Scattered Thoughts

It's been a fertile month for "oh, I should blog that!" moments, though the moments of actually still having the interest in blogging anything once I reach the computer have been quite a bit fewer. All the same, here's a few of the ones I remember:

1.) I have the travel bug BAD this summer... really bad. And I don't think I can blame it on Quebec and Idaho having whetted my appetite. After those two trips, I wanted to be on the go... visit Downers, hit the road, cross a few borders... it wasn't so much that I wanted to go anywhere particular, as that I wanted to go.

Now I want to go to England... or Rome... or Australia... or England...

I blame working in the Archives.

The problem there is that I've been reorganising the bishops' correspondence with the other bishops, and there is quite a bit of travel-related talk in there. Of course, it's not that the bishops were travelling all that time--quite a lot of the letters simply say "thanks for the invite, but I'm busy confirming that weekend", but the fact of the matter is that, for the most part, the bishops write each other infrequently enough and live far enough away from each other, that the topic of travel comes up very frequently as both a reason for writing and as a common ground (eg. running into each in Rome on an [i]ad limina[/i] visit or at a synod or something). And, given the infrequency of letters, this leads to a distorted emphasis on travel in the episcopal correspondence, from the viewer's point of view--or at least this viewer.

What this has succeeded in doing, besides the general effect of honing my wanderlust, is to re-emphasize my nomadic priorities: Rome and England more or less neck-and-neck, followed by a general desire for western and northern Europe (the climes of Middle-earth, so to speak), then Europe and the Caribbean in general, then diverse parts of the Pacific and Oceania, then Canada and the States, and then the world at large... an idiosyncratic priority list basically based on personal curiosities, world politics, and familiarity.

2.) Last summer, as August approached, I started looking forward to returning to classes. Not seminary, so much (I was indifferent there), as to university proper. Orientation and the subsequent return to school had me happier than I'd been in a long time...

This year, it's the opposite. While I'm indifferent to returning to Concordia (I seem to have gotten through my academic fatigue, thankfully), I'm really looking forward to being back in seminary. Here, I think Quebec may have been partly to blame, as well as the fact that in general I've seen more of the seminarians this summer by far than I did last year, but that doesn't explain it all. I'm not just looking forward to a return to the seminarians, but a return to the community routine: morning prayer, breakfast, Mass, evening prayer, group meetings, community meetings, choir practices, evening prayer, retreats...

In a sense, given that my wanderlust has worked in tandem with a very willing willingness to study abroad, this is kind of odd... but not a problem, by any means.

3.) My Barrow-downs compatriots will be pleased to know that I've been the chief instigator in turning a half-dead, ought-to-have died thread foolishly connecting Middle-earth and the newest LEGO castle line, on the Classic-Castle forum, into a rather serious (if not quite Books Forum standard) debate on Tolkien.

4.) I really do look forward to being older. And not just "mid-twenties" older, or "middle-aged" older, but rather "ready to retire after a long service" older. Granted, I take a romanticised view in which I'm still mobile, relatively healthy, and have my mental faculties... but that's hardly any worse than the more socially accepted romanticisms about youth, is it? One odd thought that did occur to me, though, in this connection, is that I would love to end up in a Barrow-downer retirement home. I mean, most of us will all hit old age within the same half decade... Given our failing eyesight and unsteadiness on the roads, how else will we stay in touch.

5.) I am inordinately pleased with myself for having discovered that spending $110 dollars on five different LEGO sets is vastly more satisfying than spending $105 on a single set. Really, it's inordinate.