In a little over two weeks it will be six months since I graduated.

Weird.

That's almost all that I can say. I don't feel like an adult yet, but I have all of these adult characteristics that I never thought I would attribute to myself. I still feel as though I'm on a sort of extended summer break. In another month or two I'm going to step back in to the Quad and start talking about the metaphysics of Rahner and Emily Dickinson's influence on modern poetry.

I'm really still a student at heart. I went back to an old prof's class to give a talk a few weeks ago. The students were incredible--sharp, engaging, and utterly brilliant. A troop of bright young scholars indeed. Midway through our conversation I found myself wishing that I was on their half of the room.

Ahh well. The academic in me needed some time to stretch out and think anyway. It particularly needed the last Harry Potter book to come out to find out whether my meditations on the universality of the Redemption story and Rahner's Theology of Grace were applicable. (They are.) Weeee.

In the past three months my three closest friends have left the country. The longest period I've spent apart from many of them is only a few months. Given that all of them have been frequent guests, it's hard to accustom myself to not seeing or talking to them daily. I find myself with an odd amount of free time; a combination, I think, of having fewer friends within walking distance, and not having homework. Ever. The result has been the following:

1. More poems. Whether good enough to do anything with remains to be seen. But I've never been one to submit anything without the threat of bodily harm if I didn't take them off my bookshelf, so. . .
2. A great deal of reading!!!!! I recently finished Pullman's series His Dark Materials. While extremely heretical, it was still absorbing, well-written, and wonderful. I'm in the process of rerading Franny & Zooey for approximately the 622,000th time. It's a million times more wonderful than I remember. Oh, Salinger, you had me at hello.
3. I've done a tremendous amount of lateral thinking lately (Kevin, have you read Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? After having Rene, you'd love it.) I've had a number of excellent faith questions posed by a tremendous variety of people. Oddly enough, all within the past two weeks or so. It's nice to have the time to muddle over these without having to follow them up with reading immediately. Although, at the same time, it's great to have profs who don't mind the occasional email asking for reading direction.
4. For the time being, I think that I've made a decision about grad school. I think that it's going to be theology, as I can't find a course in the Theo & English. In a dream world, I'd go to Fordham, but any place that will allow me to study systematics is appealing. I think that it would be easier to teach a "Systematics of Literature" (ie, my senior thesis) than it would be to teach a "Literature of Systematics" course. Of course, this will probably change in about two weeks when I decide to go for a MFA in poetry. Ahh well.

Right now I'm really REALLY loving the poem "Nancy Drew" by an author whose name I can't remember. If I haven't already emailed it you, go google it. Now. The last two lines make my heart want to explode all over the place.

Well, I'm off to fall asleep with Salinger and Damien Rice. What a lucky girl.

Blessings.