Beautiful by MercyMe (Lyrics)

I was on my way to school this morning flipping through radio stations as is my habit when I came across this song by MercyMe.  I'd never heard it before, but it absolutely brought tears to my eyes. So many of their songs do that.  They have a powerful gift for putting the right lyrics together. 

If you've read here lately or much, you know I've been floundering, struggling even more than usual with who I am, with what I'm worth, issues I always deal with.  This song spoke right to that.  I have no trouble seeing the beauty in people around me.  They, for the most part, sort of astound me.  They are always so much more capable and wonderful than they realize.  My students are perfect illustrations of this.  They absolutely shine. 

I never see myself this way, though.  This song nailed me.  It made me realize that the way I see my students is the way God sees me.  He sees potential.  He sees good.  He sees beauty and promise.  He sees worth.  I needed that reminded right now, maybe more than I've ever needed it before.  It was a lovely gift.  It made me feel beautiful, and that was nothing short of a miracle.

You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me....

Top Gear US?  Pardon my casual language, but WTF?  How can you have Top Gear without Jeremy Clarkson?  Without James May?  Without Richard Hammond?  And don't even tell me they've got an American Stig.  Somehow, just the thought of that makes me...twitch. 

Not everything translates.  Some of the joy of that show is in the wonderfully sarcastic and dry British humor of the show.  Much of it is in the interplay of personalities of the hosts.  I don't believe that you can just transplant that to a different network in a different country and get the same results just because you're going to be testing impossible cars. 

Sure, lots of US viewers probably won't know the difference. It's happened before.  There was the US version of Touching Evil.  The Office started in the UK, too.  Most US viewers might know Monty Python, and, if they're really on it, Are You Being Served, Absolutely Fabulous, or Fawlty Towers.  It's a shame more British shows aren't known here.  There are Keeping Up Appearances, Vicar of Dibley, Wire in the Blood, Hex, Being Human, and my personal and perennial favorite, Dr. Who.

I wish people would watch these in their "native form" rather than feel as though they have to alter them.  I don't know why we do that.  Other countries pretty much have to watch whatever we send them; why don't we try to expand our horizons some, too?  It's not like they're going to be speaking another language or something (although, really, even if they were...would a subtitle kill you?  I mean...really?), and as everybody knows, a remake is almost never even as good as the original, much less surpassing it. 

I will probably check out the new US version just to give it a chance, but I'm not expecting anything.  I don't see how they can have episodes as epic as the guys' camping trip last week with the homemade travel trailers or the convertible people carriers or the tractor races.  I'll keep mine with the Union Jack flying behind it if it's all the same to you.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for that accent.

Emily Dickinson Again

Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind -
Thy windy will to bear!

Isn't it funny how a piece of a poem can grab you suddenly? This one spoke to me today.

My New Motto

"Run mad as often as you like, but do not faint."  ~ Jane Austen

Once again, I turn to Jane Austen for wisdom.  Funny how she has the right words so frequently.  I told somebody myself yesterday, "Bend.  Don't break."  I think that's what she's saying here.  That's what I have to find a way to do.  There are ways to restore balance, to reclaim something for myself from the trainwreck everything has become.  I can do this.  I think, although I hesitate to say it lest I tempt the gods to strike me again, that I've hit the bottom.  Now it's time to push my way back up.

The Fall of Icarus

I love this painting by Brueghel.  I always have.  Poor Icarus falls, probably screaming, to his death, wings disintegrating, wax running, and the farmer continues to plow, the shepherd tends his sheep, the ship sails on.  His troubles do not trouble the world.  He makes no mark on anyone, not even in his moment of greatest distress.  It's a perfect model for the way the world works.

I feel Icarus' pain today.  My wings are coming apart, and I can see the water rushing closer and closer.  Impact is imminent.  I know it's going to close over my head, fill my screaming mouth, and that will be the end.  I will just disappear.  There will be nothing to mark my passage except a feather or two floating on the apathetic waves.  They'll suit somebody else up with wax and festive plumage and toss them high, be amused as they circle and dart, and then yawn when the inevitable occurs. 

They're pulling me apart piece by piece.  I wish I could summon up a righteous fury or soar again on a draft of renewal, but all I can think of is that nothing I do makes any difference to anyone in any way at all...it's all just feathers caught in currents, spiraling into an endless ocean of salt and senselessness.  

Distant Thunder

I'm finally home. I had a very tasty Italian sub thing Stouffer makes and some Vinegar and Salt potato chips (my favorite flavor along with Dill Pickle...which, I guess is really more or less the same thing).  I bought some groceries so I don't have to open my pantry and stare into the vast emptiness before grabbing a bag of animal crackers for lunch again. 

Now, I'm taking a few minutes to unwind.  In the distance, I can hear the sound of thunder.  It's been a long time since we had a good thunderstorm.  I hope it comes on and gives us some rain tonight.  It would be nice to sleep to the sound of falling rain, and we really need the water.  

I'm going to bed soon.  I'm tired.  Yesterday and today were 12+ hour days at school, and tomorrow will be, too.  I'm going to take a Mental Health Day soon just to catch up on sleep and grading.  Maybe if I sleep tonight to the sound of this oncoming weather then I will somehow soak up some extra rest.

Appropriate, I Thought

Yeah.  You're in the right place.  Still me, jangly cap with the bells intact.  I get tired of things quickly as far as blog decorative details.  I finally found a blog template I can honestly say that I like, though.  It feels appropriate for me.  It's the closest I've come to one I think I'll keep.  I just wish the body was dark.  I like light print on a dark background.  If I were enterprising, I might be able to tweak it and get that effect, but right now, I'm going to leave it as is.

With regret, I also got rid of my Japanese bell.  I love my funin, but I got tired of the sound and of having to cut the sound off every time I came to the site.  If you found it restful, I apologize for it going away.  I just needed a change.  I still have my real ones hanging around the house and outside, but the one on the blog ultimately got on my nerves.

Oh.  And beware the sheep at the bottom.....

Worn Out

I've never seen this one by Van Gogh before.  I stumbled across it on the web today, and it moved me powerfully.  When I saw it and the title of it, I said to myself, "My God.  That's me.  That's me and everybody I know right now." 

The other day at lunch, the conversation turned to fatigue and all the things we aren't getting done.  Work stuff was mentioned, how behind we are with this task or the other even as more is being added, but I was astonished by how much even the simplest functions of everyday life are being laid aside because everyone is tired and nobody has any time to do them anymore.  One woman said she told her husband they were going to need to hire somebody to clean their house because she just couldn't do both school and the house right now.  Everybody sitting there made sympathetic noises about the derelict condition of our homes although few of the rest of us will be able to hire help to rectify it. 

We all talked about the TV/Couch/Sleep phenomenon.  I don't know that I've seen the end of any movie I started watching later than 6:00 pm in three months.  I come home, put in a favorite to soothe me or catch one on TCM that I love, and the next thing I know, Yoda (my cat) is leaning over me sort of patting me on the cheek with an insistent paw because it's 2:00 am and she's ready to go to bed in the big bed and stop this silly napping on a crowded and narrow couch business.  I get up, stumble to take the almighty Topamax, and go sleep in the bed for three hours.  I hate this.  I'm not the only doing it, either, from the conversation at the table.  I might be the only one with a cat waker-upper, but I'm not the only one collapsing on the couch.

How has this happened to us all?  How has life become this?  I get up at 5:00, stagger into a shower, wake myself up with cold caffeine, teach my heart out while trying to juggle a million other little parts of my school day, work three or four hours after the last bell trying to catch up on everything I couldn't do during the hours allotted, and stagger home again to fall face down.  How am I supposed to find a life in all that?  Because, ladies and gentlemen, this isn't one.  Is it?

That's what I'm asking myself lately.  I feel more like a member of a cloistered order, Educatorius Sanctificatatum (and no, I don't know any Latin, so if I said something funny, laugh to yourself and leave me alone), than I do whatever it is I really am.  I rarely see my friends.  My house is almost literally falling down around me.  My family looks at me nervously and out of the corners of their eyes to see when I'm going to drop from sheer exhaustion.  My doctor is taking samples of blood to start arcane rituals and analyses.  I wouldn't know a date if one walked up to me, slung me over its shoulder, and carted me away.  Truth be told, it's been so long since I have even had time to think about romance, even a silly little crush or interest in someone, that it makes my heart sad.  So I ask again.  Is this what life is supposed to be?  And if it's not, how do I make it that thing?

It's very easy for somebody to say, "Run away!  Quit your job and be free!  Cast off your chains and fly!"  But there's the mortage.  And the hospital bills.  And the government who was so nice to pay for my graduate education and would like me to pay them back now.  And food.  Oh yeah.  Food.   Let me not forget that.

I look at this man in his chair and I can feel the tension in him, even as he rests for a moment there, hands covering his face, blocking out the world for a moment.  I just bet you his head hurts.  I know just how.  Like an icepick right through the eye.  Maybe a hot tear rolls down his cheeks.  Maybe his teeth grind against each other and a little noise he can't quite stop escapes the back of his throat.  He's given everything he has, and, at the end of the day, despite that old cliche about your all being enough, he's found out the truth behind that:  that most of the time, it never really is.  Somebody almost always wants just a little more than you've given, just a little more than you have. 

I wonder if he found a way to get up from that chair and go on.  That's the painting I'd really love to see just now.  God, if Van Gogh did that one, too, I think I'd scrape up the purchase price for the original and carry it with me everywhere I go.

On Being President

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." ~ Douglas Adams

Upgrading

I went in fasting this morning to get some bloodwork done, and after I stumbled out of the clinic and drove through Chick-Fil-A to get some juice and a biscuit so I wouldn't be quite so goofy anymore, I went to our local OfficeThing to take care of a massive purchase order and to get some stuff for myself with a reward certificate from their teacher cash-back program. 

I have been using Windows 7 on the new laptop the school got for us, and I really like it.  My home desktop came with Vista, and it has been a mostly crap experience.  I haven't had many of the serious issues I have heard others complain of, but I haven't used that machine very much because of the little things.  They've added up to my using my netbook instead when the screen is larger in the back and the printer is actually attached to the desktop in the back.  I also need 7 to get all the Home Networking stuff set up because Vista has never been able to manage that well.  There has always been something...off...with it. 

After getting my 600 folders with my purchase order (don't ask), I checked on upgrading my netbook to 7 (no go), and came home to upgrade the desktop.  Now, something like nine hours later, I'm still trying to finish it up.  I really hate doing upgrades.  It's ridiculous.  Nothing should take this long.  The OS upgrade itself took about three hours.  I just gave up and went to take a nap.  It did its thing and I got some much-needed rest.  When I got up, it was waiting for the product key.  It was much less frustrating that way.

I should have done that for my attempt at upgrading Office, too.  I wanted to upgrade 2007 to 2010, but after three attempts, I'm quitting.  There's some error that is probably going to require a clean install and I'm just not up for that tonight.  Some things are too much, you know, and 2007 has been a stable and good version for me.  It's just frustrating that these things can't be easier. 

I still have some cleanup work to do on the desktop.  Now that 7 is running, some programs I needed for Vista are redundant, so I want to uninstall them.  I also need to "tweak it out" like I always do and get my home network set up to see if I can share files easily between my work laptop and my big desktop in the back.  That will make life tremendously easier for me. 

Days like today reinforce my knowledge that I could never be a tech.  Just the waiting alone would do me in.  The silly error messages added on top of that would have me smashing stuff right left and center.  I'm glad there are people out there who can do this stuff all day every day, but I'm not one of them.

Every Girl's Crazy About a Sharp Dressed Man

I was cruising around Etsy today and I saw the Forage line of handmade bowties from somethingshidinghere.  I had to smile.  I am a fan of the bowtie.  I just think they look....I don't know...nifty.  For some reason, I think nifty is probably the word I want here. 

Yeah, guys in ties are nice.  And in suits, lovely ties are appropriate and expected.  However, there's something about a guy who can really, actually, and truly pull off a bowtie with aplomb that makes me take notice. 

Very few guys go with this option anymore.  I, not being a guy, don't know why exactly.  I would suppose if I had to venture a guess that perhaps it's a little old-fashioned. This would be a plus for me, but you know I write with fountain pens and frequently choose antiques instead of modern things.  Somebody noted earlier this week that I had made all the fonts being projected on my on-screen bellringers look like old-school manual typewriters.  She called me an "old soul," and she's right.

It also looks to me like it's a real pain in the backside to tie, too, maybe even moreso than the traditional Windsor knot.  But when they're on and done, they just have so much more personality to them than the regular ties that everybody else wears.  I also would think they'd be better because they wouldn't constantly be in the way of whatever it was a person was trying to do.  Who knows?  Maybe this isn't an issue?  You can tell how much I know about men's clothing here...

There will be those who say that bowties are the provence of older men.  I can refute this with a single image.  Voila.  Looks good on him, doesn't it?  It is just a little disturbing to me that I've come to like this angular and antic Brit in his bowtie as much as I have. He is, after all, approximately six years old, I think....

Perhaps my fondness for the garment comes from the gentleman, you suggest.  (Looks at the photo a moment)  Perhaps.... 

(Snicker)

Can You Spare a Square?

This is what we've been reduced to:  an entire hallway of 14 educated professionals with higher degrees rationing the two rolls of toilet tissue we're allotted every day in our staff bathroom.  Toilet tissue, quite ironically, has become more valuable than copy paper, and that was already more precious than gold. 

There is nothing that makes you feel your lack of worth in the universe than dashing down the hall in the five minutes you have between classes to take care of vital personal business to find that you can't even do that because there is no toilet tissue.  It's absurd.  It's depressing. 

We were also told that if they found any rolls in our rooms that had been taken for kids to use as Kleenex, they would confiscate them.  Now, I have always bought Kleenex out of my own money, so this doesn't apply to me, but I find the idea of turning our cleaning staff into TP Police ridiculous.  I makes me absolutely rebellious, in fact.

Tomorrow, I'm fighting back.  I'm taking my own supplies to school.  I'm not living like this any more.  This will be just one more thing I have to buy and take of my own, I guess.  Pretty soon, I suppose I'll be paying the light bill there, too.

Rain and Migraines

I've had a migraine off and on all day today.  I tried ignoring it for most of the morning, but that's a little like ignoring a two-ton, bright orange monster pirouetting on ice skates while it blows one of those canned-air horns.  Not something exactly easy to overlook, really, once it decides it wants your attention....

By the time fifth period got going, I was in serious pain.  I took a Maxalt and started "the wait."  Either the medicine will get ahead of the pain or nothing will do any good and I will simply have to long for a dark, cool place to be very still until the pain stops or I die.  Fifth period finally left for lunch, and I just stayed in the room.  We are not, technically, supposed to do that, but I couldn't stand even the fluorescent lights in the hall, so I knew going outside and into the noise of the cafeteria would have been like an icepick through the eye.  I told my next-door neighbor where I was going to be and slunk back into the cool, quiet darkness of my classroom to consume my meager lunch. 

After school, we had a planning session for one of the grade level teams I'm on for the new 9wks.  I think we got a lot done, and I feel like a burden has been lifted from me.  It's great when we can stuff accomplished.  The headache continued to plague me, but I didn't take another big pill.  Even after all this time, I still avoid them as much as possible.

On the way home, the sky was lit up with lightning.  It was good to see.  I got just outside of town when the bottom fell out of it.  I put my flashers on, slowed down to about 40 and pressed on.  I needed to get home.  I'm so grateful for the rain, even though I suspect that the changing atmospheric pressure is part of what's causing my head pain.  It's worth it not to have to worry so much about wildfire. 

I'm about to go to bed.  I need sleep, and maybe all the stupid crossed wires in my poor head will reset if I get a little extra.  Tomorrow, all the dust will be washed out of the air, and I can try it all again.

Dark Phase

Too much lately.  This is not a happy place.  Click away if you're looking for a rhapsody on autumn sun or one of my tried-and-true geek philosophical excursions. 

My uncle is in the hospital.  They're not exactly sure what's wrong with him.  I hate that.  Why the hell don't they know?  Why is it that as I've gotten older it seems that this is what I hear more and more frequently whenever anyone I know has to deal with medical science?  Was it always this way and I didn't notice?  As I child, I think we're taught to trust that medicine has all the answers, that they are omniscient.  I'm beginning to wonder just how often they're playing "the blind men and the elephant" with things behind that clean white surface.  Of course, that may be all anybody can do, and I'm grateful for the care he receives, but it's frustrating.  Very frustrating.

I need some big happy thing.  Some big stupid impossible cinematic happy thing.  Right now, my joy is very far away.  I've found out bad things about people I truly thought well of, been told a story about a woman who finally found love at the age of 65 only to have her husband die two weeks after the marriage, and am watching a situation I care about a great deal spiral out of control.  Grades are due tomorrow and I'm so far away from having things ready to finish them out that it's almost a comedy routine. Tomorrow will start another week where every human imaginable wants me to be in three places at once.  Would that I could clone myself or that I came in triple form..... 

I am trying to combat this as best I can with little joys, with small pleasures, but increasingly, they are not enough.  This is no eclipse; this is shift to the dark phase of the moon.  One of my friends asked me if I wanted to talk about it.  I laughed.  What is there to say?  Why should I burden her with it?  I'm tired.  I have things going on that I don't know how to resolve.  I'm not going to make somebody else carry this when it's so heavy for me.

Poem

The gods fall

no matter how grand and gilded the idol

or how costly the sacrifice laid

before the high pedestal.

Underneath those shining layers of

carefully-applied veneer

hide crumbling clay feet.

He will let you down.

There is no divinity in that form

you’ve been adoring

no salvation

in those powerful alabaster arms

you’ve lovingly caressed.

If you could see the reality

instead of the dream-blind glamor

the whole hollow thing

would tumble into the light

to cower there ashamed

naked, cracked, rotted, empty,

the incarnation of nothing more than

sawdust, cobwebs, broken promises,

and foolishness.

Think for Yourself

To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list.  ~John Aikin

Banned Book Week just ended yesterday, and today there is a notice in a North Carolina paper about a church that wants to burn all other versions of the Bible except for the King James version and "evil" books by Billy Graham, etc., to cleanse the world of "satanic literature."  I don't know whether to cry, scream, or sit down and just put my head in my hands and give up.

Censorship of books, wherever it happens, is wrong.  If you don't want to read it, leave it alone.  If you don't want your children to read it, teach them your beliefs and trust that they will leave it alone, too.  Don't presume, however, that you have the right to tell somebody ELSE how to think about things.  There is danger in that.  That's how dictatorships get started.  That's how dystopian literature becomes reality.

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, said, "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."  I think that those who seek power for the sake of power, those 1984-esque  people who are not mere myth or paranoid fantasy, know this.  Whether they are wearing the mask of religious fervor or political righteousness, the people who take away the first book are setting a precedent, knocking over the first domino that will allow the others to go, too. 

Maybe you don't personally care about that first book.  Maybe you don't know anything about it.  Maybe you do, but you don't like to look at it.  Maybe it blatantly offends you, in fact.  Be careful, though.  Once somebody has been able to reach out their hand and take away that book because "it offends," something you hold dear might come under fire next.  It's a very slippery slope when value judgments are made on the basis of something so subjective.


I'm not saying there are no lines and no limits ever.  I don't think that your freedom should ever be taken at the cost of someone else.  Things like child pornography and the language of hate are always harmful to others.  I know there are those who disagree with this and say there should be no regulation at all, but I can't believe that the original ideas of free speech included a protection for things that damage others, use them and make them less than human.  


Therein lies the distinction between the books that people are trying to ban and these other things to me.  The literature is trying very much to explore what humanity is, dig down through the layers of this life, this world, this condition of being alive, even the bits that are not pleasant.  Perhaps especially the bits that aren't pleasant.  Some of the literature that people have tried to ban most frequently takes hold of some of life's toughest situations and looks them directly in their blood-shot eyes, tries to explain them honestly, tries to force people to look at the ugliness and brutality that all-too-frequently creeps into every life despite the most careful steps taken in prevention.

I think that is why those who want to ban these hate them so much.  It makes them face realities they want to hide, makes them realize that not all the gated communities in the world can keep pain away forever.  These books are the anti-TV, the anti-pop music.  "Books can be dangerous.  The best ones should be labeled 'This could change your life,'"  said Helen Exley.  Change is always hard.  We're creatures of inertia, comfortable in our little ruts.  Let's hope we can find a way to be less fearful of alternate ideas, though, before we wake up and find that they have all slipped through our fingers when we weren't paying attention.

Shameless Luxury

Today, I put supper in the crockpot and went outside.  The weather was splendid.  I sat in my lawnchair under the tulip poplars and the chestnut tree with my iPod and my Kindle and read for hours.  The air was soft and golden, slipping through the leaves in whispers and scented with the faintest tinge of distant wood smoke.  If someone had set out to create a perfect autumn day, they couldn't have done better than today. 

Days like this make me grateful for this ramshackle old house out here in the country.  I may not have much, but on these great gilded days, what I do have is more than enough.

Typography

I love typography. I find the art of words fascinating. Words and quotes becoming beautiful, the shapes of the letters themselves becoming the focus, is something I never get tired of looking at. Today, I was cruising through Etsy and looking at all the creative quotes and recreations of those sometimes familiar lines. I found probably half-a-dozen things I would like to have to hang up somewhere.

I've often wished I knew how to use something like Adobe Photoshop better or other graphic design software that would allow me to make these pieces myself. Maybe someday I'll have time to sit down and teach myself or take a class. Until then, I'll enjoy the fruits of talented others.

(This print can be found here on Etsy in MursBlanc's shop.  All the Zodiac signs are represented there.  This one just happens to be mine.)

Raising Arizona chase scene

This is one of my all-time favorite scenes in any movie. I laugh non-stop throughout. I don't know why it gets to me. I think it's a combination of Cage's cartoon character expressions and the silly stuff that happens. Every time he slings his head with those pantyhose flying around, I can't stop snickering. By the time the teenage clerk comes out with that 44, I'm hysterical. The Cohen brothers have a flawless sense of characterization and the ridiculous that I appreciate.

Pandora

 written today

Pandora

~ for L.

They formed you with divine hands

gave you that deceitful-lovely box

gently patted you on the shoulder

and set you on the wide way –

There was no way to foresee

it was all going to go

so horribly wrong

Nothing to tell you

the same hands

that gently smoothed the last errant curls

loaded these hellish horrors

inside such delicate elegance

and smiled as you left

the home of the gods

After the maelstrom

after the swirling darkness is over

after the thousand tears and stings

Get up.

No matter what else

the capricious fates may have intended

your name still means

All Gifts

All Good Things

Lift up that head

even though it hurts

even though your wounds

are fresh and raw

Dare to go back to that betrayer-box

look inside

Even in this darkened world

that tiny fragment cannot be extinguished

There at the bottom it sings

unconquerable

waiting for you

Reach down your hand

wrap those tired cold fingers

around that healing star

and claim Hope

as your own.

All Things Come Full Circle

For the first time since I left here more than ten years ago, I packed my bags, ate lunch with my family, told them bye, and drove north into the fading sunlight of an autumn afternoon to Starkville and Mississippi State University.  It was more than a little surreal.  As things will do, some things have changed.  Roads have broadened, rerouted, become four-laned instead of the winding, narrow, two-lane log-truck traps I remembered so well.  Most things, though, remain constants.  Noxapater is still a tiny speed-trap dot forcing everybody to slow down to 25 mph briefly.

As I drove, it was a little odd knowing that at the end of this trip, there was no dorm, no tidy Cotton District apartment waiting.  The shadow of the past, of that life where I used to belong here, was silently insisting that there was homework to do, that there were groceries to be bought, when I arrived.  Instead, there's a hotel room with two double queen beds, a fairly posh little living room area, and a two-day, grown-up job writing curriculum.

Tomorrow I'm planning to go walk around campus and see what's changed there.  I'm sure these moments of deja vu will continue, but I want to take my camera and get some shots of what of MSU that I knew remains.  Already all the dorms I lived in except for the apartments are gone.  Probably that's as it should be, too, but it will interesting to see what is still here and what has gone the way of my homework and midnight trips to Wal-Mart.

Blues Brothers

I watched The Blues Brothers in a 30th Anniversary celebration last night at our local theater.  Even though I must have seen that movie countless times on DVD and TV, I never get tired of it.  It's a perfect combination of slapstick, wit, and music.  I don't know what part of it appeals to me most.

Like everybody does who likes it, I have favorite lines.  The classic "We're on a mission from God" shows up with me and my friends, and I also love "Our Blessed Lady of Acceleration, don't fail us now!"  One day, if I ever get better with my figural ceramics, I have a piece in my head that is going to be a statue of Our Blessed Lady of Acceleration.  It's going to be a multi-media piece.  There are others, too, some of them spectacularly impolite. It's hilarious.

Belushi and Aykroyd are a perfect match.   The wild mania of Belushi and the straight man of Aykroyd team so neither overwhelms the other.  Both were also wise enough to let the true stars of the show, the musicians, shine, too, because The Blues Brothers is as much a movie about the roots of American music as it is anything else.

I've always thought of it as a love letter to the evolution of America's music.  It starts with gospel, touches country, Motown, pure blues, Chicago blues, and ends with rock.  Other styles are present, too, but those great touchstones of American music are present there.  Knowing that Aykroyd especially is such an aficionado of music, particularly blues, makes me think this film must have been special.  I think I've read somewhere that when The Blues Brothers was made, most of the artists who were in it were actually in sort of a decline in their musical careers at the time, and the movie revived interest in them.  It's hard to believe that anybody could ever forget John Lee Hooker, Aretha, or Ray Charles, but if that is true, then it's just another thing about this movie that I love.

Funny, musical, and loaded with everybody in the world from Carrie Fisher and Frank Oz to Stephen Spielberg and Pee Wee Herman, The Blues Brothers is always going to be one of my favorites.  I'm thinking of watching it again tonight, in fact, just to see some of my favorite scenes again since I was so very tired at the end of a long school day yesterday.  After all, here at home, I can sing along with my favorite musical numbers and clap when the Illinois Nazis get theirs at the end....

Not Paying Enough Attention

I found out recently that a friend of mine is in trouble.  It was one of those face/palm moments.  Once I knew it, I could see the warning signs in the past few months flashing out at me like they were limned in neon, and I wanted to pound my head on the nearest hard, flat surface for being an oblivious idiot.  How is it that this friend was going through this thing, and I didn't know it?

I can make excuses.  I can tell you that life for me lately has been a delicate highwire act composed of equal parts of hysteria and furious motion.  I could mention that I have, in many ways, created a shell of blindness to enshroud myself so I don't see some of the things that are upsetting me most in my day-to-day world. 

Really, though, I can't feel that there is any excuse.  I don't know that there is a single thing I could have done for my friend or even can do now, but I should at least have seen. The not-seeing, the closing my eyes, is unforgivable.  I've got my eyes squeezed so tightly shut in self-defense that I'm missing important things.  It's got to change.

Fortune

I always keep the fortunes from the fortune cookies when I go out to a restaurant that has them.  I keep them in a pretty little paper box in a desk in my bedroom.  I realized today when I was taking a handful of them out of my wallet to drop in just how many of them have accumulated.  They differ in color, size, font.  Some have silly little expressions on them.  One or two have a little smiley face along with their dollop of wisdom.  Most give you lucky numbers and teach you a word of Chinese.  Today's offered that nangua means "pumpkin."

I'm not exactly sure when I started tucking these little slips of paper into my purse instead of leaving them along with the debris of the meal on the table, just another thing to be cleared away after I leave.  There is something charming about them that made me want to take them along.  Maybe it that they generally offer something positive (although I have had one or two weird ones that are ambiguous).  Maybe it's the whimsy of the thing, the kitsch of them.  I am, after all, a sucker for kitsch.

I think more than either of those things, though, it's the fact that these become artifacts of moments for me.  I always go to Chinese restaurants with my family or my friends, so we're opening the cookies together, laughing over the advice inside, trying to pronounce the words, trying to figure out if the "magic cookies" have truly figured us out or not.  They are mementos of happy times, and although as I look at this little box now, I cannot remember when exactly I split open that tan confection that told me "If the world seems cold, kindle a fire to warm it," or "You'll have all sorts of chances to make a happy encounter," I know it must have been preceded by pleasant conversation and togetherness.

Someday, I will think of some kind of craft project or something to use these in an interesting way.  Until then, I will just keep adding them to their little box periodically and stirring them with my finger and remembering.  It's just another eccentricity, I suppose.  However, if it hurts no one and makes me happy, where is the harm?

Johannes Cabal

"...but the day was otherwise as good as any day without a large-calibre handgun can reasonably be..."  ~ Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard

Yesterday, I finished the second Johannes Cabal book, Johannes Cabal the Detective.  I am in love with this series and its hero.  The writing seems to be getting better with each installment, and it is witty and fun.  It takes place in an alternate-history sort of world, what is currently being classified as "steampunk," a title I'm not all that fond of, but it's done so well that it's not intrusive with its combination of gadgets and magic as that genre can sometimes be.

Johannes himself is a modern-day Faustus, one of my all-time favorite archetypes in literature, and his story is slowly being unfolded for the reader in each volume.  He is a profoundly motivated person who is seeking to do what he thinks is the highest good but who finds himself doing truly heinous things in the process.  While that sounds very angsty, and at times it can get there, it is all done with flair and a great deal of humor that keeps it from being oppressive.

I also spot elements of influence from great sources I love.  I see Frankenstein there so clearly, the great Gothics written large.  In fact, since I have just been teaching Gothic literature and am just about to teach Frankenstein again this year, maybe I was more aware of that genre than I usually would be, but I saw so many parallels between Johannes and his motivations and Victor. 

Johannes also reminds me just the tiniest bit of another magic user I'm fond of, Harry Dresden, except Cabal has none of Dresden's qualms about the use of deadly force. He is in every way just as deadly.  I love the scenes of conflict between him and the Devil in the first book.  Even funnier are his methods of dealing with those who tick him off.  Let's just say you don't want to wind up on his list....

I can't wait for the next one.  It's so nice to have a new author to enjoy.  I don't know when the next one will come out since I think Johannes Cabal the Detective just came out this year, but one hopes Mr. Howard is a quick writer....  I don't think Cabal will stand for anything less, somehow.

What Were You Thinking?

Much in the news recently was Terry Jones whose church was going to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 with a mass burning of the Koran.  When I first heard of this, I was, as I seem so often to be when I hear of horrifying things, in my car on my way to work. 

My first thought was disbelief.  How can anybody believe this kind of behavior solves anything anymore?  How can anybody believe that this sort of thing is what God wants his people to be doing?  I read up on the situation a little, and Jones claims it's all an attempt to get the NY imam in charge of opening an Islamic center near Ground Zero to talk to him.  

I wonder if it ever occurred to him that this behavior might be counterproductive.  The Koran is venerated in Islam, and the proper treatment of it is tantamount.  Why would any Muslim even want to come to talk to someone who would threaten to debase it?  It would be like someone crawling up on the altar of Jones's church and using the bathroom there.

God never called for Christians to go ye therefore and be offensive to everybody around them.  He never told his people to walk out into the peoples of the world and slap them in the face rudely, act superior, and deliberately do things that were acts of aggression and provocation.  He told us to be mirrors of himself, and since God is Love, I think actions like Jones which are all about threat and hatred are missing the mark.  Wars start because of actions like his. Lives are lost because of actions like this.  Hate grows because of actions like this.  People go further away from God because of actions like this. 

Jones backed off.  He got his fifteen minutes of media attention, which, probably, was all he was ever after to begin with.  I just can't help but feel, however, that harm was done just by the suggestion.  As a nation, as a world, as a humanity, we're now just a little further apart that we were before.  I'm sure it grieves the heart of God.

No! Child Left Behind

As I drove home today, I was turning over a puzzle that I can't solve:  how to help some of my lowest-performing students reach the levels demanded of them by standardized testing mandated by state and federal law.  These students work, for the most part, very diligently, but due to circumstances beyond their control, they may never make it to what the state and the fed in their almighty wisdom have said is necessary to get that most basic of tools needed to have any sort of success in life, a high school diploma. 

I'm tired and I'm confused.  What chance have these kids got?  I stood beside one as she took her test today, and she was working so hard, so very, very hard, giving me everything she had.  I don't know that it's going to be enough.  What am I going to do?  How am I going to bridge that gap?  I can adapt, accommodate, adjust, and basically rewrite everything I do; I can bend myself into a teacher pretzel, but I don't have magic.  I'm so afraid that I'm not going to be anything like enough when it all is said and done.  I'm afraid that I'm going to fail them.

It's a terrible feeling.  My day is split between student who will go on to be the proverbial doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, who will blaze brilliant swaths through their chosen fields and trades, and then these little lost ones who are slowly slipping through the cracks of society.  Why can't there be a place for all of them to be okay?

Misplaced Saint

I forgot my St. Cecelia necklace this morning.  I ran out in my usual tizzy, and somehow, something happened to disrupt my routine of putting on accessories, and it didn't get slipped around my neck.  I didn't realize it until I reached up to fiddle with it as I habitually do.  I sort of felt around on my neck for it, and I immediately realized it was not where it was supposed to be.  It's amazing how much something like that, the absence of one tiny thing you're used to having on, can be a major difference in a day.

All day long, I felt as though something was off, and I must have reached for the chain and charm a hundred times.  I use the necklace as a worry stone, something to occupy my fingers with when I'm thinking or working.  As I've also blogged elsewhere, I also love the general symbolism of it.  I felt a little bereft without it.  Tomorrow, I'll be more careful.  I have enough other things keeping me off-balance without running out without my saints.

Prairie Arts

My best friend and I went to West Point Saturday for the annual Prairie Arts Festival.  We went two years ago, and intended to go last year, but a variety of things prevented us.  Prairie Arts sort of takes over West Point and fills that small town to the brim with artists, crafts people, and musicians every year for Labor Day weekend.  There are some truly remarkable things there.  In addition to the sales, they also have a competition, so the people who come bring their very best crafts to enter.  I saw some pottery and some glass that was exceptional.

Both my friend and I wanted to see specific artists that we'd seen before, and we hoped they'd be there.  We got up early and drove up.  The weather was gorgeous. The last time we went, it was horribly hot, but Saturday was cool with a breeze.

The artists I really wanted to see were a couple from Alabama.  They do face jugs and other pottery pieces.  I had gotten a fantastic piece from them two years ago when I was there, and I had been thinking about their face jugs for quite some time.  Fortunately, they were back, and I got a two-sided face jug.  He has wonderful personality.  The expressions on both sides are incredibly detailed.

I want to use it as a model to try to see if I can figure out how to make face jugs of my own.  I like the combination of vessel and sculpture in them.  They remind me of the ogre tiles of Japan a little with their grimacing faces and individuality.  They're ugly and fun.  I don't know if I can get to a point of competency with my pottery where I can make them, but I'm sure as heck going to try.

The whole day was great.  Being with my friend for a whole day was sort of an escape from our normal routines for both of us.  The only part we didn't get to do that we'd planned was a trip through MSU.  We tried, but State had a home game, and we got caught up in the massive herd of people trying to get into the stadium.  We just flowed through the campus with the river of other vehicles until I could find an out door that wasn't blocked, and then we got the heck out.  Maybe we can go back up there on a day when there is no home game.

I'd like to go back to West Point, too, on a day when there is nothing else going on.  It looked like a good town to take some photos in.  There were some lovely old signs that had been well-kept and so forth.  West Point has some nice junktique shops, too, so a day trip up there for MSU and photography might be in order soon.  After all, I can end it with a meal at Little Dooey's, and that's no small enticement.

I hope going to this festival is really going to turn into an annual thing.   It's so nice to spend time with my friend.

The Hand of Fate

It's amazing to me how just when the last point of unbearable horribleness is reached that something comes to give some relief.  The Hand of Fate swept in today and shoved me into a place where there was some surcease from the sorrow and panic that was destroying me.  I don't know if it's going to last, but at least for the moment, I feel better.  I feel like there are people around me who care.  I didn't know there were so many people who did.  It is the best sort of surprise, really.  And even if the floor falls out from under me again, I will have that to hold onto if it does.  I'm tired, I'm exhausted, and I'm going to bed now.  Tomorrow will be, hopefully, the start of a brand-new day.