WELCOME
Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; a privacy of glorious light is thine.—Wordsworth
‘I wanted to begin the new year with a clean slate, but I was not hoping for one so clean. The computer crashed yesterday, and I am poised to accept the loss of countless irreplaceable files—years of correspondence, photos, stories, essays, lessons, lists, schoolwork. It is not easy to hold it all lightly. But God is constant.’
These words were the first I journaled this year. Only a week later I wrote, ‘[W]e have recovered most of our computer data, with high hopes for the rest. It was, in fact, the afternoon when, in conversation with Mrs. W—, I concluded that the time and energy I had put into those computer files were not summed up by those files. There was much—skill, knowledge, thought and even relationship—that was not stored on the computer. That conversation ended with a half-laughing, “But it’s still so hard!” Then God gave it all back.’
He gave it back and more. I am typing now on a beautiful, updated Apple laptop given to me as a free gift.
One of the things I did lose were the editable files of my extensive website, though they remain viewable online. Rather than wiping my previous blog and beginning again, I am continuing here at Privacy of Light. In the grand eclectic tradition of Cabbages and Kings, I will write about whatever topics happen to engage me at the moment—often language, history, art and domesticity.
I called myself Handmaiden on the previous blog, and will be Larkrise here. It remains to be seen by what names my siblings will be known. We have been discussing the possibilities for something really clever—names with the same meanings as our actual names, perhaps. Nothing seems to work well for everyone. Blayne is fine for one, but when, by the same principle, the rest of us are Jemina, Alarica, Axton, Melhem and Ashwin... Well.
• Wheat Field with a Lark by Vincent van Gogh, and the line from Wordsworth’s poem, are themes for my blog, as expressions of the beauty found in pursuing the heights—even when you feel alone. •
May 9, 2013