2007

"Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is." --Herzog, Saul Bellow

It snowed this morning. Although I have been in Michigan for almost three weeks now, this is the first snow I have witnessed. Beauty, intruding unexpectedly (if belatedly)...and made all the more appreciable in its fashionable reluctance. I sit now, crosslegged on my Oma's floral print sofa in her immaculate sitting room, facing the glass sliding doors. Sunshine now concentrates on melting away the snow, which evaporates in jagged patches to reveal damp earth.

Oma sits on her cushy gray armchair with some sewing, snipping, pinning, and needling with an abstract frown. Every once in a while she looks around with utter bewilderment, having lost her train of thought. Then, retrieving it, the frown returns as she sets back to work.

NPR chats about the weather from the Bose radio beside me. 36 degrees now in Grand Rapids, 35 in Holland. 2:00 pm...Hannah will drive back from her dramatic job at Mr. Burger shortly. Her boyfriend Steve drove back to his home in rural Ontario this morning.

I, unlike Oma, Hannah, and Steve, have done very little today. I awoke at 8:30, showered, and had a great deal of leftover holiday food. Then I finished reading Herzog, a gift from Jordan Kanavel (who is presumably back at Covenant now, preparing for classes to resume tomorrow). It was a thought-provoking, somewhat disturbing, self-important book. I enjoyed it, but feel that I do not entirely understand its message. After puzzling it over mentally, I'll probably return to it and review. I also want to brush up on Reading Lolita in Tehran, because it mentions Herzog.

It doesn't feel like a new year. Although I formulated the routine list of resolutions, my heart is not in it. I am self-indulgent, and this life of exhausted indolence does not suit me...I tend to grow fat and sluggish. I need to keep my mind and body sharp.

Anyway, I'd better log off. Hannah will be here soon, and I have a letter to write.

Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worhip, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire... (Hebrews 12:28,29)