an internal vibration

It is deeply satisfying to be back home. Free from classes, homework, Lenoir. This town is just blooming and my family is happy and crazy. It is good to be around them again, to be reacquainted with our insane and hyperactive style of living (even if I am often slow to adjust).

I am sitting on the floor in our bedroom, helping Kelsey compile her song list for her graduation. (A trio of Kelsey-esque choices: George Winston, Sandra McCracken, and Tom Petty.) Sam is rubbing his grody feet on me as I type. We are listening to Bob Seger and Grace is brushing her teeth, getting ready to go to lit. class. Mom is addressing envelopes and making smoothies. Dad is in the treehouse office, pretending to work. Feet up and down the stairs, crunching bags, the ticking ceiling fan. Sounds of a home.

Cleaning the kitchen is a rich and fulfilling activity. I woke up yesterday morning at 9:30 and cleaned for an hour, listening to Arcade Fire and Jose Gonzalez, feeling excessively accomplished. I like doing tasks with immediate and noticeable results. Afterwards, Dad and I biked to the public library and bought 30 books for a mere $16. I came back and spread a white sheet out on the grass and read Proust, Woolf, and Fodor's travel guide to Japan and wrote a haphazard entry in my journal. The sun passed in spotted patterns over the lawn and I was at peace.

"For even if we have the sensation of being always surrounded by our own soul, it is not as though by a motionless prison: rather, we are in some sense borne along with it in a perpetual leap to go beyond it, to reach the outside, with a sort of discouragement as we hear around us always that same resonance, which is not an echo from outside but the resounding of an internal vibration." -- Proust

Watched "Lars and the Real Girl" last night with the family; probably the best film I've seen in a long time.

(My style of writing changes when I come back home. Family activity and movement takes priority over ideas.)

God is gracious to us in our weakness. Light is shed upon the righteous and joy on the upright at heart.

Currently
Reading: Swann's Way, Marcel Proust; Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf; Fodor's guide to Japan
Hearing: "Duettino - Sull 'Aria'" from "The Marriage of Figaro"
Eating: A blackberry smoothie, courtesy of my mother
Thinking: Once upon a time I could write better things