day every spring the waters of the Adonis run red right down to the sea. Now the corrie is empty except for the black goats sleeping in the sun on the ruined floor of Aphrodite's temple, and against the roar of the torrent the drowsy stirrings of the goat bells come sharp and clear. The rags that flutter from the sacred tree are tied there as petitions to the last and latest Lady of the place, Mary.
Even without the legends, it would have been breathtaking. With them, the scene of white water and blazing rock, massive ruins, and bright flowers blowing in the wind from the fall, was something out of this world. And as we turned eventually out of the corrie onto the track-- it could hardly have been called a road-- that would take us home by a different route, the scene had its final touch of Eastern fantasy.
A little way beyond and out of sight of the Adonis corrie, a few Arab houses straggled along the water-side. A path, a white scratch on the rock, climbed out of this at an angle to the road. And up this path, going easily, went a chestnut Arab horse, the white burnous of its rider filled out by the motion like a sail, the scarlet and silver of the bridle winking in the sun. At the horse's heels cantered two beautiful dogs, fawn-colored greyhounds with long silky hair, the saluki hounds which were used by the princes of the East for hunting gazelle.
A curve of the road hid them, and all at once it was time for lunch.
We saw the rider again, on our way down the other side of the valley. We had spent more than an hour over lunch, and the horseman must have used paths which cut off a thousand difficult corners that a car had to take. As we picked our way between the potholes into some tiny settlement in a lost high valley where the snow lay not very far above us, I saw the rider below, walking his horse down a barely visible path that took him thigh-deep through a field of sunflowers. The dogs were invisible below the thick, heart-shaped leaves. Then they raced ahead of him out onto a lower curve of the road, the horse breaking into a canter behind them. So clear was the air that I could hear the jingling of bridle bells above the thud of hoofs in the dust.
The squat peeling houses of the village crowded in on the car and hid him from view.


FROM
The Gabriel Hounds
by Mary Stewart

Fooled

"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, sir, I say.
Colours seen by candlelight
Will not look the same by day.

Elizabeth Barret Browning: The Lady's Yes

Those bitter crusts

We had run into another shower, and big drops splashed and starred the windshield. The car slewed overfast around a sharp bend in the road, and rubber whined on the wet tarmac. He hadn't once so much as glanced at me. He was probably hardly aware of who it was he had in the car. So much for Cinderella.
I sat quietly beside him and nibbled the bitter crusts of common sense.

MORE FROM
Nine Coaches Waiting
by Mary Stewart

The Comte de Valmy

A minute or so later I left the salon, to walk straight into as nasty a little scene as I had yet come across.
Philippe was standing, the picture of guilt and misery, beside a table which stood against the wall outside the salon door. It was a lovely little table, flanked on either side by a Louis Quinze chair seated with a straw-colored brocade. On one of the chair seats I now saw, horribly, a thick streak of ink, as if a pen had rolled from the table and then across the silk of the chair, smearing ink as it went.
I remembered, then, that Philippe had been writing to his uncle, Hippolyte, when I called him to come downstairs. He must have come hurriedly away, the pen still open in his hand, and have put it down there before going into the drawing room. He was clutching it now in an ink-stained fist, and staring white-faced at his uncle.
For this time of all times he hadn't managed to avoid Monsieur de Valmy. The wheel chair was slap in the middle of the corridor, barring escape. Philippe, in front of it, looked very small and guilty and defenseless.
Neither of them appeared to notice me. Leon de Valmy was speaking. That he was angry was obvious, and it looked as if he had every right to be, but the cold lash of his voice as he flayed the child for his small-boy carelessness was frightening; he was using--not a wheel, but an atomic blast, to break a butterfly.
Philippe, as white as ashes now, stammered something that might have been an apology, but merely sounded like a terrified mutter, and his uncle cut across it in a voice that bit like a loaded whip.
"It is, perhaps, just as well that your visits to this part of the house are restricted to this single one day, as apparently you don't yet know how to behave like a civilized human being. Perhaps in your Paris home you were allowed to run wild in this hooligan manner, but here we are accustomed to--"
"This is my home," said Philippe.
He said it still in that small shaken voice that held the suggestion of a sullen mutter. It stopped Leon de Valmy in full tirade. For a moment I thought the sentence in that still little voice unbearably pathetic, and in the same moment wondered at Philippe, who was not prone to either drama or pathos. But then he added, still low, but very clearly, "And that is my chair."
There was a moment of appalling silence. Something came and went in Leon de Valmy's face--the merest flick of an expression like a flash of a camera's shutter--but Philippe took a step backward, and I found myself catapulting out of the doorway like a wildcat defending a kitten.
Leon de Valmy looked up and saw me, but he spoke to Philippe quietly, as though his anger had never been.
"When you have recovered your temper and your manners, Philippe, you will apologize for that remark." The dark eyes lifted to me, and he said coolly but very courteously, in English, "Ah, Miss Martin. I'm afraid there has been a slight contretemps. Perhaps you will take Philippe back to his own rooms and persuade him that courtesy toward his elders is one of the qualities that is expected of a gentleman."
As his uncle spoke to me, Philippe had turned quickly, as if in relief. His face was paler than ever, and looked pinched and sullen. But the eyes were vulnerable: child's eyes.
I looked at him, then past him at his uncle.
"There's no need," I said. "He'll apologize now." I took the boy gently by the shoulders and turned him back to face his uncle. I held him for a moment. The shoulders felt very thin and tense. He was shaking.
I let him go. "Philippe?" I said.
He said, his voice thin with a gulp in it, "I beg your pardon if I was rude."
Leon de Valmy looked from him to me and back again.
"Very well. That is forgotten. And now Miss Martin had better take you upstairs."
The child turned quickly to go, but I hesitated. I said, "I gather there's been an accident to that chair, and that Philippe's been careless; but then, so have I. It was my job to see that nothing of the sort happened. It was my fault, and I must apologize too, Monsieur de Valmy."
He said in a voice quite different from the one with which he had dismissed Philippe, "Very well, Miss Martin. Thank you. And now we will forget the episode, shall we?"
As we went I was very conscious of that still, misshapen figure sitting there watching us.
I shut the schoolroom door behind me, and leaned against it. Philippe and I looked at one another. His face was shuttered still with that white resentment. His mouth looked sulky, but I saw the lower lip tremble a little.
He waited, saying nothing.
This was where I had to uphold authority. Curtain lecture by Miss Martin. Leon de Valmy had been perfectly right: Philippe had been stupid, careless, and rude...
I said, "My lamb, I'm with you all the way, but you are a little owl, aren't you?"
"You can't," said Philippe very stiffly, "be a lamb and an owl both at the same time."
Then he ran straight at me and burst into tears.
After that I did help to keep him out of his uncle's way.

FROM
Nine Coaches Waiting
by Mary Stewart

A Page, which may contain a proposal of sorts

It may be very true that once in a while, things fall beautifully into place like perfect puzzle pieces. If we are lucky enough for these once-in-a-whiles, happiness warms all troubles away.

And troubles seemed to fall away from Ceci's mind like dust in sunlight.
All but one.


Marguerite was the first to hear all.
They sat together on a farm fence behind her house. The sun warmed Ceci's face while memory's goosebumps crept up her skin.

"I would never have believed it," Marguerite said, "had I not come upon the two of you in the hallway that night. The distress in the air was almost... visible. And poor Mr. Lennox," she gave a light laugh, "looked so distraught!"
Marguerite reached forward where she sat perched on the edge of the fence. She placed a hand on Ceci's knee. "Honestly, Cecilia. Sometimes you have such a presence... I believe you could hardly imagine what you do to people's nerves. And so you have to believe me when I tell you that your Mr. Lennox is a brave, brave man."
Ceci shook her head. Not that she distrusted her cousin's words; she was thinking of Corran and the burning house again. "I know," she said.
Ceci frowned and tried to rub away the goosebumps. She heaved a great sigh, but didn't return the smile her cousin sent her.
"So what is the dilemma?" Marguerite asked after a few moments of silence.
Ceci snapped her gaze back at Marguerite and raised an eyebrow. She suddenly felt quite cold and rubbed her arms again. "Think about it for a moment, cousin. I'm sure you'll come up with something."
Marguerite scowled at Ceci. The dilemma was of course, obvious. She had only wanted to hear Ceci explain it. "There's no need to be sardonic, Ceci. Honestly."
Ceci sighed again. "I've not yet met Sir Lennox. And Corran won't tell me directly if he's mentioned my existence to his father. That is the dilemma."
They were silent again for several minutes. In the space of that time, a mourning dove spoke off in the distance.
"Oh, hell!" Ceci suddenly exclaimed, pounding a fist into her lap. "This is exactly why I promised myself never to get involved with gentry." Then she bit her lip.
Marguerite looked slightly shocked. Slowly she descended from her seat and looked up at her cousin. She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it when a figure caught her eye.
For a moment she expected it to be Christopher, but it was not. It was, in fact, Mr. Lennox.
He traveled slowly and deliberately through the tall field grass with that familiar blue hat in his hand.
Marguerite took a step back as Corran nodded to her with a grin. He reached up to Ceci and pulled her gently down from her perch.
Marguerite wondered if he'd heard what Ceci had just finished saying. If he had, she doubted he would display such a beaming smile as now shone on his face. It would be wise to retire now, she decided. She bid them a good evening with a nod and a special look at Ceci--a warning look that told her they would discuss her disconcerting declaration at a later date. And she left them to make her way home.

"Good afternoon, Sicily," Corran said, plopping his hat down on the fence post and leaning up against the beams.
Ceci couldn't sustain a frown. "Have you adopted Pearl's pet name, then?"
Corran smiled. "I feel as though I should be allowed a name for you all my own."
"I should tell you, I have so many now I can hardly remember them all."
"I'll keep that in mind," he replied.
"And to what do I owe the honor of your presence this afternoon, Mr. Lennox?" Ceci asked, teasing him with a little curtsy.
"You won't get away with that for long," Corran said, leaning forward on his elbows. "Soon, you see, I aim to make you Mrs. Lennox. Then the joke will be on you."
Ceci straightened awkwardly. She almost stumbled, in fact. It was the first that he had ever mentioned any kind of official... attachment.
Corran noticed her stumble. He took a step toward her, reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small velvet pouch. "I haven't a ring just yet," he emptied the contents into the palm of his hand. "But it may serve, for the present."
And what an ironic moment for Ceci to turn clumsy. For about half a minute she simply stared at Corran's hand, and as she fumbled with the slippery, silky chain resting in his palm, he gave a chuckle. He leaned forward and kissed her temple. Then, carefully and expertly he fastened the delicate silver chain around her neck, just touching the little jewel with two fingers where it rested below her collarbone.
"There you are, love." he murmured. "Beautiful."
Ceci found herself tipping forward to wrap her unsteady arms round his waist and to press her face up into his shoulder. And she couldn't see it, but he lifted his head, closed his eyes and grinned, staggering back against the fence with her sudden weight pressed against him. He laid a hand on her soft head of curls and breathed deeply.

Malte

"There is an hour to go until sundown, at which time we will tie up at the quayside from where our journey began. Perhaps it will begin all over again tomorrow, perhaps none of it ever happened. What, then, is time? And who are we, returning in an altered light? Have we any way of knowing, when the bells ring for sunset and we have reached a point in the stream that we have passed before?
I just ask, Malte. You do not need to answer.



"He wound up with his own mercantile house in the city, ships in the harbor that sailed far and wide and came home from foreign parts with holds full of fan coral, narwhal tusks, and turtle shells, all of which were fashioned in his workshops into true works of art. While transforming its fruit, he still stayed true to the ocean from which his wealth derived. From walrus tusks he created creatures with long heads and slanting eyes. He claimed that the creatures knocked on the ivory from within; he was merely the man who applied the knife to let them out. It was when he acquired the nickname the Amber King that he began to expand the summerhouse into a castle.



"So it is with us. We keep our miracles close to our chest. We cannot interfere in the course of events, anyway. To everything there is a season. The living have nothing but that, and soon the story will be played out.


FROM
Prince
by Ib Michael

Blackbird

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

-why, the Beatles, of course