Library of Congress Tour

         

             Day seven of our D.C. trip today. My mom and I spent the first few days in the capitol, rode the train up to Wilton, Connecticut to visit friends and head into N.Y.C. tomorrow.
            Wandering around the capitol on Memorial Day weekend, my mother and I walked into the Library of Congress as it was beginning to close. We peeked through closed doors, and I snapped pictures of the engraved quotes and the gilded dome. Wandering around down below the main hall, we got separated. As a searched around, a security officer with a rust colored beard walked after me calling, "Ma'am, where are you going?"
             "To grab my mom. She's somewhere down there."
             "I don't want you to get lost down here." So he came with me.
             But at the end of the long corridor revealed yet another maze of halls and no mother. I tried calling her cellphone while the guard strode back whispering into his radio. Seeing him become smaller and smaller back down the hall, I made a break for it and jogged down the next hall to look. Nothing. I felt hot and fighting mad as I turned around to walk back.
            There she came with the bearded guard at her side. I couldn't stay angry for too long because the officer escorted us down through a gold elevator and asked if we would like to see the library floor, usually off limits to tourists.
             "We'll see if any of my keys work," he said twisting into the lock.
              Click.
              We stepped onto the bright cream carpet and strained our necks towards the ceiling. The guard prattled on about being on duty during the shooting of the second National Treasure film with "Nick Cage overacting as usual."

              Libraries are amazing places. And I could write several paragraphs about why this is true, but it would be easier to convince you by simply walking you into the doors and leading you to the parallel shelves of musty old paper, glue and ink.
              Darcy gives Elizabeth an indirect complement when he exasperates Caroline Bingley by adding to her long list of qualifications for the accomplished woman saying, "And to all this she must yet add something more substantial: in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading." The following are a few quotes a took pictures of at the Library of Congress. I feel that Austen would concur.

 "The true university of these days is a collection of books."

"Reading maketh a full man [or woman]. Conference a ready man [or woman]. And writing an exact man [or woman]."

 "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors."

Waiting for the Sequel

           The most popular conversation to have with a recent graduate begins something like this, "So the million dollar question is what's next?" I know this now from experience. And I've become quite polished at responding, "I have no idea!"

            Answering the question "what next?" has proved less terrifying than I made it out to sound all semester. Though I still don't have a satisfactory response, or even any plan at all, life keeps moving, and I'm still breathing--despite the fact that I have no papers due and no presentations to practice. I feel a little bit like clothes hanging in the closet, fresh and waiting for the next outing.

 

         As far as the Pride and Prejudice project, things seem to be at a similar junction wondering "Now what?" My capstone was completed with along with the end of school. I had so much fun speaking during the presentation, that I want to keep working with it, although in a different format, perhaps less academic.   

  101 pages when it was all said and done. 

        This week's post has become a mixture of metaphors and pictorial media. My life, at the moment, feels a bit like the ending of a novel. Everything with school was tied up in a neat little conclusion and laid to rest. That sounds a bit morbid. Don't worry, no one has died. But it's different than just a new chapter because chapters are full of suspense and leave you on a cliff so that you turn directly to the next. It's more like the ending of a book, or a section, and I'm waiting for the sequel to come out and hoping it doesn't disappoint. The first book was so good that part of me wonders if the author can top it. I have a feeling He can.

 

People

       "We are very proud and we are very prejudiced," read the graduation card. Another gift came in the form of A Jane Austen Devotional--yes this does exist. 

 

        Saturday, I graduated from college. And the most wonderful part was the host of family and friends there to share in the excitement and joy. Writing one million thank you notes tonight, I realized how incredible it is that people need people.
        Even the intrepid and independent Miss Bennet requires relationship. Elizabeth is dependent on her close friendships with Jane and Charlotte. She thrives on conversation with her father, Darcy, Wickham, etc. She receives the help and support of Aunt and Uncle Gardiner.
        All this to note that relationships pull us through the trial and difficulty and rejoice with us in the happy endings and new beginnings.

Rain

        

           She sat inside and watched the rain rat-a-tat-tat against the thin window pain. The parched dust smeared in muddy tears as the water splattered onto the ground. It seemed more like a Christmas finals week than five days before summer break. But the rain felt so good.
          Woosh! Sheets of water poured out of the grey sky which was one big cloud. it drew her out the door and into the midst as blessings showered, drenching through her long hair and down her arms. The fresh water trickled off her finger tips. She lifted her head up and opened her mouth smiling.
          I feel like that. Just sitting, soaking in incredible blessings until your skin has absorbed so much it can't any more and the gifts go spilling right off of you. The power of massive amounts of water is disguised by the tiny droplets which package it. But in the midst of the beautiful shower, the boom of thunder and the stormy air are still frightening.
          Though I haven't done any dancing in the rain this week (although it is a regular tradition on campus, enacted my freshman year), it has poured. Hot Santa Ana winds scorched the earth as the sun beat merrily last week. But the clouds arrived over the weekend with a different plan in mind. And the rain is how my life feels currently, on multiple levels.
          The rain is sad, tears washing the earth. It makes me want to curl in a ball under a blanket to hibernate. In the same way, life is bittersweet. A beautiful ending into an expanse of unknown which makes me want to hide under the covers. If it can't see me, maybe it will go away. Doubtful.
          Rain storms prove frightening. The distant rolling boom resounds in the air. The dark skies cover slick roads. The pouring water drenches my clothes, and there are no windshield wipers to clear my wet eyes.
          But rain is wondrous. The earth cracks and bleeds for it. Like microscopic presents pouring from the air, it acts as Santa Claus for the plants. Like rain, God has been pouring out other blessings on top of me. I sit with my eyes closed and my palms facing up and soak in the overwhelming tide of goodness.
          The forecast predicts an end to the shower--an end to this short but oh so sweet season. That frightens me too.

Life as We Know It is About to End

            Falling asleep last night, I realized that I'd forgotten to write. Yikes! I'm not really sure what to tell about other than the terrifyingly fantastic new that it will all be over next week. I printed out my Pride and Prejudice paper over the weekend and just held it. Like a child that had recently struggled out of a womb and into the light of day, the 100 pages rested fresh and beautiful in my arms.
          While my roommate practiced introducing herself in Hungarian (part of a linguistic assignment), I finished up my last essay for the year and sat breathing. Endings and I share such a bizarre relationship. For the most part, school now seems like an out-of-body phenomenon as things march to the great conflagration of the end. In a matter of hours between falling asleep and waking up at home, the whirlwind of events signifying the end promises to halt to a profound nothingness the next morning. This radical and inevitable shift scares me most.
          But life beyond school has proved absolutely fantastic lately. I've been seeing the grace of alternative narratives (a fancy term I learned in Communication 100 to describe making positive assumptions or granting people the benefit of the doubt). Somewhat like Elizabeth, my critical mind jumps to an explanation for other people's behavior which is more often than not a judgement about their characters. I was pondering how to handle one situation when God said, "Hey, that's my job." Too often, I subconsciously act as though I am the savior of the world commissioned to figure out everyone else. Praise God that I am not--people are weird.
        If you read most of my recent posts, you might assume that Armageddon is nigh and the world is about to end. Honestly, it feels a bit like that. But life continues for millions of college graduates every year, and it promises to move forward for this one too.

"It's never not gotten done before."

         I purposefully postponed this week's post one day in anticipation of relating to you the spectacular views of last night's sky during the peak of April's much anticipated Lyrid Meteor shower.
         However, it's now a day later, and I have no such romantic tale to tell you.
         At school, a foggy sky blocked the heavenlies save for the pale filmy light of the moon above the clouds. So we drove up the hill to try to find clear sky. But the fog moved with us, and we resorted to counting headlights instead of shooting stars. The final score was 84.5 cars moving up the grade and 29.5 headed down. (The half was from a car that turned into a house on the middle of the hill. Don't ask me why I like half cars and half puppies and halves in general so much.)
        Despite the slight disappointment, we had fun laughing and nibbling on chocolate.
        In other news, life as I've known it for the last three years is rapidly winding. The promise that the homework has never not gotten done before is proving true for the last time as assignments are turned in and my life has begun to slow down to a lovely little pace of editing and eating, working and sleeping.
       The project which has dominated my existence for the last 3.5 months is essentially finished--Praise the Lord! My senior project class took its final quiz this morning and learned that our presentations will be held in, drum-roll please...the computer lab? Oh well, at least there will be a computer on which to show our power points.
       Well, this is all the news I can come up with for tonight.

23 Classes To Go and the Cult of Romance

     

           As of today, the blog has collected its 1,001st hit. From this we can infer that either my mom and I are getting really good at typing in the address or that a few other folks in the universe have found it too--which is exciting.
           Also occurring today is the four weeks till graduation mark. This afternoon, I counted 23 more classes to attend before the semester ends.
          In other news, a terrible attack struck the Boston Marathon this morning, and the Lyrid meteor shower begins tomorrow.
          On an entirely different note....
          In sociology class a couple of weeks ago, my professor mentioned a study by Elaine Tyler May called Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America. May attributes the 2,000 percent rise in divorce rates from the late 19th to early 20th centuries to the cult of romance. Prior to the advent of media, grounds for divorce cited abuse or failure to fulfill the duty of a partner. Only after the Victorians did the possibility of divorce over "irreconcilable differences" first surfaced. Prior to these expectations of romance and personal fulfillment in marriage, couples didn't fall out of love.
          My professor pointed out that people still believe in marriage because most remarry faulting the previous partner, not the institution, for their discontent. This reminded me of a TED talk by Jenna McCarthy (not to be confused with actress Jenny McCarthy). She pointed out that when couples see a romantic movie--where the banter is carefully scripted and things are blissfully concluded before the credits roll--, they often leave the theater feeling discontented with their comparatively boring existence which includes diapers, incessant channel flipping and crock-pot dinners that didn't appear on screen. In contrast, when a couple watches a blood and guts action flick, they return home feeling more than satisfied with their quiet, cozy little life in which no one is running from dinosaurs or dodging jagged spears around every corner.
         As much as we think we want it to be, life is not a fairy tale where Mr. Darcy will eventually learn how to say the perfect words and Elizabeth is carried to a wealthy estate where dust doesn't land and servants would clean if it did.
         Fiction is wonderful, but dreams can also be dangerous. Not to be a glass half empty kind of gal, but dealing in reality can also help stifle discontent.
         As the end of my undergrad looms in just a month, I can sense the dissatisfaction that will invariably hit like a tidal wave two days after commencement. When it is finally over, I'll miss school and romanticize the adventures of the past three years.
         In preparation for the aggrandizement, I've notified my friends still laboring under the weight of college courses and internships to call me and complain about the lack of sleep, lack of showers and other stresses. And then I'll be reminded of how grateful I am to have my freedom and my boring but wonderful little life.