As though to breathe were life

I taught Tennyson's Ulysses this term and wept as I read it. Never before has this poem so overcome me, and I have always loved it.

Sometimes the world overcomes me and I needs must cry. Just because I can. Sometimes it's nice to feel things on some cosmic level that one cannot explain. Like when I broke down in the car listening to the story about the farmers in northern Colorado who opened their farm after the harvest for anyone to come and reap the remainders (which, by the way, is apparently substantial amounts of quality food) for free. They expected 3,000 people and got over 10,000. All you can carry from the farm for free. It shut down the highway. I could cry right now as I write this and can't verbalize why.

We got back from San Antonio and it was a great trip. I miss Laura and Aidan so much and seeing them was wonderful. I resent that they had to go and why. But I am glad they are doing so well now. We did some shopping and hanging out and lots of eating (oi - I feel so fat now). The one thing we did that I loved was visiting the missions. I admit that in my Anglophilia I never bothered to learn some key things in American history (but ask me anything you want about the British Monarchy), including all things Wild West and along the Mexican border. Mostly because I moved to the west as an older child and had never spent time anywhere near Mexico, but mostly it's a gap in my education. For example, I know what the Alamo is but I never really knew the story of it, or any of the other missions for that matter, and it was educational. And sad.

The ruins are not all ruins - some of them are still functioning parishes and this amazes me. There are so many ghosts in SA; I felt uncomfortable in a couple of places - especially at the first mission (Concepcion, I think) where one room was all wrong. The Alamo is strange because there are so many tourists that it's difficult to pick up on much, but being there at night - I could just feel the energy of the place emanating from its very walls. Laura told me that The Menger hotel (adjacent to the Alamo) is hella-haunted and I believed her. When I went there later that night to photograph it, I couldn't even walk up to the building. About half way across the street walking toward it I felt nausea and the overwhelming sensation of needing to get away. I half expected the photos I did take to have horrible things in them. They don't.