It's been only 2 weeks...

I've made it through merely two weeks of studying for my English Oral Examination in the fall, where I must face a daunting room of three professors and be quizzed on everything from The Declaration of Independence and Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy to Beowulf and John Milton's "Paradise Lost." And at the end of these two weeks, I feel as if I've accomplished nothing, other than some minor reading, and I dread reading every morning. On Monday, my friend Rachel and I went to IKEA in Atlanta in an effort not to study, and to look at some pretty cool home furnishings. On Tuesday, I indulged my desire to bake by making some delicious basil bread, see below, and a so-so strawberry cake, using a new recipe. Wednesday I sucked it up and read and posted, working hard. Thursday I went hiking with another friend, Christina and her husband James, and today I'm working again. Taking a break after the epic "Beowulf", before tackling Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Once I start reading, I really enjoy the work, but the motivation it takes to get me started is similar to the motivation it takes to get me to start running. I love to run during and after a run. I love feeling as if I'm breaking through the air, creating my own wind, feeling the air flow by my skin along with the beat of my heart in sync with my breathing and my breathing in sync with my feet pounding the gravel trail by my house. I love the adrenaline afterwards and the knowledge I've succeeded in working my body, giving it strength. But before I run, I dread the process of putting on running clothes, pulling back my short hair and crazy bangs, and even tying my shoes becomes a laborious task. The same is true for reading. I would rather take a nap, cook, or anything else to prevent myself to starting the marathon of works ahead of me. Once I start, I'll enjoy all of them, even enjoy taking notes and connecting themes and theories throughout the work. I just have a hard time getting there. In my pretended stupor of not working on my school work, I'm reminded how much I just want to escape. I want to escape Clemson, South Carolina, the US, everything. But I know my satisfaction in escaping this country wouldn't serve my true purpose. Other than missing my family horribly (Ethan would definitely be in my backpack) I wouldn't be content in another country for long before that same feeling would creep back into my life, no matter how exotic a location. I'm reminded of some words from C.S. Lewis I read in a Tim Keller book recently,

Speaking of a type of Sehnsucht, or profound homesickness or longing:
"Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are no the thing itself...Now we wake to find...[w]e have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken in...

Our life-long nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation" (C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses).

More and more, as I live in Clemson by myself, attempting school and motherhood and maybe a few friendships here and there, I'm reminded I cannot do this on my own and I long for the freedom from imperfection and feebleness. I fail so often at being a good mother and friend. I strive to do things on my own and forget to ask for help. My pride leads to my downfall and I constantly realize my shortcomings. I'm learning, seeking, growing, cherishing this tough time and hoping in what is to come.