:-)

Whuff.  I feel like I've been on a wild roller coaster and have just hit a brick wall.  I'm exhausted.  Like, looking up at my bed contemplating just sleeping on the floor (with a sleeping bag, of course) sort of exhausted.  Today has simply been too good.

I went to the public library here to see if it might be worth getting a library card.  I can read Dutch, but the books I want to read are mostly written in English, and translations are not fun.  So, I checked out the English section.  I found Stardust by Neil Gaiman.  It's a truly pleasant little book, and I read a few chapters of it.  

My back was warm against the heater, rain was pelting against the window, a fairy market unfolded before my eyes.

There's a cafe in the library called Coffee Star, and I sat in there, drank a mocha, and wrote and wrote.  I did a little homework, and then I wrote some more.  One of my characters has jumped out at me and demanded that he be described.  So I've spent most of my day figuring him out.  He's a rather delightful man, if a bit close minded at times.  :-)

Then I came home, and ate, and wrote some more.  I went to the sports center at 6 and danced for an hour.  I'm trying to figure out how to use poi in dance, and make new combinations and such.  Then Tai Chi, and Wushu, and home.

I'm listening to Bela, my room smells like lavender, and I'm simply exhausted.  :-)  But sublime.

Alive!

Today's picture is a bit weird.  But I just can't seem to take one that looks any better, so we can all deal.

I woke up with a feeling of dread because I hadn't done my Coptic homework and knew I was behind.  And then I got to class, opened my notebook and realized I had done the homework after all, and moreover had read ahead in the book.  So I was just wrong.  :-)

I read quite a lot of Khalil Gibran today.  His words make me want to fly to pieces and become the breath reciting them.  

I can't quite describe the transformation that has come over me in the past few weeks.  I feel like the little wild kitten of my soul has once more been awakened, and is playing in the tall grasses inside me again, stalking butterflies and climbing trees.  I feel like all the negative emotions, situations, experiences that I have felt, been in, experienced since the age of 12 have been stripped from me, scrubbed off of my skin, evaporated.  I remember them, but they no longer seem to be a part of me.  My pain was once like a tattoo, and now my skin is clean again.  I used to have a hundred names, and now, only my true name is resonating. I feel new, but at the same time, ancient.  Like the child I used to be.  I've become the woman I'm supposed to be.

How can you describe this feeling?!  How can you describe the shattering of what you thought was your heart?  How can you describe the realization that you've been a bird living in a tiny beautiful cage?  Every minute now feels like I'm dancing!

Funny how the smallest thing can change everything.  Funny how one emotion can open up the secrets of how to truly feel emotion.  Funny how quickly time can be erased, and how quickly the mind can become like itself again.  Funny how clear everything seems now that my sacred waters are still.  For once I can see everything reflecting clearly!

Is this cryptic?  I suppose it is.  I think it should be.  It's a mystery I don't quite understand myself.  And I like not understanding.  I like the mystery of this new child that is my ancient self.

Hot like the sun, wet like the rain,

Green like the leaves, Life is a game

Stars in my head, shine Moon shine

Everything's cool and I feel fine

Can you touch (the root that feeds us)

Can you hear (the words that I say)

Can you feel (the music move you)

Can you feel alive today?

Strong like the grass, tall like a tree

Free like the wind, eternally

Nothing to lose, nothing to gain.

Just running wyld, again and again and again

Bumblebees and blossom, only trees and me

Humblebees and blossom, only trees and me...

--Alive! by Omnia

Temple of Fantasy

I'm happier today than I have been in a while.  Maybe content is the word.  Fully comfortable in my own skin.  No doubts anymore.  :-)

I had a really great day today.  Jan and I went to the Temple of Fantasy, the fantasy fair (Ren fair) that was held this weekend at the Pieterskerk.  We were there when the doors opened at 11.  Everyone was dressed up, and there were tons of vendors selling their wares.  Jewelry, books, clothes, candles, statues, POI!  :-)  

There were also bands playing.  I'm generally really picky when it comes to music, especially live music.  And I'm particularly skeptical when the genre is referred to as "Neo-Pagan."  Not to say Pagan music is bad as a genre, it's just that when it's bad, it's BAAAD.  There were two bands today:  Rapalje and Omnia  

The first was a really solidly great Celtic band.  Lots of flute and drum and bagpipe.  Wonderful vocals, hilarious antics.  Good times.  I'm definitely going to look into them some more.

But truthfully Omnia was the one that sort of blew me away.  As I said, I was extremely skeptical at first, especially when I saw the lead singer.  He wore a long black coat, black pants, a long brown loin cloth made of leather, a top hat, with long red dreds and brown feathers falling down his back.  I thought, "Meh, just another Goth kid who wants to be noticed.  This might suck."  But I was wrong.

I'm not a fan of the "Goth" look generally.  It tends to reflect a certain lack of self esteem, I think, and I'm just plain annoyed with people who refuse to see anything but black in life.  But these guys wore it well.  They weren't trying to be weird, not trying to be something they weren't.  They just WERE weird.  Haha.  And they weren't dark; they actually had an amazing sense of humor.  Hilarious.

In the end though, I was really impressed by their musical talent.  They didn't just look cool and make noise, they were tight.  Their voices were all beautiful, and flexible, and their harmonies were spotless.  Musically their songs were complicated and interesting.  There was no Gothic Black Fluff here.  These guys were talented and made what I can honestly call music!

The lead singer, Sic, even recited The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe to music.  Frankly, this poem has ALWAYS gotten on my nerves.  I don't like the meter, and the repetition has always grated on my nerves.  The whole audience sat down, and I thought "Oh, here we go.  Dark black, raven, death, blood, gloom."  But I was absolutely mesmerized by him.  The poem comes to life when recited to music.  It works perfectly.  And Sic brought it to life.  It wasn't just the over-dramatized gasping of a man with too much eyeliner.  This was truly art!  I was literally breathless by the end.  :-)

They just take you by the core and shake you around.  The music takes them over, and they send it deep inside you and you can't resist it.  And you don't want to.  I haven't heard such a talented group of musicians in a long time.  

So, yes, that was the day.  Jan and I wandered the booths looking at all the little trinkets.  He found a really amazing ankh necklace for me, but then was haunted by Egyptian stuff.  Ankhs kept jumping out at him at every booth.  I played around with all sorts of different types of poi, and finally decided on some nice flag poi.  They look like wings when I spin them!  They're red with black trim.  Normally wouldn't have been my very first choice (I personally loved the lapis blue with green trim) but they'll look so cool with my belly dance costume that I just had to.  Now I have two pairs of poi (I have some hand-made ribbon poi that Robert got for me at a Fantasy Fair in Spain not to long ago) that will look amazing if I can ever perform.  :-)  

Jan and I had an amazing lunch of bread, pesto, some sort of Croatian sauce, olives (for me) and soup (for Jan.)  Jan bought a flute and we got some tea and he played around with it.  We watched the bands.  We danced.  (Jan won't admit it, but he's a good dancer.)  We wandered around again.  We spent 7 hours there, and didn't want to leave!  I got an Omnia CD and the whole band signed it for me.  We chatted with them for a bit, made another round, and left. 

When we got outside we found that it had snowed, so we had a mini snowball fight, and took pictures of the street.  Now I'm home, listening to Omnia and Faun, and rather enjoying it all.  I used to love this sort of stuff as a child, and have slowly moved away from it.  I miss it, and it feels good to come back.  :-) 

Open your eyes and you can see

They can steal the land but your spirit is free

I belong to me, I belong to me

They can steal my land, but my spirit is free

I belong to me, I belong to me

They can break the land but they can't break me.

Death! Are you ready to die?

Make the fat cats rich to support the lie?

Mulit-media games of war

Multinationals keeping score

All of this don't mean a thing

Cause we still dance and we still sing

Democracy, plutocracy

They can break the land, but they can't break me.

--Omnia, Dance Til We Die

Go Team HuCo!

Man, what a day!  The weather around here has lost its mind.  We've had two days of hail!  Hail!  And today it snowed!  The first snow of the season!  Funny thing is, today was also the day that Sinterklaas came to town.  :-)  Sadly, I missed it, but that's ok, there's always next year.

I spent my morning waiting for Jan to wake up and studying.  And truthfully mostly waiting for the plumber to come and fix my shower.  Which he did, and life is much cleaner now.

I stepped outside to watch it snow, and noticed Julia looking from her window into the courtyard at a small black cat.  She had the most amazing yellow eyes I've ever seen, and was meowling at us hungrily.  Sadly, we're both vegetarians and thus had nothing to offer.  Alas.  :-)

Jan Claus woke up, and we met Julia, Illaria and Janos at the market.  I was amazed at how nonchalant everyone was about the hail.  I feel like it should only hail if there's about to be a tornado, so to me hail is rather sinister.  But we all slogged through it with no problems, no sense of urgency.  Cool.

I'm also amazed at how nonchalant people are about the market.  I still haven't gotten over how amazing it is to see so much fish, and fresh olives, and spices and flowers.  The world is an amazing place!

After a successful market day (which among the group included purchases of bread, scones, kibbeling (fried fish), flowers, and 5 potatoes) Illaria, Janos and Julia wandered off back to their lives, and Jan and I went to the Pieterskerk to pick up our tickets for the Fantasy Fair (Ren Fair) tomorrow. We got cheese and corn bread sandwiches on the way. On the way back, we stopped in at an esoteric book store and geeked out for a while.  Then on to a book store so I could buy note cards and so Jan could look at journals, and of course, the books. 

Then home again where I spent the rest of my day making Egyptian flash cards.  I now have nearly 300 of them, and I'm not done yet!  I'm determined to learn them all too!  Phew.

At 8 there was a pub quiz down at Café 't Keizertje.  The teams were split up by faculty, so we had 2 Science and Math teams, 2 Law teams, the Humanities, and Archaeology.  Unfortunately, Archaeology consisted of just Jan and me, so we joined Humanities.  Such a great night of really tough questions and A LOT of laughter.  These people are too much fun!  My team was Carlos, Denny, Denny's girl, Walter, Cindy, Jan and me.  In the end, Humanities won, too!  

After Humanities made everyone cry, we all went downstairs and played pool.  Jan, Walter and I played against Carlos, Kia, and Giorgios.  It was actually a very sad game because we were ahead, and then, we lost.  To Kia, who I don't htink has ever played pool in his life.  Ever.  Oh well.   My team and I lost the pool tournament, but we walked out with heads held high.  Or something.  :-)

So, yes, another good day!

I'm beginning to rather enjoy winter now that it's decided to actually be winter and stop pretending to be other seasons like "fall" or "summer." Ha!

Tomorrow Jan and I are getting up early and going to the Fantasy Fair!  I have to go pick out my outfit!  :-D

Yesterday the North Wind Ran Rampant in the Streets

I'm going to update quickly.  Jan Claus is still asleep, and I'm waiting for him to wake up so we can go to the market!

Yesterday I did exactly as I promised and didn't get out of bed, except to make some toast, until time for class.  :-)  I didn't get quite as much work done as I had hoped, but flash cards were made, and Egyptian words were certainly learned.  And a few poems were read, and some artwork was looked at, and though I might have technically been wasting time, I was expanding my mind, so I can't consider it wasted.

Plus, by the time I got to class I was awake, and alert, and ready to learn.  And I did!  Ah, Egyptian yesterday was so refreshingly clear!  For once I could look at a sentence and not just know what it said, but I knew why it said what it said!  I've realized this is a problem with me.  Has been forever.  When I was in middle school I could look at a word problem and be able to tell you the answer.  But I struggled so hard to learn how to "show my work."  In the end, I lost my ability to just look at a problem and figure it out in my head.  Being forced to put the process on paper completely changed the way my brain comprehended math.  I'm trying not to let this happen with Egyptian.  I can look at a sentence and know what it says, but I struggle to remember whether a verb is a subjunctive sdjm=f or an indicative sdjm=f or a freakin sdjm.ty=f(y)  I really hate those.

There was another Game Night, and it was yet again a blast.  The usual suspects were there, and the Belgians played Colonies, as usual, and we played Apples and Pears, as usual.  Though we did broaden our horizons and played Monopoly.  I'm actually pretty notoriously bad at Monopoly because I have no head for strategy, and once people start getting competitive, I sort of have to shut down.  But everyone was really light hearted about the game last night, so we all just laughed and joked, and the game was really just a prop.  Which is as it should be.  I ended up winning though, in the end.  But that was just luck really, because I only managed to buy two properties, and fortunately didn't land on too many other properties.  And I got the Free Parking money, which really boosted my stash.  Haha.

Afterwards, Jan Claus, Walter, Kia, and two girls whose names I will never be able to spell, one from Indonesia, the other from Taiwan, and I went to some party of somebody.  I was never quite sure why we went.  Something about Facebook, I don't know.  But we had a really great time.  The music was sometimes really good, and we all danced.  As the night progressed, however, the music sort of fell into Dutch music, which is, according to what I've heard, pretty bad.  Really bad, actually.  There was also a fight, and a few guys got kicked out.  We were on a little catwalk overhead, so we got to watch and not get involved.

In other news:  I did my dishes, cooked a meal, washed the dishes again.  I stepped into the bathroom and found it completely covered in rice!  Rice!  A few days ago I spilled a bowl of rice in the sink while doing dishes, so lots of rice went down the drain.  The shower has been draining really slowly lately, and I didn't even consider the possibility of the rice.  Now, my shower won't drain at all, and every time I run water in my kitchen sink it ends up in my shower.  I cleaned up the rice, but gah.  Rice!  Hahaha.

So that was my Friday.  Jan Claus may sleep all day, but eventually we'll go to the market, and then hit the books.  Next semester, I'm going to be the best student in my classes.  I can just feel it.

The Sequestered Nook

Ok, my book blog has begun!  I can't escape the seductions of those little stacks of paper and the sweet worlds they contain.  And I must admit I don't want to!  :-)

The Sequestered Nook

Pink Sunset Beaches

I'm always amazed at how much people can change your mood.  I was simply exhausted today, discouraged, uninspired.  Couldn't get motivated (mostly, I think, because I couldn't get warm!)  and just wanted to go back to bed.  

And then I worked on a project with Catalijn and Kenny (both Dutch) and Catalijn said she has a friend looking for a roommate. 

And then there was mastaba class, which was great.  We talked about how the Egyptians, far from being obsessed with death, were actually very enthusiastic about life.  Sure, most of what we have talks about death, but, most of what we have is from tombs....  But look at the mastaba tombs of the 5th and 6th Dynasties and you'll see more depictions of the joys of life.  In fact, they refused to even represent the dead body.  So, no, Egyptians weren't obsessed with death; it was life they craved.

Sasha and I walked home talking about culture and living history.

On the way home from the grocery I ran into Jan Claus who was just returning from the book store.  So, we nerded out for a while over his new buys, and I told him about my new buys.  We both agreed that there are much worse addictions.  It's so nice to have someone around who loves books as much as I do.  :-)

I don't have class until 3pm tomorrow.  My plan?  To curl up in bed and not move.  Until 3.  I think I might just take my computer and my Egyptian work up there with me and get some work done.  But, I just don't know that I'm going to get out of bed longer than it takes me to make some toast.  Ahhh....

In other news:  Gmail has decided to add a settings option where you can make your mail very pretty.  Themes, different color schemes, etc.  Right now, my e-mail inbox is a beach with a pretty pink sunset.  I think, however, that as time passes, it might just change to night, and then back again to day.  There's a location setting too, and if I set it to Nashville, the sun is out.  If I set it to Cairo, it's a dark beach.  Mine is sunset.  This is entirely too much detail in my life, but I LOVE it!  :-D