Leaving on a jet plane (don't know when I'll be back again).

So, I leave London the day after tomorrow.  It's going to be hard to do. 

I've just been incredibly happy here!

Really happy.

How strange!

How wonderful :]

My Utopia, really. 

And I'm alive--feels good to be reminded!
Alive!--don't know how it always slips my mind.

(and I remember the first time I recognized
that I could do anything that came to my mind)

There will be much to process and adapt to upon arriving home.
I will take care of me :]  And we'll just keep on keepin' on. 
And, you know, I've got good people.  I've got real good people.
That wheel of fortune just keeps on spinning, spinning, spinning.
(thank goodness I am good at word games!)

For my final semester project, I am recreating contemporary art pieces by: dancing in a crowd with a cabbage on my head, decorating / documenting a telephone booth, getting my friends to cross-dress, and filming myself eating a bowl of cereal.   

Then, I am turning my bedroom into an art gallery, and my class will tour it.  I aim to find free 3-D glasses somewhere in London, if I can, and make every one wear them.  Welcome to the world through my eyes, or something :]

I have a collage on my wall and a large art project's worth of beer & diet coke bottles lined up beneath it. 

All in all, this is the BEST PROJECT I have ever been assigned in college.  Mostly because I assigned it to myself.

I love everything.  I don't want to leave. 

I must go prepare for Thanksgiving dinner now.

Theatre and Pictures

In the next week and a half, I will be seeing performances of "Inherit the Wind" featuring Kevin Spacey and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" featuring Mrs. Huxtable from The Cosby Show and JAMES EARL JONES (Darth Vader). 

PICTURES from Scotland (since this is a PICTOblog):  These took too long to load so I'm not adding them.  Gahhh.

I just climbed hundreds and hundreds of stairs to the top dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.  WHEW.  What a workout!

London Experience # 12: Oxford University

My summary of the Oxford University trip:

I, Claire Davis, sat and had a drink in the very same pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien once got hammered and discussed epics together. Oh, and I stood in a spot where Daniele Radcliffe once stood for the filming of Harry Potter.

Talk about "EPIC!" 

Oxford college--cold, ornate, distinguished, traditional, challenging, successful. Some of these aspects appeal to me; others do not. Oxford itself was how I would have expected--a mix of towering, beautiful stone buildings, coffee shops, and chain shopping stores. I always romanticized Oxford college in my mind, and it altered my perspective to see it in reality. I disliked that the traditions in place seemed to detach students from professors and students from one another; it was frustrating to me that so much emphasis was placed on decorum that students couldn't even sit in the grass outside of their building. Structure is good, and traditions can bring people together, and the solitude of winter and stone can birth many poetic sorrows, ideas, and imaginings, but it just wasn't enough, somehow. I like my sunshine, and I like the freedom to romp outside or go where I please. I like it when barriers are broken down; I like when I can stop worrying about being impressive or respectable and just really get down to learning. Oxford was incredible, but it just wasn't the place for me.

The "Eagle and Child" pub, however... Well, I'd drink with CS Lewis and Tolkien any day.

glasgow, mom, essays, and other things

An in-depth look at the next 24 hours:

me:  hey look my paper is due tomorrow
friends: ICE SKATING TONIGHT!!!
me:  I should start my paper...
[[time elapses]]
me:  OH GOD I STILL HAVENT STARTED MY PAPER
friends:  time to go ice skating!
me: YAY ice skates I'm going!!!
[[more time elapses]]
friends:  we loved ice skating!
me:  IM FAILING SCHOOL INSOMNIA FAILURE INCOMPLETE DOOM GLOOM DOOM GLOOM
[[more time elapses]]
friends:  hooray we all turned in our papers and we feel so refreshed because we slept so long and well after ice skating last night!
me:  I AM SO TIRED I CANT MAKE IT HOME
[[ I collapse ]]
friends:  OH No!!!!!
[[SIRENS SIRENS SIRENS SIRENS SIRENS SIRENS]]
friends:  Claire collapsed!!
paramedics:  don't worry kids we are paramedics and we save people
me:  [[still collapsed]]
paramedics:  WE MUST GIVE HER CHOCOLATES
friends:  yes! yes!   the chocolates!
[[paramedics give me lots of chocolates]]
me:  I LOVE CHOCOLATE
friends:  yay!  claire is awake!
me:  ice skating is the BEST!!
paramedics: weeeee

the end :)

-------

In other news, mom visited this weekend.  Saw Kew Gardens, Covent Garden market, a cathedral, Harrod's, Brick Lane, Hyde Park, Trefalgar Square, the V&A, Billy Elliot, BBC jazz concert, Calendar Girls, pubs. 

Went to Glasgow, Scotland, with Evan last weekend.   Really fun and relaxing.  Visited Loch Lomond.  Wrote this song:  ROCKS ROCKS WATER IN MY SOCKS /  Going on a journey by the lomond LOCH /  take it all in!  better take stock! /  then hurry for a whiskey at the bar down the block!  LOCH! LOMOND!  LOCH!  LOMOND!  LOCH!  LOMOND!  LOCH!  LOMOND!  ((and repeat)) ...It was a smashing success, I think.

Starting to see Chapel Hill friends everyone in London.  Today, I "saw" Owen and Jonah.  Cheers.

Also, happy belated birthday to Shauna if she reads this!! :) :) 

Schedule for Spring 2010

Thus far, I am registered for:

ENGL 348-002 (AFAM Poetry)

ENGL 439-001 (English Lit 1832-1890)

ENGL 489-001 (Lit, Culture, and Health).

ENST 201-002  (Environment & Society)

CLEANING MY ROOM. Compiling the soundtrack of my life. Going to an autumn festival tomorrow.  Figured out how to transfer my St A's slideshow to video format.  Working on that & learning Photoshop skills for my term project. 

PS

This week's highlights include:

ROCKAOKE


SOPHIE CALLE

QUIDDITCH

V & A MUSEUM

Also, my roommate had a guest over this weekend and she has SWINE FLU!  That is not a highlight, though.  I just took a Shakespeare exam, and now I am going to go eat dinner at my professor's flat.  Have a great night!

I LOVE ART

I LOVE ART
I LOVE ART
I LOVE ART
I LOVE ART
I LOVE ART

Technology is opening up so many doors.

I went to an incredible gallery exhibit today. Sophie Calle.  Sophie Calle.  Sophie Calle.  Sophie Calle!

Still Processing Berlin (a quick entry for class)

My art professor talked with us about our Berlin experience during class the other day. She seemed troubled that we had not spoken about it with anyone--a tour guide, or survivor, or even a local--and so she tried to pry our reactions out of us.

I responded with (pretty much) these words, relating my answer to the art exhibit we had just viewed:

Visiting Berlin was an intense experience. It's sort of like how, you know, Gustav [the artist] describes most of his pieces as an exploration into the "auto-destruction" or, for some, the "auto-creation." Walking around the gallery, though, I was struck by how inherently intertwined they are. Can you have one without the other? Destruction with out creation? Creation without destruction? Those elements were strikingly present in Berlin. They [the Berliners] destroyed a wall, but they created an open space and the beginnings of a new community... I was disturbed by the visit to the concentration camp, and the imprints left by Nazi Germany on the city. What must it feel like to live in the shadows of that camp? How do you cope with the Holocaust becoming a tourist attraction?...But at the same time, there is this wild night life, and there are so many young people, and there is all of the potential that goes with rebuilding... there was a powerful mixture of these elements...I don't know, I wouldn't ever want to live there, but it was a thought-provoking and, in some ways, inspiring place to visit--even if it was troubling at the same time.

My art professor followed up with an interesting response. She expressed that her parents were German Jews, and as a Jew, she was taught to see birth and death in a different way than many others do.  Her words, more or less, elaborated:

In my religion, we do not celebrate the birth of a child like you do. Birth is a somber time because a new child means new hardship. Birth means new pain. For us, death is valued as an escape from pain. We celebrate death in the way that you celebrate new life... Memory becomes everything. We remember what happened over two thousand years ago. Our meaning comes from what happened before us.  Part of Holocaust remembrance, part of the Berlin experience, part of the concentration camp tours, the art exhibits, the tourist sites...is the need to reflect on what came before--a need to understand who we are and where we came from. We, too, are all rooted in the past, and our interactions with the past shape how we view the present. 

Berlin nightlife

Standing outside the Berlin wall

I like this poem

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
 a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer –
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

-- Carol Ann Duffy

one more memory

I can't believe I almost forgot SITTING ON DAN AND AMYS FURNITURE actually just that one huge furry chair/couch WHAT IS IT CALLED?

a few happy memories

totally rocking at manhunt
hammering out songs on the piano
drunk conversations on the roof
cleaning sprees, headphones, & PBR
dancing to Peaches and/or MIA and/or Kelly Clarkson
FF7 with the guys
noodle fights and races at the pool
having the whole Hall to myself for an hour
board games & drinks at the dining room fold-up tables
standing under the porch awning during a storm
trying to identify the footsteps coming up the stairs
sidewalk chalk in the driveway
talking excitedly about the future of St A's
sporting the plaid for MSCL nights
3 am--or 4 am--or 5 am--beer pong
sharing the Harris Teeter monster cakes
the sweaty stroll back home after Frisbee games
and, always, third eye blind in the living room!

(I miss my family.)

This week, I was sorted into a Harry Potter house...

HUFFLEPUFF!


Curses!


At least it wasn't Slytherin...

London health care

ME: HI I NEED MEDICAL THINGS
LADY: WHO R U
ME: AMERICAN
LADY: COOL HOW OLD
ME: TWENTY ONE
LADY: LETS TALK
ME:  I HAVE QUESTIONS
LADY:  I HAVE ANSWERS
ME:  OK THAT WAS GREAT
LADY:  HERE TAKE ALL OF YOUR PRESCRIPTIONS FOR FREE
ME:  K THX!!!!
LADY: O AND TAKE MORE STUFF YOU DIDNT EVEN ASK FOR
ME: WOW GEE THANKS
LADY: COME BACK AGAIN!

I have returned

Went to Berlin this weekend.  It involved:

--waking up at 3 am to catch a bus, then a plane, then a train ride
--Mexican food and drinks until check-in time at 2 pm
--a hostel called The Circus
--schnitzel
--a Couch Surfing party
--an exhibit on Bauhaus
--a stroll by the Berlin Wall
--Checkpoint Charlie
--Berlin reunification festival
--a 3 hour meal at a Spanish TAPAS restaurant
--my professor throwing down with us
--capoeira-style dancing in a Berlin basement bar
--graffiti-covered parking garages transformed into clubs
--dancing on stage to German techno
--lots of making out in public
--a fantastic 5 euro breakfast buffet
--a very disturbing visit to a concentration camp
--a fancy 3 hour dinner with gourmet schnitzel and live music
--RYANAIR

Many stories to tell but no time / patience to tell them.  Mostly, I'm just happy. 

ABABCDCDEFEFGG

On the four-and-a-half hour bus ride back from Stratford-upon-Avon, I made a list of my goals for the next year:  


1)  Learn how to effectively use Photoshop
2)  Apply for a job with Americorps to pay off student loans
3)  Find a full-time summer job in North Carolina 


In my  "The Birth of 'COOL'" class, we are discussing post-modernism.  Every one seemed to think that post-modernism was this crazy-cool philosophical development that gives them the power to shape their world, but when I ponder post-modernism, I am just overwhelmed with how lonely it all feels.  The idea that we communicate through symbols--that was is "true" is basically whatever we all decide is true--that we have no way of really knowing how each person individually is interpreting the symbols, rhetoric, language, world around them--that we will go our whole lives being unknown, being unsure whether we have ever really connected with another person or not--well, that haunts me.  One of my classmates said that post-modernism is a philosophical tool that gives you the power to take concepts and experiences from the real world, break them down and transform them, then return back into reality.  I guess I have a hard time compartmentalizing my world like that; I don't know how to separate the idea from the reality.  


Another idea that I have enjoyed pondering recently is that art is about choice--that the artist's selection is what matters.  I've been thinking about my creative process through this lens, and I am excited by the ideas it inspires.  So much of the way that I think is less about making new creations and more about finding the connections in others--in picking out what I think matters in the pool of ideas and expression that exists all around me--and using this hodgepodge of thoughts and connections to fuel my existence and give me the energy to go through day, after day, after day.  I am a little bit drunk, so I am not sure if this makes sense, but let me summarize in a more concrete way.  I am terrible at drawing.  Horrible at it!  I have no patience for making straight lines, and whenever I color, it ends up looking like muddy crayon soup.  However, I have seen some artworks here in London that really inspire me, that--YOU know--move me.  I look at Picasso's "Nude Woman in a Red Armchair," and I somehow see myself in that, and I see the complexity of sex, and womanhood, and vulnerability, and life, and personality in that, and then I want to piece it all together, I want to take all of the symbols--me--Picasso's piece--someone else's words--a few parts of other people--and piece it all together, overlap that.  I have nothing new to create; I just want to show the overlap of all of these things running through my head.  Thus, Photoshop!  With Photoshop, I can layer photos and cut out pieces of them and add in quotes and do all sorts of things; I can select what it is that I want to include, and I am creating art by that very selection.  Or something.  Or maybe Photoshop falls under the category of creating.  Ah, brain hurting, too much Kronenburg.


I have a paper due at 3 AM, so I must keep this short (kidding, kidding, too late or that, obviously).  I love London.  I love being in London.  It isn't, to be frank, an exotic experience.  They have KFC here!  However, I am having this very strange experience here of feeling almost normal.  I have been able to leave much of my past behind me in the States, and people here are getting to known me on the basis of who I am at this moment, and it is a strange feeling.  It is less complicated here.  I feel bolder to do certain things; what frightens me isn't quite so overwhelming when I am able to remove it from the context of all that came before.  I am doing well in my classes, meeting nice boys, hanging out with disturbingly well-adjusted people, spending time with one of my best friends, and enjoying the fun of learning about a new place.  I know that, when I return to Chapel Hill, my responsibilities and issues will still be there; I know that this is more of a vacation from those things rather than a transformation beyond them.  Still, I am getting something from this, even more than just space to breathe and relax.  I realize that the entirety of my being is not just what has come before.  I am a person of the moment, too, and while I don't need to hide the past, I don't (to be very cliche) have to be entirely defined by it, either.  I don't have to give explanations for everything to anyone else or to myself; sometimes, quite refreshingly, the moment can just be the moment.  I have no idea what I am going on about here; this is like that time I drunk Facebooked SR that two page message once about how I hoped the Hall would maintain some of its openness or something.  Wow, that was forever ago.  For. Ev. Urr.


Okay, I have to go finish my paper right now.  PS I held an owl on my arm at an apple festival this weekend ITWASSOCOOL.  PPS I sign every guestbook here (e.g. at a B&B or museum) with my name and a TAU CROSS.  Sometimes, I quote Shakespeare too, mention a few well known hoops that we all have in our lives.


Take care Take care Take care 
and tell those rushees how scary I am!

London London London

I met my first Irish friend and we decided we were soulmates!  More details later!

Exciting classes!

Okay, so I've finally had all of my classes except for London experience, which is tomorrow.  We are going on a tour of London via the tube.

My classes are wonderful!  Well, all except one.  I have, basically, a human geography class about global London which is terrible.  However, it is worth the sacrifice for... dun dun... THE BIRTH OF COOL.  Yes.  We talked about everything from Miles Davis to quantum physics, and somehow it all fit together wonderfully.  Shakespeare is also phenomenal; it is taught by this hilarious, tiny British woman who lives in the countryside.  She has marvelous anecdotes about slugs.  Also, my art class takes place solely in museums around town.

After class, I sat in the British museum for an hour.  It is a block away from where I live.  There is an exhibit on "Living and Dying," which I explored.  I sat and watched other people walking through the exhibit.  It was fascinating to watch their faces and guess their reactions to the exhibit.  There was one man, in particular, who caught my attention because he was just.  so.  freakin'.  old.   I wonder what it is like for a very old man to look at an exhibit about life and death.  On my way out, I also saw a statue from 800 BC.  It was an attendant to the Assyrian god of writing, Nabu.  There was an inscription to go with it: "DO NOT TRUST IN ANOTHER GOD."  I liked that, even though I'm not sure sure how trustworthy language is, in the end, since it is all just symbols and everything.  I figure trusting in muses is probably better than trusting in the god of war or whatever else.  Poetry ftw.

More updates later, gators.

Today I...

Went to Kensington gardens and met Peter Pan!

I also briefly made out with a fellow name Felipe who is from Chile and loves soccer and rum and his country and he is learning English and he says I'm beautilful BAHA.

So I was all HELLO CHILE FRIEND GOOD BYE and I gave him a hug farewell and thought he was giving me a silly hispanic kiss on the cheek but I WAS WRONG. ALAS.

And by ALAS I mean that London is a beautiful city of adventure. Oh and I finally met up with Mairin today and it was wonderful.

Also, I tried to touch a swan and it ATTACKED ME. DOOM!

MESSY GRAMMAR

Today I went on a tour of the British Library.  Our tour guide has been working at the library for 30+ years.  He personally carried a GUTENBERG BIBLE and original Shakespeare texts from their previous resting places to the new library building.  He took them in a taxi cab.  I said, I WANT TO DO THAT.  He said his arms were shaking a lot.  "LOW PROFILE"--that's what he called their taxi cab transport.

British people seem to smile less but frequently make intense, sustained eye contact.

Ford, my frisbee throwing buddy, is my most delightful friend here thus far.  My roommate is amusing and nice.  There is some guy here that was good friends with Liz B. We found ourselves happily lost today while looking around for theatres, and we ended up in a very fancy building known as The Royal Courts of Justice. 

I talked to this eccentric old man in the grocery store. He passionately described to me how air lines are getting cheaper, now, but they also consist of the TRASH OF THE EARTH because these days they just let anyone in!  In the olden days, airplanes had class!  And the people in Cork are so stingy that they'll pick ashes up off the ground to roll them into cigarettes...  and in the US all the rich, trashy, miserly people go to Florida...  and soon there's going to be a world war because the whole world is getting trashier and trashier!   After a while, I starting getting uncomfortable and tried to escape to buy my mozarella cheese.  What a crotchety, potentially dangerous, endearing sort of old man.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try to play some pickup frisbee at a park.  I discovered a new sport today called "netball."  So many of the people playing it had colorful hair.  I want colorful hair, goshdarnit.  I must learn more about this "netball."

I am listening to Sinead O'Conner.  Last night, they played that song IIIII WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODYYY at the pub, and I laughed with glee.  That song reminds me of the Hall, most particularly NC and her wild dance moves.  When I return, we shall listen to that song together.

I miss St. A's.  Life here is exciting and new, but it is also overwhelming and a bit lonely without all of you.  Please keep me updated on what's going on with literary/visual projects.  I will enjoy having that connection with everyone while I am abroad.  It is comforting to know that, when the semester ends, I can return to a safe place inhabited by people I both love and enjoy immensely.  Meanwhile, I will push myself to continue adventuring into the unknown!

This looks fun:

I applied for my own amusement:

http://www.oneandother.co.uk/


This summer, sculptor Antony Gormley invites you to help create an astonishing living monument. He is asking the people of the UK to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals, in an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.

Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, different people will make the Plinth their own. If you’re selected, you can use your time on the plinth as you like – to demonstrate, to perform, or simply to reflect. One & Other is open to anyone and everyone from any corner of the UK. As long as you’re 16 or over and are living, or staying, in the UK, you can apply to be part of this unforgettable artistic experiment. Participants will be picked at random, chosen from the thousands who will enter, to represent the entire population of the UK. The rules are simple: you must stand on the plinth alone, for the whole hour; you can do whatever you want, provided it’s legal; and you can take anything with you that you can carry.
You can play your part in making this idea a reality – either by volunteering yourself, by telling others about it, or by experiencing it online or on the square itself.

How to take part

• Register online at oneandother.co.uk, or by post.
• The final draw, for places on the plinth in October, will be on 1 September. Successful applicants are notified by email.

One person. One hour.
One & Other.

"Through elevation onto the plinth, and removal from the common ground, the body becomes a metaphor, a symbol… In the context of Trafalgar Square with its military, valedictory and male historical statues to specific individuals, this elevation of everyday life to the position formerly occupied by monumental art allows us to reflect on the diversity, vulnerability and particularity of the individual in contemporary society. It could be tragic but it could also be funny."

Antony Gormley

CANT STOP BLOGGING !!#!!0101!!>?

ME (9:08:03 PM): oh man  
ME (9:08:15 PM): I had dinner with my mom and my brother and my mom's boyfriend tonight  
ME (9:08:30 PM): and my mom was saying a prayer for dinner because apparently she does that now that she's dating this guy 
ME (9:08:33 PM): and I BURST out laughing  
ME (9:08:57 PM): and THEN in the middle of him telling some story I started laughing with a ton of water in my mouth and I ended up spitting it all over the table  
ME (9:09:00 PM): ALL OVER 
ME (9:09:25 PM): and THEN I made my happy claim of MOST PEOPLE IVE MET FROM ASHEVILLE I REALLLY DONT LIKE EXCEPT FOR LIKE ONE OR TWO PEOPLE AND THEYRE AWESOME
ME (9:09:41 PM): and then my mom freaked out  
ME (9:09:56 PM): and I thought it was because her boyfriend was from asheville  
ME (9:10:02 PM): and I was all OHGODOHGOD AWKWARD OH GOD
ME (9:10:26 PM): but apparently she was just worried I'd hurt my brother's feelings since he hangs out in western north carolina so much pfaw  
FRIEND (9:12:38 PM): LMAO 
FRIEND (9:12:54 PM): i hope this is a preview of the epic blog post about your day 
ME (9:13:07 PM): oh man 
ME (9:13:11 PM): I will just post this conversation

Summer Movies & Shows

Here is a list of what I watched this summer:

City of Lost Children, Brazil, Serenity, Princess Mononoke, Blade Runner, Shaolin Soccer, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Karate Kid, Lawrence of Arabia , Love In the Afternoon, Charade, Steel Magnolias, Casablanca, How to Be, Dirty Dancing, PS I Love You, I Love You, Man, Hitch (didn’t finish), Harry Potter VI, Up, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Secondhand Lions, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, that “documentary” about dragons (didn’t finish), that Swedish movie of Laura’s

Firefly,  My So Called Life,  Shogun (not all of it)

OH AND MYSTIC PIZZA (+ pizza)

Poetry

ROSES

You love the roses - so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

George Eliot 1819-1880 

  

This reminds me of sitting under the rose bushes in front of the Hall and reading a book. There is something satisfying about being surrounded by roses while enjoying a good novel.

Yesterday, I almost ran over an alligator with my bicycle.

Picture time!  Yesterday, my brothers, my dad, and I went on a bike ride around St. Marks Wildlife Refuge.  We biked for a long time on what, I am assuming, were dikes.  At one point, I was two feet away from running over a small alligator.  It thrashed its tail, snapped, and then disappeared into the marsh.  The rest of the ride was me going THIS IS SO COOL I CANT BELIEVE I RAN OVER AN ALLIGATOR WELL ALMOST WE BETTER LEAVE HERE BEFORE IT GETS DARK THIS IS AWESOME WOW I HOPE WE DONT RUN INTO ANYMORE ALLIGATORS.  We stopped for a while to fish in the salt water; I caught a flounder, but it was an inch or so too small to keep.  We had to rush back to get to the car before dark; at one point, one of the largest alligators I have ever seen crossed the path up ahead of us.

The best part of the whole ride was when two or three very large deer were leaping around through the dikes / marsh.  It was like being in a fantasy film, just the four of us following after some sort of a dream.  I've never seen deer so close to the ocean before; there was sort of a wild beauty about it all. 

Here are pictures:

My brothers and me (sorry for the jpeg quality).  You can see some of my backyard!  And the ol' basketball hoop...

Us with my dad.  Front yard.

  

 Siblings biking along the dikes.  I am straggling along in the back.

Can you see the deer running ahead of us?!  To the left.  It has a white tail.

 This is what I think of when I remember the GOOD part of Florida.

  

No cars, no streets, no buildings, no people...  (except maybe for the ones I love)

Pulling my hair back?

Setting our bikes aside to fish for thirty minutes.  We had to race the night on the way back! 

Other weekend highlights include:  eating tempura ice cream, watching Blade Runner, dining at the SHELL OYSTER SHACK and playing STAR OCEAN (second story)

I heard that DTGS went off without any major disasters.  Hooray!

My brother and I agree that you should listen to this song on FULL VOLUME:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J7UPSh2Xxw

Today, my brothers coerced me to go on a bike ride.  It took them 45 minutes to do so.  We went all over Tallahassee and I said OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE HILL THIS IS TERRIBLE and they said CLAIRE STOP USING YOUR BREAKS SO MUCH and I said BUT WERE GOING SO FASTTTT and they said CLAIRE JUST COAST DOWN THE HILL and I said NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and they said CLAIRE JUST LET GO OF THEM and I said BUT ITS SO FAST I REFUSE I REFUSE THIS IS DUMB and we repeated that conversation for two hours of hills.  It was fun!

Last night, I saw a billboard that said WHO IS JOHN GALT?

Greetings from Savannah, GA

Motel/hotel parking lots = very reliable place to find free wi-fi at night. 

Good drive thus far!  I am getting tired, though--may not drive the whole way to Florida.  We'll see. 

I am burning a CD with Joanna Newsom on it so that I can just listen to Sadie on repeat for at least 30 minutes.  

Onward, onward, onward into the unknown!

REBELLION

It is 12:15 and I am blogging instead of packing!!!

I'm going to London, but first I'm going back to Florida.

Wow.  3:19 AM already.  Everyone in the Hall is in bed right now--probably asleep.  Peter is crashing on the couch, and Nikki is curled up on bench pads in the Library.  I have set up my temporary residence in the Cave Oven, and it is a peaceful place to fall asleep.  It is strange how sweet and sad the Hall can be late at night in those rare moments when I'm the only one awake and moving about in the house.  It is very quiet, and sometimes I think about how other people before me have probably shared this same feeling--this sweet, sad, quiet feeling when the house and the people in it are still.  I guess there's some sort of a bond, there, even though I am here alone; there is a bond in that shared experience of solitude.

I have to drive nine and a half hours soon.  I know I'm not going to get out of here until much later than I would prefer to leave.  I've already said all of my good byes, pretty much, so I feel like I should just go ahead and slip out of here to make it less awkward and painful.  There is a part of me that knows I'm not leaving for very long, but there's another part of me that is being reminded now of just how important my Chapel Hill family is to me.  I'm realizing that, while I may carry you all in my heart forever, there will still be times ahead when I am physically separated from you; that, while my love for you will always be there, our relationships may change, and life and distance will in some ways push us apart.

That being said, I think I've been making the best of my time here this summer.  I'm sure I will reflect on all of the fond memories some more in the future--I bet no one listens to the VENGA boys station at 3 AM in London!--but, right now, I just want to sink into how grateful I feel.  I've enjoyed living at the Hall, and I like all of the silliness I've been a part of, and I also appreciate some of the struggles this summer that challenged me and the way that I look at things.

I am so vague and sleepy right now, and I think I may fall asleep, feeling a strange mix of sad and happy and grateful and full of love.