Here's my new look, sexier, I think, if a bit more narcissistic.
I've been having a kind of blogging angst lately so allow me to write a somewhat self-conscious post. I'm never sure what to write on this blog. It's my blog and I feel little pressure to copy others' blogging habits. I've noticed a rising number of personal details on these covblogs. People are being talked about more than ideas. Then there are those who only talk about ideas. I try to keep a happy medium, but I'm not happy with it.
Some bloggers seem to want a place to rant, a place to share their own opinions on the world around them in whatever language they choose. Then there are those who just want to blether. Two words I don't like to apply to my writings are "rambling" and "random." Perhaps they fit, but I see them far too often in the subtitles of xanga blogs, from girls who think they are clever and cute.
(On a complete sidenote, does anyone double-space at the beginnings of sentences anymore? Is double-spacing going the way of the hyphen?)
I don't know why I blog. Because I fear death. Because I feel the need to sprinkle my wisdom upon the masses, especially when I don't have the huge white board in my dorm tower room to write my aphorisms on. I blog when I have ideas that I need to express for others, and while they should probably be sent off to friends in emails they often end up pinned onto this blog with the hope that they'll be able to breathe better if subjected to the gaze of the anonymous internet-world. It satisfies my need to communicate with large groups of people at once. I'm a talking-in-class, enjoys-public-speaking kind of girl--the more people I can talk to at once, the better. Of course, I also enjoy small conversations, letting ideas fly back and forth, but group discussions, when they actually happen, are very satisfying. (I've been enjoying some great Harry Potter discussions this week. As I said, I love reading a book with the world.) And I guess that's why I blog, generally, to take part in some kind of huge discussion, whatever and wherever that might be. And that's not the only reason, but it'll make me happy for now.
I'm sending out lots of resumes and cover letters these days and I keep finding myself wanting to break out of the mold of boring adjectives--dynamic, organized, team-player--and write things like "smart and sexy," "a dry, intellectual wit," and "has good teeth." I really think that if they're as nit-picky as all the resume guides say they are then they should care that I have good teeth.
I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince today, first in my family. Now I don't have to worry about younger brothers letting things slip. I have many thoughts going around in my head, but I'll just mention one. This wasn't the darkest book yet. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was traumatic from beginning to end, the loneliness, the whining, the death, and Umbridge making it all completely unbearable. That was dark, my friends. I realized when I started reading number six that I had blotted out a lot of number five from my memory because of Dolores Umbridge. Half-Blood Prince made me remember why I love Harry Potter.
I think my favorite thing, though, is the idea of reading a book with the whole world. I know it's probably a false sense of community, but it's encouraging nonetheless.
I saw two license plates today that say something about the way Nebraskans seem to express themselves. I was driving through the afternoon sun back from the public library where I had been reveling in the feeling of neo-hippie culture and NPR values, when I pulled up right behind this car with MAJESTY spelled out very clearly on its white, Nebraska license plate. (I knew some people here who tried to spell out "majesty" with the initials of their kids' names, but the wife had some health problem and they only go out "maje.") Who needs a bumper sticker when you've got a vanity plate? Later, on the same drive home, I pulled up behind a Chevvie Tahoe whose license plate was pretty much on my eye level. I still had to look at it twice to believe it. It said DRAFT. What the heck? Why would someone choose to legally brand their car with that word? They're crazier than I thought. Why won't they just stick with ILUVJIM and GOLFING and not try to make cryptic religious and political statements? I was tempted to pull up next to the Tahoe and ask for an explanation, but that's probably what the driver wanted. On the other hand, the driver could have been perfectly innocent of the message. I once passed a car on the interstate plastered with "dance" and "ballet" bumper stickers and driven by a middle aged man who didn't look like the idea of tights and spandex would appeal to him in the least.
While I was taking the train around Britain with my free-to-go-anywhere railpass it crossed my mind to just find places with cool names and go there. I contemplated Chipping Sodbury and Weston-Super-Mare, but the best name I found was Effingham, reminded me of Fukushima, a Japanese town name I encountered in an extremely painful book I was assigned in college. I had no idea where said Effingham was, so I never got there, but I just discovered that several times on my rovings I was about five minutes away from the legendary Effingham, which is just outside Guildford. I hope there are some out there who may benefit from this knowledge.
I woke up in the dark on Wednesday. It was the first time I had woken up in the dark in almost six weeks. What the British summer lacks in heat it makes up for in light.
The travels are over for now. I had a glorious finish to my time England, going through L'Abri, taking long train rides, and finally spending a surprise two days in Yorkshire with Laura, eating English strawberries in a grassy moat, wandering through meadows and rape fields, skinny dipping in fountains (okay, so maybe we didn't exactly do that). I had my last pasty on Friday, my last chips on Sunday, my first and last kebab on Saturday night while listening to live music spill out of a pub called The Roman Bath in York.
Traveling mercies is the phrase I kept coming back to during my trip. It was a frightening experience at times. I didn't always know where I was sleeping at night, I didn't have much money for food, but I realized that, in the end, I was glad. It was probably the only time I'll get to feel like I'm living from hand to mouth without really living from hand to mouth. I read a poem in The New Yorker this spring called "Tree Limbs Down." It contemplated how in an overpriviledged society it's really hard to appreciate the value of things. We need to live with immediacy to really appreciate life. It included the lines "the outside of immediacy, alas, is uncertainty: / so the costly part of the crust of morning / bread is not knowing it will be there." I'm not pretending that I was ever starving, or even on the edge of starving, but I did get to live with more uncertainty than normal and that was good. Of course the best part of it at the time was finding a place to stay and food to eat and good conversation. Traveling mercies.