Things I Like Today

Right now I'm super into Vol 25's Etsy store. My friend Cat over at Budget Blonde got a "just because" gift from there, so I went to check it out. Oh my goodness-- I'm head-over-heels in love with Vol 25's whimsical prints. I found about 10 that I would love to buy. I'm thinking of making a wish-list of them and maybe splurging on one right now. I mean, I'll need new wall art for next year when I have my own little apartment or flat, right? That's how I'm justifying it to myself. Currently, I'm lusting after these two the most:



Guh, aren't they fantastic??? I would decorate my whole house in her artwork if I could. And, honestly, they are very reasonably priced. So, if anyone wants to buy me a nice gift... :)

I'm also digging the game 'Munchkin' today. I've heard lots about it, but never played before last night. Holy crap, it's sooo fun. I love all of the funny random cards (for example, I got the Sneaky Bastard Sword and the Sandals of Protection, while my friend Andrew got The Butt-Kicking Boots. I also had to fight two of the scariest monsters ever: a Potted Plant and Crabs!). It was only my first ever game, but I can see how now that I know the rules better it would go faster and be even funnier. So excited to play again, hopefully in the near future.

Oh and here-- take two songs! Adele's new single "Rolling in the Deep" and (a guilty pleasure) Jessie J's "Do It Like A Dude." Give them a listen, they're kind of amazing. The video for the latter is reaaaalllly weird, though. So just listen.

Today is full of things to like! :)

A Letter To The Birds Outside My Window

Dear Singing Birds,

I'm sure you don't realize it, but I haven't been sleeping very well lately. No matter what time I go to bed, I'm awake by 7:00 AM. I lay there in the gray light of early morning wide awake and desperately wishing to fall back asleep. I'm very tense right now; I think it's the waiting for others to decide my future bit that's getting to me. The endless waiting and the nerves and hoping every morning for an e-mail saying, "Congratulations!" that so far hasn't come from anyone.

Anyway, Birds, the point is, today I was sleeping. Sleeping soundly and happily and dreaming of driving in a car with Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. We were all good friends and they were still in their costumes from The King's Speech and Colin Firth was stammering a bit. Then you started singing. Yes, you. And BAM, just like that your birdsong woke me up-- at 7:45 AM. I lay there, desperately wanting to be asleep. But you kept singing. Then you would stop ever so briefly and I would have hope that finally, finally it would be quiet for awhile-- then you started again. You must have been literally on a branch right outside my window you were so loud.

The thing is, Birds, in the spring, I don't mind your early morning songs. You and your chirps herald warm, sunny days, flowers growing, sundresses, walks outside, and afternoon naps. In the winter, there is no compensation for your irritating shrieks. I wake up and it's rainy and cold and raw outside, because IT'S STILL JANUARY! Migrate back south or hibernate or something! Or move to a tree a few houses down. Please, it's a very small thing to ask.

Thanks so much.

Love,
Abigail

Language Acquistion

I need to start working on French and Spanish again. For fun, but also just in case I have another language exam to pass in the next few months. I have Muzzy II now and everything. Goals: to translate Charlotte's Web in French and to translate The Alchemist in Spanish. With the help of a dictionary, of course. Maybe this will be the year I actually do it.

A Wonderful Piece of Work

I got Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff for Christmas, and I finished it last night. Absolutely fantastic book! Highly recommended. I'm not usually much on popular histories, but I do love biographies, and as far as the writing goes this one was top notch. Very readable, lots of sumptuous detail, and a great grasp of the history, it seems (though I'm no historian of antiquity, to be sure). Seriously, I couldn't put it down. As with Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, the story compelled me to keep turning the pages, and the writing brought me not only to the political but the emotional heart of things. While this one didn't make me cry (probably due to lack of any extant primary source material), it certainly fascinated me and made me question the way we understand history, politics, events, and societies of the past.

Schiff seemed to understand the limitations of her sources, but there were still a few times when I questioned her tactics. I guess that's what taking Historiography courses will do to you. There were also a few issues with punctuation which I felt like her editors should have picked up on, but what can you do?

Her main purpose was to set Cleopatra in context, to demystify her, as it were. After giving us a rundown of the legends surrounding the woman-- that Cleopatra was overly sexed, that she cast spells and enchantments on Caesar and Antony, that she brought brought two Roman men to their ruin, even that she killed herself with a snake-- Schiff makes the assertion that Cleopatra's history was written by the winners while she was the loser. Most tellingly, those winners were Romans who didn't look kindly on genuinely powerful women.

Schiff looks at the sources-- Roman, of course-- to figure out where the chroniclers are telling the truth, where they are embellishing, and where their own cultural prejudices played into their interpretations. Since we know very little about Cleopatra's upbringing, Schiff reconstructs a typical noble Egyptian/Macedonian education, which was illuminating. She brings to life ancient Alexandria in full color and glory. She sets austere Rome back to the days of the Republic, when the city was made of brick, not marble. She looks at the other societies in the East, and examines the politics among them like a master chess player, charting out the ramifications of each move, and getting into the logic behind every play. Of course, some of this must be attributed to modern historians who have recently published some new and revealing books on ancient Alexandria and even Cleopatra herself (Schiff's bibliography includes Cleopatra Reassessed by Susan Walker and Sally-Ann Ashton and Cleopatra: From History to Myth edited by Susan Walker, which, though I haven't read them, seem to have probably been rather important to Schiff's main purpose... which was to 'reassess' Cleopatra and to separate the history from the myth... hmmmm maybe that's what these professional historians have been doing lately, too).

Overall, a fun, fast, beautiful, and informative read for anyone interested in Cleopatra, or the ancient world in general.

Ghosts That Broke My Heart

Today I have no need of a winter coat and even though I know better than to trust that this bubble of good, warm, spring-like weather will last, for now I'm perfectly content to stretch out my arms in the sunshine. The past two days have been opposite and the same. Yesterday was cold, rainy, and I felt miserable and read microfilm in Richmond. Today is warm, sunny, I feel happy, and I spent the morning/early afternoon on campus getting some things in order for my thesis and applications. But both days have been characterized by thinking about the past, though yesterday I felt upset by it and today I can reflect more clearly.

Here it is: the only thing I know for certain is that next year I most likely will not be in Williamsburg. I've thought this two times before-- once at the end of senior year and again at this time last year, but I really will be going now. And not only will I be going, but probably I will not even be in Virginia anymore. And once upon a time that thought made me so happy, but now... Williamsburg, I've realized, is my home. It's where I feel happiest. It's where I want to be. I am sad to leave it and excited to return. I've been searching for a home for years and suddenly I realize I have been here all along, and now I'm going to leave. How do you leave your home?

I chose here. I chose this place long, long ago, when I was still a little girl, only eight years old. This is all I wanted. I felt that I had a future here, and I did. I've become who I am here. But then I think, Williamsburg is full of ghosts. I realized it today on campus, walking past people who looked vaguely like friends I remember from four, five, six years ago. Seeing buildings that I lived in, or places that I remember having class, or picnicking, or flirting, or reading, or rehearsing. Places I have cried, places I have been full of laughter. I have a good memory, but a nostalgic one. With so little else building over these shades, it feels as if I'm thrown into the past every time I step on campus. All these ghosts might someday suffocate me.

Perhaps, now, my future lies elsewhere and there are other places that can become home, too. Places that I have yet to explore, people I have yet to meet, challenges yet to face. I've never much liked change-- I still feel sad watching Little Women when at the end they are all grown-up and those wonderful times they had as children are lost-- but it has to happen. Change sometimes has bad things, but without change so many wonderful things wouldn't occur, either.

So, I can feel sad and apprehensive about all of the changes coming up in the next few months, or I can think of myself as an adventurer on a quest to find my treasure.

The World Is Quiet Here

I love libraries. I've always loved libraries. I love the way they smell in the stacks, sort of dusty and papery and a lovely shade of gray-yellow. I love getting lost in the library, going up row after row of books books books and seeing a thousand and one, no a MILLION and one volumes that I'll probably never read but that, for a moment, seem so incredibly interesting that they consume me. For the first time, well, ever really, I got to just wander in Swem Library. I went with a purpose-- to return a vestry book and to check out Camera Lucida and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil-- and came out with a pile of books. So many that the librarian asked if I needed a bag.

I sat on the floor in front of the shelves of children's books, picking out titles that sounded funny or cute or like fairytales. I discovered that in addition a rather large section of books on photography-- daguerreotype to digital-- Swem has a collection of books on wine and wine tasting! Perhaps I could moonlight as a sommelier. I lose myself in books about Tudor England and books about the 18th century and really any type of book from histories to books on literary theories to postmodernist novels. The library makes me feel incredibly elated and incredibly small. So much knowledge and how on earth can I ever read even a fraction of it? How can I write anything worthwhile when so much has already been written? It scares me to the core and inspires me beyond its innumerable words.



(photo from here)

It Is Written

"Maktub," the merchant said finally.
"What does that mean?"
"You would have to have been born an Arab to understand," he answered. "But in your language it would be something like 'It is written.'" And, as he smothered the coals in the hookah, he told the boy that he could begin to sell tea in the crystal glasses. Sometimes, there's just no way to hold back the river.

~The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

(I know this isn't what he meant by 'It is written,' but my thesis is finished-- all of the text, the footnotes, and the bibliography. And maybe, just maybe, the possibilities of life will open themselves this year. No way to hold back this river.)

Pure and Clean and All I Want

It feels like a new year. It feels like a page was turned on life and it was blank without any doodles or scribbles and I have a whole year to fill it up however I want. I wore amber at midnight on January 1st; I had a hunch that it might have some kind of good luck associations, and while I'm not usually superstitious, I thought it couldn't hurt. Besides, my cousin gave me the necklace, and starting a new year with a gift from my cousin has to be good karma. I wore my Luckenbooth on New Years Day. Midnight with family, the first day with love.

Apparently there's an unspoken rule that nothing can ever be perfectly calm, but it seems like 2011 is trying its best. Or maybe I'm just trying my best. All I want from this year is smooth-sailing. Things don't have to be outstandingly great, just... calm and respectful.

So, after the first week, the year has been good, mostly. Kay got engaged, Kacey turned 23 in Richmond (great Thai food followed by a low-key Irish pub), and Sphinx the cat moved in with me. Perhaps the biggest news: I (almost) finished the text of my thesis!!! I thought it was done, minus the changes my committee will suggest, but then I decided to add an epilogue. I also need to finish my bibliography and correct my footnotes. Perhaps another day or two of work-- but really, that's nothing compared to the past year and a half of stress and sweat, research and panic attacks.

But now, of course, I'm sick with a cold. And this Saturday feels like the perfect time to snuggle under the covers with a cup of hot tea and Salinger's Franny and Zooey.


(Photo of Laura Marling found here; the title is a song lyric of hers and in this picture she looks a bit like how I picture Franny.)

(Believe) In Love

...and to start the New Year off right, two of my very best friends got engaged to each other last night! Congratulations, Kay and Brian!!!

I'm so incredibly happy for them, I can't stop smiling!

(Photo found here)

Believe

The word of the year, chosen by Rick Blunt, is Believe. He wrote,

"It encompasses... heart, soul, faith, commitment, perseverance, transcendence, rejuvenation... it stands for everything you want to be and want to become... it what you have to do to make anything happen... believe... in good... believe in overcoming the bad... Nothing can happen without Belief. Love begins with a belief... anything of value depends on who and what you Believe in it... value comes from belief. And Believing in something can help you achieve anything... because if you don't believe nothing can be accomplished."

I love this word and I hope I love this year just as much. It certainly started wonderfully. I spent New Years Eve and midnight in Staunton. We started the evening with Rick in SantaLand Diaries at the ASC (amazing!), and then headed over to the Baja Bean. The lead-up to New Years was spent listening to the music of The Findells while 'Abigail-Dancing' with Zan, Lys, Zach, Jen, and Hunter. I don't think I've ever had so much fun at a New Years Eve. I wore my cute new shoes and a black dress with my cute new mustard-yellow cardigan, so I felt pretty and confident (despite the fact that the 'Abigail-dance' is my best dance move). At midnight they passed out champagne and we counted down and Zan and I kissed and everyone sang Auld Lang Syne, but just the first verse over and over even though they had passed out the lyrics to all of the verses. I called my parents and texted some of my friends Happy New Years! and I got texts saying Happy New Years! and I forgot about the time difference in the Midwest and texted Emily, Christina, and Dana at my midnight. Oops.

Returning home around 1:00 AM or so, we settled down to chocolates and the beginning of the New Years Day Twilight Zone Marathon, then to bed for to prepare for New Years Day! Zan's family always has a big New Years Day brunch, so we awoke early-ish to prepare for that-- wonderful home-cooked food, mimosas, educated conversation about theatre and history, and to top it all off, we visited the baby lambs born that morning and the day before!!! Adorable! We all wore our Believe shirts, and at the end of my stay we exchanged Christmas gifts and listened to Zach play his guitar, and I was sad to leave but my mother was heading towards Williamsburg with Sphinx. Hooray!

The day ended with fettuccine, a warm kitty, and NCIS/Twilight Zone with my mother. Fantastic. Happy New Year, everyone! May 2011 bring us all happiness.

BELIEVE!

(Photo by Zan)