Sunday, December 28, 2003
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
is just one of the many quality books to which y'all should treat yourselves if you haven't already. It's by Roald Dahl, and it's a chapter book, and it is quite possibly the reason the world hasn't ended yet.
Anyway. Breaks mean books, and I have been reading. Here's a partial list, in hopes it'll inspire a few ideas for anyone who's been skulking about his or her home library looking for something:
I'd recommend
Ex Libris, by Anne Fadiman-- kind of snotty-intellectual, but it's so good, so very good, so sweet and cold it's the literary equivalent of sherbet.
Can't Take My Eyes Off of You, by Jack Lechner-- Guy watched 12 TVs for 7 days. The overstimulation comes through in his prose. Awesome book. Not suited to anyone who gets motion-sick.
Rumble Fish, by S.E. Hinton-- I'm pretty sure it has some Deep Meanings hidden in there somewhere, but it's still a nice story, and by the end you feel like you know Rusty-James. Maybe you do.
everything ever written by Rochelle Majer Krich (including but not limited to Angel of Death, Blood Money, Blues in the Night, Dead Air, Fertile Ground, Nowhere to Run, Shadows of Sin, and Speak No Evil, plus this really freaky one about Monopoly, of all things. Fair Game, maybe?)-- nice solid writing, nice solid murder mysteries. Plus, she's an English teacher (!)
The Circus Fire, by Stewart O'Nan-- heartbreaking and thorough account of Hartford's 1944 tragedy. The author has a very strong storyteller's voice, and if, like me, you find it to be confusing, it'll take you awhile to get through the book, but it's worth it. It's a brilliant and lovely book. Be even better if the man believed in commas. (good-natured grumble grumble)
Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer-- Mormon fundamentalism, an engaging look at Mormon history, and ponderings on the nature of religion, PLUS the angel Moroni assaulting Ron Lafferty's anus. Go for it, young'uns. (The book, not Ron Lafferty's anus. Said anus, along with the rest of its owner's body, is apparently currently under the protection of the Utah penal system. And believe me, my dad has already made every possible off-color comment about "the Utah penal system" and "Ron Lafferty's anus," so you might as well save yourself some time and not start.)
"The Regulations of Robbers," by Christina Accomando (quote marks in the title are the author's, not mine)-- not a "beach book," as Miss Thing at the library would put it, but it's got some interesting ideas, and it rightfully spotlights some women who in their time weren't given their due. Also, I'd just like to say that I am impressed with the ability of academic folk to state the obvious and act like it's some Vast Truth they've uncovered only after years of devoted study and toil. Phillis Wheatley was actually talking trash about slaveowners in all those poems about how much she liked being kidnapped from Africa, pressed into slavery, and forced to adopt her owners' religion? Wow! Who'd've thunk it?
I wouldn't recommend
Snobbery, by Joseph Epstein. I'm sure there's a very fine book underneath Mr. Epstein's stilted, smug, and rarefied prose, if you're patient enough to look. I wasn't.
The Five People You Meet In Heaven, by Mitch Albom. My mom gave it to me for Christmas, which should tell you just about everything you need to know. It's sappier than a Vermont forest in winter, more heartwarming than your average acid reflux disease, and so generally clean and wise and decent that the more misanthropic among us must surely suggest that it must be picking up hookers and gunning blow on the side. Can't say I'd recommend it. Can't say I didn't want to bawl like a baby at the end. Your call, sentimental suckers.
is just one of the many quality books to which y'all should treat yourselves if you haven't already. It's by Roald Dahl, and it's a chapter book, and it is quite possibly the reason the world hasn't ended yet.
Anyway. Breaks mean books, and I have been reading. Here's a partial list, in hopes it'll inspire a few ideas for anyone who's been skulking about his or her home library looking for something:
I'd recommend
Ex Libris, by Anne Fadiman-- kind of snotty-intellectual, but it's so good, so very good, so sweet and cold it's the literary equivalent of sherbet.
Can't Take My Eyes Off of You, by Jack Lechner-- Guy watched 12 TVs for 7 days. The overstimulation comes through in his prose. Awesome book. Not suited to anyone who gets motion-sick.
Rumble Fish, by S.E. Hinton-- I'm pretty sure it has some Deep Meanings hidden in there somewhere, but it's still a nice story, and by the end you feel like you know Rusty-James. Maybe you do.
everything ever written by Rochelle Majer Krich (including but not limited to Angel of Death, Blood Money, Blues in the Night, Dead Air, Fertile Ground, Nowhere to Run, Shadows of Sin, and Speak No Evil, plus this really freaky one about Monopoly, of all things. Fair Game, maybe?)-- nice solid writing, nice solid murder mysteries. Plus, she's an English teacher (!)
The Circus Fire, by Stewart O'Nan-- heartbreaking and thorough account of Hartford's 1944 tragedy. The author has a very strong storyteller's voice, and if, like me, you find it to be confusing, it'll take you awhile to get through the book, but it's worth it. It's a brilliant and lovely book. Be even better if the man believed in commas. (good-natured grumble grumble)
Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer-- Mormon fundamentalism, an engaging look at Mormon history, and ponderings on the nature of religion, PLUS the angel Moroni assaulting Ron Lafferty's anus. Go for it, young'uns. (The book, not Ron Lafferty's anus. Said anus, along with the rest of its owner's body, is apparently currently under the protection of the Utah penal system. And believe me, my dad has already made every possible off-color comment about "the Utah penal system" and "Ron Lafferty's anus," so you might as well save yourself some time and not start.)
"The Regulations of Robbers," by Christina Accomando (quote marks in the title are the author's, not mine)-- not a "beach book," as Miss Thing at the library would put it, but it's got some interesting ideas, and it rightfully spotlights some women who in their time weren't given their due. Also, I'd just like to say that I am impressed with the ability of academic folk to state the obvious and act like it's some Vast Truth they've uncovered only after years of devoted study and toil. Phillis Wheatley was actually talking trash about slaveowners in all those poems about how much she liked being kidnapped from Africa, pressed into slavery, and forced to adopt her owners' religion? Wow! Who'd've thunk it?
I wouldn't recommend
Snobbery, by Joseph Epstein. I'm sure there's a very fine book underneath Mr. Epstein's stilted, smug, and rarefied prose, if you're patient enough to look. I wasn't.
The Five People You Meet In Heaven, by Mitch Albom. My mom gave it to me for Christmas, which should tell you just about everything you need to know. It's sappier than a Vermont forest in winter, more heartwarming than your average acid reflux disease, and so generally clean and wise and decent that the more misanthropic among us must surely suggest that it must be picking up hookers and gunning blow on the side. Can't say I'd recommend it. Can't say I didn't want to bawl like a baby at the end. Your call, sentimental suckers.
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Corn, not potatoes
It's time for the annual pilgrimage to Iowa, and we leave tomorrow at seven in the morning, by which I mean eight or so by the time I've managed to rouse the dormiphilic dude whose room is next to mine. Boomer, your sheep are numbered. Anyway. Anticipate no updates from Schu for at least another week or so. I'm sure you're all crying in your eggnog.
And on that note, I'll leave you with the following inspirational quote from my mom:
"Do not buy the cheap, foaming, fragrant cleanser! Do not buy it! You may see Tilex for soap scum. It is shit! Do not buy it! You must buy Tilex for mildew! What if it is not there? Then you will buy NOTHING! Go forth and buy me adequate cleanser! Go! Go!"
It's time for the annual pilgrimage to Iowa, and we leave tomorrow at seven in the morning, by which I mean eight or so by the time I've managed to rouse the dormiphilic dude whose room is next to mine. Boomer, your sheep are numbered. Anyway. Anticipate no updates from Schu for at least another week or so. I'm sure you're all crying in your eggnog.
And on that note, I'll leave you with the following inspirational quote from my mom:
"Do not buy the cheap, foaming, fragrant cleanser! Do not buy it! You may see Tilex for soap scum. It is shit! Do not buy it! You must buy Tilex for mildew! What if it is not there? Then you will buy NOTHING! Go forth and buy me adequate cleanser! Go! Go!"
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Santa Cruz Beats Santa Claus (well, not literally. Or, if hypothetically literally, totally on accident, because who knew this wine was so strong? Well, I haven't drank since the kids were born. . .)
I love Christmas caroling. I loved it back in the day when it meant jamming seven kids, two cornets, two alto horns, a baritone, and two big-mama B flat tubas into a 1987 Honda Civic and having to open the sunroof so the tubas could stick out, then whining for hours about how cold it was even though we were all mashed in there like bananas in banana bread, and G-d help us if we ever wanted to get out, so we just spent the whole night driving up to fast-food take-out windows and treating the ladies and gents inside to horribly-rendered but unsurrendered versions of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "O Holy Cow, It's Really Frickin' Freezing," as Emma renamed it after we had to pour Mrs. Howard's hot tea over her lips to unstick them from her mouthpiece. It was her own fault. Girl has a lot of spit. And don't think Jayshawn didn't make the appropriate inappropriate comments about that already, thankyaverramuch, all you would-be wags in the audience.
I loved it later on, when Mr. Steyer drove his minivan, and so we could actually disembark, plus we didn't have to spend so much time discussing Alisha's need never ever ever again to get her hair straightened immediately before squishing into the backseat and near-killing us all with the noxious chemical fumes, which thankfully dispersed after about the first hour of the sunroof being open, but still dang near managed to straighten my innocent-bystander hair by proxy.
I loved going into restaurants and nursing homes and strip malls and playing, glad I'd memorized the music so I could watch the people watching us (there were always some), and I loved the free goldfish a pet store gave us one year, especially since it looked perfectly healthy but died before all of us were even out of the store, and I loved the lady in a steakhouse who stopped me as we were leaving and exclaimed, "That's an alto horn, isn't it?!" It wasn't, but it looks a lot like one, and so I only grinned "How did you know?" and oh, the stories she told, and the tunes she could have played. . .
I loved all that, and I loved the weather, and I loved the people, but most of all, I think I loved the fleeting nature of it all. You go, and you do the best you can, and then it's over and you're on to the next thing, and it doesn't matter what happened before, which was good, given that one time half of us were playing "Silent Night" and the other half somehow thought we'd agreed on "Joy to the World", but even after that, after all the next things, it stopped. It was a good time, and then it was over. It ends. I don't think there's a lot in life that's really like that. I broke my arm when I was eight. It still hurts in cold weather, or when too much changes at once, weather- or otherwise. I have been working outside the home since I was fourteen, and I'll be working till the day I die. A person has to show up, and keep showing up, every week. None of this "I had a great time! See you next year!", at least not if you want to get paid, which is nice once in a while. I have friends (despite what some of you may have heard). That's a commitment. You have to keep putting something in, and you have to keep coming back, or else everything starts to drift, and pretty soon what's drifting is y'all, and you're drifting apart.
That's fine. That's the way some things should be. It tests and tempers a person to have to live with these things, and if they weren't around, we'd probably all be selfish, crazy, or both. It's just nice to go caroling every once in a while, and be released from expectation and continuation, freed to do something too short-lived to be anything but real.
So it took me approximately fourteen billion years to find Easter's house, and on the way, I managed to make the acquaintance of several bemused cows and what could have been either a horse or a donkey or a cleverly-disguised CIA operative staking out the secret operations of the Farmhouse Five, who conspire every Saturday night to overthrow the government by-- gasp!-- playing poker, for real money , and not getting a license for that or for their shotguns or for the chile con queso Jerry's wife makes, which is so damn good it should be illegal.
Anyway, I got there ten minutes late, and I was still the fifth of twenty-one folks who came. I was also the only one who hit the carbonated beverages rather than the alcoholic ones, and accordingly was, three hours later, the only sober one singing, which made for a rousing rendition of "Siiiilent niiiii. Hooooly niiii. Ahhhh izcaaaam. Ahhhh izbriiiii. Rooooon some virgin so tennnnnnner an' miiiii. . . Sleeeeeeee pin hevvvvvvly peaHEEEEce. Sleeeee pin hevvvvly peeeece." It also made for some fun when the dog decided to park himself in front of Sean, who was sitting next to me, because of course the dog was wagging his tail, because the dog was enjoying what I heard was a very nice and delicate-yet-robust red, because Sean was not paying much attention to his wineglass on the floor, because Sean was at that time snockered, and Sean was mostly just still laughing at my earlier comment that I thought it was the Son's body we ate at Communion, not His mother's, but all this "tender" business was making me maybe rethink the whole idea. Anyway, the dog's tail was wagging rhythmically, and either because this is the dog of a choir director or just by sheer coincidence, this wagging tail was pretty much in time, and it was slapping my music on certain beats of each measure: "WHAP let us WHAP, WHAPpily WHAP, unto the WHAP, WHAP let us WHAP, WHAPpily WHAP, with one aWHAP." After awhile, we gave up on ushering the dog away, at least while everyone was still singing, and so we finally just started WHAPping with the dog (not to be confused with rapping with the dog, which would also have been cool but might have engendered the need for an explanation of the differences among "dog"s, "dawg"s, and "dogg"s). So that spread, and finally the whole choir was pounding on something (couch, floor, knee, neighbor) on every 1 and 4, and heck if we didn't actually sound better than usual. I was impressed.
This was, of course, at practice after our three-house caroling extravaganza. The first folks we visited did not seem happy to have us tromping all over their lawn, listened gamely for two songs, and then nodded and went back inside. The second couple praised us lavishly, which may or may not have had something to do with Bill's death-defying leap away from a car coming down the street mid-Adeste. Man tucked and rolled, and man had good cause. The third house we stopped at was that of a young, single woman who dang near Maced the all of us when she saw some stealthy posse assembling in her driveway. Easter kind of startled her by ringing the doorbell, but she very kindly elected not to crush his head in with the heavy-looking paperweight she was hefting when she answered, and she came outside to clap and sing along with "Deck the Halls (and Not Poor Easter, Fa La La La La La La La Lawsuit)." She came over to hang out with us later, after we aborted our plan to go sing other places and just headed back to Easter's to eat and drink and polish Advent songs.
A merry coming Christmas to all my Christians.
I love Christmas caroling. I loved it back in the day when it meant jamming seven kids, two cornets, two alto horns, a baritone, and two big-mama B flat tubas into a 1987 Honda Civic and having to open the sunroof so the tubas could stick out, then whining for hours about how cold it was even though we were all mashed in there like bananas in banana bread, and G-d help us if we ever wanted to get out, so we just spent the whole night driving up to fast-food take-out windows and treating the ladies and gents inside to horribly-rendered but unsurrendered versions of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "O Holy Cow, It's Really Frickin' Freezing," as Emma renamed it after we had to pour Mrs. Howard's hot tea over her lips to unstick them from her mouthpiece. It was her own fault. Girl has a lot of spit. And don't think Jayshawn didn't make the appropriate inappropriate comments about that already, thankyaverramuch, all you would-be wags in the audience.
I loved it later on, when Mr. Steyer drove his minivan, and so we could actually disembark, plus we didn't have to spend so much time discussing Alisha's need never ever ever again to get her hair straightened immediately before squishing into the backseat and near-killing us all with the noxious chemical fumes, which thankfully dispersed after about the first hour of the sunroof being open, but still dang near managed to straighten my innocent-bystander hair by proxy.
I loved going into restaurants and nursing homes and strip malls and playing, glad I'd memorized the music so I could watch the people watching us (there were always some), and I loved the free goldfish a pet store gave us one year, especially since it looked perfectly healthy but died before all of us were even out of the store, and I loved the lady in a steakhouse who stopped me as we were leaving and exclaimed, "That's an alto horn, isn't it?!" It wasn't, but it looks a lot like one, and so I only grinned "How did you know?" and oh, the stories she told, and the tunes she could have played. . .
I loved all that, and I loved the weather, and I loved the people, but most of all, I think I loved the fleeting nature of it all. You go, and you do the best you can, and then it's over and you're on to the next thing, and it doesn't matter what happened before, which was good, given that one time half of us were playing "Silent Night" and the other half somehow thought we'd agreed on "Joy to the World", but even after that, after all the next things, it stopped. It was a good time, and then it was over. It ends. I don't think there's a lot in life that's really like that. I broke my arm when I was eight. It still hurts in cold weather, or when too much changes at once, weather- or otherwise. I have been working outside the home since I was fourteen, and I'll be working till the day I die. A person has to show up, and keep showing up, every week. None of this "I had a great time! See you next year!", at least not if you want to get paid, which is nice once in a while. I have friends (despite what some of you may have heard). That's a commitment. You have to keep putting something in, and you have to keep coming back, or else everything starts to drift, and pretty soon what's drifting is y'all, and you're drifting apart.
That's fine. That's the way some things should be. It tests and tempers a person to have to live with these things, and if they weren't around, we'd probably all be selfish, crazy, or both. It's just nice to go caroling every once in a while, and be released from expectation and continuation, freed to do something too short-lived to be anything but real.
So it took me approximately fourteen billion years to find Easter's house, and on the way, I managed to make the acquaintance of several bemused cows and what could have been either a horse or a donkey or a cleverly-disguised CIA operative staking out the secret operations of the Farmhouse Five, who conspire every Saturday night to overthrow the government by-- gasp!-- playing poker, for real money , and not getting a license for that or for their shotguns or for the chile con queso Jerry's wife makes, which is so damn good it should be illegal.
Anyway, I got there ten minutes late, and I was still the fifth of twenty-one folks who came. I was also the only one who hit the carbonated beverages rather than the alcoholic ones, and accordingly was, three hours later, the only sober one singing, which made for a rousing rendition of "Siiiilent niiiii. Hooooly niiii. Ahhhh izcaaaam. Ahhhh izbriiiii. Rooooon some virgin so tennnnnnner an' miiiii. . . Sleeeeeeee pin hevvvvvvly peaHEEEEce. Sleeeee pin hevvvvly peeeece." It also made for some fun when the dog decided to park himself in front of Sean, who was sitting next to me, because of course the dog was wagging his tail, because the dog was enjoying what I heard was a very nice and delicate-yet-robust red, because Sean was not paying much attention to his wineglass on the floor, because Sean was at that time snockered, and Sean was mostly just still laughing at my earlier comment that I thought it was the Son's body we ate at Communion, not His mother's, but all this "tender" business was making me maybe rethink the whole idea. Anyway, the dog's tail was wagging rhythmically, and either because this is the dog of a choir director or just by sheer coincidence, this wagging tail was pretty much in time, and it was slapping my music on certain beats of each measure: "WHAP let us WHAP, WHAPpily WHAP, unto the WHAP, WHAP let us WHAP, WHAPpily WHAP, with one aWHAP." After awhile, we gave up on ushering the dog away, at least while everyone was still singing, and so we finally just started WHAPping with the dog (not to be confused with rapping with the dog, which would also have been cool but might have engendered the need for an explanation of the differences among "dog"s, "dawg"s, and "dogg"s). So that spread, and finally the whole choir was pounding on something (couch, floor, knee, neighbor) on every 1 and 4, and heck if we didn't actually sound better than usual. I was impressed.
This was, of course, at practice after our three-house caroling extravaganza. The first folks we visited did not seem happy to have us tromping all over their lawn, listened gamely for two songs, and then nodded and went back inside. The second couple praised us lavishly, which may or may not have had something to do with Bill's death-defying leap away from a car coming down the street mid-Adeste. Man tucked and rolled, and man had good cause. The third house we stopped at was that of a young, single woman who dang near Maced the all of us when she saw some stealthy posse assembling in her driveway. Easter kind of startled her by ringing the doorbell, but she very kindly elected not to crush his head in with the heavy-looking paperweight she was hefting when she answered, and she came outside to clap and sing along with "Deck the Halls (and Not Poor Easter, Fa La La La La La La La Lawsuit)." She came over to hang out with us later, after we aborted our plan to go sing other places and just headed back to Easter's to eat and drink and polish Advent songs.
A merry coming Christmas to all my Christians.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Articles the Dispatch has never run:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,952227,00.html
That's it. I'm renouncing my U.S. citizenship and moving to Great Britain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,952227,00.html
That's it. I'm renouncing my U.S. citizenship and moving to Great Britain.
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
My brother kicks butt.
Called home today at the unlikely hour of 9AM, looking to see if by chance anyone might be skipping school or work and also willing to do a driving-related Good Deed. No one was skipping, but I got an answer:
"Ehhhhh," unenthused a young man's voice.
"Hey, Boomer. What up?"
"Everything I've eaten in the past two days. Or possibly months. herk 'Scuse me."
Aww. Feel better, Boomer. Also, get off the computer and go help Mom with dishes.
Called home today at the unlikely hour of 9AM, looking to see if by chance anyone might be skipping school or work and also willing to do a driving-related Good Deed. No one was skipping, but I got an answer:
"Ehhhhh," unenthused a young man's voice.
"Hey, Boomer. What up?"
"Everything I've eaten in the past two days. Or possibly months. herk 'Scuse me."
Aww. Feel better, Boomer. Also, get off the computer and go help Mom with dishes.
Sitting in the library,
waiting for something to begin or end. I keep telling myself to study o-chem or read physics, but the finals-week frustration has settled in, and "work ethic" might as well be a sandwich condiment, or possibly an extra in a James Bond movie. Which is not to say I don't want to work, or that I'm not doing any work (don't worry, would-be mothers), just that I was hoping to get through five chapters of organic and ten of physics, but my brain is bending and it's only been three each. Argh. My compliments and condolences to everyone else who is preparing for final exams this week.
It was a mistake to look at chapter 12, because this is all about rotational motion, and accordingly features plenty of alphas and omegas and circles, so I just keep thinking about unrelated topics. I was walking home through some precipitation the other night, scurrying cross-campus with neither umbrella nor hat, since I don't believe in the former and had forgotten the other. So I was moving pretty quickly by the time I got within a block of where I live, and it was still raining, and I was still getting damp, and everything about it was so unremarkable that something amazing and unusual was bound to hit, hard, since I wasn't looking for it.
walkwalkwalkwalkwalk huh?
The faintest glimmer of motion from something I couldn't size up stopped me. Wait. What was that? I surveyed the aching heavens, but received only four plaintive drops on my glasses for my trouble. Looking left, I saw no one. At my turn right, only impassive and impossible solid buildings intruded, their bricks blurred, beyond comfort. Nothing. Where else-- down, and there it was.
The sidewalk at one juncture was tremendously uneven, one corner reaching up, the other sunk down, dignity and defeat combining to catch the wayward water falling. The puddle formed there must have been four inches deep, dark and shimmering and shifting. What I had seen repeated itself second by second: raindrops too slight to be visible, too weighty to be missable dropped into this pool, and their impact radiated outward in perfect roundnesses of varying size. Circle, circle, circle, the rain too light for my sight making me think, initially, that these energies rose from the puddle itself, stirring in damp discontent and curious creativity. I stood still and only watched, feeling old and awed and odd, awakened, now aware of my breath going in similar circles in and out, fading, renewed. Creature of water that I am, I feared for an instant that I'd tear at a corner and tear up, marveling at the sheer simple loveliness of it, but the moment passed, and a few seconds later, so did I, shaking the accumulated rain from my glasses and the accumulated richness from my eyes. I can still see it, though: sometimes on the bus, and sometimes in simple projectile motion, and sometimes in certain people-- circle, circle, circle, vital and vivid and reasssuring, rocking me.
I am very grateful for all of it, and for the rain.
waiting for something to begin or end. I keep telling myself to study o-chem or read physics, but the finals-week frustration has settled in, and "work ethic" might as well be a sandwich condiment, or possibly an extra in a James Bond movie. Which is not to say I don't want to work, or that I'm not doing any work (don't worry, would-be mothers), just that I was hoping to get through five chapters of organic and ten of physics, but my brain is bending and it's only been three each. Argh. My compliments and condolences to everyone else who is preparing for final exams this week.
It was a mistake to look at chapter 12, because this is all about rotational motion, and accordingly features plenty of alphas and omegas and circles, so I just keep thinking about unrelated topics. I was walking home through some precipitation the other night, scurrying cross-campus with neither umbrella nor hat, since I don't believe in the former and had forgotten the other. So I was moving pretty quickly by the time I got within a block of where I live, and it was still raining, and I was still getting damp, and everything about it was so unremarkable that something amazing and unusual was bound to hit, hard, since I wasn't looking for it.
walkwalkwalkwalkwalk huh?
The faintest glimmer of motion from something I couldn't size up stopped me. Wait. What was that? I surveyed the aching heavens, but received only four plaintive drops on my glasses for my trouble. Looking left, I saw no one. At my turn right, only impassive and impossible solid buildings intruded, their bricks blurred, beyond comfort. Nothing. Where else-- down, and there it was.
The sidewalk at one juncture was tremendously uneven, one corner reaching up, the other sunk down, dignity and defeat combining to catch the wayward water falling. The puddle formed there must have been four inches deep, dark and shimmering and shifting. What I had seen repeated itself second by second: raindrops too slight to be visible, too weighty to be missable dropped into this pool, and their impact radiated outward in perfect roundnesses of varying size. Circle, circle, circle, the rain too light for my sight making me think, initially, that these energies rose from the puddle itself, stirring in damp discontent and curious creativity. I stood still and only watched, feeling old and awed and odd, awakened, now aware of my breath going in similar circles in and out, fading, renewed. Creature of water that I am, I feared for an instant that I'd tear at a corner and tear up, marveling at the sheer simple loveliness of it, but the moment passed, and a few seconds later, so did I, shaking the accumulated rain from my glasses and the accumulated richness from my eyes. I can still see it, though: sometimes on the bus, and sometimes in simple projectile motion, and sometimes in certain people-- circle, circle, circle, vital and vivid and reasssuring, rocking me.
I am very grateful for all of it, and for the rain.
Monday, December 08, 2003
Because the Onion occasionally makes me laugh loud enough that people in the public computer lab start shooting me little nervous glances or glares or something:
http://www.onion.com/3948/news1.html
http://www.onion.com/3948/news1.html
Sunday, December 07, 2003
And another one!
Villanelle [how's that for being straightforward?] by W.H. Auden
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away?
Will time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Villanelle [how's that for being straightforward?] by W.H. Auden
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away?
Will time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Saturday, December 06, 2003
Hey! It's a villanelle! And it's not "Do Not Go Gentle"!
"The Waking," by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
G-d bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
"The Waking," by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
G-d bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Exciting Event of the Day
This should tell you something about the day.
So I'm checking our mailbox downstairs to see if we've got mail. The mailboxes are like the kind in big apartment buildings, where there's a whole wall of mailboxes, just the little boxes with glass windows in front, and you unlock your mailbox with your house key. To access our particular mailbox, a person kind of has to lean down and squint and peer around in there, or at least I do, because I'm relatively tall, and so here I am, leaning, squinting, and peering, and I hear somebody coming up kind of fast behind me. I weigh my options, wait, wait, then sidestep at the last minute, then witness what has got to be one of the most hilarious sights in the history of my dorm, rivaled only by that time last year when one of my roommate's buddies insisted she was sober, so sober, in fact, that "I could do a perfect cartwheel right now," and folk egged her on, and she attempted to do a cartwheel in about a three-foot-by-four-foot area and ended up crashing into the door and dang near wiping out a massive piece of cabinetry. But I digress.
Hopper goes flying spectacularly headfirst into the mailbox wall, hits the floor, and goes "Ouch! I missed." "Were you trying to headbutt me?" I enquire quizzically. "Well, yeah. Well, no. I wasn't really going to exert any force on you," he grins sheepishly, scrambling to his feet, rubbing his head. Aaaaand then it was time for the "you-should-be-glad-I-didn't-turn-around-and-break-your-nose" lesson, complete with nearly-full demonstration of why men should not sneak up from behind women without any warning. Namely, because we can kick your sweet lily ass. ("Well," DMiv opined in his exquisite way, "you can, at least.") So yeah. Hopper, you got lucky this time.
This should tell you something about the day.
So I'm checking our mailbox downstairs to see if we've got mail. The mailboxes are like the kind in big apartment buildings, where there's a whole wall of mailboxes, just the little boxes with glass windows in front, and you unlock your mailbox with your house key. To access our particular mailbox, a person kind of has to lean down and squint and peer around in there, or at least I do, because I'm relatively tall, and so here I am, leaning, squinting, and peering, and I hear somebody coming up kind of fast behind me. I weigh my options, wait, wait, then sidestep at the last minute, then witness what has got to be one of the most hilarious sights in the history of my dorm, rivaled only by that time last year when one of my roommate's buddies insisted she was sober, so sober, in fact, that "I could do a perfect cartwheel right now," and folk egged her on, and she attempted to do a cartwheel in about a three-foot-by-four-foot area and ended up crashing into the door and dang near wiping out a massive piece of cabinetry. But I digress.
Hopper goes flying spectacularly headfirst into the mailbox wall, hits the floor, and goes "Ouch! I missed." "Were you trying to headbutt me?" I enquire quizzically. "Well, yeah. Well, no. I wasn't really going to exert any force on you," he grins sheepishly, scrambling to his feet, rubbing his head. Aaaaand then it was time for the "you-should-be-glad-I-didn't-turn-around-and-break-your-nose" lesson, complete with nearly-full demonstration of why men should not sneak up from behind women without any warning. Namely, because we can kick your sweet lily ass. ("Well," DMiv opined in his exquisite way, "you can, at least.") So yeah. Hopper, you got lucky this time.
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Brief Sass, Some Schu, and the Fizzix Too
Sass and I have been doing physics problems, probably for too long, and I'm giddy with Gibbs free energy and conservation and conversation. We decided, walking cross-campus to where she lives (the Dorm of Doom), talking about brothers and balisongs (illegal in the great State of Ohio, along with any other kind of "gravity knife") and albino squirrels ("you know what I said, first time I saw that? Well, first I thought my eyes were playin tricks on me, because it was like 5, and the sun starts going down. But then? Then I said 'man, that squirrel is white. That is a white squirrel' ") and grass (she's a stone-cold killa of those green blades of filla), that her end-of-quarter physics course evaluation would have been much more articulate had she used the adjective "irritating" more often, since seven times over one paragraph just wasn't cutting muster. Then I turned thesaurus, and we brought up "ennuyent" and "pernicious" and "redoubtable," which wasn't strictly related but is a cool word, and after all the physics phun was over, I was headed to the main campus library to type a take-home final exam.
"Go to the Law Library," Sass suggested. "It's right across the street."
"The Law Library?"
"What, you want it to have a cool nickname, too? The LawBrary? Yeah, the Law Library. They got all these signs like 'Law Students Only!' and 'If you're not a law student, sign in here!' and 'Law students are the only ones among us who are truly human! Bow down!' and all that, but nobody checks, and nobody cares."
"Hmmm."
So here I am in the Law Library, disregarding all the KEEP OUT MERE MORTALS signs, doing the last few physics problems. When I went to sit down at one of the cubicles, the guy next cubicle over took one look at me and discreetly scooted his laptop case all the way under the table, despite the fact that I'm at least two feet away from it and it's not in my way. Mistrustful bastard. What would I want with your empty, scrawny-ass little 'puter pouch anyway? Maybe he senses I have not sipped the sweet nectar of Hardcore Academia Ambrosia. Yes, that must be it. I guess the others just aren't on to my thieving, scientific scent yet.
It's a beautiful building, though. The architecture is all clean lines somehow forming visual surprise, and from one end of the second floor, the other seems to stretch on indefinitely, producing the illusion of unlimited, expanding expertise. I kind of wish I could live here, sleeping under the tables or in the soft purple-backed chairs or even lying on the linoleum between the lines of books, shelf after shelf of specialized smarts standing sentinel for me, traversing the dawn, halting the sun in its storied sky to enquire "Who goes there, and in federal court, is [a bill of the essential ultimate facts upon which complainant rests its claim for relief] sufficient to invoke exercise of equity jurisdiction?" (The answer, incidentally, is YES, as set forth in Walling v. Alabama Pipe Co., 3 F.R.D. 159.) (source: Federal Digest, 1940, v. 31, pt. 2 (Federal Civil Procedure, 1-1260)).
I could claim a cubicle all my own, and sit and learn o-chem and psalms (sometimes I think they're the same thing) and study physics and let my cheap PaperMate pens hemorrhage their blue blood onto the desk surface by way of inabsorbent printer paper (artificial order doesn't suit me). I would be horrible, and happy, and intent and intense. If somebody brought me blankets, I could even be in tents, though it's likely the librarians would notice if I started building forts among the Florida Statutes. Perhaps they'd play castles with me, or call Cash and make him come get me.
Ah, but still, forever won't be coming (nor becoming) for a bit, and so I must stay, distracted, here, rotating theoretical wheels with angular speed 800 rev/min and trying not to stare too hard at the hypnotic pattern in the snap of upholstery backing the cubicle, squares of color darting in and out of drab dark and beige. I'll eat inertia, and breathe Bernoulli, and quaff QED (only from an approved beverage container, of course), and bid you now a fond and friendly adieu.
Adieu.
Sass and I have been doing physics problems, probably for too long, and I'm giddy with Gibbs free energy and conservation and conversation. We decided, walking cross-campus to where she lives (the Dorm of Doom), talking about brothers and balisongs (illegal in the great State of Ohio, along with any other kind of "gravity knife") and albino squirrels ("you know what I said, first time I saw that? Well, first I thought my eyes were playin tricks on me, because it was like 5, and the sun starts going down. But then? Then I said 'man, that squirrel is white. That is a white squirrel' ") and grass (she's a stone-cold killa of those green blades of filla), that her end-of-quarter physics course evaluation would have been much more articulate had she used the adjective "irritating" more often, since seven times over one paragraph just wasn't cutting muster. Then I turned thesaurus, and we brought up "ennuyent" and "pernicious" and "redoubtable," which wasn't strictly related but is a cool word, and after all the physics phun was over, I was headed to the main campus library to type a take-home final exam.
"Go to the Law Library," Sass suggested. "It's right across the street."
"The Law Library?"
"What, you want it to have a cool nickname, too? The LawBrary? Yeah, the Law Library. They got all these signs like 'Law Students Only!' and 'If you're not a law student, sign in here!' and 'Law students are the only ones among us who are truly human! Bow down!' and all that, but nobody checks, and nobody cares."
"Hmmm."
So here I am in the Law Library, disregarding all the KEEP OUT MERE MORTALS signs, doing the last few physics problems. When I went to sit down at one of the cubicles, the guy next cubicle over took one look at me and discreetly scooted his laptop case all the way under the table, despite the fact that I'm at least two feet away from it and it's not in my way. Mistrustful bastard. What would I want with your empty, scrawny-ass little 'puter pouch anyway? Maybe he senses I have not sipped the sweet nectar of Hardcore Academia Ambrosia. Yes, that must be it. I guess the others just aren't on to my thieving, scientific scent yet.
It's a beautiful building, though. The architecture is all clean lines somehow forming visual surprise, and from one end of the second floor, the other seems to stretch on indefinitely, producing the illusion of unlimited, expanding expertise. I kind of wish I could live here, sleeping under the tables or in the soft purple-backed chairs or even lying on the linoleum between the lines of books, shelf after shelf of specialized smarts standing sentinel for me, traversing the dawn, halting the sun in its storied sky to enquire "Who goes there, and in federal court, is [a bill of the essential ultimate facts upon which complainant rests its claim for relief] sufficient to invoke exercise of equity jurisdiction?" (The answer, incidentally, is YES, as set forth in Walling v. Alabama Pipe Co., 3 F.R.D. 159.) (source: Federal Digest, 1940, v. 31, pt. 2 (Federal Civil Procedure, 1-1260)).
I could claim a cubicle all my own, and sit and learn o-chem and psalms (sometimes I think they're the same thing) and study physics and let my cheap PaperMate pens hemorrhage their blue blood onto the desk surface by way of inabsorbent printer paper (artificial order doesn't suit me). I would be horrible, and happy, and intent and intense. If somebody brought me blankets, I could even be in tents, though it's likely the librarians would notice if I started building forts among the Florida Statutes. Perhaps they'd play castles with me, or call Cash and make him come get me.
Ah, but still, forever won't be coming (nor becoming) for a bit, and so I must stay, distracted, here, rotating theoretical wheels with angular speed 800 rev/min and trying not to stare too hard at the hypnotic pattern in the snap of upholstery backing the cubicle, squares of color darting in and out of drab dark and beige. I'll eat inertia, and breathe Bernoulli, and quaff QED (only from an approved beverage container, of course), and bid you now a fond and friendly adieu.
Adieu.
Monday, December 01, 2003
A, aa, and aaa on up.
Do you ever just get possessed by strange curiosity sometimes? The kind of curiosity that leads you to do things like very, very quietly and gradually, in small stints when he's not looking, pour your orange juice into your little brother's milk in order to see how much you can sneak in there before he notices? The kind of curiosity that inspires you to say, out loud, things like "Do you think the Crab Nebula would taste good with butter?", even when you know what the Crab Nebula is, and you're pretty sure that eating something that can't even be resolved into stars, let alone dinner, would probably have you reaching for the antacids sooner rather than later? The kind of curiosity that leads you to say "Sure! I want to volunteer to stay up really late at night talking to people who are extremely upset!", then scratch all your future plans because you realize all of a sudden that you really love talking to people who are extremely upset, because you can help them be less upset, and your previous attitude of "This is the hardest possible thing I can think of to do that needs to be done" is no kind of justification for a lifetime career choice?
Yeah. This post involves none of that kind of curiosity. I just started playing with the Internet, because that's the kind of thing that still amuses me as a computer neophyte.
So I went through and played with URLs featuring the letter A. http://www.a.com/ turned out to be sad nothingness. http://www.aa.com/, much to my anonymous dismay, is American Airlines. http://www.aaa.com/, needless to say, is home to the famed roadside assistors. http://www.aaaa.com/ has been bought by some huge conglomerate, most likely, and is languishing while it awaits development or sale. Ditto http://www.aaaaa.com/, except it involves, as I presume from its setup, a different conglomerate. Lather, rinse, repeat with http://www.aaaaaa.com/, with yet another conglomerate. http://www.aaaaaaa.com/ is what looks suspiciously like a French porn site. http://www.aaaaaaaa.com/, in the Shocking Surprise of the day, is owned by the same conglomerate that had the foresight to snatch up http://www.aaaaaa.com/. Past that, we recess once more into the sorry land of "Cannot find server" and "The page cannot be displayed," and since this isn't the Little Search Engine That Could, we're going to have to settle for that answer no matter how many "I think you can"s we utter.
So now that you've met your Stunning Investigative Journalism quota for the day. . .
Do you ever just get possessed by strange curiosity sometimes? The kind of curiosity that leads you to do things like very, very quietly and gradually, in small stints when he's not looking, pour your orange juice into your little brother's milk in order to see how much you can sneak in there before he notices? The kind of curiosity that inspires you to say, out loud, things like "Do you think the Crab Nebula would taste good with butter?", even when you know what the Crab Nebula is, and you're pretty sure that eating something that can't even be resolved into stars, let alone dinner, would probably have you reaching for the antacids sooner rather than later? The kind of curiosity that leads you to say "Sure! I want to volunteer to stay up really late at night talking to people who are extremely upset!", then scratch all your future plans because you realize all of a sudden that you really love talking to people who are extremely upset, because you can help them be less upset, and your previous attitude of "This is the hardest possible thing I can think of to do that needs to be done" is no kind of justification for a lifetime career choice?
Yeah. This post involves none of that kind of curiosity. I just started playing with the Internet, because that's the kind of thing that still amuses me as a computer neophyte.
So I went through and played with URLs featuring the letter A. http://www.a.com/ turned out to be sad nothingness. http://www.aa.com/, much to my anonymous dismay, is American Airlines. http://www.aaa.com/, needless to say, is home to the famed roadside assistors. http://www.aaaa.com/ has been bought by some huge conglomerate, most likely, and is languishing while it awaits development or sale. Ditto http://www.aaaaa.com/, except it involves, as I presume from its setup, a different conglomerate. Lather, rinse, repeat with http://www.aaaaaa.com/, with yet another conglomerate. http://www.aaaaaaa.com/ is what looks suspiciously like a French porn site. http://www.aaaaaaaa.com/, in the Shocking Surprise of the day, is owned by the same conglomerate that had the foresight to snatch up http://www.aaaaaa.com/. Past that, we recess once more into the sorry land of "Cannot find server" and "The page cannot be displayed," and since this isn't the Little Search Engine That Could, we're going to have to settle for that answer no matter how many "I think you can"s we utter.
So now that you've met your Stunning Investigative Journalism quota for the day. . .
