I spent most of the day at the library taking a practice test for the GRE Literature in English subject test. It took me almost three hours to complete, and the two hundred thirty questions turned my brain to mush. I didn’t do too badly, at least for my first time taking a practice test, and I’ve a full two weeks more to study for it.
I finished the test just about the time the library closed, but I didn’t feel like going back to the dim solitude of my apartment, so I pulled a quilt from the back of my car and sprawled on the colorful patchwork beneath a birch tree on the library’s lawn with my almost-complete collection of Mary Stewart books—which, as my prized possession, I carry everywhere with me—and my laptop. When I wasn’t rereading (for only the hundredth or so time) my books or talking to my mother and sister on Skype, I merely lay on my back, the ground cool and damp through my agéd quilt, tracking the progression of a vaporish xebec across the endless sea-sky, a pale kraken lurking after it.
Xebec? Really Ashlee, where in the world dig you dig this one up?
ReplyDeleteRemember a few years ago, Dad, when I wrote an alphabet poem? Well, I searched the dictionary for "x" words and found xebec. It's a three-masted Mediterranean sailing vessel with square sails. :D You learn all kinds of things reading dictionaries.
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