Thursday, October 30, 2008

"What kind of feminist are you?!" --Myrhh, accusingly.

A bad one. Or a proper one. I think that that might be the answer...

I Love Spinach!

An onion in my spinach!
It makes me want to cry.
I do not want to eat it.
It hardly tastes like pie.
Tomatoes is my salad!
I wish they were not there.
See how tight my eyes are closed?
Tomatoes, disappear!
Just look at all the green peas!
Celery in my stew!
My parents said to eat it,
So I guess I have to.
A cake is on the counter.
Someone baked it just today.




This "poem" makes me laugh (it is from some kids' magazine, I think), as does this article, which I don't even remotely get--I guess this mother is cooking her children their vegetables into "mysterious liquid-centered gelatin orbs made through a process called spherification," which sounds sort of expensive and silly and ineffective, but amusing.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

I Like that My State Is Mysterious

"A fella could campaign for a lifetime in Pennsylvania and still not know what the hell he was doing."

--Old candidate in the 70's

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Professor on Happiness

There is a critique of Walker Percy that I've been wanting to write (although possibly I should read more than the two of his novels that I've read to do that), and it has something to do with Percy's understanding of the human situation as too alienated for my taste. But, of course, the Professor is always wise (from his recent essay on happiness):

Human happiness may depend on being “at home with our homelessness.” Then we are best able to experience the many and varied good things of this world for what they are, not expecting too much or too little from them. We’re able to discover and fulfill the purposes given to members of our species alone. Right now, the Americans most at home with their homelessness seem to be our evangelical and orthodox believers. They are our most familial and political or patriotic beings, the Americans most reliably doing what Darwinians say members of our social species should do. They’re most at home in the world because they’ve most come to terms with it and have a clear explanation for their experiences of homelessness, their experiences of freedom not shared by the other animals. They’re best at subordinating the “how” of modern technology to the “why” of a purpose-driven life.


I can handle being at home with homelessness as a prerequisite for happiness, but not so much as an end in itself. Oh my goodness--he ends with "a purpose-driven life." Lawler has a true (and wonderful) respect for evangelical America.

On Fall and Apples


Since apples (preferrably straight off the tree or Macintosh) are one of the wonderful things about fall and since I have the surprisingly remarkable anthology, A Book of Luminous Things:

Mystic by D.H. Lawrence

They call all experience of the senses mystic, when the experience is considered.
So an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the wild welter of earth and the insistence of the sun.

All of which things I can surely taste in a good apple.
Though some apples taste preponderantly of water, wet and sour
and some of too much sun, brackish sweet
like lagoon-water, that has been too much sunned.

If I say I taste these things in an apple, I am called mystic, which means a liar.
The only way to eat an apple is to hog it down like a pig
and taste nothing
that is real.

But if I eat an apple, I like to eat it will all my senses awake.
Hogging it down like a pig I call the feeding of corpses.



This also makes me remember this please-will-you-miss-home email from my mother last year around this time.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Darnit, 15 pages is short!

Ali G - Interviews Andy Rooney

Clever.

Bless Their Hearts

First words of comps instructions: "Be accurate."

Me? (--be an accurate person?) Or my answers? Is there even any difference between those two things at this point?

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Definition

"Shaking hands with the clock"--Pennsylvania Dutch for "hurrying." As in, "I'm shaking hands with the clock in order to make it to church on time." Or, "I'm shaking hands with the clock so I can hit the hay for a couple of hours before I have to get up to feed the horses."

Notes (Blamed on Still-Missing Roommates)

The maintenance man, who (or whom?) I love, is turning the squirrels into dogs: when you walk outside they run at you as if they are begging for scraps at the table. One ran up my leg a couple of months ago. This just doesn't seem safe. I suggest you buy a bb gun, Warren, and train them not to run at me--that every hand is not going to feed them.



Also, Daniel is using the bringing up of the gifts as an outlet for his suppressed matchmaking urges. Today, while holding my hand, in front of the priest: "How appropriate that this is in front of the priest! Emily, this is Chris. I'd like you to bring up the gifts together next week." Me: "Hi Chris!; I don't really want to bring up the gifts, Daniel." I got out of it, but it took some arguing and ignoring the great guilt that I was feeling--I had sort of decided that I wouldn't refuse to bring up the gifts, because that just isn't that generous, and the last time I refused, I suffered remorse and went back and gave in. Plus, I do sort of like curtsying. But I do think that Daniel asks people he knows a disproportionate amount.
Stearns: "I had such a great weekend because Kurtz paid attention to me and I got baptized."

On Marathons and East Coast Snobbery

Congrats, Stearns, on your baptism. Just remember: all the sins count now.

Next point: I think that "they" should hold marathons in rural areas, where people can run happily without blocking off the traffic. This way both the runners and the drivers will be happy. I think that there must be hundreds of thousands of miles where there are no drivers in the Dakotas and Nebraska and such places. I know that the runners must like to run near the pretty monuments (and the monuments are, indeed, inspiring), but we can make replicas and put them in the middle of nowhere and people can run around them there, like how "they" built the Parthenon in Nashville (I really don't understand that at all).

Additionally, who goes to watch a marathon? This seems to me to be a rather insipid and wasteful activity (not that watching CSI is a grand and lofty activity exactly). If I were to run a marathon, I wouldn't want people watching me. And I'm really not interested in watching other people do that.

Moreover, I have heard (not sure if it's true) that running marathons is bad for your body. I think that we need to begin to calculate the insurance costs charged to the American people by runners who run too many marathons (especially in cities, where the concrete must be very hard on one's ankles). I think that there should be a federal marathon tax and surgeon general's warnings on the sign up sheet.

Comps Charm


(Thanks Wendell!)

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Goodness Gracious (A Short Rant)

Writing about federalism would be so much more interesting if I were interested in it. Also, it would be easier if I knew anything about American government. Where are you, Warren, when I need you?! Also, the semi-colon use in The Federalist is bothering me.

That is all. Well, not even remotely all, but enough for now.

Also, especially when watching detective television shows, I am vaguely scared to be alone in my house, although Ben, the Baptist Pastor, would call this me pretending to be a faint-hearted girl, which he (somehow, I don't know how) knows isn't true (B, tBP: "Emily, you're in a man's world now"--I refuse to believe that it is a man's world that I'm in. It's just a plain old world in which I get to be however I like.). I was in fact scared by the wind this morning.

What Makes Man Different from Animals.6

Moths

Moths watched us through
the window. Seated at the table,
we were skewered by their lambent gazes,
harder than their shattering wings.

You'll always be outside,
past the pane. And we'll be here within,
more and more in. Moths watched us
through the window, in August.

Adam Zagajewski

From A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, which I picked up today at the Arlington County Library Sale, purportedly to give away, but I bet that won't happen. On the page facing this one, there is a poem written by an American, which Milosz argues shows the American response to nature: that it can get us back to paradise. This Polish poem, on the other hand, shows nature as insurmountably separate from us.

What is interesting in this poem, however, is that while nature is perpetually separate from man, the poet also attributes human characteristics to animals, almost a desire on the part of moths to be with man. In a sense, then, he emphasizes the difference between moths and man; in another sense, he undercuts that difference (or at least attributes to moths characteristics of higher animals--that is, my dog watches me; the ladybug doesn't).

Friday, October 24, 2008

Lyrics That Amuse Me in My Semi-Delusional (But Actually Surprisingly Okay) State

"You could have whatever you like" (I know the rest of this song is no good, but this line over and over is great. I firmly support this sentiment.)

"Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it / If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it" (Percy: "Is she talking about a finger?" Yep.)

"Because a girl like you is impossible to find / You're impossible to find" (which just makes about zero sense; although, when I'm tired, I don't even remotely make sense.)

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Comps Prayers, Please!

Broaches

From Go Fug Yourself: "[H]er character, Rachel, is way too elegant to ever wear what is essentially a shiny orange satin cupcake with a broach in her hair and matching shiny orange shoes."

Okay, so I'm not crazy about the ballerina-ness of the skirt, but please!--let's not make fun of wearing broaches in your hair; that is just pure creativity. And really, the shoes might be a little matchy, but it's nothing that's above me. I love her jewelry, including where she wears it.

Well, we can always make fun of me and fashion--there was the time that I wore white pants and a purple shirt and a pink blazer to the symphony. The outfit made perfect sense to me until I got home and my roommate set me straight...

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Sister Margarita Aloysius


I'm fairly certain that that's a Diet Coke that St. Cordelia is gripping as if someone would have to pry it from her hand before she'd give it up.
Excerpts from Ch. 3 of St. Margarita Aloysious to the Little Giddingites (note her use of "saint"):
"Speaking of pranks. My best black veil friend pointed out to me some weeks ago that a cardboard cutout of Elvis in a gold jumpsuit lives behind the refrigerator in the guest dining room, for reasons no one will fully explain. Now if there's one thing I learned during my time at Little Gidding, it's that you can have a whole lot of fun with a cardboard cutout. So, another impish postulant and I ... snuck into the guest dining room one night after compline and liberated Elvis. We snuck him upstairs and sat him upright in a chair in the Postulant Mistress's office. Of course we then put the chair immediately in the path of the doorway and pulled it closed. And unexpected bonus--the door fell open and terrified many of our fellow postulants who happened to walk by that night, as well as St. Mary Veronica the next morning. I assure you, nothing is stranger or scarrier than a man in a dark room inside the cloister at night. This was our starter prank. (Hat tip to Little Gidding.)"
Other notable parts include the shocking phrase (at least to my very youngly Catholic ears), "nine-year novena" (that's typically a nine-day prayer); the term, "Steubies" for the Steubenville crowd; and a quotation from Bede Jarrett: "At mass I link up with my friends again and can find you there."

Saturday, October 18, 2008

From My Father to My Mother

You are the sweetest fruit in the orchard.

You are the bluest sky on early October day.

You are like the refreshing ocean surf that surrounds the Hawaiian isles.

Your grace is like the Doe that leads her fauns through the swaying fields of wheat.

To be in your presence if like drinking from a glass filled with our well water after laboring in the summer sun ... and your beauty exceeds the fall colored hills that surround our house. ...

Your smile is like a gentle breeze that invigorates the weary souls.

Friday, October 17, 2008

The Paradox of Home

Perhaps the paradox of home is that you ought to long for it but can never go back. Even in the nostalgia of poems and songs for home, there is often a hint that it is unachievable:

Who says you can't go home
There's only one place they call me one of their own
Just a hometown boy, born a rolling stone, who says you can't go home
Who says you can't go back, been all around the world and as a matter of fact
There's only one place left I want to go, who says you can't go home


It doesn't matter where you are, it doesn't matter where you go
If it's a million miles aways or just a mile up the road
Take it in, take it with you when you go, who says you can't go home

"Take it with you when you go" makes me think that, although the song seems to assert that you can go home, and in one sense you can, in another sense you can't. When you leave, however, you ought to leave with the memory of home.

And since we're pretty close to Christmas:


I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light beams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams



Same idea--on the one hand, we have the assertion of homecoming; on the other, its impossibility.

And, since it is inadvisable to talk about home without quoting Wendell Berry:

Leaving Home

Whose light is this
that is mine, that
in the shine of the rain
flashes from every leaf
and brightens the rows
where the young stalks
rise, as if bidden
by a knowing woman's hand?
This is no time to go.
The new building stands
unfinished, raw boards
geometric in the air, a man's
design climbing out of the ground
like a tree. When I go
I will carry away its dream.
The light that is mine is not
mine. Were I, like all my kind, to go
and not come back, this light
would return like a faithful woman
until the pent stalk rose
to the shattering of its seed.
No time is a time to go,
and so any time is. Do not wait
to know whose light this is.
Once the heart has felt
the ever wakening
woman's touch of the light,
there are no more farewells.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Dinner Party.4

One of the comps rules is that I can only have dinner parties with famous people. I interpret "famous" to include a professor friend, in whose honor we dined (we being Napa and Percy and The Professor and one of his students, who is a libertarian studying abroad in Italy in the spring and counting Italian 101 as a government credit--clever, clever girl!). The Professor discoursed well and moderately about Sarah Palin, the economic crisis, architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright intended his buildings to fall down?!), movies, the need for everyone to take up childbearing and smoking immediately (as in, this weekend). He also offers the most palatable apology for technology that I ever hear. As far as I can tell, he is one of the wisest people alive.

Unfortunately, there was nothing too dramatic--the getting-our-guests-stuck-in-the-bathroom gig is getting a bit old and is no longer really that funny. Additionally, although the ladyfingers that I made for the tiramisu were flat instead of tall, you couldn't tell too much. Plus, you could mix tiramisu all together in a blender and serve it as a milkshake and it would still be the most wonderful thing imaginable. When I was in Poland this summer, and the server brought out tiramisu for dessert on night, my face evidently lit up beyond description; that was when I realized that it's something I really like and purposed to make it as soon as possible (now being that).

Plus, technically, the broccoli was supposed to be broccoli with red peppers, but the only thing that the grocery store had was green peppers. I'm sure this cut down significantly on the aesthetic value of the dish. Also, I made your bulgar dish, Diana--this ranks as one of my favorite things. Oh--one quality comment of the evening:

Emily: "Whole foods has singles nights!" (meaning you go there to meet other single people)

Percy: "Wait, like, you get a discount if you don't have a girlfriend?" (possibly he was excited...)

Sometimes I think it would be great fun to make a blog that parodies this one, and shows me disheveled in the kitchen, covered with flour or dough or what not, dirty dishes everywhere, with very little idea what I'm doing.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Correspondence

To the post, On the Evils of Constant Communication, Wendell said...

"Emily, I am so glad you can multitask. So many of my other friends have 'blogs,' but they never write anything on them. I have good reason to believe this is because they are on Facebook all the time. Of course, you are also on Facebook all the time, but you still manage to write many good things here. For which I am grateful."

Somehow, I think that this is what they call a left-handed compliment. As an aside, I am insulted by the term "left-handed compliment"--it is unfair to denigrate left-handed-ness, of which I am quite proud. Occasionally people try to do this in the Bible, too (the whole sheep and goats bit). This is really a problem.

What Makes Man Different from Animals.5


From Hobbes's description of the passions:

"Desire to know why, and how, CURIOSITY, such as is in no living creature but man, so that man is distinguished, not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion from other animals, in whom the appetite of food and other pleasures of sense by predominance take away the care of knowing causes, which is a lust of the mind that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure."


Ah! Curiosity as what makes us different from the animals. He is turning philosophy into a passion, I think.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Chivalry v. Chauvinism

One of the criteria for me liking a particular restaurant is whether they serve women first. What woman would be happy that her gender was ignored as part of a social experience? (What person would be happy that he was treated like an androgyn?) We are not genderless creatures. I believe in equal treatment, but why, oh why, does "equal" mean "the same"? Here is an excerpt from an article is titled, "Old Gender Roles with Your Dinner?":

Maybe a gentleman’s dish would be set down ahead of his female companion’s.
Would anyone really care?

Yes, as Ms. Moon said she learned when reading a customer comment card one night. “Serve ladies first!” it said.

... [S]he did tell servers that they could and should start considering gender, at least sometimes. “Read the table,” she told them, “and if it seems like they would appreciate ladies being served first, just do it.”

Although the goal in many public places and in much of public life is to treat men and women equally, most upscale restaurants haven’t reached that point.

Then again they haven’t really tried all that hard. They’ve learned that ignoring gender is risky, and often foolish, because men and women approach and respond to restaurants in different ways, looking for different things.

A broad generalization? Absolutely. It’s also nowhere near as true as it once was.

Certain musty rites — chivalrous from one perspective, chauvinistic from another — have faded or disappeared. It’s a rare restaurant that gives menus without prices to women dining with men. And most restaurants no longer steer the “ladies” toward the banquette, assuming they want to face out toward the room.


"Musty rites"! Goodness gracious, if dining becomes a gender-blind experience I think that I will give up dining out all together in protest. Clearly it matters where women sit. And I love the idea of menus without prices. I have a strict rule: if a gender difference insults me (cough*poker game exclusions*cough), I call it chauvinistic; if it is nice, I call it chivalrous.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Week 6, Keats and Hobbes

When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be


By John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.



In our discussion of Hobbes's politics being founded on a fear of violent death, one of the boys in my section (his hair is dyed a little red and for about the first four weeks, he wore the same orange and black and yellow pair of shorts) posed a challenge to Hobbes: "Where I live in northern California, there are the most Great Whites. Basically, South Africa is the only place that even comes close to rivaling it. But I would rather be killed by a Great White than maimed. What would Hobbes do with that?"

I had no answer.

Well, I basically have no love for Hobbes. Not that I exactly have love for Keats's answer to the fear of death, either. But it is a beautiful poem.

Assorted Rant

Several things that have been bothering me: A) Columbus Day--mostly the mail not going through. Mail is important and has become less important because of email, but for those of us who still care about letters, we should get them on all the days (okay, except Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter--holidays that are actually celebrated; how would one even celebrate Columbus Day if he wanted to celebrate it?) Celebrating by not doing something that no one wants to do anyway (work) really isn't celebrating.

B) Pictures of stock market people who are either happy or sad and worried, to symbolize the mood of the market as a whole. How do I even know that these are stock market people that they're taking pictures of? They might just be people on the street smiling or frowning.

C) The internet. I don't think it's even possible to quantify how much more work I would get done if the internet didn't exist.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

On Aging.3

It seems to me that this campaign gets it exactly wrong: what sort of person tells his grandparents who to vote for? Clearly, we're supposed to be sitting at our grandparents's feet absorbing their wisdom. This is the sort of thing, frankly, that upsets me more than particular economic policies.

P.S. I was discussing being 25 with someone who also turned 25 lately, and she pointed out that we are fully adults--now we can rent cars. I don't think that "they"'re keeping anything else from us except senior citizen's discounts.

On the Fascination of the Japanese with Anne of Green Gables

A bit of insight (although the question certainly isn't solved):

"Anne has been hugely popular in Japan since it was first translated there, in 1952; the story of an outcast rising above adversity through pluck evidently resonated with postwar Japanese, who may have seen parallels to their own situation. (Japanese fans are also fascinated by her hair: the book’s title in Japan is Akage No Anne, or 'Anne of the Red Hair.') Each year, several thousand Japanese visit the island in homage to Anne. In an essay published earlier this year in The Guardian, the novelist Margaret Atwood described asking an audience in Japan about the book’s enduring appeal. She got 32 responses, ranging from the shared love of cherry and apple blossoms to Anne’s ability to stand up to 'that most formidable of Japanese dragons, the bossy older matron.'

In Avonlea, I talked to a 'village resident' in a minister’s collar, who told me he was also a minister in real life and had officiated at more than 500 weddings of Japanese couples, mostly at the Anne of Green Gables Museum."

(Good work, Graham!)

Rant: On Meddling

Basically, giving me advice about my life, to be anything more than someone spouting off, must be rooted in a particular (very deep) level of friendship. It must not be rooted in an elevated conception of one's self (I never know if I spell that correctly--is it "oneself"?). And it must always be done nicely and not preachingly. This just makes me think of Rachel Lynde, the very definition of meddlesome. This makes me ever so thankful, too, for Robinson, and his Oakeshottian conception of friendship as never seeking to change the other. While that, too, is an extreme, I think, it sure is a nicer extreme to be around than meddlesomeness.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

This Is Not Actually How I Make Important Political Decisions, I Promise!



One minute I'm reading the news, the next minute I'm looking up pictures of John McCain when he was younger because Warren told me how good looking they were. This is why I never know exactly what's going on in the world...

Lessons from these pictures: A) John McCain is very old--these are all in black and white; B) He was, in fact, very handsome.










On Tennis

"I confided in one of my girlfriends — who had run through a lot of therapists on her own — while playing badminton. (Badminton, with cocktails, was maybe the best therapy for both of us.)"

--from a Modern Love on a woman whose therapist falls in love with her, and the complications that result.


I prefer tennis: although it is less conducive to conversation, you get to hit the ball harder.

Friday, October 10, 2008

The Art of Losing

It is always just when I begin to congratulate myself for being a competent person that I gain a greater insight into the depths of my incompetency.

Tonight I was studying in DC (what dear friends I have--they are always calling and suggesting interesting places that we can study together) at a coffee shop/bar about 15 minutes from my house. Somehow I ended taking the hour-long route home. This involved Georgia Avenue and Silver Spring. I almost called you, Wendell, but it was about 1:30 a.m. when I was there, and that seemed like an imposition.

On Aging.2

Why I will live long and healthily:

"[T]hose who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer, a bigger increase than that associated with exercising or not smoking. ... [O]lder people exposed to negative images of aging, including words like “forgetful,” “feeble” and “shaky,” performed significantly worse on memory and balance tests; in previous experiments, they also showed higher levels of stress."

Why I need to not end up in a nursing home:

"[T]he worst offenders [at condescending to the elderly] are often health care workers."

One woman's strategy:

"To avoid stereotyping, Ms. Kirschman said, she often sprinkles her conversation with profanities when she is among people who do not know her. 'That makes them think, This is someone to be reckoned with,' she said. 'A little sharpness seems to help.'"

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Meet Robinson (I Was Going to Call You Calvin, But I Thought This Was Nicer)

"So I'm just a prop to you? The good looking, smooth talking gentleman to trot out at dinner parties?"

Robinson is, indeed, the good looking, smooth talking (should that be hyphenated?) gentleman I trot out to dinner parties (well, used to trot out to dinner parties, before I went into comps hibernation and he moved away), but he's also much more.

Robinson's virtues are many: namely, he is from the commonwealth of virtue, liberty and independence. Additionally, his father makes guns. Moreover, he is brilliant. Furthermore, he is kind.

We met, gosh, years and years ago--he was a grade older than I was in college, and, I think, the president of the College Republicans. He never spoke to me, but that was not even remotely due to an absence of kindness, rather, it was more likely due to the fact that if a boy spoke to a girl at our grand old alma mater, it seemed as if they might marry immediately. Alas, our friendship was thwarted for a while (possibly Robinson would deny the fact of our friendship, even now, as I'm not sure he believes in friendship between men and women). It didn't help that he won the "big dog" award in a very competitive class--he never lets me forget (although the professor likes me more!).

But, perhaps in part as a result of his obvious intellectual superiority, Robinson has compensated by bending over backward to be generously kind. Including nagging me until I joined him at Georgetown.

Meet the Gypsy

Our parents were friends first, so we had very little choice in the matter. Perfectly positioned between Stearns and I in age, Gypsy is one of the few people who can stand Stearns and I together for long periods of times (this is a result of years of practice). When Gypsy comes over (every night we're all home) to chez Leopard late at night for some matchmaking lists (one of our first and favorite past times), cookie dough, and a sleepover, we laugh so hard that sometimes we can't move. I particularly remember the night we twirled around late at night (in the rain?) in the curtains from Gypsy's room and ended on the floor of her room in tears (good tears). And the dance group we started that met after church in the mezzanine (you Catholics really missed out--I bet you didn't have mezzanines!). And the brunch on the porch in which we dressed up like Southern belles when we were long past the age when that was a legitimate activity, purportedly for Ilana's pleasure, but clearly more for our own.

Her name comes from the day that Stearns, Gypsy and I dressed up like matching gypsies with all of the jewelry we owned around our necks, beauty spots markered all over our faces, and bandannas on our heads. We then stood by the road for the entire afternoon and counted how many beeps we could get from each car.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Meet Diana


"Oh, Diana," said Anne at last, clasping her hands and speaking almost in a whisper, "oh, do you think you can like me a little--enough to be my bosom friend?"

Diana laughed. Diana always laughed before she spoke.

"Why, I guess so," she said frankly. "I'm awfully glad you've come to live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody to play with. There isn't any other girl who lives near enough to play with, and I've no sisters big enough."

"Will you swear to be my friend forever and ever?" demanded Anne eagerly.

Diana looked shocked.

"Why it's dreadfully wicked to swear," she said rebukingly.

"Oh no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know."

"I never heard of but one kind," said Diana doubtfully.

"There really is another. Oh, it isn't wicked at all. It just means vowing and promising solemnly."
"Well, I don't mind doing that," agreed Diana, relieved. "How do you do it?"

"We must join hands--so," said Anne gravely. "It ought to be over running water. We'll just imagine this path is running water. I'll repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend, Diana Barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you say it and put my name in."

Diana repeated the "oath" with a laugh fore and aft. Then she said:

"You're a queer girl, Anne. I heard before that you were queer. But I believe I'm going to like you real well."

When Marilla and Anne went home Diana went with them as for as the log bridge. The two little girls walked with their arms about each other. At the brook they parted with many promises to spend the next afternoon together.

"Well, did you find Diana a kindred spirit?" asked Marilla as they went up through the garden of Green Gables.

"Oh yes," sighed Anne, blissfully unconscious of any sarcasm on Marilla's part. "Oh Marilla, I'm the happiest girl on Prince Edward Island this very moment. I assure you I'll say my prayers with a right good-will tonight. Diana and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr. William Bell's birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken pieces of china that are out in the woodshed? Diana's birthday is in February and mine is in March. Don't you think that is a very strange coincidence? Diana is going to lend me a book to read. She says it's perfectly splendid and tremendously exciting. She's going to show me a place back in the woods where rice lilies grow. Don't you think Diana has got very soulful eyes? I wish I had soulful eyes. Diana is going to teach me to sing a song called 'Nelly in the Hazel Dell.' She's going to give me a picture to put up in my room; it's a perfectly beautiful picture, she says--a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress. A sewing-machine agent gave it to her. I wish I had something to give Diana. I'm an inch taller than Diana, but she is ever so much fatter; she says she'd like to be thin because it's so much more graceful, but I'm afraid she only said it to soothe my feelings. We're going to the shore some day to gather shells. We have agreed to call the spring down by the log bridge the Dryad's Bubble. Isn't that a perfectly elegant name? I read a story once about a spring called that. A dryad is sort of a grown-up fairy, I think."

"Well, all I hope is you won't talk Diana to death," said Marilla.


As far as I can remember, Diana and I met in church when Diana and her sister wrote letters to me and my sister and included a picture of themselves in them. That was the beginning of my first pen-pal-ship. Goodness gracious, we wrote faster and faster (sometimes 3 letters in a day, depending how many people moved between each others houses). And then we just had to hang out most afternoons. There were club meetings. And the rare chance my sister and I could convince Diana and her sister to play dress up. And the gem stone shop under the deck. And of course crystal princesses (how could those not be mentioned?). And stamp collecting, and then basketball. And now sushi and grad school.

Here's to kindred spirits!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Magnolia

An interesting movie (no disrespect intended)--one well worth thinking about. What I'm still attempting to make sense of (besides all of it) is the introductory three vignettes of coincidences. It seems to me that weird things need to have a reason to be in the movie; it's fine with me that they're there, but they must fit (perhaps this is too much to ask for?). The raining frogs work, I think, due not in small part to the foreshadowing with Exodus 8:2 sprinkled about earlier in the film. The three events in the prologue, however, have a less obvious connection.

The relationship between children and parents is clearly a central theme in the film (the idea that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the children). We see this in Claudia and her father Jimmy (who is the host of the game show, "What Do Kids Know?"--where parents are pitted against children in trivia)--her father quite possibly molested her, and there's a good chance that this is related to her coke addiction. In the parallel story of a T.V. producer, Earl (who cheated on his wife and left her), and his son, Frank, a man who teaches other men secrets to getting women into bed ("Seduce and Destroy"), we again see the sins of the father affecting the son. The plague of the frogs, too, refers to the plague against the Egyptians in which the first born son was killed--the sons were killed because of Pharaoh's sin. Moreover, one of the three "coincidences" in the film's prologue is about a boy who was committing suicide, but would've been saved by a safety net, were not the gun that his mother was pointing at his father loaded (the boy himself had loaded it) and accidentally shot.

The film tells us not to mistake children for angels. I'm not entirely certain about the meaning of this line. Although I'm sure that, were I to understand how it relates, it would relate at about 30 levels.

It is interesting that Stanley, the little boy on the game show, is the one who has a premonition of it raining frogs--he asks what sort of meteorological instruments the building has. He responds to the rain by peeing his pants. The fact that it rained frogs also helps him come to terms with his own genius--he understands the exceptional as something that happens. "This happens; this is something that happens." This gives him the strength to stand up to his father. Perhaps it is Donnie (the man who had been a child star on the game show, but was now an adult living in the past and working for an electronic store in sales)'s inability to understand his own exceptionalism that condemns him to an inability to form relationships--he asserts against the film itself (I think) that children are angels. This is precisely the ideal that Stanley rails against when they ask him to come forward for a bonus round and he refuses.

As far as I can tell, the film makes you work quite hard for a coherent read (which I haven't even approximated). I'm not sure what this means, but if the form matches the content, then I'm okay with it (namely, if the film warns against simplicity in our understanding of life, then it could be right to do this by complicating and nuancing everything that it can). I just couldn't yet say if that unity reveals itself or not.

Percy: The one response you aren't allowed to have is that I've read too much into this. Clearly the film bears reading into.

Monday, October 6, 2008

And He Was Modest and a Philanthropist!

From (where else?) The Economist:

"THE eyes were blue. Cornflower blue, steel blue, ice blue. ... Paul Newman himself thought little of them. He hid them behind sunglasses, and sometimes asked his fans whether this was all they valued him for. His epitaph, he once said, should be 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.'"

I remember watching The Sting for the first time as a little girl. I watched it with my father, and it was a very special occurrence because it was one of my first "grown up" movies (i.e. I was allowed to watch it despite the women on the carousel). Perhaps this was the origin of my fascination with poker...


Sunday, October 5, 2008

Is Quiet Mind a Compliment?



To Lucasta, On Going To The Wars
Richard Lovelace

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breasts, and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such,
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.

"I like the picture." --the most outspoken girl in the class (and a very clever one)

"Although I think there's a discrepancy with the picture," --one of my favorite students (he is one of my favorites because he reminds me so much of my brother that I can't even express it), "He looks a little foppish, not honorable and war-like. Maybe he's just French."

At which, the class began to disintegrate into a discussion of his eyebrows.


I waffled on including this poem, because I'm not certain it's a good poem. But Sterns and Percy gave the go ahead (according to Percy, its paradox redeems it). So I did.

The kids tied "To Lucasta" to Aristotle on spiritedness. The poem also led into a discussion of the relationship between the good for the man and the good for the city, although the clever, outspoken girl pointed out that the narrator doesn't so much make an argument for his need to sacrifice for the city as an argument for his own moral superiority.

My other class tied his stronger embrace of the sword/horse/shield in defense of the polis to Aristotle's seeming affirmation of the polis over the household (or am I reading Arendt into Aristotle?--it is all blending together now).

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Realism or Pessimism? Or Sayers On Aging

Last month--

Me: "Can we go to a nursing home together?"
Sayers: "Hopefully we'll still remember each other."

Today--

Me: "When we move to the same town someday, we can walk together!"
Sayers: "If we can still walk."

And first thing this morning--

Me: "Ah! I am 25 and my face looks old!"
Sayers: "No, your face looks old because we slept four hours last night."

A Directory

Upon request (okay, fine, there's been no request) here is a list of the characters who are part of this blog (some unknowingly):

Emily Hale--the only one who ever blogs

Ilana and Sterns--her sisters, who are supposed to blog

Myrrh and Frankincense and Gold--her roommates (one now absent)

Sr. Cordelia--ideally to be Sr. Margarita Aloysius (also a one-time resident of Little Gidding)

Whigwham and Wendell--the boys' house boys (Whigwham is in my bad graces [perpetually, but this time for boycotting my blog due to the sitemeter, which he finds to be unethical])

Warren and Percy--the others

Sayers and Mr. Sayers--they live in the real world and lawyer crunchily

Nicholas--that's his real name (!)

Parker--Anne of Green Gables-come-runner

Gypsy--And then there was the time we thought it would be great to dress up like gypsies and make the cars beep at us...

Diana--oh my goodness, we've been friends from before time began

Lawrence--amazingly enough, he is named after Lawrence of Arabia

Fr. Dinosaurhead (Fr. DH)--our favorite priest

Bro. OP--a rather cheeky Dominican

(By the way, I have a brother!)

Nicknames available upon request.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Brick House

"You aren't going to talk that way to me in this house."

"We aren't going to put up with that in this nation."

In the first few times (okay, fine, first few years) I came home from college, my parents and I had disagreements that ended with: "Not in this house!" I can't tell you how many times I've heard the same phrase in church (they call our church "this house," too). It strikes me as a uniquely Pentecostal or fundamentalist way of putting things. I've wondered and wondered why this is the case.

I have no answer. I mean, I have the beginnings of an answer, but it's so undeveloped that I'm not going to give it. But I did notice these and other Pentecostalism-isms from Palin tonight. Ones I caught:

"So that they shall do the same, telling our children and our children’s children about back in the day.." (beautiful move from religious rhetoric to down home rhetoric)

"From any country that would seek to destroy Israel"


"Wipe off the face of the earth"


"Those who destroy what we stand for"

"Rear that head of abuse"


"revelation"


"That wasn’t going to happen in my state"
'
"The good work that he is committed to"

Perhaps these phrases/words are in common use? For me, they certainly have a religious connotation.

The Only Bad Thing Was That They Missed Pirate Day, Which Was a Couple of Days Ago on the Blogs

Not gonna lie--I'm sort of impressed: “We just saw a big ship,” the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, told The New York Times. “So we stopped it.”

They are brave: "You only die once."
They have imaginations: "Think of us as the coast guard."
They are ambitious, and even kind: “Killing is not in our plans,” he said. “We only want money, so we can protect ourselves from hunger.” When asked why the pirates needed $20 million to protect themselves from hunger, Mr. Sugule laughed over the phone and said: “Because we have a lot of men.”

Whoever thought of calling the pirates to interview them aboard the ship they took over was genius, no question.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Women and Mores


Tocqueville: “There have never been free societies without mores, and as I observed in the first part of this book, it is woman who shapes these mores. Therefore everything which has a bearing on the status of women, their habits, and their thoughts is, in my view, of great political importance.”


Rousseau (in a footnote to the phrase, "when men have sacrificed their taste to the tyrants of their liberty"): "I am very far from thinking that this ascendancy of women is in itself an evil. It is a gift given them by nature for the happiness of the human race. Better directed [by whom?--men?!], it could produce as much good as today it does harm. We do not adequately suspect the advantages that would result for society if a better education were given to that half of the human race which governs the other. Men will always be what is pleasing to woman; therefore if you want them to become great and virtuous, teach women what greatness of soul and virtue are. The reflections occasioned by this subject and made long ago by Plato greatly deserve to be better developed by a writer worthy of following such a master and defending so noble a cause."



When I read this passage from Rousseau some time ago, I thought, "The Straussians would love this." I really wonder if Mansfield isn't doing precisely what Rousseau recommends: providing women with an understanding of what greatness of soul and virtue are in men so that women will want that, and so that men, in turn, will strive to be that. I think Mansfield said, possibly in the introduction to Manliness, that the book was written not for men, but for smart women.