osprey_archer | Thanksgiving

I'm feeling a little down, because this is my first Thanksgiving away from home and also because the sun persists in setting at four o'clock. (Seriously, sun. This is unacceptable behavior.)

So I am making a list of Things I Am Thankful For, like a good grade-school student.

1. I'm thankful for hot chocolate, because it is an uncomplicatedly joyful thing.

2. I'm thankful that I've finished the first draft of my paper. The hardest part is done.

3. The campus is built around an artificial lake. A few nights ago, when the moon was a crescent and the sky was dark purple, when I was walking back from the library I saw a guy sitting on the lake shore - and it's dark enough that he's only an outline of dark black against the black water - and he was singing, sonorous and deep and too soft for me to make out the words. I'm thankful to have experienced the scene.

4. I'm thankful that my family is together and healthy even if they are all inexplicably on the other side of an ocean. Poor planning that.

5. I'm thankful - and indeed, rather astounded by - England's literary history; every city I go to has writers in its past, and I didn't plan it that way, they're just everywhere. My goodness. You could drive five hours in any direction from my hometown and the only literary history you'd hit are the guy who wrote Ben Hur, and Carl Sandberg.

I feel like the grammar in that sentence is confused. This is what a lack of literary history does, people: it becomes a gaping void which eats grammar.

6. I'm thankful - I never thought I would say this - I'm thankful for Facebook, because sometimes you just want to see photos of your friends that you haven't seen a thousand times before. Stare at old photos long enough, and people fade into static images; in new photos they have life again.

7. I'm thankful for this picture, which I took this afternoon: