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.

Hello, old friends. It’s been too long. So long, in fact, that to be completely honest I feel terribly out of practice and have been stressing out a bit over what to post here first. So, to break the ice while I attempt to rediscover my blogging voice, here are some photos from this quarter:

(Click on each photo to see a description of it at Flickr.)

One of my good friends (and fellow Gutenberg students) has described summer as a “pit-stop on the highway of life”—a time to relax, refuel…. and just sit there. Going nowhere.

Mind you, take my friend’s words with a grain of salt—he despises summer with rarely-seen fervor. But this year, I think he has a point.

I know it’s an odd sentiment from someone whose summer has been characterized by ceaseless activity, but I, too, have felt “paused” since the middle of June. Partly, I know, this is due to the unsettledness of my worldly possessions—one look at my bedroom floor, piled three layers deep with clean (or dirty; who can tell?) clothes, reveals the story of a girl who is perching, not nesting.

Another contributing factor is the absence of friends who became dear to me over the course of the school year. This is the first time I’ve had to deal with class- and house-mates leaving me for the summer, and I can’t say I like it.

But more than the practical realities of far-away friends or a messy room, something else is not quite right… something in the air at Gutenberg that is as hard to pinpoint as it is conspicuously absent from my summer.

It can’t be simply the absurd level of busy-ness that my life reached last school year, because between working at my anonymous retail location, shooting and editing four weddings, and trying to get my fledgling photography business off the ground, I’ve been rivaling that level all summer.

There is a qualitative difference, I’ve decided, between my activities at Gutenberg last year and those I’ve occupied myself with this summer. My summer undertakings have all locked my focus squarely on this temporal existence of ours. They’re fun, they’re challenging, they’re engaging—but they leave me weighted to the ground—engulfed by daily matters and completely oblivious to bigger, greater goings on.

Thankfully, Gutenberg does not hesitate to jackhammer away the kind of cement shoes I’ve been pouring myself all summer—eternal importance is peeking through the very weave of its curriculum. One cannot put themselves through the readings and discussions and interactions at Gutenberg without asking themselves what this whole “life” thing is all about—about what’s really, truly important. My soul is beginning to yearn for this atmosphere of fumbling and frank exploration.

My parents and I stopped by Gutenberg tonight as we were running errands, and we took the opportunity to check out the room I will be living in come fall. This tiny room, which I have longed to live in since I was ten years old (a story for another post, perhaps), has been tickling the back of my mind all summer—a tantalizing reminder of the school year that lies ahead. But not until tonight, as we measured for curtains and a desk, did the reality of the coming year really hit me.

Suddenly, that amorphous feeling of Gutenberg nostalgia solidified into four walls, a ceiling and a floor—this room would be my Gutenberg. This is where I would read, and laugh, and cry, and have my mind blown in ways I can’t even imagine. It was all real. We were coming back for another year. And I couldn’t have been happier.

I have to admit: as far as pit-stops go, this summer’s been a pretty nice one (definitely one of those fancy gas stations that has really clean bathrooms). I have so much to be thankful for, and so little to really complain about. I know that. I do.

But even so, I hope you’ll understand me when I say: I’m ready to hit the road.

Wow. My freshman year is over. I’m a sophomore now. How on earth did that happen?

I don’t believe I have any poignant observations to make about this year’s passing that didn’t come spilling out in my last entry. Suffice it to say, it came and went more quickly than I would have thought possible—and my surroundings have changed so dramatically from two weeks ago that I’m having a hard time calling up the details of my life for the last nine months. It was a relief to see a couple of girls from my class at a small social gathering last week; their presence reassured me that this whole thing hasn’t been a bizarrely-detailed dream.

As I observed at the end of last school year, summer always sneaks up on me and then rushes by before I’ve had a chance to properly enjoy it. But at least, as I head into this summer, I already feel like it is practically over; this either means that I’m finally becoming more realistic, or that summers are getting even shorter. I guess we’ll see.

Part of my increasingly fatal practicality is the realization that summer ‘to-do’ lists rarely get ‘to-done’. But because I would hate to let that long-time optimist living inside of me die for good (that was sarcasm), I’m going to make one anyway. Here, to keep me accountable (and to give you an idea of what I’m up to if I’m not posting here) are some of my goals for the summer:

• Once again, I need to make some money. Quite a bit of money, actually; I want to cover as much of next year’s rent as I can before the school year starts. My primary source of income will still be my anonymous retail location, but I have several photography jobs lined up as well.
• As a corollary to that, I would like to develop my photography business further. I have already taken steps towards this—especially to improve my post-processing capabilities. More on this later. (Maybe.)
• We all know what very important book is coming out on July 21st, right? RIGHT? My goal is to read all six Harry Potter books in a row before the seventh and final book is released.
• As loathe as I am to contemplate schoolwork at the moment, I suppose I ought to practice my Greek a little bit—I’d hate to lose my whole first year over the summer.
• I want—no, I am going to build a bookcase. After expressing my desire to buy an unfinished bookcase and paint it up for my room at Gutenberg next year, Dad suggested that I just build one. That sounded pretty exciting, so with my Dad’s help, I’m going to do just that this summer. I’ll keep you posted on its progress.
• If you ask me, Lylium.org could use a little freshening up. It’s been almost a year since I unveiled the current design, and although I love it, feel that a nip here and a tuck there could help me set the site’s design perfectly in alignment with its evolving purpose and style. Wish me luck on that.
• Oh, and… I should probably finish moving into my Parents’ house before it’s time to move out again. (My mom just almost had a heart attack when she read that—my boxes of crap are currently lining all of our tiny houses’ hallways—just kidding, Mom! I’ll be done in a few days! )

So. There are some of my possibly-underwhelming-but-quite-a-relief-from-the-school-year plans for the summer. What about you? Are you doing anything exciting this summer? Let’s hear about it.

And so, another spring break hobbles to a close, and another quarter takes off from the starting line.

That is my way of saying that you will not be hearing as much from me for a while. I enjoyed posting every day during spring break very much; it did, as I hoped it would, re-enchant me with Lylium.org. So I hope to avoid any more month-long silences.

But the sad reality is that school is an all-consuming force, and if I am honest with myself, I know that posting every day is not a feasible reality. At least, not if I hope to also attack my schoolwork vigorously—which I do.

I have great hopes for this quarter. It is a fresh new start—and it is my last chance this year to really get in there and apply myself to the task of learning. I’m looking forward to taking on that challenge.

So, for now, auf wiedersehen. I hope it will not be too long.