sentimentality

Nick Drake makes pretty music.

 Today it rained – so I decided that it’s really just a “prep for ireland 101″ opportunity to get used to some cloudy, rainy wonderland where I’ll be spending the next four months, come january.  It’s always harder to get up on rainy days though.  If only it wasn’t so much easier to cuddle up under some blankets and listen to jack johnson sing about banana pancakes.

Philosophy was over my head once again.  So much for enjoying anything about existentialism.  Maybe if I did all the readings I’d be more interested, but I really doubt it.  Our grad student prof is just way too in-over-his-head to be able to help us non-philoers out.

Irish was bearable. Until she announced that we have a quiz on Weds now to make up for us all doing so poorly on the grammar part of our test last week.  Maybe, just maybe it had something to do with the 60 words of vocab we had to memorize.  Then again, who doesn’t want to know hat ufonna means UFO in irish?

Fiction writing - what to do, what to do about that class.  I really do want to be a great fiction writer.  How amazing would it be to be able to write for a living?  But to no avail, I’ve only gotten mediocre grades so far.  There are a couple of people in that class too, who I’m just in awe of as far as talent for writing goes.  We’ll see how meeting with her during office hours goes.  It’s really interesting because this is the first class I’ve had in awhile that is solely artistic and I always walk away feeling like I need to do something with myself, artistically – to make some sort of statement while I can or when I have the time.  It’s nice, too, to break away from all the reading and the analyzing and just focus on the creativity for awhile.

Today was one of those days where I wanted to just zap home for two seconds, and zap right back to Notre Dame.  Just long enough to soak up the homeyness of home – to boil some water for tea, to soak up the autumn air outside, and get a great big hug from my grandma.  Maybe the span of a day or so.  I find during times like that, tea helps.  Which sounds….ridiculous, and way too Irish for my own good.  All those times when I was little, at family functions, it always ended with a cup of tea.  My mom would make what she always called warm milk – leave the teabag in for about two seconds, fill it halfway with milk and let me add way too much sugar.  So now I make this concoction of sweetmilktea whenever I’m on campus and need a little pick me up. 

It’s funny how things like that can just transcend.  Well actually, it’s not just funny, it’s pretty wonderful.  There are just some items in life, some things that can bring you back to a good place because they’re virtually the same everywhere.  It doesn’t even have to be something like tea, I’m talking about the grand scheme of things too.  Really great relationships fall into this category too – friendships and family.  I just love how there are some things you can count on, no matter where your two feet are planted.

Love.