Brainsnap...

...I think might be a good band name. Not for me, but for someone, somewhere...
It seems I only write here when it is very late, and often when I ought to be doing something else. I suppose this means you (dear reader, as some Victorian novelist might say) hardly get me at my best; for this, I apologize.
So here I sit, at a late hour, with a half-finished C.S. Lewis paper before me. I have fought long and hard to reach this point, employing all my powers of procrastination and distraction to keep from actually writing. No one, I think, knows the art of distraction from purpose like a writer. One I actually begin, and my fingers stagger their first halting steps across the keyboard, it is not so bad. It is just this terrible inertia that fills me at the thought of beginning. It reminds of me Bilbo, when he was preparing to enter Smaug's cave. It was there, Bilbo knew, in the dark of the tunnel, where true courage was shown. Everything from that point on was almost an afterthought. Oswald Chambers said something similar, that the true battle takes place on our knees, and in our hearts, before the moment of action itself. All the rest is simply a demonstration of what has already taken place.

Johanna flies in tomorrow morning. (For Oxford friends: she is a friend from back home. To home friends...well...you should know her already; she is one of "your kind.") She and her cousin are spending a week in England. There is a spell to be found here, if you listen for it, an incantation whispered in the trees and from green hills, the stone of old buildings and worn gravestones--I hope they find it.

Two plays in the past few days: "Pygmalion" and "A Streetcar Named Desire." The former was good and the latter was...well...serviceable.

I have taken to listening to ambient, trancelike, new age sorts of music while I work. I have also noticed that the Incan monkey god tends to visit me more often with helpful advice for my papers. Could these two things be related?

I have discovered line breaks between paragraphs.

See?

I have been humbled, especially as of late, knowing how many people are praying for me here, from family to friends to acquaintances to perfect strangers who only know of me second hand. It is no small thing to know that people approach the throne of the King of the Universe on your behalf. For this I am grateful, and most undeserving.