Back to Beowulf

After politics I'm getting a collection of essays on Beowulf out from the library, which willl hopefully lead me to something better. Something about Grendel, maybe? It includes Tolkien's famous essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," which will may be enough on its own.

I think I'll become a flagellant, treading softly through the hallways of my dorm crying Latin prayers and beating myself with my textbooks. When I die, my ghost will keep on flagellating, haunting the halls of the underclassman dorm...

Which brings me to a grammatical question that's been bothering me for some time. When used as an adjective, is it "underclassmen" or "underclassman"? What do you think?

Angst isn't generally my thing, but sometimes it's appropriate. Like now.

My prof rejected my proposed topic for my English paper, because, as he recognized, it was crap and would result in a paper that basically summarized his lecture on that canto without contributing a single new idea.

I have literally no ideas. Absolutely no ideas for this accursed paper.

Time to pray some more.

As for you, you can pray that I can refrain from impaling myself on my pencil.

Scratch that. I don't have it in me to tackle Beowulf after less than thirty minutes of lecture on it. The Inferno it is; more specifically, the fifth canto, in which Dante the Pilgrim has his famous encounter with Paolo and Francesca in the Second Circle of Hell.

I swear, writing a paper feels like as painful a process as giving birth (though I can't say I know from personal experience). It's like the mental equivalent of labor. My brain and emotions are addled beyond the powers of description to say. This is the first major push: picking a topic, which will develop into a thesis. The second push is actually writing the essay.

Believe you me, I am going to drop this English major like a potato Enna's been playing with.

Well, today is not the most peaceful and relaxed of days for me, as I have to e-mail my proposal for my second English paper to my prof today and I still have no idea what my area of interest is (I can tell you this, though: it'll be on some aspect of Beowulf), but I've still certainly got plently to be thankful for, and I thought I'd join some of youse in writing a list of things I'm particularly thankful for right now:

I'm thankful...

that I go to Wheaton. It is the perfect fit for me in so many ways, and I feel at home there like I've rarely felt at home elsewhere.

for my English and German professors and classes.

for the German language. I can't even say how much or why I love it, but this language feels like the native language of my soul, or something like that.

for all the new and incredible friends I've made this semester.

for the beautiful music I've discovered and rediscovered.

for the wonderful books I've read and have yet to read.

that it is so easy for me to get books! The campus library has more than half a dozen magnificent bookcases of YA and children's books, and the public library is so excellent and so close.

for Irish dance. For my dance school back home, that I've finally found a school here that seems like it'll work out for me, for the feíseanna I've been to, for the progress I've made, for the fact that I got up my nerve last October to try a class in the first place, and for how well it suits me.

for my marvelous bike, for the freedom it gives me, and for all the time I've spent on it.

for the stunning Pacific Ocean.

for Midwestern trees and skies.

for the vivid and strange moments and memories that make life what it is.

and for miraculous poetry.

Home in my city by the bay

Yesterday I flew home in the evening. There was crazy traffic getting to the airport, and it just felt hectic there, but I didn’t have to take public transportation there, I made my flight with plenty of time, my luggage arrived, and I even enjoyed a tasty smoothie and ran into Elanor at the airport. (Bananas and blueberries are excellent blended together, by the way.) I got some uncomfortable plane sleep, and was home by midnight.

Today I rode my bike down to the health food store by the beach, and after I’d picked up the brown sugar, dried apples, and rolls, I couldn’t resist riding the last few blocks to the beach. It was as beautiful as always; no traces of the oil spill were apparent (yes, there was an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay the Wednesday before last, if you weren’t aware, caused, of all things, by a tanker running into the Bay Bridge). I did see this notice all over the place, though: