P.S.

It could be that "Hot Baked Alaska," "the naughty librarian" could be something even Chesterton could accept? I'm sure he would have even better nicknames...

Women in Politics

"in general, women [writing] on women bore me. chesterton says something like one woman is magnificent, more than one is a mob." --JVS

When looking up Chesterton on women and mobs, I came across his essay, "The Suffragist," which is intriguing, especially in light of the recent VP nomination (do we call it that?):

"[W]hen a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her."

This reminds me of Warren, who challenged me to arm wrestle, suggesting I use both arms against one of his.

Chesterton continues: "If you will notice, you will see that all the instinctive gestures of oratory are gestures of military leadership. ... It is almost the exact gesture of drawing the sword.

"The point is not that women are unworthy of votes; it is not even that votes are unworthy of women. It is that votes are unworthy of men, so long as they are merely votes; and have nothing in them of this ancient militarism of democracy. ... [T]hese [militaristic oratory gestures] are not the gestures, and therefore not the instincts, of women. No honest man dislikes the public woman. He can only dislike the political woman; an entirely different thing. ... A husband would be pleased if his wife wore a crown of gold and proclaimed laws from a throne of marble; or if she uttered oracles from the tripod of a priestess; or if she could walk in mystical motherhood before some great religious order. But that she should stand on a platform in the exact altitude in which he stands; leading forward a little more than is graceful and leaving her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified--well, ... that hurts. It is for the modern world to judge whether such instincts are indeed danger signals; and whether the hurting of moral as of material nerves is a tocsin and a warning of nature."

Redeemingly, Chesterton is charming and witty. But it is really lines like "leaving her mouth open a little longer and wider than is dignified" that propel nice, well-meaning women (me!) straight into feminism.

Dubious Compliments

"If you visited the Amish, the Amish would be changed forever."

"You are so beautiful--I thought, she can't be an academic. She must be a reporter. Are you a reporter?"

A Hunch Or What Makes Us Different from Animals

So if our telos as humans is the function or role that makes us different from the beasts--the function that only we have, then in a way, the continual discussion of what makes us different from the animals in political theory might be a sort of throwback to teleological thinking (then again, it might not--it might have some other purpose, even for those who disregard teleological thinking). I find it fascinating, when reading philosophy or political theory, to notice what the author says humans have that separate them from the animals--most commonly reason or language. But some thinkers get more creative--in Arendt, for example, promising and forgiving are what make us different from animals. In Tocqueville it is our urge and ability to improve ourselves. I guess there are two sorts of teloi--a natural telos and a supernatural telos, right? Because for the Christian, the telos of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, or something like that (which necessitates, among other things, reason, language, the power to promise and forgive, and the ability to improve ourselves).

Priest Cancels Nun Beauty Contest

I, for one, have no idea why beauty pageants are so often misunderstood. Clearly, they are about the whole person and not just physical appearance:

"My superiors were not happy. The local bishop was not happy, but they did not understand me either," Father Rungi told Reuters news agency from the town of Mondragone, near Naples.

"It was interpreted as more of a physical thing," he said. "Now, no one is saying that nuns can't be beautiful, but I was thinking about something more complete."

On Knowing Things

"Where is the life we have lost in the living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
--TSE, Choruses from "The Rock"

"Most of us know little or nothing of how to produce food. More and more of us cannot build, cannot fix, cannot track, cannot tell time by looking at the sky, cannot hunt, cannot skin or butcher, cannot cook, cannot can, cannot make wine, cannot play instruments (and if we can, often do not know the songs of our culture by which to entertain a variety of generations), cannot dance (i.e. actual dances), cannot remember long passages of poetry, don't know the Bible, cannot spin or knit, cannot sew or darn, cannot chop wood or forage for mushrooms, cannot make a rock wall, cannot tell the kinds of trees by leaves or the kinds of birds by the shape of wing--on and on, in a growing catalogue of abandoned inheritance."
--Patrick Deneen, "Culture, Technology, and Virtue"

I was talking to a dear old lady the other day who lives in an assisted living facility. She recently got her own computer and loves looking things up on the internet. This vaguely reminds me of myself (except I am still laptop-less, although ideally that is a situation that will be shortly remedied). Kudos to her for learning how to use the internet when she isn't young any longer.

But this makes me wonder about how the knowledge we get from the internet affects us--suddenly we can satisfy every curiosity--we can know every fact that it enters into our mind to want to know, and even some that never occurred to us to be curious about. Our knowledge becomes web-like, and sort of stream of consciousness. Our knowledge comes to us from any of a number of sources, from any country, from a person of any age, from anonymous sources, usually. This replaces, at least to an extent, learning from others things that are useful to fulfilling particular jobs and roles. Suddenly learning becomes an isolated rather than a social activity. For instance, several months ago I looked up on the internet a recipe for an old family dish that my grandmother could no longer remember how to make. Don't get me wrong--I am, most certainly addicted to the internet, but I wonder what sort of negative consequences this has on us, in addition to its plenty of positive ones.

Oakeshott on Religion

(From a letter)

"And I would like, more than anything else, to extend those brief pages in On Human Conduct into an essay (you know how I admire and value this literary form) on religion, and particularly on the Christian religion. This ambition came to me, partly, from the re-reading of all that St. Augustine wrote--St. Augustine and Montaigne, the two most remarkable men who have ever lived. What I would like to write is a new version of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo--in which (amongst much else) 'salvation,' being 'saved,' is recognized as [having] nothing whatever to do with the future. Oh, but I know I can never do it now; I have left it too late."

(from Paul Franco's Michael Oakeshott)

First of all, this is from a letter, in which he praises essays--clearly Oakeshott had wonderful sensibilities. Secondly, how interesting! An Oakeshottian consideration of religion as something that should be centered on the present instead of on the past or the future. There seems to be something right about this--it captures the humility that we ought to have about our salvation and objects to Calvinist predestination (at least in my mind it does). Thirdly, Oakeshott had an affair with Iris Murdoch! My apologies--I think I'm not supposed to be obsessed with celebrity gossip, but I can't help it. This is intriguing.

Descent into DC

When asked when she fell in love with Mr. Darcy for the first time, Elizabeth says that it might have started when she saw Pemberley (this might be a made up memory, or perhaps it just happens in the movie). Similarly, I think I decided to attend Georgetown when flying over it into Reagan for the first time--when you sit by the left window and you descend from the north, the view is unmatched in my (admitedly limited) experience. The first thing that always catches my eye is the National Cathedral and Georgetown's spires and red brick. Then, as you continue to descend, you see big white, boxy office buildings, and then comes the Mall! From the sky, you can see wonderful circle patterns around the monuments and the plane allows for a view straight from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol. The monuments look like they're a small model on display in the National Building Museum, which could be knocked over with no trouble. As you keep descending, you can catch the National Bascilica and the Mormon Temple, consistently banished to the outskirts of the city. Finally, as you land, you catch a view of the Freemason's temple in Alexandria. The whole thing is an eminently satisfying experience. In fact, last time I landed, we pulled out of our landing, circled around, and descended again. Aside from my great fear at unusual things happening during airplane rides, I was delighted to have the best part twice!

This Is Not Liberalism

On Nostalgia, Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic (figures that he wrote on Lionel Trilling--if not a conservative, Wieseltier will make others conservative, although the comments on the article really make me think that he's talking to the wrong crowd. His readers ask for systematic arguments, while Wieseltier argues poetically, in an Oakeshottian fashion):

I come from a tradition that cultivates nostalgia, yet I am quite certain that the re- building of the Temple in Jerusalem would not fulfill my religion, but ruin it. And yet nostalgia, or so I am beginning to understand, is not only an escape. If it may represent a collapse of critical thinking about the past, it may also represent a birth of critical thinking about the present. One method for exposing the inadequacies of the present is to hold it up against the past. (And against the future, which is of course much less constraining. The future is never inadequate, is it?) And in the event that the present should be found lacking in comparison to the past, this is not nostalgia. It is critique. A longing may contain an analysis. In a society whose watchword is "new and improved," new and unimproved is a heresy. But the religion of my homeless ancestors really was richer and deeper than the religion of my housed contemporaries. And I do not see that American life will be improved by the absence from it of second-hand bookstores, or large movie screens, or patience in journalism, or privacy. The view that everything is changing for the better is marketing propaganda--Google progressivism.

Here's to Sisters and Rowboats and Yeats.

Michael Phelps: More Girlfriends than Gold Medals

According to the China Daily, it appears that he's going with multiple women. :

THERE'S only one thing better than winning eight gold medals - that's having two girlfriends.

Although WikiAnswers has a different opinion on the question of whether or not he has a girlfriend:

No he does not. He said that he is focusing on swimming and his college studies. He said he doesn't have a girlfriend and he leads a pretty quiet life. He said he hangs out with his friends like any other college guy and he's just focusing on the olympics. And if he did have a girlfriend now it would be me =) but then again he couldn't go out with me because I'd be with nick jonas ohh well I'll just have to figure something out then =)

I like this girl. But, close by, WikiAnswers also offers the as yet unanswered question: Does Michael Phelps have a disorder?

And, unable to live with myself as long as I leave the asker--such an obviously jealous boy who doesn't even know how to swim and can't get any women at all--hanging with this unanswered question, we must answer it here:

No he does not. He said that he is focusing on swimming and his college studies. He said he doesn't have a disorder and leads a pretty quiet life. He said he hangs out with his friends like any other college guy and he's just focusing on the olympics. And if he did have a disorder now it would be me =) but then again I couldn't be his disorder because I'd be nick jonas's ohh well I'll just have to figure something out then =)

By Hale and Stearns (mostly checked for corniness potential by Stearns. I had never seen those smiley faces with equals signs. They sort of take me back to elementary school in an uncomfortable way.)

People are quitting smoking in order to have plastic surgery. Yet another reason to smoke.

Burke on Chivalry

"Without confounding ranks, [chivalry] had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gradations of social life. It ... mitigated kings into companions, ... raised private men to be fellows with kings, ... subdued the fierceness of pride and power, ... oblidged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws to be subdued by manners."

Chivalry as proper democratizer--I like it. Within the difference between kings and common men, there was an equality--an equality, we could say, before women.

MODERN WOMAN : The Lost Sex - 50s Newsreel

Urg.

From an article about a woman who survived an abortion attempt:

"The legal limit for abortion in the UK is 24 weeks. The only exceptions to this is where a woman's life is in danger or if there is a real risk that the child, if born, would have a severe physical or mental disability.

In those cases, there is no legal time limit.

Giana, a committed Christian, is opposed to abortion."

No shit! She's opposed to abortion?!

This is amazing really: it is prohibited to kill your child after 24 weeks unless he is disabled. Discrimination, which we abhor at every time and place is permitted in this instance. And not only discrimination of disabled children (who are most in need of our protection):

(from another article and the same news source)

"The number of female foetuses being aborted in India is rising, as ultrasound is increasingly used to predict the sex of babies.

What would you do if your husband's family did not want you to have daughters--and insisted you took steps to make sure it id not happen?"

Let's discriminate against women as well as against the disabled, or at least potentially disabled, children.

The Serendipity of Gmail

I think that this was a result of too many emails that said, "I promise I'll come to Warsaw next summer" and "I think I just need to move to Europe":

Warsaw apartments, Poland - www.hotelinwarsaw.com - Apartments in City Center, Old Town Discounts in July!

and another (even better!):

Polish citizenship - www.polishcitizenship.pl - Polish citizenship and EU passport

Making a Picture

Elizabeth Bennett and I were in Banska Biastrica, a really lovely town in the mountains of central Slovakia. After tea in an old tower served by a Slovak with her nose pierced and dreadlocks (speaking of, I really like those haircuts that are sort of asymmetrical, with a little bit of extra hair on one side; if/when I get a shortcut, I think I would like that), and which we drank sitting on a padded floor with lots of cushions and low tables, we were walking back to our bus. On the way, we passed a darling old man, who I know the Sartorialist would have loved. I said to Elizabeth, "I would love to take a picture of him."

El: "You really want to? I'll ask him."

Em, inspired by El's daring: "Yes!"

El: "Old man, may my friend take your picture?"
OM: "I don't really know how to work those machines." (Remember, the Old Man is 80-ish. He thought we wanted him to take our picture, which is just delightful, given how many young tech-savy people were around.)

El: "No, no--she wants to take a picture of you."

OM: "Why would she want that?"
El: "She's American [i.e. capable of all strange things] and wants a picture of some natives [for some reason Slovaks don't strike me as 'natives']."

OM: "I don't really think I'll fit in the picture."

El: "She'll take care of that."

At which point, the OM got a cute look on his face, sat his cane straight up, and posed for the picture.

Alphonse Mucha

Mucha is a Czech art nouveau painter who they're even proud of in Slovakia. I'm pretty crazy about his paintings, especially the one that says "Job," because it really captures how I feel about that word.

Kapurkova or On Leaving

A kapurkova is something that we must bring to the United States from Slovakia--it's a leaving drink, roughly translated. There are tall, thin glasses that bulge at the bottom, from which the kapurkova is shot. One time, at a traditional Slovak restaurant (of course I'd had halushky!), they brought Elizabeth, her aunt and I each a kapurkova. Because the aunt was driving and Elizabeth had had enough alcohol before that, it was incumbent on me to drink all of them!

The fact is, leaving is very painful if one has proper conservative sensibilities. A kapurkova is an acknowledgement of this fact, and an attempt to alleviate some of the pain of departing. Kapurkova, then, is a truly conservative thing (and being conservative is, of course, the best argument that one can make for anything).

On Tour Guides

Typically, I hate tours. I remember one tour during an internship at some old house in DC. When we left the house, I remember realizing that I had no idea whose house it was, and that I learned precisely nothing about it. The tour guide had moved us from one room of the small old house to another, carefully avoided the long lines of other tourists--we would move out of the way, allowing them to pass. She would cough several times in each room, possibly mumbling something under her breath, and then we would move to the next room.

Sometimes tours are necessary. A tour was, for instance, the only way that I was allowed to complete my pilgrimage to Corrie Ten Boom's home in Haarlem. Unfortunately, a Christian American bought the house and uses it to evangelize. It isn't unfortunate that he uses it to evangelize (such a thing couldn't help but happen when Corrie Ten Boom's story is told--goodness gracious, I just read her Prison Letters and few things are more moving; they are remarkably more moving, for instance, than Anne Frank's diary), it is how he uses it to evangelize. The tour consists primarily of repeating that Corrie Ten Boom and her family were Christians, not any old Christians, but ones who loved Jesus.

Well, when I was in Bardejo, a medieval town in Eastern Slovakia, we had a tour of the town. Our tour guide was an 87-year-old woman who had done her doctorate in history and had always had a particular interest in Bardejo. The tour was interpreted for me by Elizabeth Bennett. She was a darling women, wearing all black mourning clothes, with a handkerchief tucked in her sleeve, nylons, black sandals, and some excess concealer left on her nose and cheeks and the lapel of her blouse. She took us through the Cathedral--she knew what every sculpture was on every altar, she knew the name of all of the vaulting on the ceilings, she even knew where to find the ass of the architect of the city hall, who mooned the city in art since he wasn't paid sufficiently. We came to one altar in the cathedral. One of the four women figures had been stolen and subsequently replaced with a copy. She asked me which one. The answer seemed clear to me, so I immediately, self-assuredly pointed to the one that I thought it was, and she agreed. We continued with the tour.

About 10 minutes later, she said something to Elizabeth, who immediately began to laugh. Elizabeth told me, "She said you chose the wrong figure. She told me, 'I didn't dare tell her she chose the wrong one, but if you dare, you can tell her.'"

Women and Work Or How Women Save Civilization

Part of the point of women is to make sure that men don't work too much. Edith Stein writes in her essay, "Spirituality of Christian Women":

But the woman who "suits" man as helpmate does not only participate in his work; she complements him, counteracting the dangers of his specifically masculine nature. It is her business to ensure the best of her ability that he is not totally absorbed in his professional work, that he does not permit his humanity to be stunted, and that he does not neglect his family duties as father.

Men can easily tend toward monomaniacism with their jobs--concentrating more on the job than on their family. Women ideally help to ground men. Perhaps part of this grounding is in women making men attend to them, thereby helping to save men from abstraction.

Quotes

"You give me an apple; I'll give you my heart." --Slovak tea towel for hanging on the wall.

"A guest to this house is the Lord to this house."--sums up Slovak hospitality (also on a Slovak tea towel). More on this at another time. Or several other times.

"Let me show you my butterfly collection." --what a Slovak man says to a woman to get her into his bedroom (no actual butterfly collection need exist).

"Let me invite you." --What Slovaks say to indicate that they want to pay for the activity. We only have the much more vulgar, "Let me pay," as far as I know.

"Let's change the place." --I noticed this in both Poland and Slovakia. This was appropriate when moving from dinner to a bar or from one bar to another bar. Occasionally we would also coffee shop hop. That is false.

"Let's go stand in the shadow." --We would say, "shade"; I sort of prefer shadow.

Georgia.2

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people," George W Bush said in Washington.
"Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st Century."

Was it ever acceptable? Is it only unacceptable today?

On the Timing of Thank You Notes

A of all, as Chad used to say, we need to write thank you notes. This is an important thing to preserve. Whigwham used to argue that thank you notes diminish the value of saying thank you (which he says, I must add, all too often--many times even before I've done the thing that he is thanking me for, or even if I participate in some activity with him that I wanted to participate in). I disagree. I think that thank you notes complement and strengthen the verbal thank you (perhaps I say this only because for me saying thank you can be awkward, but writing it is less so).



B of all, thank you notes ought to be written some time after the gift is received. If they are sent too soon (within a day or two), it appears that writing the thank you not is a duty to be gotten out of the way rather than a delight. If thank you notes aren't sent for a long time, then it can appear that the gift was not worth thanking in a timely fashion. It is important for the person to know that you had time to enjoy and use the gift and to begin to appreciate it before thanking the giver.

Georgia on My Mind

I've heard the thesis that democracies don't attack other democracies in a variety of forms (the least convincing of which is that countries with McDonalds in them don't attack other countries with McDonalds; the end of this argument was something to the effect that McDonalds franchising is virtuous).

On the Delights of Addictions

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

--TSE

Tossing yet another paper coffee cup into the trash can (curses on Slovakia!) to the great dismay of my recent green frenzy (the color, for me, actually has nothing to do with environmentalism--my parents raised us to be actually and not kitch-ily environmentally friend; i.e. don't buy things), I remembered Eliot's line, and tweaked it a little bit: "I have measured out my life with coffee cups." This, in turn, reminded me of the coffee place in Bratislava that quoted this line of Eliot on a column in the middle of the room (fabulous Frappachino; I don't even know what that is, exactly, but mine was Irish and good), only they spelled his name, "Elliot." I was/am distressed, a little bit. I'm not sure exactly what's going on there. Is it the same as when they add "-ova" to the end of every woman's surname (Jane Austenova, Hannah Arendtova, etc.), or is something else going on?

On Nametags and Gratitude

My desire to be more grateful to people to whom I owe that conflicts with my absolute hatred of nametags. For instance, I went to a wedding lately where we were asked to wear nametags at the reception. Also, I went to a very nice seminar where they were always asking us to wear nametags. What to do with this extremely messy situation? I lately arrived at a somewhat satisfactory compromise: wear the nametag on one shoulder and my hair on that same shoulder. Conveniently, the nametag is there, but mostly hidden.

Gustav Klimt

The Kiss:

Klimt is a member of the Vienna Secession movement. We visited the main building of the movement when I was there, and Elizabeth Bennett strongly recommended me this picture (in fact, she insisted that I buy a postcard of this picture, which I duly did, and now it is framed by my bed).

This is really a lovely picture. Part of what I love is the way in which Klimt emphasizes the masculine/feminine differences--the man is more bronzed and stronger, the woman pale and slight; she is curved and covered with flowers, while he has laurels in his hair. We see that she is fruitful--there are golden vines growing from her. The play of patterns is simply delightful.

A Portrait of the Priest as a Young Man

Airplane Movies

While on my return flight to Dulles I had thankfully finished my last reading from my trip--Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition, so I could guilt-free-ly watch all of the movies I wanted. What did I choose? The Other Boleyn Girl, Made of Honor, and 27 Dresses. The most sophisticated choices imaginable, I know.

I'd wanted to see The Other Boleyn Girl for quite some time, but as I'm scared to death at the prospect of Sterns and I falling in love with the same person, it took a while for me to work up the courage. This movie actually did capture well some dynamics of the older sister/younger sister relationship. The younger sister surprisingly forgives the older sister all of her very malicious, calculating actions, even though they came between her and and the man she loves. The younger sister would do anything for the older sister to preserve the family relationship. Sterns, I hope you're still glad you didn't marry that boy when you were 14!

Made of Honor is remarkable in the way that it always is to me when people still believe in marriage. It seems to me that if extra-marital sex is fine, then marriage is entirely unnecessary. But somehow people keep on getting married. And I rejoice. In this movie Patrick Dempsey, former playboy to the Nth degree, finally realizes that he wants to settle down, and, of course, it works out neatly in the end.

27 Dresses I found to have very little merit at all, and I've been in a lot of weddings. I think that there was one funny line: "You can cut it off and wear it again." That is actually supremely funny. Also, the main boy in it is super cute in a not-the-same-as-every-hollywood-boy sort of way, which is another redeeming factor. The acting is some of the poorest and most awkward I've ever seen.

Edward Scissorhands

This is a really striking fairy tale critique of mass society. Edward ("of course he has a name") is the creation of an eccentric inventor who lives on the top of a hill and dies before he gives his creation hands. One day a purple-hatted Avon saleswoman discovers Edward and immediately decides that he will come to live with her. Although in the end we see that he cannot live in the suburbs, neither was the Avon lady's idea entirely bad, for the lives of at least one person he meets is forever changed, as is Edwards'.

In a way, this is a sort of incarnation of "the other" into a suburb comprised of brightly colored houses, unaccepted, in the way that incarnations typically are. He must leave, finally--the suburbanites make this clear (led by an odd Catholic fundamentalist organist outcast who ultimately is able to join the group by discovering someone even more outcast than herself), but this doesn't mean it wasn't good that he came. It was, as we see through the existance of snow, which never occurred before Edward came to suburbia, but continues since he left.

On Men as Mushrooms and Bears

One afternoon, near the tiny indescribably beautiful village of Vlkolinec, we spent the day hiking in the woods. We being my friend, Elizabeth Bennett (one of the wittiest and most spirited women you can imagine), and her friend (my friend now), Marta, who is one of the remarkable people you meet--she is humble and selfless and serving in a rare way. Anyway, these two girls were teaching me how to find mushrooms so that we could eat them. You have to be able to distinguish between the good ones and the poisonous ones by how they look and smell. You have to know where and when to look for them (after the rain is followed by warm weather, in the morning so no one gets to them first, in the pine-needly ground under an evergreen). And sometimes you're lucky and sometimes you aren't. We found only a couple.



Also, Slovak bears must be different from Pennsylvania bears. I'm fairly certain that PA bears are perfectly safe--unless you get between a mother and her cub, there's nothing to worry about. Evidently Slovak bears are very dangerous and they often tree people. So in addition to mushrooms, we were always on the lookout for bears, although in a sort of different way. They said if we were loud enough, our voices would scare them away. The two girls looked for mushrooms, and I took care of the talking loudly and often to scare the bears away job. Elizabeth expressed her desire for a man who is like a bear--who knows what he wants and goes after it without fear and takes it. I'm not sure that I'm interested in a bear in quite the same way.

Knowing

I have a theory that Moulin Rouge is almost, but not quite right: It isn't "The greatest thing that you will ever learn is to love and be loved in return"; but rather, "The greatest thing that you will ever learn is to know and be known in return." Of course, knowing and loving are connected.

As Fr. Schall (who I, incidentally, know and love) writes, in Idylls and Rambles in the essay, "On Conversation and Companionship" (and this follows a small quotation of Plato's in which he belittles board games): "Thus, we actualize ourselves, become what we are, through interpersonal communications in 'the order of being'. We converse with one another, our friends and companions, not for use or pleasure, but to a higher purpose: to discover and tell one another about the that which is we have learned, and to listen to being as experienced by our companions. For these too are personal I's, likewise amazed at being they did not make, who rush 'to confirm' us in its discovery, in freedom and knowing and loving, often in pus and walks that need not, like creation itself, exist at all."

We want to know others, not only to confirm our experiences, but also to confirm ourselves as the experience-ors. This is why we are drawn to people who have a gift at knowing quickly and intuitively. This is why speaking and language are such great goods--because they are part of (thought not the whole of) the process of self-revelation.

The Serendipity of Gmail

From an email in which a friend wrote, "Not too serious. What happened the other night. Did you fall in love?" we see the gmail ad:

Make Anyone Fall In Love?
- GetYourExBackNow.com -
Instant Relief From Break Up Pain & Fastest Plan To Get Your Ex Back

Not only is the question mark fortuitously placed in this ad, but really, isn't the fact of love that it can't be forced? And isn't it that if it were forced, we wouldn't even want it? This is what drives me crazy about people who approach falling in love like a finding a career (I met one in my travels). A defining feature of love is surprise. The surprise ought to be embraced and not avoided.