In the month since I last wrote, I have:

• Completed my thesis.
• Defended said thesis successfully.
• Graduated from Gutenberg College.
• Been given a (very lovely) wedding shower.
• Moved Gil into the apartment where we’ll both live after the wedding.
• Attended to a seemingly endless number of details in preparation for the wedding / moving / life after college.
• Watched a dear friend get married on the beach (last weekend) and made preparations to be in another dear friend’s wedding (this weekend).

I hope you will forgive my silence. It was not my intention to be gone for so long–but then, it never is. Of course, at this point this blog is mostly for me–and for the few people who I know read it. So for you, you loyal few, and me, I wish I could come back now with a satisfying wrap-up of my time at Gutenberg and a preview of what’s to come; but frankly, I have neither the time nor the energy.

The best I can tell you is that when (if) my life settles down a little, I will be back. Writing is something I’ve discovered I can’t go very long without, and so I suspect blogging will not be either. But there are things in life that demand my attention away from the internet, and I am happy to give it to them. Especially since I am marrying one of them. I’m sure you understand.

As you may have noticed, I have also made a few changes to the design around here. It was time for a change; it has been for quite a while. If you happened to stop by on the afternoon I was working on this, you’ll know that I conducted these changes “live,” bit-by-bit. In fact, I still don’t think I am entirely done. This blog, like my life and each of ours, shall remain a work in progress.

(I wrote this post a few weeks ago but never published it. I’m still in the throes of writing my thesis, but there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel. And it is getting closer. I’ll let you know when I surface.)

I’ve had the same bedspread since I was 14. That is going to change this summer, for obvious reasons, but for now I am still camouflaged by my bed when I sit on it in jeans.

Which makes me think of… (it doesn’t really, but I’m trying to somehow tie this post together) Anna Karenina. I finished it just in time for the discussion we had on Wednesday, and I do not think that anything I have read has affected me as strongly since The Deathly Hallows. (If you are tempted to laugh at that, please re-read the entire Harry Potter series and then get back to me. But that is a different discussion altogether.) The novel is incredibly rich, and I highly recommend it; please do not be scared of its 940 pages. Even if you take a year to read it, which I almost did, I think you will find it worthwhile.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the book is Tolstoy’s incredible grasp of the way people work. I found myself in every character he wrote, because no matter how evil and selfish some of the choices that the characters made were, Tolstoy refused to “villainize” any character–he showed their thought processes in such a way that it honestly left me wondering whether I would not make the same choice in their situation. This is the danger of all our evil; it is so easy to convince ourselves that it is good.

Song for today:

I am tip-toeing to the edge.
I am standing on a precipice.
I am overlooking an uncertain future.

Every future is uncertain, but sometimes it is more obvious than others.

It may not seem uncertain. I do know (as much as we can know): when I’m graduating (hopefully), who I’m marrying, when and where I’m marrying him, and where we will live.

But I don’t know: when I will be done writing my thesis, where our money will be coming from, what it will be like to be married, or what it will be like to live on our own. I don’t even know what tomorrow will bring, let alone the next new, uncertain year. I suppose this is part of the faith we’re asked to have—faith that tomorrow or the next day will not bring us more than we can handle.

I tend to underestimate what I can handle, though, so often I look at what the day has brought me and assume it is too much. Like today, when Gil assured me I could squat the weight he had put on my shoulders, and I whined and whined that I could not possibly, until I finally tried a little harder and did it. God does that to me almost every day; you would think, by now, I would have learned to not whine and to just push—but no.

Speaking of days, they are rushing past. Every morning I wake up (unwillingly) and stare down a marathon to-do list. I have to make choices like: will I work on my thesis, or will I do the reading that is due for this afternoon’s discussion? Will I chat with friends today at lunch or will I work out, since it is the only time today I can possibly do it? I hate that these are decisions I must make. I wish I could take everything just a little bit slower. I wish I could take spoonfuls of these last school days and roll them around on my tongue like the chocolate ice cream I just remembered I have in the fridge. Instead, I am gulping them down, because it seems that is the only way to fit everything in them that needs to be done.

I wish, I wish, I wish… and yet, I know I can handle this too. It may not be easy, it may not be certain, it may not be picture perfect, but it is a part of this life I am living, and it is full of blessings I forget to remember. Lord, help me remember. And help me push.

A friend and classmate decided to work on his thesis outside the other day. He eschewed a lawn chair and laptop and instead set up an armchair and a typewriter. I found this setup quite photogenic.

Spring has come early, it seems. This was a week and a half ago.

We read this for class a couple of weeks ago. I still haven’t finished it… but I’m almost there, and I’ve loved it so far, so don’t spoil anything.

Well, hello. It’s been a while.

I would apologize, except that my silence was mostly intentional. I guess the simplest way to explain it is that I needed to be living life and not posting about it.

I came very close to deleting this blog altogether several times within the last year; and, who knows, I still may. My return here is a trial run. I’ve realized that I still have words and images crawling around in my head, that, although they may not ultimately benefit anyone else, need to find an avenue of expression for my own sanity. I want to see if this blog can continue to be that avenue.

In order for this to happen, I think that Lylium will be undergoing a tone shift—or perhaps merely continuing the one it has been undergoing for some time. Here’s what I would expect to see here from now on, if I were you: 1) Photos without explanation, 2) Cryptic musings (some new, some old) on life that may not make sense to anyone but me, and 3) Pictures of whatever other creative endeavors I might cook up (hint, hint). Also expect: some combination of the above three, or something else entirely. You’ve been warned.

What you shouldn’t expect to find here is a newsletter-type update on my life. If you know me in real life and you’d like details about what’s going on with me these days, drop me a line or call me and we can chat. I’d love to hear what’s going on with you as well.

But, to start things off, I’m going to violate what I just said and give you a nut-shelly update on my life, just because it’s been so long. Lately, life has had lots of:

These books.

I’m beginning my senior year at Gutenberg College this fall, so Kierkegaard and Camus have become (or ought to have become) my constant companions as I prepare to write my senior thesis. (I’m comparing them on “despair,” and The Sickness Unto Death and The Myth of Sisyphus are my two primary texts.)

This boy.

His name is Gil. He goes to Gutenberg. He’s tall, deep, and, like most people, completely un-sum-uppable.

The usual.

• Blessings (that sometimes feel like a warm towel and sometimes like a cold shower).
• Days when I don’t see the point.
• Days when I do.
• Family and friends who challenge me and continue to be more gracious than I could have imagined.

Okay. That’s all you get. From here on out all of my posts will be completely indirect and incomprehensible.

… Or, you know, maybe not. I suppose we’ll just have to see.

I saw this while passing by an empty room on the boy’s hall today. My brother lived in this room when he attended Gutenberg a few years back.

A wrap-up post for my sophomore year at Gutenberg is long overdue, but, like has been true of so many things lately, I am finding it difficult to write about. Not because of any particularly traumatizing event that took place during it (well, okay, there were the two year exams), but because at the end of the year, all my memories and experiences from it got packed up into a neat little box like the rest of my belongings, and I am only now starting to open that box and examine them, one by one.

So, for now, in lieu of explaining a great deal about this past year, let me share with you something I made this afternoon on a break from wedding-photo editing:

Behold: 100 photos taken on my computer during the ‘07-’08 school year. It’s amazing how much is wrapped up in each one of these silly little pictures; each one brings its own context rushing back to me. Of course, that doesn’t help you very much, but… still, it might help you get a glimpse into the up-and-down roller-coaster that was my sophomore year.

P.S. I passed all of my two year exams, by the way. And finished all of my coursework. Meaning: I am officially a junior. Unbelievable. =-o

These were the clouds outside the window of Kari’s car as she drove us to a lecture we attended the other night. I’ve been revisiting my annoying habit of taking my camera everywhere, and it’s starting to pay off.

Another night, I walked around campus, looking for light leaking out of windows in interesting ways. This is of the Blue House kitchen:

I also took my camera to a recent show by Science Heroes, a group made up of two Gutenberg students who rock way hard. They had really cool lighting:

If I keep this up, hopefully I will have more photos to share with you soon. Cheers.