Close-up

I'm experimenting with new blog titles. I don't love the one I had, so I'm trying on new ones for size. It's likely that my blog title will change many times in the next several days. I doubt that I'll want to keep this one, which I thought of because I was singing George Gershwin's "Summertime" in my head after midnight as I was getting ready for bed tonight. We'll see.

A real update coming tomorrow. Cheers!

I wrote this post on Monday, but the internet hasn't been working very well, so I couldn't get it up. We went to the New Globe Theatre to see Shakespeare's As You Like It, but I just wrote this about the journey over to the theatre. I was so impressed by how beautiful everything was, and I felt a bit like a sponge, soaking in the beauty of the evening and feeling so grateful to be here.

We started off by getting off the tube at the St. Paul’s Tube stop. I love getting off at St. Paul’s, because the station is just behind the cathedral. So, you walk up and around to get out of the station…and BOOM. There is St. Paul’s Cathedral, in all of Christopher Wren’s ingenious glory. No matter how many times I walk by, I can’t help but stop for at least a few seconds and stare up at it. Tonight, it was especially magnificent; we arrived right during sunset, so the clouds created puffy-looking streaks across the sky, in varying shades of violets, blues, and greys. (I’m in Britain. I’m spelling grey like a Brit. “Gray” is American and so much less refined looking, I think.) I cannot walk past St. Paul’s without singing the song, “Feed the Birds,” from Mary Poppins. So, I always inevitably have that song going through my head for the rest of the day or night whenever I walk past that lovely edifice. I love St. Paul’s.


(Picture stolen from my roommate, Caitlin. She's the middle one. Roommate Whitney is the one on the right.)

After walking past St. Paul’s, we had to cross the street and walk over to Millennium Bridge, which is a pedestrian bridge only (I did not know this) and is also in several movies, including a scene in the latest Harry Potter movie where it gets destroyed. On the bridge, I naturally got distracted again and we paused to take many, many pictures of ourselves and other girls in the program, taking full advantage of what Dr. Soper (the Humanities professor) termed “the golden hour” when we were learning about basic principles of landscape photography the other day. It’s that hour just before the sun sets when it casts a golden light over everything and in which everything looks more vibrant and beautiful. I love that kind of light. But I am a little bit vain about why—someone told me once that my red hair looked really lovely in that glowing, golden light of the setting sun…and I was narcissistic enough to believe it. So I love being in that golden light, unfortunately because I’m a silly, vain little girl sometimes. Not to mention it makes everything pretty. Oh well.

The play was excellent, but I guess I was a little wrapped up in the simpler things tonight. I think I tend to forget to pay attention to some of those things as I hustle and scurry around to get to the next thing. It's easy to feel that way in London. It's easy to think of and hear about all the fabulous things there are to do and to realize that you probably won't get to see or do half of them, even though you do try to go out and take advantage of your location at least (and often more) once a day. I'm very much a list-maker--almost nightly for the past couple of years, I have made a to-do list (Generally on Post-it notes. I'm obsessed with them.) for the next day...and the highlight of any week is looking at a completed post-it note list at the end of a day. I list things that have to be done, things that would be nice to get done, and just things I want to indulge in because I'd like to do them. (There are a lot of that last category on my London Post-its.)

But tonight I remembered how beautiful it is to rejoice in the doing of my Post-it items, because though the item on the list was "Go to As You Like It," I think I learned just as much from the journey as I did the play itself and the completion of the task. Reminds me of President Monson's "Finding Joy in the Journey" talk from October 2008 General Conference. It's nice to stop and smell the roses. Even if I don't finish all the things on my daily to-do list, I'm remembering to enjoy the process. If I can learn to "suck the marrow" out of this experience, as Brother and Sister Shuler advised, and truly live in the things that I do accomplish, then I might even learn to revel in my half-done Post-it note.

Because really, by doing less and living more, we don't lose that much after all.

...or, in some of your cases, a little longer than that. But, that doesn't fit very well with the BNL song, now does it?

Now, for an update. I'm just going list the things I'm thinking, as connecting them all with enough words to make them flow would just be a longer post than any of you are interested in reading.

1. I flew over the Atlantic all on my own, sitting next to a nice Muslim Bangladeshi man who often visits Chicago (where I was) and lives in Saudi Arabia and has a Mormon colleague from Utah. Random. He was a really nice guy though. This is my first view of London. At 6 a.m. It was beautiful. :)


2. I arrived at number 27 Palace Court last Wednesday at about 9:00 a.m. London time. I met up with 8 other girls in my program at the airport, and we took a shuttle bus to the London Centre. I sat by a very, very cute Scottish boy (with an even cuter accent) and our driver was a wonderfully charming old man who narrated for us the neighborhoods of London as we passed.

3. By Saturday, I had seen Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, the London Eye (only I'm not going ride it--its 17 pounds! And everything that I would see from it, I can see myself. As Rachel said, it's a rip-off.), the Thames, several houses of state, Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, all around my neighborhood, and also Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament from a distance. I had also visited the British Museum and the National Gallery and been to Phantom of the Opera. (Phantom was amazing. We had an absolutely excellent cast. Mostly because the Phantom was incredible. I loved him.) :) Woo-hoo!

My roommate Nicole and I in front of the British Museum.
I saw the Elgin Marbles! Gaaahhh!!! :)

4. Sunday, I went to church. I attend the Mitcham ward, in an area of London waaaaay south of the main city (about 1 1/2 hours one way) and there are only 6 or 8 people in the ward who are white. And 4 of them are missionaries. Most of the people are from Ghana, I think. I work in the Primary, and it is going to be so cool! :)

5. Monday, classes started for real. I like them already, and the faculty especially.

6. I am almost done with my English Teaching Application. I'm emailing it to my mom to send in on Thursday, and when I finish, it will be cause for GREAT celebration. It's been kind of an ordeal to get it all done. I worked on it almost all day today, and finally after dinner tonight I took a break and went to Gelato Mio with a couple of my roommates. It was lovely to get out.

It's been fabulous so far. I'm so excited for the rest of this week! But more on that later.... it'll be a surprise.

This is it. What I've been waiting for since the age of ten.

I'm flying to London today.

And I can't even articulate real words or real thoughts to attempt expression of how I feel.

I'm so excited. Oh boy. :)

:) :) :) :) :)

I'm in Chicago for a few days before I head to London, and it's been rain-ish-cloudy-ish-weather the whole time I've been here. I love the rain. Sun is nice and all, but growing up where I did, we were always very grateful for the rain, since we always needed more of it. I associate it with being calm, pondering, and curling up with a cozy blanket on a couch. During the fall and winter months, rain is my favorite kind of weather. It's a good thing I'm going to England. I'll get lots of rain there. :)



And I love this painting of Chicago in the rain. It's called "Chicago Hancock November Rain," by John Houston.

I am waiting to go to London. It's just about all I can think about. I feel like these people, just waiting, waiting, waiting.







Only, this is what I am waiting for:




I think Andy Warhol is right.

I used to think English wasn’t a very pretty language. I think I began changing my mind last fall when I took my first university-level English class. The more poetry, stories, novels, plays, etc. written in English that I read, I find myself appreciating more and more the beauty of it. However, I think it’s a different kind of beautiful than other languages that we think of. The actual sounds of English may not be, to some ears, as melodious and resonant as Spanish, Greek, or Italian, but to me, its variety of sounds, both discordant and tuneful, makes it that much more beautiful. The variety is beauty.

The more I think and get to know myself, the more I wonder why I ever considered not studying English. I love words. (Obviously. I wouldn’t talk so much if I didn’t.) But really—it used to be that music was the one thing that could always move me to tears, inspire me when nothing else could, or make me want to be better more than anything else. But as I’ve studied literature and the craft of writing this past year, I’ve become more and more aware of my love affair with words. I love to read, write, talk, listen, and participate in all communication that involves words. With the use of words, there is such power and potential to do good and to increase understanding between people. And I guess that’s why I love words so much. They provide so much room and opportunity for expression and insight into other people’s lives, thoughts, and hearts. Not to mention the fact that the possibilities words offer are limitless. Each word has many disparate meanings, and like cooking, when you combine different words together in different ways, each combination creates endless flavors and experiences, no two of which are ever identical. As Benedick says of Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, in the care of a gifted speaker, "his words are a very fantastical banquet."

Even when two people use the same words, it’s still unique because each person has his or her own voice that preserves itself in their sentence and paragraph structure and diction of other things they speak. I am such an English major—here I am rhapsodizing about the power of words…but it’s true—and it’s something that I have come to absolutely love as I’ve studied more. The funny thing is that I even see it in the Book of Mormon—Jacob is one of my favorite prophets as far as writing style goes. I think he is so eloquent and expresses the truths of Christ's grace and unconditional love through His sacrifice for us so beautifully (see Jacob 4). Alma and Mormon are pretty good too.


I think the capacity for communication and understanding between people when words are used well is the best part. When I'm reading a work that moves me, it's because the author has communicated something to me through his or her words that resonates with my soul. I come to a deeper appreciation and understanding for the ideas conveyed via his or her powerful words. That is why we read. That is why we write. To help each other understand experiences, thoughts, ideas, and ways of life. And that's why I study English. I want to understand.

And then when a work of literature does that for me, I feel kind of like like this girl. The words just kind of jump right off the page and enfold me in a great big word-a-licious hug. Yum. :)

(photo courtesy of: http://media.photobucket.com/image/art%20words/jim131314/words-1.jpg)