Journaling Page

Outside my window…clouds spread thick across the sky, growing thin and letting the blue sky peep through in some areas, but mostly all that is to be seen is the white grey clouds. They hide the sunlight from view and shadows take advantage of this, casting themselves over the trees and across the yard. A dark shadowed day, with even the dandelion puff-balls still and without movement in the grass. If you look high enough in the trees, some leaves can be seen rustling gently but not many; only a few especially playful little leaves. The water on the pond is calm, calm and still, the breeze seems to have spent all its strength in playing with the leaves up high in the trees and has no more energy to send the water rippling and twirling across the pond. It is an in-between sort of day. Not summer nor yet fall, it is simply an in-between-er day, a day without warm sunshine, hinting of summer, and chill breezes, proclaiming fall.

I’m wearing…jeans, a new black and white striped top, and my new black flats wait for me at the door, along with my coat and a scarf. Whatever the weather may be like at the present moment I am ready for fall, and I shall determinedly wear warm thick sweaters, knit dresses, scarves and coats, hoping that if fall sees this open admiration of him he shall come and join me in my fall readiness.

I’m listening to…the unsteady, rather unpremeditated “click” “click” as my fingers hit the keyboards to form these words. The words come in seemingly random bursts; all will be silent for a few moments as I think about which words to use and then suddenly my fingers burst into a flying dance (which they seem to enjoy very much) then all is silent once more. Thinking, thinking, thinking, writing…

From the kitchen…I love the kitchen in the morning. I love the sounds of the coffee maker steaming and brewing on the counter, the teapot whistling merrily in a steady burst of steam, a loud smash of a knife or cupboard door rattling, and the patter of little feet running across the floor looking for something yummy for their rumbley tummies. I love the smells of toast being browned or breakfast made, the delicious smell of coffee brewing flouting everywhere, the smell of coca that my brothers are making, and the cup of coffee (yes, coffee again) warm in my hands. Such good morning sounds and smells, wafting from the depths of the kitchen.

I’m reading…I’m in a rather skip from one book to the next sort of mood. I feel like reveling in all my favorite parts of my favorite books so I will pick up an old favorite for a day, curl up with it for a happy hour enjoying it wholeheartedly then I decide to pick up a different one that this book has made me long for. So I flitter from the pages of one book to the next quite contentedly. There are a few books I would like to look up at the library when I have the time though, perhaps before I work today.

One of my favorite things… laying in bed for those first few moments after waking up. Before the thoughts of the day flood into your mind, before you think of all the things you need to do that day, or even before you think of all the things you hope to do. The best moment is that state between sleep and wake, where you really are still half asleep and yet you can feel your toes wiggle under the covers that are both warm and cool at the same time. You watch the curtains blow on the wind created by the fan, blow out in billows like sails on a ship and then ripple and fall back till they billow again. You can see the morning sunshine sneaking through the gaps in-between the curtains and you feel that you could lay here forever, and then you wake up for real and know you must get up.

Around the house…oh there are so many things I would like to do around the house right now, but most of all I should like to curl up in a comfy chair with a blanket thrown around me and a book in my hand, it is that sort of morning.

I am creating…I am rather excited to begin a new knitting project. My Mama has found a pattern for a sweater she would like me to make for Ella and I can’t wait to get started! I can’t wait to go and look at new yarns and feel how soft, to squeeze the yarn and decide which one I would like to work with. My fingers are itching to get those needles in my hands and start creating that steady rhythm of knit stitches coming down and across my needles.

I’m thinking… Oh dear this is sad, I’m trying so hard to think of what I am thinking! But thoughts come and go so fast! Have you ever thought of that? Really they do. You are listening to a song on the radio, it makes you think of a person you know, which makes you think of what they are doing, perhaps they are on vacation somewhere…which makes you think of vacation and snow, which makes you think of Advent and preparations for Christmas, which makes you think of ice-skating, which makes you think of breaking your arm ice-skating last January, which makes you think of having your arm in a cast, which makes you think of fainting. And there you are! In the course of an instant you have gone from thinking about a song you are listening to- to fainting! And it seems quite random to suddenly say, oh I was thinking about the time I fainted! How, may we ask, did you come to be thinking about that while writing a Journaling Page? I don’t know…I don’t know…

A few plans for the rest of the week…Oh so many plans! But most of all I hope to do some practice driving since I start my first class of Drivers Ed in exactly a week.

I’m pondering…(takes on solemn face) I am pondering the repercussions of over indulgence in the bedtime hours by staying up late. Too late, I mean. If you stay up late into the night you may not be able to get up in the morning…unless you never go to sleep! Yes and stay up forever on the pure power of coffee! Now there’s an idea! I think it would be a very good thing if someone invented a machine to pull you up out of your comfy bed and dumped you depressingly in the cold hard bathtub.  I should call it the “Hard Cold Reality Machine” and I should abuse it soundly during the day by every hour going in and making faces at it, but I should secretly be grateful for it, till the day I suddenly went insane and grabbed a large pillow next to me and started smacking it “you ruined my beautiful dream!” and then the robot would say “Welcome. To. Hard. Cold. Reality.” In a metallic fake voice and I would go off into hysterical laughter for no reason at all.

A picture thought I am sharing…this is an absolutely adorable photo of Ella I took yesterday! I am rather proud of it! I love taking pictures, especially close up ones where the background gets blurry but the object of your photography is sharp and clear.  

My quote for the day...

“A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.”

–Anais Nin

A Cathedral and a Chapel

This is going to be a second post in my series of posts on thoughts and memories from my World Youth Day trip. For this post I would like to talk a little about some of my thoughts on a Cathedral and a Chapel. Notre Dame Cathedral and the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal both to be found in Paris. Both are beautiful but in completely different ways, and I think perhaps I liked the small chapel so full of light and beauty better than the famous awe inspiring gothic Cathedral.

As I search for sentences to describe Notre Dame I keep coming back to that one, it is awe inspiring. As you look up you feel small, little compared to that huge structure reaching up to the heavens. You are little. There is so much beauty, in the church architecture simply in how every small detail means something. Thought and symbolism was put into every inch of stone in the all of that large Cathedral, every detail was carefully planned and thought out in this building all reaching up to give glory to God, and yet, I couldn’t really like it.

Dark and cold, it seemed you could wander forever around and around without ever really getting to the heart of the Cathedral; the tabernacle. You lost somehow the sense of God’s presence amidst all the grandeur. It almost made you forget that you were in a church as you wandered on the sidelines gazing at the ancient artistry.

How very different from the Miraculous Medal Chapel that we also saw! Which’s very smallness was its very beauty. You entered it, and your eyes were instantly drawn to the front and the tabernacle. You were instantly aware that this was God’s house and his presence surrounds you especially in this place.

The very simplicity and light created such a calm peaceful atmosphere. It was so full of light! Light streamed through the windows and reflected off of the white and blue interior making it even brighter and lovelier. You felt that you were home. That’s the feeling all churches should create in one, the feeling that one is home. You are home in God’s house, and peace and serenity simply take you over in this knowledge of God’s love for you. A lot of this is your attitude, leaving all of those things creating havoc in your life behind you at the doors as you enter, but it is in the atmosphere also, and this was the atmosphere the Miraculous Medal Chapel created.

A Cathedral; a Chapel, each beautiful in its own special way but most beautiful because it is God’s house and He is truly present in the Eucharist that is found in the tabernacle in the very heart of both. The heart of the church,  both building and people, the heart of our beautiful beautiful Faith.

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society.”
- Pope John Paul II

Oh Paris!

This is my first post in a series of posts that I shall be doing on random memories from my recent trip to World Youth Day. Starting with some thoughts on...

PARIS!  

I think my first impression of Paris was rather one of disappointment, I had tried not to envision what it would be like on my way there, tried not to dream about it so I wouldn’t be disappointed if it wasn’t like what I thought it would be. I tried to keep an open mind. But it’s so hard to push from one’s mind all one has ever heard about Paris. Push from one’s mind Madeline and sketchy sepia toned drawings of the Eiffel Tower one has seen. Push from one’s mind Audrey Hepburn saying sentimentally as she listens to the musician on the street “Paris is always a good idea.” And with those pictures in one’s head, like illustrations in some pretty book, it is rather a shock to step out of the airport onto a bus, look out the window and see...just a big city.

“Where,” you wonder as you stare at the strange looking McDonalds across the street and the graffiti (in French ‘tis true) on concrete wall on the side of the road, “Where, is Audrey Hepburn? Where is my magical city of my dreams from so long ago?”

Yet, it is there, you just have to look for it.

 It is a big city, a big modern city, which I tend to forget when thinking of it, a big modern and dirty city. Yet the magic portrayed in old movies, storybooks and postcards is there.  

Especially at night.

Oh my, our last night in Paris was one I shall never forget! We had been so busy all day, rushing around from one thing to the next, that when we divided into small groups it just became such a relating time. A time where we meandered down the dimming streets and wandered into a few gift shops- not because we needed anything, but because we wanted to look. Even the people on the street had seemed to calm down and relax, no more were the pushing, line cutting, sneering-in-French-at-you, mob bustling around. Everyone seemed in a lazy meandering sort of mood.

We stopped on the side of the street and listened to some musicians singing “What a Wonderful World” and I looked around at the small group of people standing with us, the couple's with their arms around each other, swaying in time with the music, and I felt that I had found my magical Paris.

A leisurely dinner and then short walk to the subway only reaffirmed this feeling. We made it to the Eiffel Tower just before the Eleven o’ clock show.

Did you know that at Eleven o’ clock each night the Eiffel Tower begins to sparkle? And I mean REALLY sparkle. Not just a figurative speech “oh it simply sparkles at Eleven!” It literally sparkles.

It is magical!

We lay down on our backs and looked up at it. Oh it was so beautiful! Like an old time movie. There was even the old time movie romantic couple, who kissed before the Eiffel Tower, how much more romantic can you get?

Oh Paris is beautiful, beautiful with its song “What a Wonderful World,” its small cafés, its sparkling Eiffel Tower, its romantic couple lit up by the light of the glowing Eiffel Tower. Paris is beautiful!

Yet there were things about Paris that frightened me also. The subways at night become rather frightening; people come on the moving subways yelling out something I couldn’t understand in French again and again. It was going to the subways we saw a man snatch a lady’s purse and make off with it. It was going to the subways again we heard these terrifying cries of a man being beaten as the police arrested him. The subways in Paris at night were dark, rather terrifying places. (Just a random thought but it made me think of Black as Night by Regina Doman, though those were the subways of New York, I felt so alike with Blanche sometimes going on the subways in Paris.)

I saw both sides of Paris; the modern, dirty big city, the terrifying dark subways of the night, and the magical beautiful Paris lit up in the dark by a thousand glowing lights.

The Paris of Audrey Hepburn...

and the "Paris is always a good idea" Paris.

 

Some Books Are Such Good Friends...

"A house without books

is like a room without windows. "

Some books are just such good friends. Really good friends. The sort of friends you can’t remember a time you weren’t the very best of friends with. Some books are like that.

I can’t remember a time I wasn’t friends with “Anne” “Sara” and “Jo” (Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, and Little Women.) Why, those books were read to me before I could read myself! But actually, I can’t remember not being able to read. I remember first learning to read, the books that I first read, but I don’t remember when I simply couldn’t read.

Some books have a way of taking you back to the day you first read them too. There are some books that I can pick up again after years and years have gone by and I will be reading and suddenly I feel like I’m twelve again, snuggling one of my new baby brothers while reading, and thinking I was so cool multitasking! Multitasking= holding baby and reading…at the same time! Wasn’t I just so so talented?

"Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome."

~William Ewart Gladstone

Swinging in the hammock one evening reading The Scarlet Pimpernel while the sun sank down in a glowing splash of colorful glory. Reading Mansfield Park with my feet propped up on the dashboard of the car while a Taylor Swift song played on the radio. Snuggled under my covers in my warm cozy bed reading those first words of Pride and Prejudice. Curled up in a rocking chair reading Rose in Bloom, while tears ran down my cheeks (I always have a soft spot in my heart for the boyish teasing character). Lying on the cement porch one hot sunny day reading The Magician’s Nephew. Yes, reading old friends certainly takes you back…and it is a lovely feeling!

Actually what brought this on was for a while my books weren’t in their proper home in my bedroom. I had to move them out while we were painting the walls. Oh, my room did feel so empty without my books! A few days ago I finally was able to take them back (There was a rather large stack gradually making their way into hiding under my bed during this time…I really don’t know how they got there! Really! I had nothing to do with it…well, maybe one or two…okay so more than a few, but I just couldn’t stand being parted from those!) But now they are back in their proper place. On my bookshelf in my room. That is their home. As I was fingering those worn covers of my favorite books, placing them back on the bookshelf I was realizing how much I loved each and every one of those books. How each brought back a part of me from years ago, besides being such beautiful stories just in themselves.

Yes, most "post worthy"! As is the pictures of my new bookshelf all shiny and beautiful in its corner! And notice the lovely book ends we found! I liked them just for themselves when I first found them and then I realized that the quotes were Shakespeare, cream on the strawberries! You just can’t get much better than that, can you? Best friends back in your room, a new bookshelf, and bookends with Shakespeare quotes! Best day ever!  

 "Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not

know how to read a book."

 ~Author Unknown

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

        And all the sweet serenity of books."

                                                                ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Monday Journaling Page

Outside my window… A day that bespeaks of fall, of warm sweaters and a cup of steaming cider clutched in one’s hand, of chill mornings to be seen from a window and warm blankets on the inside. The sky is simply grey. Yet, it is a grey that is almost a white, grey. Not the grey of a coming storm, but the grey of a calm, still, fall day. There doesn’t seem to be much wind, but a little breeze sometimes run through the reeds by the pond and the leaves in the trees making them flutter for an instant then come to a still once more. A little bird just flew across the sky, so high that it is hard to make out what type of bird, just a little black dot flying across the sky. Actually I’m so excited for fall. I love fall, and I can’t wait for the colored leaves to swirl and the cool crisp feel of a fall afternoon.

I’m wearing…A pair of black slacks, a light grey and white striped sweater, silver dangly earrings, and my hair is up in a pony tail.

I’m listening to...Be Ok by Ingrid Michaelson.

I’m creating…new ideas for creating new and beautiful creative projects, but first they must begin with creating the ideas. Formulating plans and ideas and all sorts of rose colored schemes.

From the kitchen…morning coffee cooled down till its chill on the counter, leftover pie crust cookie crumbs left scattered on a pink plate.

One of my favorite things…that burst of inspiration you have when you have finally found just the right words and they come in a limitless flood as your fingers fly across the letters on the keyboard, trying to keep up with the stream of words. This always seems to happen just after you have had a long period of sitting staring blankly at the computer screen without a single spark of inspiration or motivation, and then the words come, and your fingers can’t keep up with them they are coming so very fast.

I’m thinking… I love fairytales, they never seem to grow old, they are always new and beautiful each time you read them. This is why it is a bad thing for me to be shelving books in the fairytale section at the library. I get too distracted as I hold my stack of fairytales. “Adams, Alec, Anderson…Oooh pretty cover! Pretty painting!” and from then on I struggle with myself to read the books rather than shelving them properly.

To live the liturgy…I want to start going to a few extra Masses during the week, daily Mass is such a special beautiful way to start one’s day I wish we lived nearer so that we could go more often! And yet I would never want to move so…

I’m reading…Papa’s Wife by Thyra Ferre Bjorn again. I think it’s so funny how my imagination takes control sometimes, all the descriptions describe “Papa” as having blond hair (he’s Swedish) yet my imagination is persistently giving him dark hair and making him look like Cary Grant. I keep pushing him from my mind “go away now, Cary Grant, I love you but you mustn’t be “Papa” he’s a Swede.” But Cary Grant just keeps coming back so I have decided to let him stay.

I’m pondering…this quote: “There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.  ~G.K. Chesterton” I found it the other day when I was searching for quotes on reading and I really like it. I have been thinking on the meaning. I think it means that the eager man is a man who will put his all into his desires, he is the man who wants to read a book and will go out of his way and put his all into searching for that book. The tired man is the sort of man who will sit and sigh and moan about how he has read all the good books to be read. He will do nothing to gain possession of the book to read. That is why one is eager, the other weary.

Around the house…at the moment the strong desire to go and crawl into my bed, under my covers and read some favorite book has overwhelmed me but of course I can’t do that, too many things to do! School and work, tidying my desk and finishing this journaling page!

A few plans for the rest of the week…Oh so many plans! So many things to do! So many places to be! I can’t even begin without making into a list, so very boring to read!