"Emily, Awaken!"

The clock on the wall is ticking steadily on. Watch the second hand makes its round, now the minute hand is moving too, and now the hour is a thing of the past. A blog waits for promised posts, the girl who has promised to write so consistently? Nowhere to be found.

 

I beg pardon, this girl is quite easily found. It is true, however, she is not to be found with her fingers tapping away at her keyboard, but asleep on her bed.  She has gone off to have a long fall nap, a winter hibernation, and as she is properly bear like, she is not to be woken easily.

There she goes, hiding from the sunlight in a mountain of blankets, a fan roars like a hurricane, blowing the icy winds about her. The covers move, out pokes a bare foot, testing the open air. Will she awaken? Is the sunshine enough to open her eyes? Your question shows how little you know of Emily.

The door to her chambers is opened, her mountain of covers has been destroyed by a merciless hand. With a swift twist of a knob her hurricane has been silenced. “Emily, awaken!” comes a voice, much too cheerful when used in such a purpose. Oh cruel world, that wakes one with no true loves kiss to soften the blow.

On second thought, even true loves kiss is most definitely not worth waking up for. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White must have been awfully nutty.

 

 

As for Emily, she sleepeth on.

 

 

I’m listening to…

 I have just discovered how much I love listening to poems put to music. For the past week my favorite station on Pandora has been the Loreena McKennit one. I think it’s so beautiful because besides being lovely to listen to, each song is a story. Well, that can be said of almost every type of music, but it’s like reading a classic in comparison to a recent bestseller novel. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but listening to beautiful ballads of brave knights and fair ladies is quite delightful. I have to say, when simply reading poetry my mind sometimes wanders. I have a harder time of slipping into the story and living and breathing it like I do with prose, but with a musical accompaniment I find it easier to imagine out the story and enjoy the meter and rhythm to it. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but all I know is I find it much easier to sink into the tale when hearing it sung to me, rather than reading it myself. Though, I do like having the poem on hand if I miss a line or two.

 

 

 

I'm reading...

 

 

 

 

Emily of New Moon: Oh, my dear L. M. Montgomery, you know I can only survive being parted from your books for so long. I remember a time when 'Emily of New Moon' was one of my least favorite, actually, but with each reading I love it more.

 

 

Common Sense 101 (Lessons from G. K. Chesterton): Again, a post due soon. Again, really a must read.

 

Party Shoes: NOEL STREATFEILD WROTE A BOOK THAT I HAVEN'T READ YET? MUST READ.

 

 

Decline and Fall: After reading Brideshead Revisited I've always wanted to read another of Evelyn Waugh's books. I'm excited to start this one.

 

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: I'm only about a hundred pages away from the end of this book. I've really enjoyed these. There's a couple that I've liked especially. My favorite are the few where he bamboozles you (isn't bamboozle an interesting word?) with some outrageous happening which turns out to be all the work of the character's imagination, and trickery of some other character. (The Offshore Pirate, Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr-nce of W-les) I also quite like Bernice Bobs Her Hair. I just bought the movie Midnight in Paris which has Scott Fitzgerald as a character, so it's been fun to read some of his stories after watching that movie again.

 

Brideshead Revisited: I just really want to read this book again.

 

The Fault in Our Stars: I just finished reading this one and honestly I haven't really sorted out my thoughts on it entirely. I felt like the book captured the characters very well, without my ever feeling precisely fond of them. Perhaps simply because they and I would not be "Kindred Spirits," if we were to meet. We would have different life-styles, values and what-not. That doesn't make me not appreciate them, as characters I felt very much as if they captured a very real sort of person, and also exemplified the author's main focus of questions on life and death. I got rather tired of the amount of sentences begining with 'and' or 'but' (which really ought to be an exception to the rule rather than the rule itself) and fragment sentences. (I feel rather guilty writing this as I know I'm a far from perfect writer myself...but...) Anyhow, I'm still deciding what I really think about it, so enough for now.

 

A Picture thought I'm sharing...

 

 

I just felt like taking a picture of some crayons.

 

 

 



 

 

 

A First Day of School

I'm Thinking: this is my first "journaling page"of the year. Even though I'm going to be writing up more blog posts of a classical styling (*cough* a fancy phrasing for writing out long blog posts with perhaps a more specific point to them than the journaling pages, which allow you to jump from subject to subject) I'm still going to be writing up a weekly journaling page on Mondays. I was also thinking about another sort of weekly post that I could come up with. The past couple days I keep coming across blogs where people have challenged themselves to take enough pictures a day for a blog post compilation of them all, and while I don't think I could do that daily, I thought it would be a fun thing to come up with once a week. Perhaps Fridays? Yes, I think Fridays I shall make up a post of just pictures, and try to keep from writing anything in such posts but just let the pictures speak for themselves.

I'm Listening to... The movie soundtrack from the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, Mom reading out-loud a book on Venice to Jack and Riley, and Marcus listening to a Math lecture.

Outside My Window... From the kitchen table one looks out at the front yard (or perhaps it is the backyard, it really is hard to decipher which should be labeled which.) Of course, it really doesn't affect a description whether I label it back or front, the real point to the thing is that it is a yard. A thing dry grass, blooming dandelions, and large puff balls that are dandelions that were. I might perhaps describe the road directly across from the yard, or the brambles that hang above the said road, but as I set myself out to describe the yard, and the yard I have described, I shall here finish off my sentence.

I'm Reading... Commen Sense 101: Lessons from G. K. Chesterton, which I plan on writing out a blog post all of it's own so I shan't write anymore here. If you haven't read it though, go find a copy for yourself as soon as possible. It's just that good. Oh, by the by, on the topic of G. K. Chesterton, here's a link to enjoy American Chesterton Society. I haven't yet had a chance to spend as long as I should like exploring that site (it's the sort of site that you really need to spend hours exploring, you know.) but I was so excited when I found it. There are bunches of his essays and things. Everyone needs more G. K. Chesterton in their life. Would you believe our library doesn't have any of his works?! The outrage. So I shall do my part to spread about his name *takes on a newspaper boy voice* READ ALL ABOUT IT. READ CHESTERON.

Common Sense 101

A Few Plans for the Rest of the Day... I am simply going to write about my plans for the rest of the day as writing them up for the rest of the week would be rather a lot to write about (lots of plans.)

1. Finishing cleaning up the school room.
2. Cleaning my room.
3. Taking a walk.
4. Another Math Lesson?
5. Coffee drive?
6. Folding laundry.
7. Finishing up this Journaling Page.

As you can see, lot's of cleaning and getting everything all lovely and ready for a new start of the school year.

 

My Nameless Little Friend

We were friends right from the beginning, she and I. She peered at me through a gap in the bookshelf, I put another book in it's place and smiled back at her. I pushed my cart of books through the shelves of fiction, finding at the end of them the same little round face; still peering at me from in-between the books.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh spying on you." She said casually. I knew then, of course, this little girl wasn't the round faced six year old she appeared to be. She was a spy. How misleading the short blond haircut and the ever so fancy princess gown! Why this little girl knew the art of shadowing someone, watching their every move from a safe distance, never to be seen- for the bookshelves hid her from sight of course!

We sat down amongst the board books. I shifted through them while the little girl perched on a stool and chattered away, secure in the knowledge of our fast friendship.

"And what do you think happened then?" She whispered and watched my expression expectantly.

I showed sufficient astonishment. "I don't know, tell me!"

"Why, I jumped of course! I stood up on that chair, put some flour on my head," (the flour was, she had already explained, fairy dust.) "I made my wish..."

"What did you wish for?" I broke in.

"A mermaid's lagoon, silly!"

"Oh yes, of course! How silly of me!"

"AND THEN I JUMPED!"  and to show me just how she had jumped in her story, she jumped again, this time from the little stool she had been sitting on.

"Did you fly?" I asked, open-mouthed.

"No," she sighed, "but maybe next time I will."

"Oh yes, I'm sure next time."

"That's what I thought." She looked smug and smoothed her dress.

I thought now was a fitting time to remark on the princess dress. "It is a lovely one." I said.

"I'm Cinderella." She nodded.

"I thought you were."

"Her hair was longer though."

"Short hair is nice for summer though. I always cut my hair that short during summer when I was your age."

"Oh yes. Short hair's better for exploring. Your head gets hot otherwise."

"Yes, there is that, and if you went to the desert just think how hot you would get then! You might faint!"

She grinned appreciatively at this. Yes, short hair was indeed better for exploring. We were agreed.

"My Mommy reads me lots of stories." She remarked, watching me alphabetize the picture books.

"What's your favorite?" I asked.

"Oh I like Peter." She said.

"Of course! Everyone loves Peter Pan!"

She ran across the room to get the coloring book and crayons from the table. On her dash back she stopped by her mother's side and listened to her conversing with the Children's Librarian.

"I like that movie!" She suddenly chirped up. "I want to lie down in a boat and be dead. They read a poem."

I couldn't help beaming at her across the room at this. I wanted to suddenly cry out "There she weaves by night and day, a magic web with colours gay, she has heard a whisper say, a curse is on her if she stay, to look down on Camelot!" Certainly, this little girl was quickly becoming my favorite person that I had ever met at the library.

She was back at my side again, I was going through non-fiction books that needed to be re-shelved. "Winnie the Pooh's my favorite!"

"Winne the Pooh's my favorite too!"

She bounced on her knees and started singing to me "Winne the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, Winnie Nilly silly old bear, he's Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh!"

Even the best of things must come to an end at some time. I was pushing my cart of books in the direction of the adult fiction. "Bye!" I waved back to her as she turned and waved with one hand, while holding her mother's with the other.

"See you soon, friend!" She called to me, and then turning to her mother she said confidingly "I made a new friend today. She's nice."

We were the best of friends, she and I, my little nameless friend. Perhaps because she reminded me of the little girl I was, not so long ago. We loved books, we loved adventures, we bounced about in dresses and would always wear our hair in short little blond 'bobs.'

She smiled at me through the bookshelves, and we were kindred spirits.

She is the Queen of Crime

(and by that you know, of course, I speak of Agatha Christie)

 

 

When the time comes that you walk into your local bookstore and find yourself giving an enthused lecture about a particular author to the lady at the cash register- you may be just a little bit obsessed. Now I'm not saying this is a bad thing, especially considering that my example happens to be (as you may have guessed) a true story. However, you might come away feeling just a little bit embarrassed and scolding yourself about keeping your mouth shut as you creep towards the nearest exit with a reddened face. One does not just give lectures to perfect strangers about your author of choice. You were of course just trying to be helpful and set her straight as she remarked "Why, I didn't know that Agatha Christie wrote under a pen name."

 

"Oh yes," you say as you scribble your name down on the recite. "Mary Westmacott. You see, she made such a big name for herself as a mystery writer that when it came to her novels that weren't mysteries her publishers..." Here you break off your sentence as you realize that the lady is regarding you with a bored expression and nodding as if she understands entirely and you needn't continue. You complete your sentence with a hurried nodding of your own head and take up your purchases in their brown bag and scuttle towards the door.

 

Outside the door you scold yourself severely and decide to keep all information gained from a certain autobiography to yourself in the future. Oh the troubles of an overly enthused reader! You think to yourself, but then a little voice in the back of your head prompts you to add, ...but she does work at a bookshop. Honestly. People these days. You would think someone working at a bookstore would be interested about these things. I know I would! and you walk away unrepentant.

 

Of course, other signs that you might be a wee bit obsessed are that you have written up great long list of all of Agatha Christie's ninety plus books and are slowly but surely crossing your way through them all. (As soon as I heard that she wrote that many books I instantly felt it was a challenge calling my name to read them all. A goal I mean to accomplish, you know.)

 

 



This goal is getting to be rather a challenge these days, just in finding books of hers I haven't read. She's written plenty of them of course- the thing is just finding them. I've exhausted our library's stock, and our local bookstore (of course, I can't really afford to buy  as many as I should like anyways. More's the pity.) so I suppose I shall have to be patient and wait for three of them to come through inter-library-loan, but it takes ever such a long time!

As you can tell, I'm just rather in love with Agatha Christie's books. It's not so much the fact that they're mystery books, as I never really liked mystery books before I found hers, but I love her way of writing. They're clever and well written, and what I like most about them is the characters. (Yes, that could have been a statement to be predicted from me. More than anything I have a love of well written characters.) And her characters are well written. Her books give you glimpses of all sorts of different characters- what makes them human; their good qualities and their weaknesses. She allows you to step into another's shoes and see the world through their eyes- which can be a bit of an unnerving experience considering some of the people she writes.

 

To finish this off I believe I shall make up a list of my top ten favorite Agatha Christie's so far (of course this is keeping in mind I might not remember them all at the moment and may come up with one two days later and say "Oh no no, I like this best out of any of them!")

 

Emily's Top Ten Agatha Christie's (in no specific order)

 

1. The Secret Adversary.

2. Murder on the Orient Express.

3. The Man in the Brown Suit.

4. And Then There Were None.

5. N or M?

6. Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

7.The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

8. The Secret of the Chimneys.

9. Cat Among the Pigeons.

10.  The Mysterious Mr. Quin.

 

*pictures from google images

New School Year's Resolutions

Most people start thinking about their goals for themselves come New Years.' They start thinking about what they feel they need to improve in themselves; what are their good qualities, and what are the things they don't really like about themselves and want to work on. For myself, (I think perhaps this is common for students period) I find that my mind is much more full of those thoughts come the beginning of the school year, rather than January 1st. It is at the beginning of the school year, as I'm sorting through last year's books, wading my way through the dishevel of my desk, still in the exact state it was last June when I closed those books.

By the by, I was thinking how one's desk has a queer feeling of time standing still through the summer. It always seems like one of those enchanted castles from fairy tales, with everything about it suspended in time from June to September. Perhaps the calender on the wall has something to do with this, reading "June" all through the summer till you go to change it come September. (At least this is what happens to me. I never touch my desk during the summer, there are much nicer places to go to write or draw during the Summer- places that don't have that ominous schoolwork feel to them.)

So here we are, September 3, 2012, dusting one's spaces and writing up a post on goals for the school year. I don't quite want to say 'resolutions' as the word resolution rather has a distasteful ring to it of things incomplete hanging over your head, don't you think? This mostly has to do with the fact that most of us set our resolutions much too high and then give up as soon as we slip once. This is why I'm not going to say anything about keeping my desk/room in states of perfection, as I know this to be quite an impossible task for myself. I'm not saying I couldn't, but doing that would, I fear, drain all the creative energy out of me and leave me unable to write, draw, create, or think even, due to a little too much perfection for comfort. I need a little bit of scattered paper and stubs of pencils lying about to be comfortable. I will say that I shall try to keep things in a better state of order, but I shan't strive for perfection, merely organized chaos.

I am going to lay out a few attainable, workable goals, though.

1. Blogging. This is my blog for the coming year, and I'm planning on creating frequent posts on all matters of things. I shall say nothing about making each post a work of art, but just that I shall post regularly and put into words those many posts that I'm always coming up with in my head, but never writing.

2. Writing. I want to write a little every single day. Whether this is writing in my new journal book, or fiction writing, or blogging, I want to get up each morning and sit myself down with a cup of coffee and really truly write.

3. Going to bed at a decent hour. (This will, of course, be the hardest for me.) I'm going to turn off my Internet at a reasonable hour each night, and if I stay up a little later I want to be able to spend that time in reading. This means not getting lost in the many corners and paths of the Internet.

4. Getting up in the morning.

5. Walking. I want to walk a little each day, and when I say walking I don't mean the necessary walking I do anyways, but going on long rambling (or of course brisk purposeful) walks.

6. Drinking more water. (Might I just add that while 5 and 6 may not seem strictly relevant to getting school work done, I assure you they are. A healthy, energetic me is going to be more happy and productive with her day, rather than the slothful me who can't keep her eyes open.)

I think that's all I shall say for now. Of course getting actual school work as a goal goes without saying. Also I shall just add a link to Victoria's post Homeschool Tips from Setonite, which I thought was very good.

Also. The Lady of Shalott, because I love that poem and this is beautiful.

There's Someone in my Picture Files?

 

There happens to be a reason, a fairly good reason, in my own opinion, why I make Anne's 'baking powder award face' (as I shall from here on out call it) whenever I hear those words. Or rather, think those words, for when does one ever exclaim out loud, or hear someone else exclaim out loud, "There's someone in my picture files?" My awnser to you, is not very often.

 

This is because my picture files is a fairly interesting place to just 'wander through'. I'm not quite sure if you understand the seriousness of this undertaking. As Boromir would say (and the rest of us would quote) "ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY WALK INTO MORDOR" or in other words, my picture files.

 

If you do decide to enter, and I would strongly advise you not to, you might very well find Scarlett O'Hara giving you her finest kill-you-dead-with-one-glance stare.

 

What? What is Scarlet O' Hara doing glaring at you from amongst Emily's nice pictures, you ask? I must say, I have no good response. She just happens to be there, glaring the day away, right in the middle of ten or so pictures of vintage patterns. Of course, I must remind you, it really isn't her fault that she is always glaring so, her face is stuck like that. I suppose it is true what they say about expressions sticking, and not to hold your face in such positions. We have been warned.

Wandering down a little bit you will find my picture folders quite a happy place to be. Lovely flowers, pictures from Road to Avonlea, countless pictures of books advising you to read, and drink tea, and a couple hugs or so.

 

Which is all quite lovely, and gives one happy feelings that remind one of sunshine and butterflies and dancing about in a grassy field.

 

But then one glances down a little farther and finds Harry Lloyd staring at one like this:

 

 

 

And no one can help but stare back at him like this:

 

 

 

And really Emily finds herself with no explanation but this:

 

"He's from Robin Hood? Anwser your question?"

 

 

 

Which of course it doesn't, but I did warn you didn't I? My picture files is a dangerous place to be. What with Scarlet O'Hara and Harry Lloyd, not to mention Alice crying buckets of tears and multiple pictures of Rapunzel's frying pan. (I happen to like frying pans) Oh and there seems to be a cat and a dog in there somewhere, don't ask me how they got in! I don't even like cats.

 

 

I would also warn one that there is an abundance of pictures of thistles for some reason, there really must be a reason for those, though I can't think what, and if you happen to see multiple stranger's pictures don't worry! I'm just planning on drawing them one of these days.

 

To finish this off I would advise only entering my picture files with some smelling salts and a cup of strong coffee to refresh one after trauma. (but really, you know that after seeing Harry Lloyd, don't you? He's really who I ought to have warned you of. Here, have some strong coffee.) I really can't be held responsible now can I? I did warn you that somehow my picture files becomes the oddest place to be. That handy 'save picture' button, something really ought to be done about that.

 

Also. I would like to add.

 

 

Thank you. You have been warned.

 

*none of the gifs/pictures are mine, I'm not quite sure where most of them came from, if I find out I shall edit. Actually, the one of Allen could possibly be Mel's? (Missie, is that yours? I remember falling in love with the thing ages and ages ago. I could be wrong though and it isn't yours. *puzzles*)











A New Year- A New Blog

I have to say that the beginning of this new blog does rather have the affect of making me feel rather fickle-minded. Especially considering the vast amount of time I spent perfecting my last, but that is in fact the real reason I have decided to create a new blog entirely. I think most bloggers, when they get tired (as everyone eventually does) of their theme, or their title, or any other aspect of their blog, simply make the few editing changes and voila! enjoy the delightful newness of it all. (Newness doesn't seem like it ought to be a word, does it? I have just assured myself that it is indeed an actual word, in the dictionary no less, but still, there is a discordant sound to it. I'm not sure why this is. If I had not decided to remark on it I would most likely change my word choice, but having pointed it out the word shall stay.)

Of course, I could quite easily do as I was just supposing that other bloggers do; namely, do a little editing and change it all up. The trouble is, while I desperately want something new to look at and create posts for, I really do love my old blog. I spent hours fiddling with the settings, learning how to create it into what it is now. I went through dozens and dozens of pictures to find just the right ones to turn them into my header, and spent much thinking time on coming up with a title I liked properly. I don't want to let go of any of that, and I rather want to have it to go back to, thus my reasoning of creating a new blog entirely.

I don't mean for this to seem as if I were giving up on that blog- moving on is a better way to describe it.

I feel as if I were a different person, needing a different sort of blog and for a different sort of reason. (Not to mention my other blog was beginning to feel just a little cluttered to me. I wanted something with cleaner lines, simpler, less cluttered if that makes sense. I'm also going to try tagging my posts properly with this blog, don't even ask my about the tags on my other, they were a hopeless mess!) This year, my last year of high school, I want to spend some more time blogging, but writing up lengthier and more frequent posts. Perhaps they will be a little less well thought out, as I'm also planning on attempting to sit down and write and then post, rather than thinking over an idea for weeks and weeks and perhaps never actually writing it up (yes, this was a great difficulty of mine last year.) and I needed some change to inspire me.

Sometimes change is such a nice thing. (This is why I have a habit of moving my bed around the room every few months or so. I like looking at different corners of my wall. It feels like an entirely different room looking from the right side as compared to the left side. Really, it's remarkable.) I like the feeling of starting something new, of beginning over, of opening a new book. It's the most discouraging thing in all the world if you are to open a textbook from last year and have to start up in the middle. You have all your smudges and mistakes and misspellings to come back and haunt you as you turn the pages. Opening a new book though! A thing most delightful! Glancing through the crisp unmarked pages, taking out that first sharp pencil, it is those things that make starting up school again in the fall a thing of joy!

All this is to account for the reasoning behind a new blog.

Those ardent admirers of Lucy Maud Montgomery will note that the quote (and title that finds it's origins in the said quote) are to be put under that great lady's name. I always liked Anne's ramblings about the 'bend in the road' and 'one chapter ending the next begining' (she says something like that towards the end of Anne of Avonlea, doesn't she? It's one of my favorite scenes.) This particular quote is to be found in the first Anne book, Anne of Green Gables, if anyone happened to be in doubt. All of which reminds me (as did looking through my copies to find the right quote) that I really must reread all of my favorite L. M. Montgomery's sometime very soon. It's been too long. For now- bed. There shall be time for more post writing, quote infatuation, book love, and general ramblings tomorrow.