Sitting in bed, surrounded by a soft, cream-coloured blanket lightly frosted with roses, listening to the soft strains of Come What May drift through my headphones, I can't help but feel. Serenity, because I'm at peace with my heart, secure in singing an old familiar song. And yet, it's not familiar, but soul-stirring, reminding me that I still have yet to take the road of love. It makes me want to rush down the path with lilies in my hair, wandering down to laughing brooks thick with ferns and birches.

I never want to lose my innocence; the zest for love and life that haunts every action with its sweetness. Not to say that I don't yearn after maturity and knowledge-- I do, but oh, I could just as soon die as be jaded to the footsteps of the world. I know that people will leave me, be it through death or loss of their own kind, and I know I will mourn and feel the edges of my soul ebbing out towards darkness. And I know that pain is doubled when your sails are open to the winds of experience. I know, I know, but the life I live is mine alone, and I've been gifted with such a life through luck (I can't imagine I did much to deserve the love and opportunities I have) that isn't it my duty to bring a small corner of beauty to the world? If God placed anything in my hands, it was that.

I was considering some of my favorite stories-- and to bring up two, Sense and Sensibility and Moulin Rouge. The characters that I emphasize deeply with (Marianne Dashwood and Christian) both experience similar coming-of-age stories. Like me, they are young, idealistic, and called foolish for being so. ("The sooner she comes into a better acquaintance with the world. . . always this ridiculous obsession with love.") Against odds, they find the happiness they seek for a time. They find their "soulmate" (Marianne's is false and Christian's is true) and thrive in their ideals. But it's not until those ideals have been struck down do they find the depth of feeling that they are capable of. Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, the man whose temperment is far more ideally suited to her own than Willoughby's. Christian finds that love does overcome all things, but not as he once shallowly thought.

There are many things I don't know about my life, but as L.M. Montgomery once prophesied for her character, I will "love deeply. . . suffer terribly. . . and have glorious moments to compensate."

As my uncle and I wandered happily through the pale morning light that washed over the old brick houses, picking crimson roses and peaches from gardens that were too appealing not to plunder, he asked me what I wanted from life. I hestitated-- somehow that wasn't quite the question I wanted to answer.

"I want to write a book," I said after a few seconds, firmly enough that it wasn't questioned. "And I'd like to go to London."

Both true, of course, in ways that matter to the world and to me as well. But somehow it was a hollow truth.

We walked on until we reached my house, and then he turned to me.

"You didn't ask what I wanted from life."

I concurred, and with a smile, asked. His reply caught my breath like a sudden flash of beauty against the horizon.

"I want to burst Joy's grape against my palate fine," he said reverently. His eyes caught mine and held them there, and I felt revelation touch me subtly, in the way life change usually does. "Keats," he added, and sat down on the front step between the twisted vines of morning glory.

Keats. Of course. I sat on my bed that night as my fingers absently played with a loose string on my jeans, just tasting that quote over and over again. To burst Joy's grape. That was no mere declaration of happiness. . . no, it implied sorrow mixed with laughter, the heights of ectascy reached only to fall into brief darkness. Shadows always tinged the light, making it fuller and richer, the way imperfection lends beauty to a woman's face.

So this is what I would say now, when it is too late to be said.

"I want to walk in meadows fresh with glimmer'd dew, beneath rain-washed skies. I want to read poetry cross-legged on the floor of a bookshop, my linen skirt circling the floor. I want to buy pretty things and clothes, china and crystal, silk and satin. I want to kiss someone in the rain with my arms holding them tightly against my heart. I want to go to a pub in London wearing a leather jacket. To write poetry in a French cafe. To embroider baby garments for dimpled fingers and knees. I want to eat chocolate and French bread for lunch, a pint of gourmet ice cream for dinner. I want to line my eyes with kohl and wear sequins and silver, and dance the night in a beam of dusty light in a club. I want to race a dog along the shoreline, and see just how blue water can be in unspoiled Nature. Kneel down and pray in a field of flowers, and make love in an old-fashioned room with with billowing white curtains. Pick roses and wrap them in coarse brown paper, finished off with twine. Weep silently, feeling tears flow from my dark eyes, and know jealousy and betrayal in all their fire."

What do I want from life?

I want to live.

Cities are rather like fancy desserts-- sublime in small amounts, but rather tiresome when faced with them each day. When morning had brought Saturday in joyful anticipation, Desi, Rachel, Jeff and I piled into Jeff's rattling car (I'm not just using that for lack of a better adjective-- believe me-- it does rattle) and after multiple arguments about the way to the light rail station, found ourselves comfortably ensconced in the cushioned seats and hopefully enchanting the other passengers with our prattle. As there were a few smiles and congenial attempts at conversation with us, I shall have to assume that our status on board the train was not in jeopardy.

Being on our way to visit the U's art museum for a last trip with Desi before she leaves us for China, we were busy City Watching. It was far from being unpleasant-- the streets are orderly and wide, the buildings 1910 elegant, and occasional bits of street art lent an air of New York culture to the sidewalks.

There are only three things that could safely persuade me to desert the country. One is the shops. Small, family-owned places sellling antiques and gourmet candy (not together, thankfully) that contain treasures that the most sprawling of mini-malls could never boast.

The second advantage is culture. Museums, festivals, book readings, plays, concerts-- all the things that my heart thrills to and that are in short supply in a town that considers several shelves full of romance novels to be an adequete library. I thrive on diversity and intellectual pursuits.

The third and most important aspect is an combination of the previous two. Books. As mentioned above, there's simply no access. It's a half hour to hour drive to be able to purchase anything worth reading. But, I digress.

As our group came out to change trains, we spotted a sidewalk sale-- any book on the table for 25 cents. Luckily, I was in good company. Ignoring time constraints, we rushed to the store only to find books on foreign relations. In a pinch, it might do, but it was not exactly the sort of thing one wishes to find at a sale.
There was nothing else to do but enter the store.

20% off all used books, and the store had a basement full of them. We separated and went browsing, all but one of us emerging triumphant with something we'd been searching for. I bought the following:

Emily Climbs, by L.M. Montgomery (I owned the first and third, but for some reason I'm cursed with never purchasing the middle)
Chronicles of Avonlea, by L.M. Montgomery
Emma, by Jane Austen (My Complete Novels fell to pieces--literally)
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

Because I'm in a whimsical, list-making mood, I'm going to list all the books in my room. . . not all the ones I own, because that would be simply impossible. They're located in varying locations.

Top shelf, big books:

Annotated Anne of Green Gables
Little Women
Star Wars: The Approaching Storm
Star Wars: Episode I
Heartsongs
An Instance at the Fingerpost
Best American Essays
Complete Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tennyson: Selected Poems
Tennyson: Idylls of the King
Whitman: Selected Poems
Emerson: Selected Poems
Elements of Playwrighting
Stone Field, True Arrow
Possession
Pride, Prejudice, and Jasmin Field
Poems by American Women
Sense and Sensibility
Reviving Ophelia
Robert Frost: Selected Poems
Silent Spring
The Hours
The Awakening
Plays for Actresses
Mrs. Bridge
Shadowlands
Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary: The Edge of Reason
The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn
Till We Have Faces
Wistana Symborska: Collected Poems
Dylan Thomas: Selected Poems
Icy Sparks
Memoirs of a Geisha
Eight Cousins
Rose in Bloom
Of Mice and Men
Little Lord Flaunteroy
Daddy Long Legs
Children's Garden of Verses
Girl With a Pearl Earring
Grapes of Wrath
The Little Princess
The Secret Garden
I Never Came to You in White
Emma
Northanger Abbey
Pride and Prejudice
Cosm
Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Sword of Shannara
Camille
Speaker for the Dead
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Mariel of Redwall
The Bellmaker
Cart and the Cwidder
Les Miserables
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Winter of Fire
A River Runs Through It
White Lilacs
Chronicles of Avonlea
Compete Anne of Green Gables series
Emily Trilogy
Across the Miles
The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories
Wolf by the Ears
The Little Prince
Catcher in the Rye
The Cage
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Shakespeare: The Late Romances
Shakespeare: Four Comedies
Shakespeare: Four Tragedies
I, Jedi
Heir to the Empire
The Last Command
Briar Rose
Smells
Wicked
Vision of the Future
Bridge to Terabithia
The Great Gilly Hopkins
Persuasion
An Old-Fashioned Girl
Searching for Dragons
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
Watership Down