random stuff
It seems somewhat self-centered to write something like this, and is never really a satisfactory exercise, but I've found that people sometimes have questions that I don't answer well. I have been using my journal all of a sudden. For a while I was posting my day to day observations and incidentals on my website but I wanted that to be more meaningful and less a record of daily life but like a "museum" if we can put up with the conceit that I need a museum.
I am a student at an all women's college in Pennsylvania. I study history - primarily early modern Atlantic history, as well as late medieval Europe. I hope to go abroad in the spring of 2003 to Wales to study History and Welsh. I find it hard to explain why I am a history major - I had no great obsession with the past as a child, or anything, but the department has appealed to me and I have enjoyed my work. History and I don't go way back, but we are getting to know each other intimately.
I take my studies seriously, although I am often highly irreverent towards all things I love. Just because I'm very irreverent, though, doesn't mean I think nothing is sacred. My day to day life is filled with laughter. I have funny friends, and we concern ourselves almost exclusively with comedy. I laugh often at myself, and say many things completely tongue-in-cheek.
I grew up in an old, creaky New England colonial farmhouse set up on a drumlin. I am the daughter of two geologists, and a very loving sister of a younger brother. I had the standard issue mildly unhappy childhood, and discontented adolescence, but I'm quite happy now. I am not always happy with the person I am becoming, but we're working on it, yes?
I have some big ideas. I have eclectic tastes in art.* I've a loud laugh and a beamy smile. I have a beautiful and large vocabulary and I know how to use it, too. I live by a very carefully articulated code of behavior, but one of the stipulations is that I not share it.
I like email and hate spam, and so the hello book is my sort-of solution. mpatton a to the t wesleyan.edu if you like that sort of thing. I assume that no one reads this.
* I have a great and tremendous love of literature. Lately these authors have been on my mind: Jeanette Winterson, Inga Clendinnen, V.S. Naipaul, Andrew Marvell, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Richard Wilbur, Michelle Cliff, Heinrich Boll. My music-listening patterns are highly changeable, but I do have a fondness for cowboy swing and other western varieties. I lately love Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, Joan Baez, Sarah Harmer, Katell Keineg, and HEM.
2000-01-18, information entry!
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