Who shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment, he dwells upon fame, upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful followers over his bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition, if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one to tell the story of his suffering to at once? Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her — who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?
the very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare
March 31st, 2008something I’d never have believed a year ago:
March 31st, 2008that I’d feel in any way ambivalent or reluctant about weaning my baby boy after a year of breastfeeding. I am SO ready to say goodbye to the pump and very, very excited about being able to do crazy things like take a day trip down to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on May 3 without worrying about the milk supply — but it’s much harder than I expected to get over that very physical compulsive feeling of wanting to FEED him.
our earth hour
March 29th, 2008G & I turned out the lights, unplugged our wall warts, unplugged the stove, turned down the heat, and spent a very enjoyable hour in the dark with little man Z, hanging out on the couch and playing peek-a-boo by the light of a solar-powered flashlight and a handcrank lantern.
It was lovely.
Of course, I had to plug my laptop back in and re-start my wireless internet in order to blog to the world about the experience, but the peacefulness of the one little unplugged hour hasn’t worn off yet, and I’m resolved to do it again. I’ve really come to hate having a laptop at home, honestly — it’s more of a timesuck than a television would ever be, for one thing, but for another it really intrudes on the way G & I interact with each other and the baby.
When I lived alone in New York I deliberately didn’t own a computer, the same way I deliberately didn’t own a TV (until Reb forced one on me when she moved out of Carrol Gardens — thanks, Reb, I still have that piece of crap, and we use it for watching DVD’s – 
). I had continual email at work, and I spent the majority of my workday sitting at my desk answering emails as quickly as they came in — I had zero interest in catching up on email at home, or randomly surfing the internet, or whatever. Instead I painted, and read books, and cooked dinner for friends, and took walks by the river, and spent quality time with my kitty-cats. It seems so amazingly idyllic from my current perspective, really.
I mean, I used to read books! And now what? When was the last time I read anything more challenging than Harry Potter? Mom bought me a copy of Arthur Schlesinger’s Journals for my birthday in October and I have yet to open it, though it’s been sitting by my bedside the whole time. Waiting.
You may read this and think I’m making stupid excuses for being lazy, but it’s not so much an excuse as it is an explanation: my free brainspace, such as it is, is being used up reading page after page on nytimes.com, or trolling through the netherreaches of IMDb, or playing countless games of Scrabulous on Facebook (and to all the folks who’ve been nagging me about Scramble, I’m sorry — I had to remove that app for the health and safety of myself and my family, it was getting out of control). As long as the laptop sits open on my desk, and the internet connection is never broken, it’s just so darned hard to cast temptation behind me, as it were, and get housework or reading or knitting or anything else done.
I’m resolved to be more directed in my internet use, though. Ironically, I think part of my salvation may lie in another damned internet device. G & I bought iphones the other week, and it’s basically meant that I can do totally outrageous things like surf the net while I’m breastfeeding or check email at stoplights in traffic. The phone makes me feel plugged in, and it’s fun to play with, but it offers so much less in terms of the immersive physical experience that a bigger screen and full keyboard offer, that I’m not in as much danger of zoning out while I use it. I maintain a higher degree of autonomous agency, and switching the thing off when I’m done retrieving a piece of information is a piece of cake.
Yargh, can you say rationalization?
Whatever — I resolve, through whatever means, to spend less time aimlessly hanging out online. And more time making things with my hands. And playing peek-a-boo with the baby.
And speaking of little men who are now ONE and impossibly sophisticated in their cuteness – we’d decided to forego the planned party today, which was to involve a bunch of other one-year-olds in some form of contained chaotic sugar-charged play, partly because Z was sick this last week and partly because G & I really needed the time to recuperate, probably more than Z himself. Instead, with practically no notice at all, I baked a bunch of cupcakes last night and had family and a small handful of friends over to witness the awe and wonder of the birthday boy encountering that first candle. (Thanks, Heather.)
Happy birthday, little man.
sacred dada
February 5th, 2008For very sad reasons, I found myself at a Roman Catholic mass this afternoon, for the first time in a long while. A close friend’s dad died suddenly last week, and the services were today at St. Frances de Sales in Newark, OH.
It was a very dignified service, and the personal tributes to my friend’s dad were very moving — but (and please don’t think I’m an awful person for focusing on the trivial, here) I have to get it off my chest that every time I check in with the RC’s in America I find the church more and more ridiculous.
I grew up attending Byzantine Catholic services at St. John the Divine in Pittsburgh’s South Side, where high mass is still sung in Old Slavonic and the priest is liberal with the swinging censer — so I know from arbitrary religious theatricality, believe me. But I really think Vatican 2 seriously effed the RC’s shit up. In one swell foop, they basically chucked 700+ years’ worth of priceless art commissioned of the world’s great masters in favor of some disposable kitschy airbrushed velvet portraits of Jesus.
I mean, have you seen a post-V2 RC hymnal? I have trouble understanding how anyone can take it seriously. The sappy lyrics are bad enough (why have dignified veneration, when you can have sentimentality?) – but the melodies are what really get to me: a bizarre hodgepodge of hippie-dippie campfire songs, old English and Irish tunes that you remember from somewhere but can’t quite place, and (this is the real kicker for me) a bunch of old hymns they’ve poached from the Protestants.
For example, the closing hymn in this afternoon’s service began with the extremely familiar opening chords of the Old 100th – so I took a breath and actually started to sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow — “ but realized immediately that the words everyone else was singing were totally different (and now Google is failing me, because I can’t recall the lyricist or the title of the song they were singing). It was something really dull and obvious about walking with Jesus, I dunno — my attention was shot, because all I could think about for the duration of the song was “wait a minute, was this melody written by a Protestant or a Catholic?”
Louis Bourgeois was a Protestant, of course. A Calvinist, even. Someone for whom the Pope would have represented the Anti-Christ. Someone who could probably have been burned at the stake by the Catholics for heresy in another time and place. But hey, you know, it’s a popular melody, and it sounds churchy, so we may as well use it for a new RC hymn.
It reminded me forcibly of an RC wedding I went to a few years ago in which my whole world-view was rattled by the still-to-me-inexplicable choice the bride and groom made to have “Simple Gifts” be the hymn to be sung during the Presentation of the Gifts (itself a bizarre V2 mutation of the liturgy, imo). They were probably thinking, here’s a pretty song about gifts, let’s have everyone sing it while our cousins bring the eucharistic bread and wine up to the altar. But of course this left me thinking, wtf? Shaker dance song as accompaniment to papist sacrament? And everyone is somehow ok with this? Am I the one who’s crazy?!
Even though I know that tradition is hardly fixed, and that religious rites always involve a fair amount of superstitious and arbitrary marching around the rug, so to speak, I just can’t get over how blithely modern American Catholics accept the post-V2 liturgy. To me it totally feels inauthentic and amateur — barely even religious. Pedantic and utterly without magic.
Like the priest in today’s service: out of deference to my friend’s dad’s longstanding aversion to the V2 English mass, he rendered the consecration in Vatican Latin (using the soft c and g pronounciations) – but he did it so awkwardly that it was all I could do to keep from giggling. At one point I think he stumbled over discipulis suis and what came out sounded like ‘dishipooey sooey,’ at which both I and the woman standing behind me visibly lurched with surpressed snorts. Cui? Hui, dui et lui! Ptui! Like, what IS that?
And really, what is it, other than unselfconscious nostalgia (read: kitsch)? Before V2, the liturgical use of Latin by the RC was merely stubborn and antiquated; but now the vernacular barn door is open, any return to Latin is inherently inauthentic. By which I mean, there used to be a real reason why the mass was in Latin; but once that reason was exploded in the interests of expanding modern intelligibility and accessibility, any attempt to bring Latin back feels totally arbitrary. Unlike the Koran, in which God is very specifically speaking in Arabic, the Bible has always been a multi-lingual collage, and there are any number of older languages we might use in the interests of carrying on a sacred tradition. I mean, if you don’t like the mass in English, why not have it in Ancient Greek? Or Hebrew? Or some antique Aramaic? Anything, so long as you don’t understand what you’re saying.
Instead, we have an English-language mass where the text is intelligible but the historical subtext is completely obscured. I’m 100% certain I’m the only person who was musing on this stuff during today’s mass, for example — or for whom there was any kind of cognitive dissonance in the appropriation of Protestant melodies in Catholic hymns, etc. I can’t imagine why anyone else would care. Why trouble yourself? Bibite ex eo, omnes! Seriously — everyone, gather ’round, take a swig!
Clearly, I need to get a life.
money well spent
February 1st, 2008movie tickets for two = $17.50
cupcakes afterward = $10
babysitter for 3 1/2 hours = $42
evening out of the house while the baby sleeps = priceless
seriously, I know it’s ridiculously expensive, but OH it’s nice to go to the mooovies every once in awhile. I’ve been cooped up in the house for the past couple weeks as the weather’s been dreadful, and little z and I basically have just been looking at each other wondering “what now?” for days and days. G & I went to see this movie, which I’ve been wanting to see since before it came out, and even though it didn’t have any explosions or car chases I think G liked it almost as much as I did. (we’re both suckers for wisecracking dialogue that’s much cleverer than anything you hear in real life — someday I’ll tell you all about our obsession with the Gilmore Girls).
10 PRINT “Hello, world”
January 31st, 2008with heartfelt gratitude to Golan for (finally) getting twirt ported to a new host and for totally going the extra mile to install wordpress while looking after the baby today –
welcome to my new blog.
inaugural posts are always so awkward, don’t you think? what am I going to write about? I used to be something of an obsessive journal-writer, never without my 9″x12″ hardbound blank book, but I haven’t kept a diary like that in years, and I’m out of practice. many years ago I read a piece by Natalia Ginzburg in which she observed that a good writer has to keep writing to keep the plumbing in order — 100 lines a day, just to flush the garbage out of one’s system. the thing is, what do you do with those 100 lines of garbage?
thank god for the internet.
I’m thinking I’m going to try to separate the personal from the political as much as possible, here — so for rants on the local scene, I refer you to the blog at progress pittsburgh, where I’m an occasional contributor. twirt is going to be more eclectic and maybe a little obscure. and sleep-deprived.