French Composition Assignment

"Describe the snow," Greg says and writes a list of adjectives on the whiteboard (in French). OK. And I ran with it. He walked around complaining about how people had started with "La Neige est" (the snow is) and used to be and have a lot. Not me. Here's what a wrote
IN FRENCH:
Le cristalline monde scintille dans la lumièe froide du soleil d'hiver. C'est une sepulcre sévère et sterile mais brillante, scintillante, et immaculée. La blanche cuvre la terre avec l'ennui de la neige, une couverture frigide, aveuglante, et prèsque spectrale, mais belle, toujours belle. Une agonie et une joie au même temps. La purité de la froidure, de petites étoiles, de la mausolée qui est la neige déroule sur la terre. Les arbres tous nus avec rien pour les protéger contre la froideure, la neige encerclement ses pieds racinés. Tous dors, attendant pour la neige fondre et les brises verts et doux du printemps retourner avec un soleil qui est plus chaud.
IN ENGLISH:
The crystalline world glitters in the cold light of the winter sun. It is a severe and sterile sepulcer, but brilliant, glittering, and immaculate. The white covers the earth with the boringness of snow, a frigid, blinding, and almost spectral blanket, but beautiful, always beautiful. An agony and a joy at the same time. The purity of the cold, of the tiny stars, of the mosoleum that is the snow, unrolls on the earth. Trees stand bare, with nothing to guard them from the cold, snow surrounding their rooted feet. Everything sleeps, waiting for the snow to melt and spring's green and balmy breezes to return with a warmer sun.

I'm a beast! I am the mistress of creative writing! w00t! (Can you sense an inflated ego?....;P) I can't wait to turn it in.

2009

Happy New Year. May it be filled with good health, happiness, and achievement. May you be surrounded by family and friends. May you keep your old friends and find new ones. May you be neither too bored or too overwhelmed. May you fulfill your New Years Resolutions and be thankful at the end for the year you've had.

My New Years Resolutions:
--Do not procrastinate
--Do not be lazy
--find time to read things that I want
--Find time to work on my stories
--Exercise
--Drink more water
--Find things to eat
--Be happy

Sanctuary

Something I wrote on the 14th of this month. As usual, I don't know where it came from. It's good though.

She tiptoed closer, ever hopeful, ever wary. Rain drizzled down her back and locks of soaking hair clung to her cheeks, neck, and shoulders. A soft, warm glow shone gently out into the cold, wet dark of night. This was her chance. Slipping and sliding from shadow to rain-wet shadow, she made her way toward the light.
As she reached the heavy oaken doors, they swung open.
"Welcome, come in," said a soft and gentle voice. It belonged to the white-robed woman standing in the threshold of the building, half shrouded in darkness, her back to the light.
"Sanctuary," the girl breathed.
"Yes," the woman smiled. "Yes, it is."

Lord Byron quotes (fragments from Manfred")

“My slumbers--if I slumber--are not sleep, / But a continuance of enduring thought, / Which then I can resist not: in my heart / There is a vigil, and these eyes but close / To look within; […]”

“as rain unto the sands”

“spirits of the unbound Universe!”

“breath of twilight”

“[…] in a robe of clouds, / With a diadem of snow.”

“Where the wind is a stranger”

“Space bosom’d not a lovelier star.”

“[…] clouds / Rise curling fast beneath me, […] / Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell, / Whose every wave breaks on a living shore”

Shelley quotes (fragments, mostly)

From "Mont Blanc":
"The everlasting universe of things/Flows through the mind, [...]"
"Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale, / Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail / Fast cloud shadows and sunbeams [...]"
"Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame / Of lightning through the tempest; [...]"
"chainless winds"
"One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings / Now float above thy darkness [...]"
"Some say that gleams of a remoter world / Visit the soul in sleep, [...]"
"A desert peopled by the storms alone,"
"None can reply--all seems eternal now."
"Fiery flood"
"Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep / Holds every futre leaf and flower; [...]"
"star-beams"
"[...] The secret strength of things / Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome / Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! / And what were thou, and the earth, and the stars, and the sea, / If to the human mind's imaginings / Silence and solitude were vacancy?"

From "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty":
"like hues and harmonies of evening,--"
"Like memory of music fled,-- / Like aught that for its grace may be / Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery."
"Or moonlight on a midnight stream, / Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream."

From "Ode to the West Wind":
"[...] the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,"
"Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread / On the blue surface of thine aery surge,"
"Lulled by the coil of his chrystalline streams,"
"sea-blooms"
"As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. /Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! / I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!"
"A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed / One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud."
"The tumult of thy mighty harmonies"
"If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

From Prometheus Unbound:

"[...] who throng those bright and rolling Worlds"
"[...] The Sea, in storm or calm, /Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below-- / Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?"
"shapeless sights"
"many-voiced Echoes"
"And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised wings / Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss"
"And died as mad as the wild waves be."
"As lighting tingles, hovering ere it strike.--"
"[...] --until his thunder chained thee here.--"
"The shadows of all forms that think and live"
"And iron wings that climb the wind"
"[...] the deep truth is imageless;"
"Each to itself must be the oracle.--
"a shroeless sea"

From "To a Sky-Lark":
"In the golden lightning / Of the sunken Sun--"

Virginia Woolf Quotes:

From "A Room of One's Own":

"The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, comletely, as if he had never been."

"As you know, it's [the chapel's] high domes and pinnacles can be seen, like a sailing-ship always voyaging never arriving, lit up at night and visible for miles, far away across the hills."

and I found this quote of Alfred Lord Tennyson's Maud in "A Room of One's Own"

"There has fallen a splendid tear/From the passion-flower at the gate"

When in doubt, quote.

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love". Neil Gaiman

(What's worse is when you do it to yourself.)

"Long after moments of closeness have passed, a part of you remains with me and warms the places your hands have touched and hastens my heart for your return." Robert Sexton
(That's true, too. Too bad you can't do it to yourself.)

"My mind tells me to give up, but my heart won't let me." Jennifer Tyler