Just Because...

My Sweet, Crushed Angel
You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God's heart at all.

Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy
To hear.

So what if the music has stopped for a while.

So what
If the price of admission to the Divine
Is out of reach tonight.

So what, my dear,
If you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love.

The mind and the body are famous
For holding the heart ransom,

But Hafiz knows the Beloved's eternal habits.

Have patience,

For He will not be able to resist your longing
For Long.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One.

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet,
O my sweet crushed angel.

-- Hafiz

Hooray!

My last exam is now done! I have writer's cramp and came the closest ever to filling my answer book. I also got to take lots of potshots at Pullman, which is always fun. And the fire alarm went off two minutes before the end of the exam. We all just stared at the invigilators in complete shock before being told to leave our scripts where they were and file out for 20 minutes. If it turns out that that was someone's idea of a good time for a fire drill I will be mightily pissed. But that's OK, I'd just finished my last essay and was starting to fill out the front cover, so it all turned out well for me. :-D

Another One Bites The Dust...

ENGL111 is done and dusted. I'm reasonably confident about it. I used all the time I had, not from needing to think but because I had things to say, so I'm not paranoid about all the people who left an hour early. Not paranoid at all. Really.

My first exam was really easy. La la la.

That's it. Nothing else to say.

Love to all,

Steph

I just got the nicest comments back from my tutor...

She finally coughed up with my essay (the first copy of which having met with an accident with a shredder), and along with its sequel it was full of really ego-flattering comments like "Splendid", "Marvellous", "Tremendous", one to two pages of typed commentary for both of them, some interesting points on what I had to say, a suggestion that I start reading up on post-colonialism (I'm not sure exactly what post-colonialism is but I think I really ought to check it out, somehow) and finished it all with:

"I hope you'll go on with English - you'll maybe want to do the Post-Colonial theory course - and I hope you'll consider post-graduate study in English? I want to read more of your work."

This is like, amazingly awesome. It's been 6 hours since I read it and I'm still grinning about it.

I just wrote a really long and interesting post about my birthday and then the internet connection failed and it was all lost...

So I'll leave everyone with the news that I had a good birthday.

Also these words from my Latin teacher:
felicem tibi
natalem diem!
felicem, O Steph,
natelem diem!

My Essay Got Shredded ...

... and my tutor still hasn't marked the replacement, despite having had it for a full week.

I like getting feedback. I like someone who knows more than me suggesting how I could have argued my point better, or mentioning other sources that I'd find interesting, or even just telling me what they liked. I'm presumably going to get it back next Wednesday which will make it a full month since I handed the damn thing in in the first place. Man, this is annoying. There's nothing worse than feeling like you're throwing finely crafted words out into empty air. Phooey.

Well, Now I Know How It Feels To Be In The Middle Of A Car Crash...

The word 'middle' used advisedly. My brother and I were in the second car at a red light when someone piled into the back of us. I have a headache and had a sore neck. (Turns out my side got the biggest dent.) The latter got me a visit from an ambulance and a fire engine. I think the fire engine was marginally closer or something, but they both figured that if I was wondering around non-disorientated after 20 minutes the odds of me being concussed or having a broken neck were slight. So they asked me some more questions, poked at my neck a bit and offered me a ride in the ambulance if I wanted to have an x-ray. 3 hour queue. To be honest, my headache isn't that bad. It probably helped that I was cracking jokes and asking for a lolly pop. That was the entertaining part.

The non entertaining part was hanging around a closed petrol station for another hour waiting for the police to turn up. When we eventually re-called them, it turned out that the ambulance had said that there was no emergency and they'd taken us off their visit list. Without telling us about it. Bastards. Presumably someone else gets to deal with the abandoned car of the driver who started it all and which, when we left, was blocking the petrol truck from leaving.

Man, I'm tired. And I didn't even have a book to read.

And She Is Now Back!

I got woken at 5am by a very loud and gravelly pur.

Phew! She has no broken limbs, is very hungry but hasn't had time to lose weight, and is purring fit to burst. I have no idea where she's been or why she turned up now, but I've never been happier about broken sleep in my life.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Bast, St Francis and any other deity or saint or helped in this. And a big cheers to the SPCA who weren't able help to me in particular but save many pets in general and were friendly and helpful in advice. Also three cheers to the National Pet Database at http://www.petsonthenet.co.nz/.

Steph

...And She Is Now Missing.

She seemed pretty happy to be home, but around 1am I realised that the reason she was so restive was an inability to get out of the house owing to my flatmate locking the catdoor. So I put her outside and realised an hour later that the catdoor was locked from the inside as well so she hadn't been able to get back in. But now no cat, her breakfast is untouched and the neighbours who are home haven't seen her. My new flatmate, Mark, thinks he heard the catdoor flap and the sound of feet earlier today, but that could have been the neighbour's cat.

This is extremely uncharacteristic behaviour and I am worried. She's not really the type to storm off because of a snit. The only good sign so far is no corpses on the road.

*%$&^%$

Stephanie

I Sprang My Cat From Quod Today...

And boy did she create hell about being in the car again. She's now purring lots and obsessively patrolling the house, which I choose to interpret as being glad to be home.

Steph

I'm Looking For Some Research Help

Hi all,

I have a favour to ask. In my (absolutely splendiferously awesome) course on Children's Fantasy mentioned in my previous post, we have started studying the Chronicles of Earthsea. It turns out that my attitude to this particular course is to encourage my lecturers to run in fear from my opinions, basically because I know the set texts pretty well so I'm trying to wring the last drop of meaning out of them. So far my lecturers seem to know the books even better than I do, so I probably won't win, but I'm going to have fun trying. ;-)
Anyway, on to the favour. The Earthsea books are absolutely reeking with plant references, particularly in the wood that the wizards' staffs are made of. For some of them (yew, rowan, oak etc) I'm passably familiar with the pagan symbolism associated with them, but, while I have some reference texts, they're buried at the bottom of seven boxes of books. Can anyone out there suggest some good internet resources and books that the public and university libraries are likely to have?
Thanks,
Steph

*********************************
What I can pull out of memory so far (I'm treating this as a scratchpad, sorry for any errors):
Yew: Ged, the second Master Summoner, planted in graveyards, used for bows, protection from the dead, immortality
Rowan: Lebannen, protection from magic, the berries make a pentagram and I know there's heaps more
Oak: Ogion
Olive: Master Healer
Aspen: the evil wizard in Tehanu
Alder: Tenar
Hazel: Therru
The Immanent Grove is comprised of oaks, willows, chestnuts, ashes and tall evergreens, (Dragonfly, p237) plus the Tree of the Grove which is a bit like an oak and a bit like a chestnut and only grows there.

Some People Are Weird...

So I'm sitting in my Children's Fantasy class before the lecture eavesdropping on the conversation behind me (as you do) and these two guys are talking about the fact that they haven't read the set text (Narnia). Ever. One of them thinks he might once sort of have seen a BBC serial of it. This is after two and a half weeks of lectures and tutorials on C. S. Lewis' life, times, and in considerable detail the Chronicles of Narnia and the big question in my mind is: "What the fuck are you two doing in here?"

If you don't care enough about the subject enough to read the books, why are you sitting a course on it in the first place? How do you expect to understand the lectures if you don't know what they're talking about. Even if you're solely motivated by the mark you get at the end of the course how do you expect to pass if you don't read the material? Understand me, this is not a course for teenagers fresh out of high school. To be in it, you need to have passed two 100 level English papers or talked the Dean into giving you an exemption, so these two people must have done some studying in the past. But I just don't get it - you only get one chance at the lectures and then they're gone forever. You only get so much time to cram all that knowledge into your brain. To me sitting around wasting it is ... approaching blasphemy.

I must be moved in, we have had a house warming party...

(Disclaimer: some of this was previously written in a letter to a friend. Hi Donald!)

So after a week of University I feel a need to take stock. I'm liking getting to mooch around in my pyjamas in the morning and very carefully selected tutorial slots to be no earlier than 11am. (Joy.) My cat has finally arrived (see below), the weather has been gorgeous although is today overcast and windy. For the weather I'm blaming Alan who is visiting for the weekend - he must have brought it down with him. Also, we now have a broadband internet connection so I don't have to trek all the way into town to get access to email. (Double joy.)

Last night we had a house warming party so I guess that officially we're moved in. ;-)
Babe finally made the last two hour car journey to Wellington yesterday. She's coping pretty well, although a bit grumpy about not being allowed outside. We went out for a sniff this morning and I accidentally let her get out of sight for a couple of minutes and then found that I couldn't find her - she'd dissapeared into the undergrowth somewhere. After about 5 minutes she turned up again, so I delayed having a heart attack for the moment.

University has been good. I get to read the Chronicles of Narnia as homework (my Gran didn't believe me when I told her), manicly trying to memorise Latin vocabulary, and reading Middle English to Elizabethan love poetry, some of which is extremely smutty. The first couple of art classes were a bit dull, but hopefully they'll liven up a bit. I've also found that there's an SF group and a Gaming group on campus, so I think I shall be wandering up to their events and seeing what they're like.

I'm learning to navigate like a Wellingtonian. That means working out the easiest ways to gain altitude (like crossing the street, going into a building, taking a lift up 2 floors then crossing the street again via an overbridge) and maintaining altitude once you've got it. Unfortunately, the maps don't contain topographical information, so you pretty much have to 'know' the streets in question. However trust me on this one - you do not want to go down into a valley unless you absolutely have to.

Love to all,

Stephanie

Watch Out Wellington ... Again

So the movers gave me trouble with when my stuff was going to arrive and I finished all the errands that I needed to run so I ended up going back to Palmerston North to visit Catherine again. I'm back now, the weather is great, my gear is finally here and I had a reverse negotiation with my landlord over rent.

Me: "Y'know, I rechecked my finances. I'm not as poor as I thought I'd be. Do you want me to raise my rent to X?" (previously we'd negotiated my rent at a discount because I'm a poor student.)
Norman: "I had a look at prices around here. Do you want to lower it to Y?"
Me: "Sure. Aren't we doing this the wrong way around?"

I will leave you all with the mystery of why packing materials take up more space when the things that they've been packed with have been removed even when I'm taking care to stack them in neatly.

Missing the Auckland contingent heaps,

Love to all,

Stephanie

Watch out, Wellington

So I finally made it here.

Taking the train down from Palmerston North I remembered again how beautiful the hills are. I somehow always forget when I'm away from them.

I'm living in Kingston. Even native Wellingtonions don't seem to know where that is - a bit south of Vogeltown and a bit north of Happy Valley. Norman (me landlord) is a nice guy, but I get the impression that he will be out a lot in the near future - I think he's busy at work and that.

This is my first full day and I've been doing important things like:
1. Finding out about bus and train timetables. I went to the train station counter and asked for bus timetables. The nice chap pointed me in the right direction. Then I asked about train timetables. To Waikanae. He slumped in defeat so I hastily changed it to Paraparaumu which he could help me with. Apparently the commuter trains all stop in Parapaumu which is only about 5km south of Waikane. Go figure. (Waikanae is where my gran lives.)
2. Getting a map (which promptly lost itself, which is a bad start. However, it turned outself in, so I'm letting it off with a warning.)
3. Getting a library card. The library is where I am now, actually, they have internet access and everything.
4. Inviting myself to my brother's house for dinner. It's good to let him know who's boss, early. Then he invited me to the Botanical Gardens to watch an open air viewing of Amelie. Maybe he's trying to show that he's boss. Hmm. I must think on this. ...

More later.

Steph

Watch Out, Palmerston North

I'm here.

It's gone pretty well so far. Babe made an ill-judged dash for her food bowl about half past 11 and found herself unceremoniously stuffed into the bathroom for the rest of the day. She seems to like her new cage, which is reinforced plywood and very enclosed. At least, she spent most of her day hiding inside it. Was highly unimpressed about the plane trip (OK, so I might have told her that she was being sold for medical experiments), but took it pretty well and is very relaxed about wandering around Catherine's house.

Watching a cat explore a new house always make me think of a Feng Shui dragon. She keeps making circuits around the house checking out all the nooks and crannies that she can find and checking them for fit and smell. She has been very quietly and gracefully trying to ooze herself out through a window so I'm guessing she's not hugely worried about life right now.

(I should add that I found when travelling to South Africa for a holiday that having Catherine along meant that I had someone to fuss over, which was a good outlet for travel nerves. I think that Babe has taken over that role, hence my obsessive detailing of her movements. ;-) )

Stephanie

Up, up and away...

OK, I'm moving tomorrow.

My life has been condensed into 4 cubic metres of stuff (or at least that's what the nice people at the moving company are charging me for), a suitcase of clothes and a cat. My pot plants are on long term loan to a friend, I have purchased an industrial grade cat cage that the airline will accept, I have purged a lot of books I don't read anymore and clothes I don't wear anymore and my room is almost down to remnants of furniture with set squares, miscellaneous CDs, a padlock, a letter holder, unused envelopes, scissors, hair stuff and all the little bits and pieces that just don't pack up easily.

Most of my forms have been filled out, the movers turn up tomorrow at lunch time and my sister is expecting me and the cat. Her name is Babe by the way. Somehow I suspect that with all this, she still hasn't worked out that we're moving yet. She's purring far too much to have pre-move nerves.

More later. (Wellington, here I come.)

^%*^%$ I can't find my cat!!!

I guess she's figured out that something's up after all.

I have six hours and twenty one minutes to lay my hands on her scruffy little neck.

F**k.

Stephanie