Word of the Day: cavil Mommy asked me Tuesday why I had all the blinds and curtains opened in the house. ‘I want to let in the Light,’ I answered There are just some things about which I have irrational fears. Dark and silent basements. Water faucets left on in public restrooms. People in uniform, any uniform of any country, and especially with automatic weapons. Someone coming into the house when we’re all sleeping and murdering my parents and me. The last one is most prominent at the moment. I think it’s because I’m by myself, no one else in close proximity like at school, especially like in Rome. It makes me nervous now, being by myself at night. I don’t know why, I just don’t feel safe anymore. Which is completely outlandish because where else could I feel most safe but at home, my father being the kind of person he is, in the country outside a city that’s in the boonies in the first place? And it doesn’t matter how late I stay awake. I stayed up reading one night till 1:30, and I felt as anxious as when I went to bed one night at 9. It’s dark, here, with the new moon, and quiet in the country. I stay in bed, covered up to my chin, closing and opening my eyes at intervals because I can see the same thing both ways, and listen to the creaking of the wood of the walls and the click and rumble of the air conditioner turning on and off, longing to turn on my lamp and give myself comfort from the stinging darkness but instead pray and pray and pray and lose my concentration to my anxiety. Eventually and somehow I fall asleep talking to the saints [thank you], waking up in the morning and wondering why I was afraid. I’m not afraid during the day—it’s just at night. I just hope that this wears off, maybe not soon but soon enough. I’m living out my days thus far reading, mostly, and stopping at one so I can watch ‘Fawlty Towers’ and ‘Are You Being Served?’ and then I get back to reading. I’ve finished one book started on the plane home, I’ve read two books, I started a new one today, and I ordered a complete works of Keats and a Joan of Arc book the other day that should be coming in tomorrow or the next day. I’m not really looking forward to studying Keats for the next six months, but I should make the best of the situation. Starting early will help, too, I think. If Phil’s still an English major, he’s in the same boat I’m in. Oh, wait, except that he likes Keats and I’m indifferent to the poet. Ah, well, what can I say? I walked around the Jackson County Library the other day, newly moved to the old post office after the fire in the County Services Building, to find that they had no books on Keats and I couldn’t find any C.S. Lewis in the nonfiction section. Some redeeming qualities, however—they had at least one volume of Beowulf and a few commentaries on the same [one, thankfully, by J.R.R. Tolkien], three completely different Lives of Saints books, and a Robert Fitzgerald verse translation of Homer’s Odyssey. I’m afraid I’m going to have to make my way to downtown Victoria after work when I work in the mornings and comb through their library to find Lewis books to move towards my anticipated goal of reading more of his work. Speaking of, I think it’s list time: C.S. Lewis books I’ve read The Problem of Pain Mere Christianity A Grief Observed The Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle The Screwtape Letters, but I read that in eighth grade and didn’t get too much out of it, so that’s on my list of ones to read as well Books I’ve read thus far A Season for the Dead by David Hewson [which I technically read in Ireland during five day, but I’ll count it because it was pleasure reading] The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde The Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, which I’m reading now I should make a What I miss about Rome list, but that’s going to have to be painfully and pitifully written down. Later.