I have several dozens of beautiful Cathedrals, Abbeys, Chapels, Baptistries, Mosques and Reliquaries from across Europe listed out on individual index cards. Tonight, they are helping me study facts about how each building shaped and transformed architecture. I'm going to keep them in a box. Someday, I'd love to play a game with them: pull one out at random, and travel to it. :)

(Though I think I'd always be hoping it was Ste. Chapelle... perhaps I'll stack the deck for the first round.)



It adds a new idea for all my traveling. I think I'll fill out an index card for each of the places my dreams visit. Not just it's name, but why it's important- how it changed and transformed the world, architecture, language, literature, art, history, me. Perhaps key facts. This class has certainly changed the way I experience the world around me... I always look for beauty, but now I look for beauty in the structure, innovation and significance of the physical world around me. Beyond my own experience with whatever beauty I am looking at, I want to become knowledgeable about it. I may be about to graduate, but I've never felt more called to become a student then I do this year. I am a seeker, and I've barely touched the secrets I know are in store for me....

The struggle is simply studying what's before me, today, tonight. "Discipline is doing what you ought to do, when you ought to do it." Tonight, the index cards are equally important to one another. One day they will be destinations I'll fly to. Tomorrow they will be dreams I can ponder. Tonight, they are facts I must memorize...