Come be young and idealistic with me

Being lonely (young, & restless)

2010-12-08T06:58:00.000-08:00

I am sorry I do not write very often. I think of things to write, but then - it takes a lot to shape those thoughts, and I get overwhelmed with schoolwork, dishes, watching the trees, talking with my roommates...everyday life. But now I have so much schoolwork to do (finals are fast approaching), that I cannot fathom doing anything but writing to you.

I am a lonely person. This is not an attempt to be pitied. I enjoy loneliness - I have made it an everyday study. I like going to coffee shops and diners by myself. Movie theaters. I like getting lost in places alone. Every time I get to a new city I spend hours (sometimes days) wandering through unknown streets until it feels like...it's mine (note: this has been done in NY at 3 am...not exactly comfortable, especially in winter, but I can say I have sat at a cafe table in center of the city, in the dark, without once seeing a car... I also know a good place to fall asleep in Penn Station...)

Though Boston is a small city, it has provided me with a new place to travel through every year - its spiraling, paved cow paths offer what every lonely wanderer desires (no certain direction). It has been a hard place to love though. Not instinctively - the buildings still make me feel like I'm a part of something very old and new all at once; there is a certain belovedness in their motley make-up (strangely beautiful, especially from a bridge over the Charles) - but its indifference has been difficult to get used to. Boston is cold and other - entirely different from where I grew up in California. And I often feel so other in it.

Ha ha - I know, I have obviously been writing too many college English essays when I describe myself as "other." Unfortunately, though, I am no better than any other cliche. Boston, because of its otherness, has been able to make me more of myself - you are forced to bloom as something when your surroundings are so dissimilar.

I think all new places do this to a person (...make them bloom...ha ha). Or maybe I only want to believe that; I cling to traveling like lichen to a rock (I love terrible similes...get over it). I want to go everywhere - I think I think I will be able to discover myself in foreignness. Of course, in reality, it is never quite so romantic. It is painful to begin somewhere new. It is harrowing being entirely unknown. And, maybe, at times, it is only running away. I do not know. But I have been blessed with people I cherish everywhere I've gone - they have made me who I am, though I may not ever see or speak to them again. There is a sort of profound satisfaction in finding places and people you love, and have loved you, in unfamiliar hamlets.

We are all lonely really - throughout our lives the one person we spend the most time with is ourself (yes, let's be Modern. Of course with a capital M). Everything leaves and changes - I clearly have no idea what this means in my very obvious 21 years. But it seems that what makes us most is loss.

(Sorry if I'm being pretentious/gloomy/ridiculous...it's in my make-up...ha ha...and I've been reading A LOT of modernist novels for class...I'll make sure to dig into some Vonnegut for perspective over break...)

You've been young or you are young - I feel like it means to know nothing and want everything. Or perhaps it is only to know so little of everything. There is some deep resistence "to settle," to not give up our idealism, but the shape of the desire lacks definition, or realism, or only includes a false, entirely negative one. I am guessing it will become neither, but a combination of the dreams and the everyday - maybe a little like the assorted Boston landscape.

(I'm listening to Tracy Chapman...90s retro chick. Also been into the Corin Tucker Band lately.)

Let's be profound: Love & identity

2010-12-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

(Hey friends. This the blog I wrote for Create. But I will promptly write another, seeing as I have not written in a very long time.)

I am a Christian. Unfortunately, I don’t even know what that word means most of the time. Even while living in a “Christian” community, it is hard for me to understand Christ in myself, especially when that understanding varies so drastically in everyone I meet. There is an obvious and necessary divide between the messiah and his followers, but it is very hard not to be defined by the people who share my faith.

This is not a very new dilemma – it is one we all struggle with, whether we are Christians or not - the question of identity. How can we belong to different stereotypes within our culture (the Christian, the writer, the black dancer, the feminist, the gay male, etc.) without being tied to their connotations (the Christian is Republican and hates gay people, the writer is angsty and dreamy, the black dancer is really good at hip hop, the feminist hates men and never shaves her legs, the gay male loves shopping and tweezering his eyebrows)? And how do you understand your sense of self if you are also the connotation (if you are, for instance, a very doubtful and self-destructive writer, or a feminist who doesn’t shave her legs)?

I do not know the answer – I do not know who I am. And most of the time I don’t know who God is either. I know the sense I have of him there – I know how profound certain moments feel, the something beneath the leaves as they change color – the beauty beneath the beauty, so to speak. Those revelations are beautiful and unguarded, but they can also be rare, and difficult to share with each other.

I want to love God and love people - two very simple things. But they are never simple in reality, are they? And I often find that believing in God often undermines my ability to simply love and be present with the people I'm with. It becomes complicated. Our ideas of God do not always peacefully coexist. Sometimes it is an idea that says loving God means loving in a certain way, means preaching, going to church on Sunday, becoming a missionary in Africa, etc. None of these are necessarily bad things, and I might partake in all of them eventually, but God's beauty is not solely that. It is everyday - not glorious, or dream-like, not necessarily visionary, or even exalted - but simple, and often hard. Hugging your friends. Reading books. Making food for people. Writing. (ha ha...Okay, now I'm just talking about me....). Crying. Doing dishes. Worrying about money. Walking... Talking (ha ha).

You get the idea - you live it too. We are most often blessed with ordinary lives. I'm just trying to figure out how to be myself ( very young and quite idealistic), but also real, and genuine; aware of (and willing to experience) pain, in order to understand God. And become (at least, a little...) less foolish.

How am I both with and apart from you? What is it, in the most mediocre moments (eyes raising on the bus, two knees pressing together, a conversation in the cold), that seems to connect us? I want to believe in something that weaves us together somehow, that destroys the stereotypes, the lack of genuinity – a sincere respect and love that exists within and outside of ourselves, and allows us to truly care for each other. I just don't always know what that looks like. Or even how to believe in it.

you are a poem

2010-10-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

hello dear world,

have I told you how lovely you are? Because you are – illuminating. The other day on the bus, where I spend at least fourteen (blissful) hours a week, it was raining (and so already perfect for dreamers). I sat in front of the doors, and every time they opened I was given a glimpse into a poem – a red house amidst a field, the neon light of a liquor store, green leaves reflected in a puddle, a boy in yellow boots crying. Poetry, I believe, is everywhere.

I have begun “teaching” the subject after school with two of my friends, at the high school about a mile from my home. It is nothing very dramatic – it is only a little over an hour of writing and talking about poetry once a week. The students are so smart and passionate – I probably learn more from them then they ever will of me. We are beginning a conversation of what poetry is: how it is formed, what makes good poetry, how it is different and similar to other art forms.

Poetry shapes my vision of the world: as I was walking to the high school today, waving to my acquaintances along our street, watching the man across the road pouring soil from a bag next to his roses, smiling as a woman said "How are you dear?" as I passed her on the street, I was overwhelmed with an everyday and ordinary beauty.

We went apple picking Saturday, and have spent the weekend baking apple things and having people over. It is simple, does not exactly sound profound, but then, the most profound things do not easily reveal themselves: the heat of the oven as you pull a cake out, drinking coffee and eating apple pancakes with your friends, arranging tables, lighting candles, watching movies, singing music in the family room. These "things" are what I imagine as the church - spending time with people, who believe or don't believe in God, talking of the terrible and the beautiful, in ourselves and the world; worshipping together in the "ordinary" miracles.

One came in the form of a woman and her daughter yesterday, who came by our house because they heard we were tutoring. Mark, our Cornell graduate in civil engineering, has already planned a day to help her with her physics homework.

What I am listening to as I write to you: "Tomorrow on the Runway" by The Innocent Mission. And... this post will also be published on the Create website.

Ordinary love

2010-09-27T06:43:00.000-07:00

I love being at school - there is a thrill here that is so fulfilling - I could read books and write papers and talk about books and papers for the rest of my life. I don't want to leave. Every time I think about leaving Simmons I get so sad, cannot even imagine it. I do not know where my life will be next year and that is both exciting and uncertain.

I am reading Mrs. Dalloway again, for my Virginia Woolf & Jane Austen class (envy me: writing an essay on Pride and Prejudice this week). There are few things as lovely as sitting on the bus (this morning, last night) while it rains (water and words), while I am lost in something so beautiful, so much like a poem - it just goes and goes, layers image upon image -

But everyone remembered [thought Mrs. Dalloway]; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab.

She so worships and fears words - loves them for their beauty, despises them for their flimsy inadequacy. I love her ebb and flow, her syntax, the way her sentences form not only a story, but a song (I am also reading The Iliad right now, they remind me of each other). She desires the present: the everyday; Clarissa walking in London for her flowers, seeing the fat lady in the cab (what a glorious moment). If you have not read Michael Cunningham's The Hours I would - it is so - I will not attempt to describe it. But it is about Mrs. Dalloway and Virginia Woolf, and one of my favorite books. I wish I could spend my life reading and writing in coffee shops. I wish I was less in love with words. Today I will share a poem with you that I wrote (it has just been written, so it might not be entirely finished):

The sun this morning

Stay with me in the error of dreams

lifting golden

in a window so lit

I want to reach inside

and grab God by the bones -

not the sallow faced savior

with eyes like hell passing

cement rooms.

I believe in a God of the ordinary, the everyday; I believe in a God of tea, a profound bit of sun in the window, on the sidewalk, the way dark chocolate tastes with coffee, some arms around me, wandering in a museum with a view of the Eiffel Tower on a Sunday afternoon, making balloon animals with my neighbors, sitting on the porch last night while the sky was gray mist, looked as though there was a fire beneath it, the green leaves drifting, flying - the world grabs me and I cannot give it up.

Create

2010-09-27T06:16:00.000-07:00

you can look at my home's (that christian intentional community where I live) weekly blog here (we take turns writing)

:)

http://createboston.webs.com/apps/blog/

Community

2010-09-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

The word has become a popular ideal in our culture, pasted in between grocery store aisles, cutely drawn up in the elementary school parking lots, scrawled in the real estate office, the bank, where you buy your smoothie, the WalMart down the street and on tv. It is overwhelming – at once so desired and intangible, certainly not always prevalent in our conversations with the bank teller, even less so when he or she is replaced with a machine.

“Community,” in so easily alienating a world can seem frivolous, pretentious, merely a pile of letters. It seems especially so to live in “intentional community” in one of Boston’s poorest suburbs (five white twenty somethings living where we’ve never been and certainly don’t look as though we belong), and to become a non- profit entitled C.R.E.A.T.E. (Christian Relationships Enabling A Transformational Environment) – a breathless string of syllables that can sound crazy, pretentious, colonial, and just really stupid.

Community, communion, commune, communism, communicate – this vocabulary bears the common and the profound; it varies between community (what we share), and what it means to commune (“to experience a deep emotional or spiritual relationship with something”) and communicate – something that I believe occurs when we take communion and give our common selves to a profound savior, share with him our inner fears, sins, hopes, beauty – when we have a genuine and sincere relationship.

Our house resides perpendicular to Blue Hill Avenue, green trees wavering throughout the city, people sitting on their porches, the sidewalk, the sound of sirens, children laughing, yelling, even an overwhelming quiet sometimes– it is a place I loved almost instantly. There are three girls that live above us, all no taller than our shoulders, with eyes like moons and energy like (very joyous) chaos, who have begun to knock on our door almost daily.

It is not easy to try to live like Jesus, hard to even attempt to become so vivid and illuminating – difficult, in theory, to let three young girls spend hours in your house daily. It is hard to commute to school, to have a job, volunteer at the high school, homework, classes, a covenant with the four people I live with.

But when the girls lead me from this room to the next, paint every fingernail a different color, bake and eat chocolate chip cookies around the table with us, laugh so openly; when I pray in the evening with my roommates, the sound of rain through the window, God so close I am breathing him – I feel blessed, at peace, beauty surrounding me – it is something I cannot easily fold it into words. It is hard and profound as God has always been, but I feel safer here than anywhere, in community with God and what he creates, and gives us to create. I have been reading Franz Wright’s book of poetry Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, something I cried through upon first reading, and something I feel now (though not nearly as well) at the end of one of his poems “One Heart”:

Thank You for letting me live for a little as one of

the sane; thank You for letting me know what this is

like. Thank You for letting me look at your frightening

blue sky without fear, and your terrible world without

terror, and your psychotic and hopelessly

lost

with this love

yours, hannah

(this post will also be posted on the C.R.E.A.T.E. website: createboston.webs.com)

Wordless (& jobless) chocolate-cupcake-eating cliché

2010-08-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

Today I did nothing. By nothing I mean I ate a whole very rich and decadent chocolate cupcake (with real, big, dark, chocolate, chips in it), read some more of this mediocre book that I am going to finish, and...I think that's it. No - wait, I also signed my MLNP pin thing (I will owe the macho loan hermanos thousands of dollars after I graduate), and read Joy the Baker's blog, maybe drooled over some dark chocolate brownies I am not going to make. And left a depressed message on a couple machines of the above title's variety, AND started The Canterbury Tales (which I am going to read in attempt of moral support for my sister's AP English class. And because as an English major I'm pretty sure I should have read some of good ole boy Chaucer by now....).

I know (just what I was thinking) - I don't even have time for a job (especially with my incredibly impressive number output of a certain conjunction), even if, due to a continued state of self-inflicted inadequacy/misery/"I have nothing new to say" writer's angst, I have not opened one word document, not even to scroll through and "edit." So pathetic, feel very sorry for me.

Not that the day is over. It is not over. I haven't watched 7 episodes of Weeds, conveniently available instantly via my family's Netflix account in a continuous, never-have-to-get-up, have-dreams-I-am-a-suburban-housewife-drug-dealer fashion. Plus I have not cleaned the house. And I am going to clean the house. And, let's face it, when you give a girl a chocolate muffin, chances are, she's gunna want a dark chocolate brownie to go with it.

ABOVE PHOTO: son-of-a-no-good-cheating-piece-of-a-chocolate-chip

some fun travelin' love

2010-07-07T14:41:00.001-07:00

www.buckleupwithhanda.blogspot.com

Rainy days

2010-05-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

I am in Ohio: a beautiful place, truly, especially where I am staying: a huge white farmhouse with white columns surrounded by miles of open land. It is stormy now; I am curled in bed with the window open. The room is very old-fashioned and feminine: rose wallpaper, lace curtains, four poster bed, wooden floors.

I love the rain. I think it is because my surroundings influence me so completely. When it rains, my mind can rest, the world is blanketed like night: my eyes have less to wander over, there is less to get lost in, less to want. It is so consuming - the ground and the sky are united, the old house rattles, the window panes quiver with purple. In the rain I am truly present in the reality of the moment: the softness of a sweater, the space the brass lamp lights so quietly, the earthy smell of of the storm. I am connected more vividly to gravity; the rain offers me a rare opportunity of contentment.

I have not written after Bath because...writing, like breathing, is overwhelming when you begin to dwell in its implications. It asks too much, each breath - another moment - becomes so profound and mysterious the mere practice becomes difficult. I feel either too grand or too insignificant to be, let alone write - the very sound is so sure: one quick, purposeful syllable.

"I am going to write," not only feels delusional to older acquaintances (the ones who, after realizing my major, ask me, so politely, "and what are you going to do with that?"), but to myself: my lack of self-esteem would never allow such a decided response. I mutter something about banks hiring English majors to write their memos or law school or something I think they'll deem worthy of dedication. I don't mention my relentless desire to open up a bakery/night lounge/art house/homeless shelter. Or my other very unambitious designs of working on an organic farm or a dude ranch after I graduate. To hitchhike, work in a diner, fall in love.

"Fall in love" is such a telling cliche: love is an ocean: sink or swim. Neither is enjoyable, though there is a certain satisfaction in drowning, in that much feeling - it is so pure an emotion - but perhaps only for masochists (those who decide to "do" what makes them insane).

Oh dear, this is not sounding very idealistic. I do believe in stormy days, in the necessity of passion, in breaking categories - earth, sky, green, blue, red, breath, letters, swimming - until they coalesce, become something unnameable. There are never enough words for blue - I am always reminded of this when I try to describe the sky. There are not enough words for anything, really, which makes writing frightening, like living: moving until you die...you must live for more.

Oh, Another Home

2009-12-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

Hi folks.

I am sitting in my living room writing to you: the windows are decorated with spray-on snow, homemade snowflakes hang on the curtains, and our christmas tree, also adorned with very charming clothespin angels and popsicle stick reindeer.

The whole city of Bath looks like a bit of a fairy tale: the streets are lit with Christmas. And one particular place looks like Christmas all year round: Hansel and Gretel's Coffee House. Located near the Royal Crescent (the most beautiful old high society apartments shaped in a crescent, as the title might suggest). You step in the door, and, suddenly, you are in Saint Nick's toy store. Tiny handmade wooden animals, warm woolen booties, lovely smelling candles, rich (and expensive) wool blankets, old-fashioned puzzels, and, I've never seen so many beautiful ornaments in all my life - crammed into such a tiny little shop. Then, downstairs, you sit in one of the three cozy little nooks, and order one of their seven hot chocolates or hot ciders and streudels. Did I mention they have a constant video playing of the snowy Swiss Alps?

I can't believe I leave here forever - no, indefinitely, on Sunday. I am so excited to see everyone and be in Ohio and then home in California, cuddling with my dearest friends and family, and I am even excited to be in Boston again, but I think I will leave a part of me here. I love this house, Bath, I love walking into town and waving to the guy who sells The Big Issue on the bridge, I love the town troubadour: an endearing man in a jester-like hat who insists every moment should be set to a Bob Marley song. I love coming home from class, finding everyone in the kitchen making dinner. It is going to be so strange to suddenly stop being with these seven people I have spent every day with these last four months (the picture above is in Ireland, though we are missing Christine and Annie, and Laura makes an appearance - an honorary member of Prior Park). Oh, and I am going to miss hearing the dinner bell...(yes, we have a dinner bell...).

Yesterday we had our Christmas morning. I made cinnamon rolls, Kathleen made pancakes (chocolate chip, cinnamon, and blueberry), Annie made eggs. Baron made us a traditional (and delicious) Christmas Eve dinner the night before. I forgot to mention we also had a Thanksgiving: we even (very) successfully managed a turkey. And we opened presents together and watched a Christmas movie...the yule log even made an appearance via Lizzy's computer screen.

I'm sorry I have been inconsistent about writing....Maddie is quite upset :) Sorry, sisher. Okay, I love you all very much, and I'll write at least one more time before I leave.

your hannah

Falling in Love with the World

2009-11-06T11:09:00.000-08:00

Oh, what to tell you of my dreamy, wandering heart? I don't know where to begin...I have so many places and experiences becoming a part of me - oh, the landscapes of my soul...ha ha. They are a tiny bookshop in Paris, where I can curl in a little nook while looking at the Notre Dome; they are the Swiss Alps - a vast beauty, where nulls of tiny villages are tucked into great, green mountainsides, which I cannot see the bottom of (I believe it would be like living on the edge of a dream); they are the taste of gelato in Italy; a nun riding a bike in Pisa; vague brightnesses passing the window of the train (where I probably spent at least 48 hours); green shutters; shirts, underwear, and sheets hung outside of windows; the warmth of a french bakery - where the vital comforts of the soul are born: bread and chocolate. They are me wandering a day alone in Paris: perhaps the best day of my life. It is true - Paris is the home of dreamers and romantics, especially on a rainy day in autumn. Oh, the blueness of the Atlantic water against the Italian cliffs, the feel of summer on my back, writing in my notebook with the ocean between my toes. They are simple happinesses: buying deep red mums across the street, drawing in a park bench across from Buckingham Palace: the litter of Fall making a softer world. They are a perfect latte in London where I sat on bright red lips and wrote letters.

Oh, how I get carried away in poetics...I see people along the streets of Bath, and I think, you belong to me - in some strange, abstract, beautiful way they are apart of who I am. I am taking an art class at the University of Bath: life drawing. I have never stared so long at someone so naked. Art has been something I've been scared of for awhile, and I hardly had drawn anything for the first hour - faint pencil marks and an overused eraser - but I finally just... drew. I never wanted to let go of my piece of charcoal or that space of time. I have decided to minor in Art (I am taking an abstract painting class next semester). Oh, another beautiful memory: my disgruntled bus driver passionately singing along to Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" on the freeway.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Dublin! And I just came back from Stratford-Upon-Avon: the birthplace of Shakespeare...of which I will write later.

- your hannah

Departure

2009-10-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

I am going to France and Italy for a week.

I'll get back to you.

ha ha. love you all very much.

So indie punk rock you will not believe

2009-10-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know I just wrote to you yesterday (so you're terribly tired of me), but I just realized that I left out a significant experience: going to an underground (literally and figuratively) indie English rock concert (it was so subterranean)! Think...skinny boys (to an uncomfortable extent). My favorite band there: Sketches (who were so indie they only had a vinyl). The venue: Mole's (as the name suggests: a dingy club below street-level), where the musical geniuses of the night - dressed in plaid shirts and adorable sweaters - gather to revel in the unknown music scene. Sketches (http://www.myspace.com/sketchesband) was incredible, though, unfortunately, their recorded material is not nearly as good as them live (I know - how awfully pompous). At one point, the one nearest to starvation (blond, jean jacket, right) whipped out some drumsticks from his back pocket and started wildly banging the drum, standing up, with his hands high above his head, his body curving back and forth like a wishbone. It was pretty wonderful. And the best part: I found out about the concert through my housemate Kelly, who met one of the bands on the street (and casually conversed with them about her experience feeding a pidgeon). They came up to us before they went on: clearly, my "cool" indicator sky-rocketed that night (as if it could get any higher...good thing I brought my skinny jeans...). I think I want to steal the one with the purple pant's haircut.

Writing & Trying to be Thoreau (in England)

2009-10-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

Dearest friends,

Hi. I have been writing papers for the last two weeks with very little sleep (as the photograph insinuates: all night team angst!), meaning coffee has been my only staple in the last 14 days.

But I am recovering, beginning last night with a James Bond-themed birthday party for two of my housemates, Christine and Kelly. And tonight was wonderful: We went out for sushi and then to this wonderful French café that reminded me of Amélie: red wicker chairs, French mirrors, warm, sensual colors. It was such a romantic night: misty rain outside, lit windows, chocolate, coffee (all that was missing was a lover...ha ha). It is unreal to live here everyday: buying bananas at the market, picking up flowers at the stand down the street, sipping cider at the pub...I've been (inconsistently and not nearly as intensively as Maddie) running around my neighborhood - through little cobblestone streets, old church graveyards, ivy-covered houses, walled-in gardens, estates (with titles like Widcombe Manor), a trail along the canal...all indescribably beautiful and quaint. I find myself touching the stone walls, just to feel it is real. My favorite spot is up a hill through some grazing cows where I sit under a tree and look over all of Bath, lit with the end of the day and the colors of Autumn (think of the scenes of the countryside in the most recent Pride and Prejudice film). I know there is probably so much more to tell you, but I am tired of writing after this week, so instead I'll leave you with a poem I finished a little bit ago:

The Secret Heart

O, trees above me like stars,
dirt roads of whispers,
the river is lit with the end,
and God, weaved in me
like my mountains at home,
rests in my soul.

A waking lake with warm, white breath,
an early morning clinging to my insides,
I sing you a troubled song,
God in blue green waters,
I wait for you to make me beautiful.

I long for the Lord,
hinging between heaven and earth,
not always despair –
I have dreams of you,
and some days of heaven –
dust settling on the lit river,
stillness in between so many sorrows
for such a blessed girl.

Dying days and people grow in me,
like rivers in wilderness –
finding me, leaving me;
making me strong with knowing.
I would unlearn truth for nothing.

Seeing worlds in this earth:
I am undone here
in the valley of trees,
my body unclothed,
myself in a moment,
naked, knowing, and unashamed.

How can I ever begin
the long, troubling roads
leading to this haunting Eden?
I will never feel so finished –
so loved and alone.

Oh, Lord, leave me here by the velvet waters
and I will praise this dust forever.

Intelligence by Osmosis

2009-09-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

I am listening to the Jacobites (current favorite: "I Believe in You"), tucked in my bed (I have view of the garden and this college's library - which has stained glass windows), it is a perfect night - windy, dark, and warm (like something mysteriously beautiful is about to happen...), open Virginia Woolf, at freaking Oxford. I am so incredibly smart right now. I don't know if we'll ever be able to converse on the same level again.

Oxford is lovely - cobblestone streets, smartly (which means much more than intelligence in the UK...) dressed men in sweaters and satchels, thrift stores (found the £1 bin and I finally feel like myself again...). I went to Christ Cathedral on Sunday (where Harry Potter was filmed...). I don't think I've ever seen such adorable alter boys (ten singing little eight year-olds with chubby innocent faces...). The huge organ stood over the entrance, and beautiful shadows of sunlight drifted over the silver pipes as the priest (? Anglican church...) delivered a really wonderful sermon exploring the nature of our somewhat (ha ha, okay...sometimes a little more...) "hidden" God. It was a service unlike anything I'm used to - very formal: all the priests (again ?) wore robes, and sang in Latin...but it was very beautiful. And the doorway was lit with the beginning of the day...(where a fountain with lily pads stood in the middle of the courtyard).

Okay, since everyone has been wondering what I've been doing when I'm not A. lying in graveyards, B. diving in piles of used clothing, or C. diligently drinking cider (I really don't understand why) I will reluctantly (ha ha. as if you all didn't know what a nerd I am...) summarize my classes:

Women, Culture, and Society in the Eighteenth Century

Yeah women! This class is taught by an adorable British stereotype: Glasses, patched tweed blazer, white hair, dark eyelashes, (when I wrote of him to Abi I forgot to mention he was between 60 - 80 years old and she thought he might be a love interest...well...what's 50 years anyhow?) mumbles in a very delightful way...about the (ha hmm) shift in women's positions during this prolific century (yes, a lot of governesses, but I think it's incredible how much women did do, and how brave some were...I'll write more later.)

The Writings of Virginia Woolf

I just read A Room of One's Own in one sitting and cried through the last ten pages. It is such a beautiful, honest, true depiction of feminism (in my opinion) and the necessity of creating a community of women who support and encourage and critique each other in their writing. It was a speech she gave to a room full of women in the beginning of the 19th century. I can't imagine what it would have been like for a constantly oppressed woman to hear this:

Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the ever-changing and turning world of gloves and shoes and stuffs...

So encouraging to a woman of today (especially this one)! And her beautiful and true combination of the profound and the mundane...I was not sure of her after finishing Jacob's Room (an incredibly hard, modern, and experimental little novel), but now she has every inch of my heart...

oh, also, obviously we're comparing Woolf's Modern (oh, yeah, it gets a capital letter) tendencies with the previous (ahhh..) Victorian Era. An era my tutor characterized as when "they saw God in everything," to which I was in class thinking Crap! that is so completely me...and my very many idealistic days spent exploring the sky....oh dear. I know there's pain and suffering and angst and dark deep bleakness too! (okay, I'm being ridiculous, but I really know I'm sometimes very ridiculous).

Have you ever tried describing your moods by literary periods? Like, all punk-like, "I'm feeling so Post-Modern today. The whole world is misery, and isn't that hilarious!..."

Worlds Beyond Oxford: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Philip Pullman

Yes, I'm reading children's lit for class. Yes, When I say I have to go do my homework I mean I have to go re-read The Golden Compass. Yes, I know you wish you were me.

Film Screenwriting

I am most uncertain of this class. I think I'm just scared of writing. The tutor (professors in UK lingo) is wonderful - very energetic and very much a typical writer's personality: passionate, funny...actually I really have to go do homework for this class right now. Watch In Bruges. I'll let you know how it is.

...LOVE you so so much...(and how I love these never-ending ellipses!...)

Quiet life in bath

2009-09-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

Some lovely highlights:

Spent today at the organic garden pruning and making apple juice! (and had a delicious tea in between!) Made banana cake for tomorrow's harvest party (with my new friends there!)

and for tonight's Brinner!!! (breakfast for dinner (YES.)) with my flatmates. We had hash browns, french toast, mimosas, and...nutella.

Spent last night with all seven of my housemates eating (homemade) brownie sundaes and watching Aladdin. Yes, we are THAT adorable.

Practicing guitar chords.

Reading a lot.

Went to Dyrham (where Remains of the Day was filmed) on Friday. I could see Wales from the house...

Planned a trip to Dublin with (we really do do everything together...) all my housemates for a weekend in November!

Currently planning my fall break adventure through France and Italy with Jim!

Angst, Disillusionment, and Gardening!

2009-09-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

I lost my hat at the club (yes, Maddie, one less for you to attempt to throw away...). I am experiencing great, existential despair and loss of identity. I am not sure I will recover.

The Organic Gardening Community!!! I went to the local community garden and fell in love. I want to spend forever there. Tim the Gardener (I already found your replacement Dad!) was one of the most beautiful souls I've ever met. The sixty year-old man won me over with his love and belief in compost. Everyone there is wonderful, they were all having tea together when I had to leave to go to class. I can't wait to go back on Saturday to start weeding/composting/cultivating happiness...

I also discovered a beautiful graveyard just up the hill from my house. It is overgrown and lovely. I sat on a gravestone for a long time writing a letter and feeling the sun turn that golden color in the late afternoon...the hills were picturesque - green with quaint English houses...I laid down on the grass and I've never seen the sky so blue and void! I came back overwhelmed and so in love with God. I just wanted to lay there forever (I know I am being ridiculous! but I can't help it - nature evokes such joy in me...ha ha! but, oh how I relate to those Romantic poets...). Oh, and I finished a poem! Which is exciting.

I love you all so much! I hope I am not writing too much or too often, but soon I will be a slave to my studies....ha ha. Good night!

Going Underground

2009-09-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

First off, I'll start with how much I love my flatmates - the residents of 31 Prior Park stay up late watching movies and comedy skits (latest: the hilarious British drag queen Eddie Izzard), have (AND make) dinner together, go watch the latest football (soccer, for you yanks) match at the Ram, have impromptu sing-a-longs, go together to market, are planning an epic thriller reenactment in Bath's main square, make midnight brownies (with Nutella), go out clubbing together...

which brings me to: Po Na Na. Yes, you are jealous. The underground Moroccan dance club (think stucco-like walls, low ceilings, and candle-lit rooms) recently had Cheese Night, an evening of absolute classics: Spice Girls, Buffalo Joe, Nsync, Footloose, S Club 7, everything 80s, and possibly every other wonderfully awful song (or artist) you've ever heard! And, let me add, I love British men. No, you ridiculous romantics, it's not their eyes - it's their dancing! Because they dance with each other! These beautiful men have no qualms about grabbing another bloke's waist and waltzing round the dance floor! Fantastic! Cheese Night = massive eternal dancing success! (like my adaptive British slang?)

Now for today: Americans are Americans are Americans. Yes, Stonehenge was freaking amazing! (how the heck did THAT happen?!), the Salisbury cathedral was BEAUTIFUL (I don't know how to begin to describe it. It was like stepping into...I don't know...a huge blue dream...), I saw Snape's cauldron, and I love Yorkshire pudding, but the greatest part of today had to be when the Americans (all fifty of them) crashed the British birthday party. Oh yeah. Think charming celebration with a lovely band (beatles, beach boys, etc - all in the 50s swing style) having a nice old time, when, suddenly, the Americans come into the private back garden and start dancing (it seems to be one thing we've got down...). Completely took over. Got an 80 year-old British man to dance on top of a table (along with several others, including the inn keeper), brought out the American flag (yes, literally), and completely took the house down (our school staff included).

Other side notes:

Transplanted the mint, basil, and parsley into bigger pots yesterday afternoon (Yes, Dad - I started a garden!)

Started doing my homework - reading children's literature! I get to read all 6 chronicles of narnia! and lord of the rings!

The English countryside is like being in heaven.

And, Abbey pals: worry no longer! I have plenty of dishes to do (8 people seem to bring in around the same sort of consistency as our beloved coffee shop! Even washed a french press today - that's right, you created a monster).

The Ram

2009-09-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

Let me just say, everything you've imagined is true: dark, inviting rooms, locals teasing The Americans ("Give him the full pint of the rough cider, Jimmy"), cricket, fish & chips, old, friendly Englishmen exchanging daily banter - everything. And, just a block away from my flat, The Ram (soon to be, if not already, "my" pub) is no exception.

My experience:

Hard Cider. Delicious. (I got the lighter brew, and just 1/2 a pint, despite Jimmy...)

Beans on Toast. (My reasoning: cheap and decidedly English) Bartender (Julian, who's, sadly, currently ailing from a bad hand that a drunk tourist fell on) : "You come all the way from America for beans on toast?! WE make much better than that, love!" (in his growly, thick English accent - yes: love).

Champagne. Just an inch of the most beautiful tasting stuff I've ever had.

Grocery Shopping = 8 Americans carrying orange bags half a mile across town to our (slightly) out of the way bungalow (never much for standing out...).

Tea. Everyday. Every hour.

Growing basil and mint in the kitchen window.

Tomorrow - THE LIBRARY.

Yes, a dream...

2009-08-31T11:52:00.000-07:00

Dearest Friends and Family,

I am writing this to you (or was, before I typed it here) sitting against a tree, slowly overtaken by this quaint, English beauty! The sky is wide – blue and soft like a Chagall painting. The river (ohh…) is beautiful. It is the first thing I found when I left my hostel Saturday morning, and I began my first day writing and reading by it – the River Avon – sitting on a bench beside these adorable boats. I’m not sure what they’re called, but they’re long and skinny and I want one! The houses along the river are some of the most idealistic homes I’ve ever seen – their gardens open to the water! I will spend many hours here.

Everything here is like a fairy tale. Stone houses with red doors, long, rambling countryside, fine English pubs…the town is a bit touristy, but the surrounding areas are lovely, and the churches – oh. Some of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen. It is strange being here – so much like a dream, and yet it is only a place! And now that it’s real, it’s changed…(Oh dear. Over philosophizing already!). I have spent two days exploring the city by myself, and today I moved into my house (on Prior Park Road! Don’t you want to be here…). It is lovely. My room is on the top floor and feels like an attic (so terribly romantic!).

I will stop boring you now, except for this (a beautiful poem by Yeats I found on the window of a bookshop here):

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Love your silly, ridiculous, hannah banana

Taking a Bath

2009-08-27T13:28:00.001-07:00

Hi friends! I love you all, and can't wait to share my terribly romantic adventures with you (rain, tea, wool sweaters, desolate moors...I'm not sure I'll return...oh, just joshing). As I have yet to leave, I'll just say goodbye, and next time write of old English rock, Captain Wentworth's love letter, and hot, lovely butter beer...

I arrive in Bath, England tomorrow night.

Love! hannah