Being at home is mostly good, if occasionally challenging becausemy family likes to drive me crazy. I got my hardcopy application for English Studies at Carleton today, which is kind of exciting, so I need to start emailing people and being all "'Sup guys...can I come to your school and stuff?"
At which point they will be all, "Uh...no. That's shiny." And then run away.
Tomorrow night (and the two nights after that) are the First Light festival at Ste. Marie. The sisters are volunteering for it (we get to be in costume!) and I must say that I am quite excited about it. We celebrate first light because, back in the day, a Jesuit at Ste. Marie by name of Jean de Brebeuf (goes by St. J-d-B nowadays) took a French folk song about a bawdy barmaid and wrote new lyrics for it, explaining the story of the nativity to the people of Huronia:
'twas in the moon of wintertime when all the birds had fled that mighty Gitchi Manitou sent angel choirs instead
This was the first Christmas carol written in North America, and it is a haunting and powerful song. If you're interested in hearing it, I suggest the Bruce Cockburn version, which is especially awesome because he recorded it in Huron. It's an especially nice night at SMATH, though, we line all the walkways with candles and have a special activity or exhibit in nearly every building, and I think it will be good to get me in the Christmas spirit this way.
Just out of curiousity, who is it from Nipissing who read this? Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to stop or anything, I'm just curious as to who you are and how you found this. Drop me an email or leave me a note. It's all good.
This is going to be an exceptionally lengthy entry, but I've been meaning to post some song lyrics for a while now, because I feel they have some relevance to what's going on in my life (and maybe yours too) because I know that regardless of age, sex, religion, etc., that, as Sam Roberts would say, "there's no road that ain't a hard road to travel on" and this song is one I like to hold close, a touchstone or security blanket in music.
I never seen you look like this without a reason Another promise fallen through, another season passes by you I never took the smile away from anybody's face And that's a desperate way to look for someone who is still a child In a big country dreams stay with you Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside Stay alive I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered So take that look out of here, it doesn't fit you Because it's happened doesn't mean you've been discarded Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime
In A Big Country, by the band Big Country. The lead singer of which was ffrom Dunfermline, which is where my family is from in Scotland. Woot to that.