Ballet and Stars and other stories

Happy second week of Easter! It's been a rather lovely few days, despite the continued Maytagging and a sudden cold that consists mostly of feeling like someone scrubbed my sinuses out with a bottle brush.

At work, the Macintosh I have to do some of my editing on has had fewer laughs at my expense; my new desk is comfortingly secluded, and I got some decorations up; the talkative half of my department went out of their way to make me feel at ease this past week; and, emboldened by desperation, I finally found the espresso machine in the building where the Mac lives. Said espresso machine promptly broke, but it made Wednesday survivable first.

* * *

The star I wrote a book about was well on the way to its zenith when we came home from Easter vigil. It spends most of the winter rising close to dawn, so that was my first glimpse of it for this year. I spent a few chilly minutes out on the deck staring at it, unaided by technology; it isn't much through the telescope, but it's a beautiful thing through the eyes of my beloved A.D.

The vigil itself was splendid. Triduum was so exhausting last year that I was particularly grateful to be able, this Holy Saturday, to put Friday's Goth mood aside for candlelight and vivid color and the Gloria.

* * *

Also, I have discovered blue eyeshadow. This has proven difficult to photograph.

I tried shutting my eyes, but then my camera decided to take its own mirror-selfie.

* * *

I wore blue eyeshadow in some quantity Friday night to see WWU's performance of the Benjamin Britten opera A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play is one of my favorite Shakespeare works—I could mouth the words along with Helena when she sang

You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant
[and yet you draw not iron, for my heart / Is true as steel... why didn't you leave that in the libretto, Sir Benjamin?]
Leave you your power to draw,
And I shall have no power to follow you

and our friend Jade was harpsichordist, and it seemed like a good opportunity to make my husband take me out on a hot date. :)

Maybe it's that modern music and even—to some extent—magic and fairy tales are so new to me still, but my inner child sat up and paid attention, awash in wonder. My grownup brain could tell that the vocal work and choreography were challenging for the all-student cast, but grownup-brain mostly sat indulgently back while the aforementioned inner child bobbed up and down in the theater seat and wished all her fairy-tale besties were around to help her fangirl over the wild dark beauty expressed in set and scene, music and dance.

Lou and I once talked on the way back from some opera we saw—probably Tristan und Isolde—about opera's unique combination of various art forms. I thought back to that as I admired Greek and Hindu-inspired set pieces, lively comic acting, and ballet alongside the music. And such music! I had only a slight acquaintance with Britten, but I will be hunting out more of his music, oh yes.

Also, I just about cried laughing when the wall was singing.

* * *

I love it when the apple tree blooms.

* * *

Sunday I wore purple and pink eyeshadow, and after church I hopped on my bike in the sun and went to see a play my friend Pat was in: Deborah Brevoort's The Women of Lockerbie, which (fictionally, but loosely based on true events) depicts the intersection of grief and generosity between women from Lockerbie, Scotland and relatives of victims of the 1988 Pan Am flight 103 terrorist bombing.

It was quite the powerful story. I cried so hard that I felt awkward for the strangers on either side of me. Brevoort brought out the eucatastrophe, though, which—of course—was what really made me lose it.

Anyway, I love local music and theater arts. You can run down afterward and hug your performing friends. :)

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* * *

Blog-friend Shallee MacArthur's sci-fi YA debut novel, The Unhappening of Genesis Lee, is forthcoming from Sky Pony Press (cool publisher name to go with cool title). It has a gorgeous cover design (ballet and stars? Practically everything I love, right there); it has a highly suspenseful premise, and it currently has a live rafflecopter through which you can enter to win an ARC! I did.

Congratulations and more congratulations, Shallee!

* * *

Solomon's seal... and dandelions

* * *

I was born in #42, grew up in #24, live in #6, and—fortuitously—ended up with a university in #1. I call this moving up in the world. Here's to Nerd Heaven! And Cosplay Fridays! Now, how to sell my company on that one.... It sounds like fun.

* * *

Maia watching, always watching

* * *

Thoughts of the return of the Harry Potter Book Club have begun surfacing in my consciousness. Stay tuned.

Currently Reading: The Line

Happy Easter! I'll see if I can rustle up some thoughts and a cat picture later in the week, or over the weekend... in the meantime, here's one of those book reviews I keep promising.

* * *

by J.D. Horn
47North, 2014

The premise of this made me think agreeably of how a spinoff Harry Potter story about a Squib might have read. Mercy Taylor is the only non-magic person in a very powerful witching family. She enlists the help of a disreputable Hoodoo practitioner in order to fall in love with her best friend instead of her sister's boyfriend—and then the family matriarch is immediately murdered, and Mercy is stuck pitting wits against magic, family secrets, and an enemy that wants her dead next.

The book contained magic, witchcraft, demons, political correctness, and a few other things that make it hard for me to recommend it unreservedly to about half my normal readership. It also contained a thoroughly enjoyable plot, a lot of surprising twists, a reliable genre voice, and some lovably human characters, of whom Uncle Oliver and Aunt Ellen were my favorites aside from protagonist Mercy. It made the hour or so of sitting in Les Schwab pass much too quickly.

Rating: Two peanut butter cookies and a chocolate one. With milk. There are a couple of oatmeal raisin cookies on the plate, but they'll only set your teeth on edge if you expect them to be chocolate chip, and if you don't like raisins, and if you eat them. :)

Let Me Mingle Tears with Thee and other stories

Be not far from me,

for trouble is near

and there is none to help.

Many bulls encompass me,

strong bulls of Bashan surround me;

they open wide their mouths at me,

like a ravening and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water,

and all my bones are out of joint;

my heart is like wax,

it is melted within my breast;

my strength is dried up like a potsherd,

and my tongue cleaves to my jaws;

thou dost lay me in the dust of death.

* * *

There's always something, Holy Week—something to distract me from Triduum. This year, it's the darkness resulting after weeks of not sleeping enough and getting Maytagged* by anxiety.

Fine, I say. Good Friday is as good a day as any to face your own demons. I'll wear black and put my skull-and-crossbones earrings in and Goth out a little. It's appropriate.

Tomorrow I can fight the dementors with chocolate, but for today, black coffee and a little proactive anger might just be good enough. There's beauty to be found in darkness.

It's hard to photograph, but it's there.

* "Getting Maytagged": river guide slang for getting caught in a recirculating hydraulic, e.g., the looping wave that forms when water goes over a submerged rock. The experience is supposedly comparable to taking a spin in a frontloading washing machine, and can be almost as impossible to escape. Fun stuff.

* * *

Pollyanna also helps.

I am glad of many things, and tulips are not the least of these.

I'm so glad to have tomato plants to care for again.

Eggplant and peppers, too!

* * *

In this your bitter passion

Good Shepherd, think of me

with your most sweet compassion

unworthy though I be

Beneath your cross abiding

forever would I rest

in your dear love confiding

and with your presence blest.

Have a blessed Good Friday, and Happy Easter!

* * *

Eia, Mater, fons amoris
me sentire vim doloris
fac, ut tecum lugeam. ...

Tui Nati vulnerati,
tam dignati pro me pati,
poenas mecum divide.

Fac me tecum pie flere,
crucifixo condolere,
donec ego vixero.

(source)

Harry Potter and Love: Less-Than-Ideal Family

Usually I prefer to link art I can credit, but for this I can only give a source.
To the unknown artist:
Thank you for including Harry and Hermione in the Weasley family portrait.
It wouldn't be the same without them.

The word from Masha:

What's missing for me is a healthy family dynamic. Not ideal..I'm not expecting ideal, - really, honestly, I'm serious! - just reasonably attractive. I know everyone thinks I'm mean for rejecting the Weasleys... I hate-with-a-passion the 'hen-pecked husband' thing. Can't stand it. I am way too sick of the over-abundance of Father-as-object-of-Ridicule gigs to embrace yet another. I'd love to see a family where spouses share a mutual respect and nurture each others dignity...

And I'm going to repeat what I said in response, which is that:

I'm OK with my love for the Weasleys being a bit irrational. Because it's true that the dynamic between Arthur and Molly is far from ideal, and is the sort of thing that's absolutely insufferable in real life. The dynamic between Molly and anyone is less than ideal, except for Harry perhaps—and it's her love for Harry, her mothering of the motherless, that redeems her so thoroughly to me.

To be fair, she welcomes Hermione as freely as she does Harry. And anyone who had to raise Fred and George can perhaps be forgiven for being a bit prone to panicking and yelling.

Allie Brosh and the Weasley twins FTW! From Cheezburger.

We don't see a lot of healthy family dynamics anywhere in Harry Potter, actually. You get a little of it in Harry's flashbacks of his parents' death scene, so you know what he lost, but there aren't a lot of clear, positive family pictures in the stories.

The Weasleys are far from ideal, but Potter fans everywhere love them, and I do, too. Maybe it's just that at thirty-six, after that much lifetime with a close-knit family that is capable both of wounding deeply and surviving those wounds, I sympathize a bit. Or maybe it's that there's sort of a Catholic nostalgia around the prolific, poor family where nobody is perfect, and nobody quite follows all the rules, but everybody is wanted and welcome.

Molly and Arthur Weasley remind me of two couples I've known for whom bickering seemed to be part of the package. One of those couples is gray-haired and still together—and possibly still bickering—and the other seems to have ironed out their differences, at least for public viewing. I would call them both happy, though I don't know either well enough at this point to say for sure.

As for hen-pecked husbands, I generally dislike the caricature on principle, but I can't say that I've ever been acquainted with the reality. At least, not with anything fitting the general image. The dominant husband and painfully subservient wife—now that I've seen, and if the Weasleys had been that, I would have responded with visceral dislike much like Masha has expressed. Ergo, no judgies from this quarter.

In other news, I went hunting for Weasley fan art, and now I have "Weasley Is Our King" stuck in my head.

Stopping By

Happy Palm Sunday!

I haven't forgotten that I owe you a Harry Potter post, ideally before the end of Lent. It's just that as soon as I decided I was getting the hang of working nearly full time, I got sick. It was the wrong week to make fish tacos—that's for sure. I lived mostly on Coca-cola for three days. There's enough kid left in me to kind of enjoy that, at least.

Kindle readers, blogger Natalie Whipple's Transparent is on sale right now for $1.99. I just bought it and can't wait to read it.

Ooh, and I still have half-written reviews for The Line (J.D. Horn), and Fiddler's Green (A.S. Peterson) to post, and I just read Cress (Marissa Meyer)... ooh. But first, I have to go plant my tomatoes and practice some of the music I'm supposed to be singing tonight. Shortly!

Bits of Light and Air and other stories

It's been my habit, these past few weeks, to think of the utter disintegration of all my routines as a bit like falling into a lake. You spend a few long moments flailing for the surface—knowing you'll find it, but panicking a bit all the same.

Amid all the burbling and greenish darkness, I'm starting to catch bits of light and air.

Favorite parts of work: Donut Friday, to which my trainer introduced me yesterday. (It'll get better, too, soon as Lent is over!) Getting paid to fix bad grammar before it goes live on the internet. Running into old friends by the elevator, at the coffee machine, and in the breakroom.

Least favorite part of work: Hearing one of my favorite new coworkers blurt to a friend, under his breath and around the corner, his agony over his boyfriend's walking out on him—and not feeling like two days' acquaintance gave me enough right of friendship to walk around the corner, put my arms around him, and let him curse off a little of the pain.

One of the reasons I keep believing in God: the desperate need to pray for people I can't immediately help or comfort in any other way.

* * *

I planted Jerusalem artichokes in the rain today. While I was at it, I weeded the vegetable garden and dug the little peony out of the yard. (Whether the latter will survive the uprooting, it's hard to say, but it has a better chance than it had against the mower.) If you wait for sunny weekends in Bellingham, you'll never get anything done.

That said, I'll take rain over the piles of snow Maine still has—"always winter and never Christmas," as Christie put it the other day. I'm praying for spring, Masha! In the meantime, I feel guilty for posting the following, but seriously, GARDEN.

Flowering quince: one of the first things to bloom around here.

I had raindrops on my camera lens, but the grape hyacinths
are still adorable.

Fruiting quince tree!

The bad garden news: two of my three red currants are jostaberries. I never had any intention of growing jostaberries; I keep trying to grow red currants. This is five out of six I've been wrong about. Either I'm going to have to learn to tear up healthy plants, which always hurts me, or I'm going to have to find some use for jostaberries.

* * *

Tonight's meal: polenta cooked till creamy, stirred up with butter and parmesan, topped with chicken and leeks and mushrooms cooked in garlic salt and sherry with chili flakes. Not very Lenten, but then, it's Sunday vigil.

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According to Maia, it is as important to sleep on work jeans as on clean laundry. This is a mystery to me.

* * *

The Harry Potter post is half written. I'll try and finish it soon.... bonne nuit.

The Quest for Understanding and other stories

"Traces"
Printmaking/woodcut; plywood and canvas
Work and photo by Margot Myers

Those of you who have been around for a while might remember that I'm on something of a quest to understand modern art.

It's something that comes to mind a lot in Bellingham. Sometimes—e.g., when walking around the giant macaroni noodle on the street corner, or navigating my way across the abstract-statuary-punctuated WWU campus—I feel shut out, as if I'd attempted to get to know someone and they'd snubbed me.

On account of which, I've been offering eternal gratitude to anyone who helps me understand modern art in any form. Masha and Christie have begun that work for me in poetry; Jade carries it forward musically; and Margot Myers joined that list of teachers a couple of Sundays ago with a beautiful visual piece called "Traces."

Margot is my friend, and maybe friendship is the best way into understanding art—or maybe I'm drawn to make friends with people who call me forward artistically. Whichever be the case, I see a lot of my own feeling reflected in her artistic statement:

The incredible, ordered power in natural systems and organisms is the main thing that informs my work. I respond to the great beauty and delicacy that I see in the sky, the ocean and in the dirt.... I want my work to increase consciousness of and a connection to the fleeting, intense and sometimes frightful beauty that exists around us. 

"Traces," she explained in a statement that accompanied her exhibit, is about travel and the traces we leave behind us as we move around the world. She studied everything from vapor trails to boat wakes in the creation process, and invited strangers to participate by leaving painted footprints; when you get close enough, you can see shoe treads marked in yellows.

Detail of "Traces"
Work and photo by Margot Myers

I had to read the words first, because I need explanation so badly. After that, though, I walked around the piece, considered it from different angles, and saw everything she'd mentioned and then some: dots on a map, headlights and taillights, land and sea and motion, salmon traveling upstream, and even comings and goings between stars. And, because my mind works this way: ferris wheels, tiger colors, film reels, peacock feathers, and Golden Snitches. (I think the latter actually represented a map symbol, but am not sure.)

Sometimes I just looked at the sweep of line and color across the boards and canvas and thought, "It's beautiful."

It was nice to meet a piece of modern visual art and feel like it said hello and smiled at me. I'd like to meet more. In the meantime, I recommend Margot's site and her Facebook page! Enjoy.

* * *

*grin and blush*

So. On March 27, I was finally able to sign up for orientation at Utah State, SAT scores in hand. And I was able to tell them that I got a 620 in Math and an 800 in Critical Reading.

Required score for getting out of college math entirely: 580. :D

I'm tempted to light off fireworks, even though they're not legal in Bellingham (not that that stops anybody). Since I'm not in possession of any, however, I'll have to settle for a VERY LONG AND EXUBERANT HAPPY DANCE OH MY GOSH.

:D :D :D :D :D

* * *

This is not the first time in my life I've worked thirty-two hours a week. What I can't figure out right now is when I used to do stuff. When did I go to the grocery?—do laundry?—sleep? I get up at six and go to bed at midnight and I still can't get it all done.

Meanwhile, the flowering quince is blooming, and the fruiting quince is leafing out; there's another peony coming up in the lawn; Lou found a brick border buried an inch deep under sod around the front gardens; I rode my bike to work for the first time today (terrifying and exhausting, but it'll get better); I'm drinking rose-and-jasmine tea sent me by Masha (best-smelling package EVER, Em! That oil! And I keep cuddling the scarf for feel and scent, and thinking of you <3); and I keep smiling because Saturday brought me some rather lovely friendship and music, like a thoughtfully-chosen gift.

The music you might just get to hear one of these days, as the composer is a certain aforementioned friend, and the vocalist is a certain aforementioned husband. ;)

Oh, and I never got you a cat picture last week. Laura, thanks for giving me permission to miss a few. George and Maia, I'M SORRY.

Harry Potter post coming soon; Masha put up hers, and Christie is planning to join back in before long as well. In the meantime, I hope you're all having a great week!

Hufflepuff Party

I have a post on a friend's beautiful modern visual art that I'm desperately trying to get posted. Not to mention the two book reviews that want writing up. They require conscious thought. Conscious thought takes work, however.

Conscious feels—not so much. :D

Kristina Horner, this is so perfect, and I love you. I always knew we were a lot alike, even though I called myself a Gryffindor and you called yourself a Slytherin.



The only thing—well, I'm not so sure about cuddling a badger. They bite. I don't need a badger for biting instead of cuddling; I have a cat for that. Most of the time, I can pry her teeth out of my hand.

The Twenty-Fifth of March when Sauron Fell

"Noon?" said Sam, trying to calculate. "Noon of what day?" 

"The fourteenth of the New Year," said Gandalf; "or if you like, the eighth day of April in the Shire reckoning. But in Gondor the New Year will always now begin upon the twenty-fifth of March when Sauron fell, and when you were brought out of the fire to the King."

Happy Feast of the Annunciation and... day of the downfall of Sauron! Isn't there a proper name for it? I can't remember right off, and I'm too sleepy to look it up.

But the girls from Pages Unbound—one of my favorite book blogs—interviewed me on the subject of J.R.R. Tolkien and his work the other day, and the post went live on this day of all days for Middle-Earth. I was thoroughly flattered to be asked, and had a blast answering their questions. If you want to know what redeems the Professor's work for me despite the dearth of interesting female characters, or how and why I first read said work, or what I'd say to people who haven't read Tolkien yet, click on over.

They're also interviewing other bloggers all week, which is just part of a stellar Tolkien read-through (master list of posts), which I really wish right now I could find more time to participate in. All you Tolkien fans—which is at least two-thirds of you who ever comment—I recommend it!

Because I Owe You a Cat Picture...

(Yes, I know the Chicago Manual of Style prefers a space before the ellipsis, and I will dutifully put said space in when occasion requires at work, but I have never understood that style choice. Feel free to explain, if any of you have the details.)

So. I like the job. I like the job so much that I just told my bosses I'd work thirty-two hours per week instead of twenty till fall semester starts. Bear with me; I'm not sure when I'll take pictures of the cat and the flowers, let alone post them, but I mean to find ways.

The next question: which of these plants I can save from further Maian root excavations by taking them to work and putting them on my desk.

Carrie-Ann, I put the Jane Austen figurine you gave me on my desk, right in front of my computer monitors. When I went in this morning, I discovered that someone had used one of my sticky notes to leave me a "This is awesome!" with an arrow pointing to Jane. My sentiments exactly. :)

Harry Potter and Love: Imperfect Friendship

Hello, Potter fans!

Christie is officially in Wales, so hopefully we'll be hearing from her soon! Meanwhile, Masha began our Lenten study of love in the first three Harry Potter books with a set of comments that wants some serious engaging. Here goes.

Best friends. Source.

Friendship is, I think, the love Rowling is least comfortable with..it is the weakest portrayed in the series, the most often portrayed, the least inspiring of all the loves shown in the series.

I would make that argument for romance, not friendship.

Apart from frequency of portrayal, every argument Masha makes here strikes me as highly defensible if we're talking about the romantic relationships—a point I believe firmly even though I shipped the canon pairs from the earliest books. But since we'll probably get to romantic love later on, I won't bother defending my position just yet.

As for friendship:

The primary friendship: Harry, Ron, and Hermione is a frustrating one for me. Harry and Ron are pretty consistently abandoning Hermione for all manner of petty reasons, Ron is - it seems, never really stops hating Harry for life in the limelight, and Harry has the sort of trust issues that can only come from an abusive childhood..but why do they never, ever go away - at least with his two closest friends?

If that had been a wizarding photo booth,
those pictures would move.
Source.

Reader experience is so personal that I can't argue with that. I can argue that Ron does eventually stop hating Harry for life in the limelight, but unfortunately my best proof requires a quote from the epilogue to Deathly Hallows, which is off limits right now.

In these first three books, the Trio is very young, and when I was their age, I was a petty friend, too. I spent a year being angry with my best friend for turning thirteen nine months before I did. Said best friend also got a much earlier grip on maturity. When I think of the evening I spent sneaking up behind her and startling her, or the afternoon I kept flipping her off the inner tube in the pool after promising her again and again that I wouldn't... yeah. I'm lucky she didn't call me a jerk and find a nicer girl to hang out with.

I can't find it in me to condemn Ron when I've been forgiven so much. :)

As for Harry never getting over his trust issues: Masha, can you give me an example of that? I'm not sure what you mean by that, so I'm not sure how to defend him.

Because the trio aren't the only friends represented in the series, but they're probably the best shot at healthy, true friendships, and it's disappointing.

I'd give that "best shot" to the Marauders, actually, sans traitor. No disappointment necessary.

The Marauders—Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs—are introduced in this book, and despite certain notable personal failures, the three loyal ones were indeed loyal. The bond of love between them ran deep. Like, David and Jonathan, Frodo and Sam deep. Deep enough to induce singer-songwriter-GarageBandmaster Zoe Bromelow to write all kinds of songs celebrating that love.

Art by Jackie de Leon

Taking her band name from the dedication to Deathly Hallows, Ms. Bromelow is well known for her Marauder-era tunes. Her songs are pretty rough-cut, but she's just about unrivalled in wizard rock for her ability to pack emotion into a short lyric and a haunting little melody. She is absolutely my favorite wrocker, and here are two applicable songs, both of which I love. It's sloppy academic practice to use wizard rock songs as arguments, but I'm totally going to do it anyway.

"Up to No Good" (sorry, I couldn't find a way to embed these)

So I'll stay with Padfoot even when he's crazy
I'll stick with Wormtail even when he's lazy
Be Prongs' friend even when he's insufferable
This means trouble

"Every Star in the Sky"

You always could see right through me
A silent smile for some inner beauty
I always did know how to calm you down
But life's not the same without James and Lily 

It's hard to sleep and it's hard to cry
But still I repeat it like a lullaby
This war will end
We'll see them again
I swear on every star in the sky

Spoilerific, but I couldn't resist. Art by ahshow.

We'll get some pictures of the Marauders' love and loyalty at the end of this book: Moony embracing the long-lost Padfoot as a brother, and Prongs' love reaching forward one generation to save Padfoot's life and soul.

So much simmering resentment. I look back at my own school-day friendships and I remember having friends like that: friends I liked (even loved), but didn't really trust, friends I knew would isolate me at the first mis-step..those weren't my closest friends. My dearest friends from school were the ones I trusted with my whole heart, the ones I know are still there for me, despite the miles, despite the spiritual distance, despite the paths we've taken that lead away from each other. There's still that core closeness..and maybe that closeness is there, somewhere deeply hidden in the trio. Buried behind back-biting, petty betrayals, and thoughtless cruelties, maybe there's the core of friendship. But if it's there, it seems like a sad, struggling thing - beset on all sides. 

Two words: Hermione Granger.

Art by conniiption.

Hermione is the constant in the Trio, the one who—despite bossiness and a taste for following the rules that goes mostly unshared by her best friends—is never, as far as I can recall offhand, disloyal. She bickers with Ron and is occasionally rude to him, usually after he does something particularly unkind to her, but she never gives either of them up for lost causes. Both boys need that loyalty.

In Prisoner of Azkaban, Ron and Hermione don't speak to each other for weeks on account of Hermione's cat supposedly killing Ron's rat. Harry and Ron are both more heartless without Hermione, and it's her approach, trembling, with the important knowledge of a mutual friend's grief, that begins reconciliation. That act cracks Ron's pride. When Ron's pride cracks, Hermione's caves in, and Harry's might never have existed. All is forgiven.

The Trio is beset on all sides, what with a serious lack of adult guidance and an evil wizard trying desperately to kill one of them off. They quarrel like siblings and sometimes have a real blowup between them, but there is always love there. It pulls them back together every time.

Art by Rae.

Still, if it is there - and I never see it reading the books, really, only in discussing them afterwards with enthusiastic people who can see it - it does raise the friendships in the series above where I saw them. I like to hope that maybe Rowling is trying to draw that aspect of friendship out. Reminding her readers again and again that love is something constant..something that 'bears all things..endures all things..[and] never fails.'  

Human love fails regularly. Rowling shows us that, but she also shows it growing, becoming more than itself, finding new ways around old breaches. Some sort of conflict between the Trio plays a role in the overarching conflict in several of the books, if not all seven, but the friends always return to peace.

What do you think, are her friendships true and beautiful? Are they Loving?

I'd argue that Rowling's friendships are realistic: true and beautiful at times, flawed and unattractive at others. They develop, progress and regress, and finish out the story rather wonderfully, in my opinion, though I'm not allowed to talk about that yet. :)

Thoughts?

Primroses Waiting and other stories

Hello, last weekday of being a stay-at-home housewife! I've been enjoying the sunshine—and killing the whole morning working on things not relevant to what I'm supposed to be working on—and putting off housework.

Maia: "Don't take a picture of me. You'll steal my soul."

The blog schedule will get substantively reworked over the next few weeks, and I won't know how till I know my new schedule... so thanks for your patience. :)

For today: the Today meme is hosted by Masha! Join in over at Piękno, or leave your own sensory notes in the combox...

* * *

Today I am:

Feeling... cheerful. I have four little primroses waiting to go in the ground; I did a bunch of account updating that I've been putting off all week; I've had a pleasant few days of not making myself do very much; and I ordered a bicycle yesterday so I can commute to work like a proper Bellinghamster.*

I'm as excited as a kid about that last one. I've barely been on a bike since my teens... but there was another blue Schwinn once, and before that, a much-loved black-and-yellow dirt bike that I rode till my knees started hitting the handlebars.

I am so going to learn to ride my bike in a skirt, by the way.

* * *

* * *

Seeing... my friend Agnes' band play tomorrow night, if all goes well! Two or three of my other friends and I are driving down to Seattle together to see her sing. I've been looking forward to this for weeks.

Smelling... and Tasting... grapefruit peeled, sectioned, and cut up into a bowl with a handful of walnuts thrown in—a Lenten lunch that doesn't taste penitential. ;)

* * *

Listening... to a real blast from the past. Upon coming home from choir practice this week with something or other stuck in my head, I thought, "I need a song to get this out, now"—and the following came to mind out of nowhere. I haven't seen the movie Polly since I was maybe fourteen.

This was the only video of the complete song that I could find that wasn't flagrantly breaking copyright law. The crowd is very enthusiastic, probably because this performance is kind of adorable.

* * *

Grateful... for sunshine, flowers, these five years of rest, and a job to go to Monday.

First daffodil!

Reading… hmm. I just finished Fiddler's Green (kinda loved it, actually; review coming soon), so I'm between books. I've got Marissa Meyer's Cress on order at the library, Dickens' The Tale of Two Cities still waiting on my Kindle, and sudden strong temptations to re-read the first three Anne books, The Blue Castle, and The Host. Hmmmmmm.

Studying… nothing! Not this week. ;)

Working on... filling out I-9s and W-2s, convincing myself to make something of Lent instead of complaining about it, and preparing a great big response to Masha's first Lenten post on love in Harry Potter. Hey, Potter fans, my good friend Masha doesn't say things like "Friendship is, I think, the love Rowling is least comfortable with..." just to make every Potter fan's jaw hit the floor—these were her sincere impressions! Go convince her otherwise. ;)

* * *

Loving... this day at home.

Hoping... for more sunshine, so I can start biking to work soon. And so my little primroses don't get stunted and beaten back by snow and frost, like the last quartet I got. And so we can finally be done with winter, because spring.

Happy weekend!

* I'll bike-commute in the sunshine, at least. I'm not hard core enough to want to take my book bag and my bangs out in the rain.

Currently Reading: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

by Catherynne M. Valente
Square Fish, 2012

“How far is it to Pandemonium, Ell?” yawned September. She stretched her legs, flexing the bare toes of her left foot. 

“Can’t say, small one.” The beast thwacked into the tree again. “Pandemonium begins with P, and, therefore, I don’t know very much about it.” 

September thought for a moment. “Try ‘Capital’ instead. That starts with C. And Fairyland starts with F, so you could, well, cross-reference.” 

A-Through-L left off the nearly persimmon tree and cocked his head to one side like a curious German shepherd. “The capital of Fairyland is surrounded by a large, circular river,” he said slowly, as if reading from a book, “called the Barleybroom. The city consists of four districts: Idlelily, Seresong, Hallowgrum, and Mallowmead. Population is itinerant, but summer estimates hover around ten thousand daimonia—that means spirits—” 

“And pan means all,” whispered September, since the Wyvern could not be expected to know, on account of the p involved. In September’s world, many things began with pan. Pandemic, Pangaea, Panacea, Panoply. Those were all big words, to be sure, but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.

* * *

Twelve-year-old September, bored with teacups and small dogs, is only too happy to be Ravished away by the Green Wind and sent into Fairyland. Immediately upon entrance, she follows the path to losing her heart and accepts a quest to retrieve a spoon from the tyrannical Marquess, without beginning to know what she's undertaking, or how she might be breaking the Rules of Fairyland—but September is rational and determined, and she will do what she must to succeed.

* * *

One of the problems most folklorists have with Disney fairy tales is that said tales rarely point out that Fairyland and the majority of its inhabitants are out to bamboozle you. Valente obviously knows the facts, however, as does protagonist September by the end of the novel—and yet, Fairyland's trickery does not destroy its attractiveness.

September, like MacDonald's Anodos, ends up Shadowless; unlike Anodos, however, September's narrator suggests this is a bad rather than a good thing. The imagery only hints at future things, so I'll have to read the sequel to discover the point of all that.

Valente presents Fairyland in extravagant prose, dropping hilarious wordplay into depiction of a wildly colored landscape full of things unexpected. Her scientific and self-reliant little heroine faces it down with the help of two sidekicks: one prone to spouting encyclopedia quotes, and the other shy and blue.

I loved the book for the humor and the characters—which included a jacket, a lamp, and a soap golem—and appreciated it for its beautiful vocabulary and thoughtfulness. The one strongly sympathetic character I could not always quite keep up with was September herself, as she and I had to communicate from the extreme furthest reaches of the Jungian thinking/feeling dichotomy. Fortunately, I had Ell and Saturday and the aforementioned jacket and lamp and soap golem to help relay messages. If I go for the sequel, which I well might, it will very much be for love of September's friends.

Advisory, aimed solely at parents who have serious cautions about Harry Potter—some of whom, for friendship to me, bravely go on reading this blog: This being Fairyland, there are witches and dragons. Well, dragon—or rather, wyvern—or rather, Wyverary. I loved the Wyverary; I ain't gonna lie. Speaking of verbal dishonesty, however, Valente cheerfully and openly subverts the concept of the "good child," starting by requiring September to lie in order to enter Fairyland, upon which I thought to myself (perhaps not entirely justly), "Oh. Well. I guess I'll never get in, then." Homeschooling absolutely crippled me on the dishonesty front. For better or for worse. ;)

Once Upon an SAT

My job starts next Monday; this is my last week of full freedom. I'm tempted to say, "Should I use it for good or for evil?"—but the alternatives are really more like, "Should I use it for cleaning house and writing or for killing time on the internet?"

PSA: Masha will be leading off the Harry Potter discussions for the next few weeks, as a Lenten act of mercy. Thanks, M—you're the best!

Special thanks to all of you who wished me luck, prayed for me, and/or thought of me Saturday! I survived the SAT. I won't know how well I did till March 27, but I survived.

Story time!

The administrators gave us the same basic list of warnings a jury is given before they're allowed to go home at night, so: instead of swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I'll solemnly vow to say nothing that matters. :)

Gratuitous Nyquil would've been a good idea the night before, except that it usually leaves me feeling drugged for twelve hours straight. Not wanting to go to bed at six PM, I opted for lying awake from five AM onward with my brain racing from anxiety. Judging from the lost look on many dozens of teenage faces at seven-thirty, this was a common choice.

Me trying to figure out the self-timer on my new camera.
This is not the look we were wearing, but it's about equally flattering.

I expected to feel old, but mostly I felt as young and lost as my fellow students—and, in fact, nearly got myself and a very young-looking junior actually lost trying to find the meeting place, which turned out to be the exact same room as the lecture had been in Friday night. It's a good thing the SAT doesn't test ability to read maps.

Feeling like a teenager again was a good exercise in empathy. At some point during the morning I took to reminding myself of Friday's lecture, because that was college, and that was fun. The SAT is high school, and high school sucks. I realize that cheating is a common and serious problem, but I began wondering where the classroom leaves off and juvenile detention begins. I hate feeling distrusted. The experience made me more grateful than ever for having been homeschooled.*

At one point, I felt every day of my age: when one of the proctors got sharp with the kids and an aid started pushing them around and scolding them with, "Do you not know what a straight line is?" From halfway across the room, with rows of fixed chairs and confused teenagers between us, I couldn't do anything, but I wanted to march up to her and explain the mathematical improbability of forcing a hundred and some stressed, sleepy young people to line themselves up alphabetically against a wall far too short for them to do anything but crowd against.

Fortunately for my third of the crowd—perhaps fifty students—a proctor with the inestimable advantage of a warm smile took charge of us and marched us up campus to a different classroom.

A girl from Surrey struck up a pleasant conversation with me en route, perhaps out of kindness to the shy stranger built like a Number Two pencil. After a few minutes of chatting, she said: "What grade are you in—eleventh or twelfth? I'm guessing twelfth." I had very warm feelings toward her for the rest of the day, and prayed for her a lot.

The back to Lou's calculator got confiscated for the duration of the test. "It has writing on it." The tiny instruction sheet for using the calculator, really?

The biggest emotional advantage I was given, next to having a nice proctor, was being seated against a wall. I gravitate to walls and corners, especially when I'm stressed. They're stabilizing.

Someone had drawn a dead or exhausted anime character on my desk. Despite the lack of ponytail, he reminded me of Edward Elric. That made me sad, so I told myself he was only exhausted, and commiserated frequently with him throughout the morning.

My second-favorite alchemist. (Dumbledore is my favorite. <3)
Source.

Aside from my old friend Fullmetal, the desk was a joke, especially for a southpaw like myself. To take practice tests with comparable difficulty, I'd have had to rivet a bicycle seat to the right side of a chair and try to balance test book, pencil, answer sheet, and calculator on that.

Fortunately, I did not have to share desk space with the cat.

As for the three hours and forty-five minutes of actual testing, here are details that shouldn't compromise the integrity of the test itself:

• I quoted The Oatmeal in my essay. The quote I wanted to use was much cruder than the one I actually used.
• I have never, as far as I can remember, failed to finish a reading comprehension test in the time allotted—until Saturday. Hopefully the curve they grade that one on will be forgiving.
• Whenever I got to one of the correct-this-crappy-writing sections, I forgot I was testing and started mouthing the words, gesturing, and otherwise thoroughly enjoying the work of proofreading. The proctors were kindhearted enough to not throw me out for this.
• My algebra score could go either way. I lost my head in the final five minutes of the final math section, tried to solve four problems at once, and failed to solve any of them.

At the end I let the weary crowd of teenagers lead the way out, and briefly felt my age again upon catching a group of teenage boys staring at me. I wanted to give them the evil eye, but I was too tired, so I looked away and let them stare. At last I commiserated one last time with Ed, collected the back to Lou's calculator, smiled at the proctors, and walked out into a downpour.

And felt very young and shy and exhausted indeed, as blast after blast of wind and rain hit me over the five minutes it took to walk to the car. I forced myself not to run till I hit the parking lot, and then I made a dash for it. I got into the car, looked at my dripping face and half-drenched hair in the mirror, laughed and let my throat tighten up, turned on the heater full blast, and drove home.

Lou met me at the door, propped me up, and took me downtown to Bob's for burgers and coffee, the latter of which I creamed the heck out of, Lent notwithstanding. I'm not sure anything ever tasted better than that coffee.

* There's nothing like homeschooling to nip a cheating mentality in the bud. My mom caught me behind the couch with the answer section of my math book open when I was about six, and that was the end of that.

The Night Before Test Day and other stories

This has been the sort of day where your morning meeting goes twice as long as normal, after which you cram in a practice SAT test, clean the house in a mad flurry, drive your car up to the school, park your car illegally for fifteen minutes because you can't find the parking meter, and promptly get lost—and you're absurdly cheerful the whole time, possibly because you had coffee.

Which is the one thing I pretty much absolutely refused to give up for Lent. :)

The day didn't leave much time for blogging, especially considering how early I have to be up to take the test. But we'll see what I can do. Don't worry, George—I haven't forgotten how important it is to include one of these:

* * *

Dear God, please let the SAT administered tomorrow be one of the ones I can score a 580 on math on, rather than a 540 like I scored the other day. And please let my calculator and my brain work. That's about all I'm begging for, although I wouldn't complain if the essay question happened to be interesting.

* * *

I think the sunshine had as much to do with my good mood as the coffee. "Partly cloudy and warm enough to walk outside with coat unbuttoned" felt wonderful after "so cold you can feel it seeping through the walls" and "more snow than rainy little Bellingham has any idea what to do with." Look—unexpected flowers:

* * *

The day was so busy that I almost didn't make the trip up to the school for the philosophy lecture, though it was recommended around choir by a friend and I'd sort of halfway said I'd go. Fifteen minutes before I had to make up my mind or else, I looked up the abstract to Dr. Zagzebski's Epistemic Authority:  A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief, her book and her lecture topic, just to see how much I wanted to hear her speak—and decided immediately that I couldn't miss it.

Imagery in Harry Potter originally gave me the concept to explain my intellectual relationship to religion, a concept that allowed me to choose to trust despite deep agnostic leanings. It was beyond fascinating to hear some of my thought processes put into academic terminology, to see the tension between the claims of authority and the claims of individual judgment expressed philosophically—a tension I still wrestle with, thanks to some of the same difficulties that questioning students were trying to camouflage behind safe examples.

I'm going to love college so much, you guys. Even if I have to take algebra. I might love that, too.

* * *

That's all I've got for tonight; I've still got to play the piano and make sure I'm prepared to show up for the SAT with everything I need (number two pencils, ticket, driver's license, calculator) and without anything that will get me thrown out (cell phone, friend's digital recorder that needs returning and has therefore spent time riding around in my purse, mechanical pencils and pens). CollegeBoard's test day page terrifies me. I feel like I'm going to the airport and therefore need to put everything into clear plastic one-quart zip-lock baggies and expect to be full-body scanned sans shoes. But most things are not quite as bad as anxiety makes them out to be.

Happy weekend!

Harry Potter, Lent, and Lolcat Syntax

...and the Oxford comma, because it rocks.

I just got a proofreading job!!!! (Wait—am I allowed to indulge in unnecessary exclamation points while claiming status as a professional proofreader? That might be a display of questionable judgment.)

Anyhow, my former employers have hired me back, and I have been doing random little happy dances for the thirty hours since the call came. In celebration of that and of National Grammar Day:

I love this so much... but we're not finished here.
The original writer's first sentence should end in a question mark,
the comma in the second should be a semicolon or em dash,
and "troubleshoot" should be written as one word.
Source.
Yes, lolcat syntax does make me want to claw my eyes out.

Today is also Carnival, and Lent starts tomorrow. Because Lent is always a good time to mix things up, and because Christie is moving to Wales and I'm transitioning into a workday schedule again, and because Masha is a good sport and game for anything, we're slowing down (yes, further) on the Harry Potter read-through for these next few weeks and focusing on the subject of love in the first three novels. As Masha said:

I want to talk about family love and friendship and charity and hope..I know Jenna and Christie have a book's worth of thoughts to share on the topic, and I'm looking forward to your reflections as well! Excited? I am!

I fear it may be hard to defend my ideas about love in the first three novels without referencing the endings of books five and seven, but I'll try. Whether I can get "a book's worth of thoughts" out of my brain and onto this blog remains to be seen, however, as does the matter of whether Christie can post anything at all till she's settled in her new home. The point, though, is that the book club will go on!

For tonight, however, I'm going to go celebrate while I can. Happy Carnival, and blessed Ash Wednesday!

Tangle-Tongued Confusion and other stories

The Today meme is hosted by Masha! Join in over at Piękno, or leave your own sensory notes in the combox.

Today I am...

* * *

Feeling... kind of exhausted.

It's been the kind of afternoon where you sit down to blog, but first your computer crashes on contact with a flash card, and then your blog won't load, because the domain host is having some kind of issue. Also, three cups of coffee apparently weren't enough.

It's also been the kind of week where—well, first you're anxious constantly, partly because you're job hunting and partly because you didn't sleep much the previous week. Then, you discover you might as well go ahead and take the SAT, because if you get 580 or better on math, you can get out of the basic math requirement. Unfortunately, you don't discover that till you've already started the process to take a math placement test, which you then have to put on hold, which makes you feel like an idiot who is wasting a lot of nice people's time.

Also, you haven't been studying for the SAT, because you thought you weren't going to take it.

Yeah.

Anyway, I took a practice SAT yesterday—took it cold. No studying. The result of that experiment is that I will be studying math hard for the next week, because:

That's a 580 on math—just good enough.
Attained by missing mostly gridded questions, which aren't penalized.
We'll see if I can manage to equal or supersede that next Saturday.
As for the rest: yay for competing with seventeen-year-olds. :P

* * *

Seeing... sunshine, and last Sunday's snow finally melting. Seven inches of snow is pretty impressive for us. I'm quite proud of myself for having gotten the car to church and back without destroying anything.

* * *

Smelling... nothing, because I haven't put that loaf of bread in like I told myself I was going to. Maybe I'd better. Be right back...

Tasting... spicy Mexican mocha brownies, adapted from a recipe sent me by MissPhotographerB. It's a box of brownie mix made with a stick of melted butter (no oil), a tablespoon of vanilla, two eggs, 1/4 cup of water, 1 1/2 tablespoons espresso powder, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and an ounce of chocolate, finely chopped. The results were outstanding.

* * *

Listening... to Hudson Taylor. This was a random YouTube recommendation, and a fantastic one. I'm loving this duo in general and this song in particular.

This is the view from the other side
Put down your weapons
Let's be defenseless

* * *

Grateful... to have my husband home from Rome!

Also for how pleasant and helpful everyone I've spoken to at USU has been, especially considering how many times I've called them in tangle-tongued confusion.

Reading… Fiddler's Green by A.S. Peterson. Course requirements and freshman orientation material for USU. Anything I can find on understanding algebra. And these quotes from Mr. Rogers, who passed away twelve years ago yesterday:

"I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred." —from his Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001

Words to live my life by—written by the best of neighbors. Miss you, Mr. Rogers.

* * *

If I fail next Saturday, it will be because I didn't have these two items
with me.

* * *

Studying… algebra, as aforestated. (That is too a word, Blogger.)

Working on... "Clair de Lune." My piano teacher is amazing, natch.

Loving... Christie and Masha, who have talked me through a mountain of emotions this week. <3

Hoping... that I can handle work and school and life without coming completely unglued from reality, and without having to quit choir or blogging. ;)

* * *

Maia: "I'll help you do your makeup. Or take pictures. Here,
swing that camera strap a little closer."

Happy weekend!