Brent's Guest Post

This is just a quick guest post by Jennifer's spouse Brent. Some of you may know that Jen has preached three times for a Church of Christ in New York State over the past few months. I have encouraged her to make the sermons available, because I think some of you may have an interest in reading them. Though I'm biased, I think they are deeply insightful and characteristically articulate. Since they are longer than typical blog-length and we don't want to overwhelm her regular posts, we've put them at another blog entitled rude sermons (see the permanent link on the right). I've already posted her most recent sermon and I'll post the earlier two shortly along with any others see preaches from here on out. Enjoy!

birthday

What an amazing day this has been. I thought it wouldn't be all that remarkable, and on the surface, maybe it wasn't. But this morning I got calls from Atlanta, TN, and local friends, messages from WA, AR & Honduras, and a surprise plate of brownies from the cool Lutherans next door & the other Jen, complete with singing and a candle. Wow! Maybe there are those among you, imaginary and alien included, whose birthdays are always full of candles and singing and lots of raucous celebrating. But my family is pretty low-key about things like birthdays, and on top of that, for a good long while in my early 20's birthdays took a drastic turns for the worse...it may have been as many as 5 straight years when my birthday probably rated as the worst day of my year, for various reasons.

So turning 29 is good. The celebrating hasn't been raucous or anything, but the cool thing is, lots of people seem to have remembered, even people who aren't related to me or married to me. That's just really nice. And despite the requisite grousing about getting old, I'm really happy about it. I like being at an age where people accept you as a grown-up. I think I've been ready for this since I was about six, actually.

Oh, and I have such an awesome spouse. (I am saying spouse instead of husband because Brent has told me this is the way people do it around here, apparently.) I mentioned in a cutesy random comment on someone else's blog that an iPod would make a really nifty gift for my birthday (then a month away). And sure enough, friends, now I have one. Isn't that seriously amazing? I am very happy about this. Not just because I now have a cute little piece of technology but also because Brent has once again proved beyond all possible doubt that he is the most romantic and thoughtful guy in the whole wide world. Maybe not the whole universe, but perhaps our new alien friends can comment on that.

Okay, I can feel myself sounding actually bubbly so in the interest of dignity I will sign off. But thanks to everyone who made this an awesome day. I love you all.

greet our new foreign friends

Hello! Hola! Ni hao! Tag! Buon giorno! Zdrastya! Everyone, say hello to our new friends. This blog is now being beamed into space along with the 5:00 news and I Love Lucy. If you too would like to chit chat with our alien friends out there then visit http://www.bloginspace.com/ and sign yourself up. Many many thanks to Greg at kendallball.net for this blog upgrade. Now my blog audience is not just an elite few and a host of imagined passers by...but an elite few plus my imaginary friends plus my intergalactic neighbors. That is so much better!

By the way, new alien friends, please know that the movie reviewed in the last post was a crazy fictional scenario dreamed up by an obviously lonely British man with too much time on his hands.

War of the Worlds

note: this actually was over a week ago but this cute little baby distracted me and I forgot to post this.

Brent took me to the movies last night. It's always an interesting cultural experience to go to an actual theater. The theater in Hamilton is packed full of teeny-boppers displaying bellybuttons, tight ass jeans and attitude. They glare at you like you're invading their personal playground, which I guess we are. At nearly 30, we're as old fogey as you get.

So, the movie was actually pretty good. I have to say, it was by far the most faithful movie rendition of any sci-fi book I've ever read. If all science fiction movies were done that faithfully, maybe the majority of them wouldn't suck like they almost always do. But even better, the changes that were made to the script were generally good ones. Instead of a fussy British academic narrating the tale of his mostly solitary adventure, we have a New Jersey deadbeat dad attempting to return his kids to the safety of his ex-wife's parents' place in Boston. It worked, I think. They changed the aliens a bit, too; although they did portray them as dependent on mechanism, which is faithful to the book, they gave them fully developed bodies rather than simply being brains operating the machinery. This I feel neutral about. Other than that, the structure of the story remains intact, even the ending. I am especially happy about this, as I'm sure it would have been very tempting to play up the interstellar war thing and have America defeat the brainy bastards with our indomitable spirit and powerful weaponry. But, like the book, there's no "war" in War of the Worlds. Right as it looks like humanity has come upon its certain doom, the aliens mysteriously start to croak and the invasion falls apart. Earth's bacteria prove fatal to the alien invaders and, through no merit or effort of its own, humanity is saved from annihilation by the ecosystem.

One thing I found curious was that Tim Robbins' character carried over none of the religious hysteria displayed by the original character in the book. It would have been, I think, a very effective platform from which to make a statement on religious apocalypticism, and I am unsure why this road wasn't taken. It certainly would have added interest to the character and provided an opportunity for thought-provoking dialogue. As it is, Robbins is just a garden-variety kook, perhaps with a hint of incipient pedophilia setting in (there's a disturbing conversation between Robbins' character and Cruise's character's daughter). But, maybe that's just my preoccupation with all things theological kicking in again...I forget that I'm not normal.

So, that's it. Not a full review, certainly, but hopefully enough that those of you who, like me, have seen way too many bad movies made out of really wonderful science fiction novels and short stories will find it in you to hope once again that perhaps this time, it will be good. This time, I think, you'll find a movie worth watching.

amends

Now that's a cute kid.

Bet her mama's proud!

back in NJ

Well. Mount Rainier does exist after all. We got to see it on the drive to the airport as we were leaving. Here's what it looks like as you peer through the back window of a moving vehicle:

But Mt. Rainier, impressive though it is, was not the main attraction of our little jaunt to WA. Nor, wonderful though they be, were my folks. Nope. We went to see my sister and her new little baby Levi (heavily featured, by the way, in the archives of this blog), who are visiting my parents for a few weeks. Haven't seen Ally since she got married, over two years ago, and of course, since Levi didn't really exist until a few months ago, hadn't ever seen him. So mostly we just stayed in the house and made ridiculous faces at this incredibly good natured kid and competed for the privilege of holding him. Nothing like a new baby to dissolve the dignity of all grown-up persons in the vicinity. We were shameless.

I knitted 3 baby booties and 2 hats over the week. That is pretty much my main accomplishment. Why 3 booties? Well, the first one was experimental, and of course too small. Why 2 hats? Well, the first one was of course too small. Ally will take that one home to Honduras for Sol to use on her Cabbage Patch doll. Yes, Cabbage Patch. I have realized the awful truth that, not being a mother myself and having not babysat since high school, I have no idea of the actual dimensions of live babies. And while Internet knitting patterns are free, a big perk, they apparently really aren't that reliable in terms of sizing. I have the distinct and awful impression that basically everything I've knitted for every baby I've ever knit for (um, this is two babies so far) has been way too small. So, anyhow, once I finally finished the second pair of booties, which are actually too big (luckily time will rectify this problem), I was absurdly proud. I hope I feel this good about defending the dissertation. Somehow I doubt it.

But just so you can see what a cute kid this is, and what a witty little knitter I am, here you go:

Now, isn't that an awesome hat?

So, all in all, it was a great week, really restful. I didn't really get a lot of reading done, although I did finish a short biography of Bonhoeffer that was really interesting: A Spoke in the Wheel by Renate Wind. And I finished the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics but I didn't get started on Critique of Pure Reason OR Strawson's Bounds of Sense. I meant to, really I did, but there was this baby to play with all the time. Really, it's all his fault.

It's nice to be back home though. I missed the cat, and she apparently really missed us. She's developed a weird meow while we were away, like a smoker's meow or something. I'm hoping it's not because she yowled in loneliness so much this week that she's gone completely hoarse. Overall though I prefer my kitty's codependent affection to the sulk routine some cats give you when you get home from a trip.

Well, that's it. I know this wasn't an exciting or thoughtful post but the pictures oughta make up for it, eh? Maybe after I get over the dopiness of the whole red-eye flight back and the losing of the luggage (again!) my brain will start working again. There won't be any more cute little babies to distract me from thinking my usual lofty thoughts. My loss, your gain.

strangers on trains

Since I relayed that very dismal train conversation I was inadvertently party to this past Sunday, I thought I would relate another little train vignette from the week before. This time I was by myself, and I had managed to get to Penn Station in time to catch the 8:03 express rather than the 8:14 local, which I was very happy about. But it turns out that the 8:03 express train to Trenton is very popular train indeed on Sunday nights, and this particular night it was packed. Not China-crowded or even Italy-crowded, but, you know, American sensibilities regarding personal space were being infringed upon everywhere you looked. So I snagged a seat fairly easily, being by myself, and was settled in before the crowds hit my train car, placidly ignoring the frantic and ruthless competition for seats by the hapless folk around me, reading Catherine of Siena's _Dialogue_. Pretty soon, the seat next to me is taken by a dark-haired woman about my age, whose companion, an extremely large woman carrying a fairly large (though apparently not heavy) box, sat in the aisle on the box. She was sporting a sticker on her blouse that said "Go Queer" and from the chatter, I think they had just come from a march of some sort. Anyway, pretty soon they noticed that I was reading a medieval woman mystic and, whoosh!, the conversation begins. Women's bodies, mystical experiences, religious experiences, religion, science, our respective religious upbringings and rebellions, and where we find ourselves now. It turns out that these two fascinating women are Unitarian Universalist, which I know next to nothing about, because while they rejected religious dogmatism, they didn't at all reject spirituality. It wasn't a deep conversation, but one of those very wide conversations of the sort you can really only have with strangers on trains.

It was relaxing to me. I'm sure that had we talked longer we'd've found things to disagree about, and perhaps the momentary camaraderie (thanks to Dr. Burks for making it impossible to type this word without flashbacks to Harding chapel) would have ended. But it was pretty liberating to discuss opinions and experiences candidly without worrying about how your audience will react to them. I can't talk to members of my own tradition like that. Which means the question we should all be asking of ourselves right now is, why the hell not?

It could be my problem. I've admitted before on this blog that part of its raison d'etre is practice finding my voice--despite the bravado of the title I'm not at all comfortable with actually being rude. I think over the last couple months I've achieved rudeness a few times, and so I think I'm making progress. But still: progress in the blogosphere doesn't easily translate into boldness in the personal sphere. So it could be my problem. I find myself wrapped up in anticipating who will think what and say what and what they will then think of me after they know what I really think about whatever. It's paralyzing.

But it could also be "their" problem. Why am I so paranoid about how what I say or think will be received? Why is contemplating that an occasion of dread? Quite possibly because it's something legitimately dreaded, because "they" can be quite dreadful. But "they" is also the "we" that, for better or worse, I have cast my lot with...so, in all honesty, it comes back to being my problem, doesn't it?

Well, I'm sure this little dilemma will come up again sometime. In the meantime, here's a bit of wisdom from my mother: "Jesus told us to be salt, not sugar." Amen. Preach it, Ma!

sitting in a lab

July 4

Well, I'm sitting in a computer lab and, quite frankly, find it depressing. So don't expect any profundity. Coffee is not at hand, in fact is forbidden, and that is a prerequisite for composition of any sort for this proud American.

I'm in one of those anonymous bad moods, the kind where there's no apparent cause--it's just there, sitting gloomy and dusty and heavy on your shoulders and you can't shake it off. If it gets any worse, it's gonna sprout a head and limbs like those horrible old stoles people wore back in the Whenevers, you know, back when it was considered attractive to parade around with dead things that clearly were once alive on your shoulders. Oh, no, I don't mean like Neanderthals or cavemen or trogladytes. I mean like when it was cool to wear your dead animal with heels and chic purse. And if it gets any worse than that, it'll probably start growling. The mood, I mean. But clearly this metaphor has gotten way out of hand. As has the mood.

Maybe it's because I sat on a train last night on the way home from fairly intense theological discussion at church (yes, you read that sentence right: theological discussion at church, and I meant it) and listened to a quartet of loudmouths declaim the superficial and ridiculous about everything from how much wine it takes to get them drunk to how dumb PhD's are. Brent and I were 2 seats away from them and I could hear their conversation better than I could the woman sitting next to me on her cell phone. It occurred to me as I listened--at that volume I think eavesdropping becomes an obsolete concept--that it would be absolute hell to be trapped in a body that, no matter how hard you tried, only expressed the dumbest thoughts in the high school vernacular you never grew out of. These people seemed okay with it, though. They were 6 years older than me. I know this because they spent 5 minutes discussing how much better it is to have been born in 1970 than '69 (complete with reference to that song by whoever it was) because they can legitimately claim to be children of the 70's. But then they started on church. These laudable Ambassadors for Christ proceeded to blast everything I hold sacred by talking about it in the same inane and foolish way they talked about everything else--loudly, carelessly, irreverently, confidently, and self-servingly.

If there's anything that shakes my faith, and I say this very, very seriously, this is it. If this is Christianity, then this rotten boat full of holes is going down. By the time we all disembarked at Princeton Junction, I felt physically ill.

I really wanted to say something snide and confrontational as I walked past them--something like, "y'all have been real Ambassadors for Christ tonight. Keep it up." But I knew they wouldn't get it. They would pat themselves on the back. Maybe invite me to a Bible study.

So maybe that's it. Or maybe 'cause it's the Fourth of July and I don't find anything to celebrate. We're going to our NZ friends' place later and I plan to wear the KGB shirt the K's gave me a couple years ago. I don't want to spend the day complaining. But I don't want to celebrate, either. What is there to celebrate?

Yesterday on the TV I heard it asserted that we should honor the soldiers who have died because Jesus said, "there is no love greater than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Well, I have to end the tirade because there are pasta salads to prepare and I should probably shower before showing up for the party. Perhaps I will find myself in a better mood at the end of all of this, but somehow I doubt it.

Communions

This past Sunday I accompanied Brent to church, which I try to do unless I'm overworked, overtired, overstressed, or just plain too lazy. As you might expect, it doesn't happen often enough, but I always love going. This Sunday was especially good, as I didn't have to sit by myself even though Brent was acolyting (I assume this can be a verb?). A couple of friends who live in Brooklyn came all the way out to Princeton to spend some time with us, and so we all piled into the little green car Sunday morn and bumped our way down Alexander Road to Trinity.

I've been to church with Brent enough now that things are beginning to feel familiar. I know the tune they sing the Doxology to and I can remember to sing their words and not the ones I grew up with. I know how to sing the Sanctus in the middle of the Great Thanksgiving leading up to Communion. I know how to navigate my way to the altar rail and I don't freak out about how to hold my hands just right to receive the bread, or worry that I'll confuse the person giving me the cup and end up with wine down the front of my shirt. And I no longer feel that everyone is looking at me all the way up to the altar and all the way back to my seat.

I bet all this sounds really silly to people who have been going up to an altar to receive Communion all their lives. But these are the things you feel when what you're used to is having an old man in a bad tie hand you a plate while you sit in the pew. The only thing you have to worry about is when they forget to come pick it up from you after it's been passed. This sometimes happens. It's a real problem if you're a woman and you feel like you can't stand up and take it to the guy (someone might think you're usurping, you know).

Anyhow, taking Communion at Trinity has become a very special thing for me. It truly is the focal point of the service. The sermon happens, is over, sometimes is good, and then we begin "The Great Thanksgiving," a very long (or so it seems to this CofC kid) liturgical movement which retells in gratitude the story and the meaning of the crucifixion, punctuated by responses from the congregation expressing thanks. Then we move to the altar. The bread is presented with the words, "The body of Christ," and the wine with, "The blood of Christ."

Sunday evenings, I take the train into Brooklyn and meet with a bunch of other Manhattan CofCer's who've committed themselves to Christ's Church for Brooklyn. Right now we're a house church. I've missed the house church dynamic after coming back from China. There's something unreproduceable about the intimacy of sitting in someone's living room. It's something like the difference between homemade and store-bought bread. Homemade church. This past Sunday, we sat around Joe and Laura's living room, around their coffee table, and shared communion after being invited to think about what this church would look like in a year: what new faces would there be around the table as we share communion together in the future? As we sat together, I imagined us all as various parts of the body, a la Paul's metaphor, and thought, which parts are we missing? What parts will join us and make us whole? Who will be a part of our journey together toward wholeness in Christ?

Two communions, separated by about 6 hours, an hour's train ride, the difference between high liturgy and informal address, the difference between altar and coffee table, church and living room. And yet, somehow, the essence of communion--being drawn together with God and with others--collapses those differences, making it plain that whatever the form, the bread and the wine function the same. The body of Christ, the blood of Christ. What else could make two celebrations so different one and the same?

hear ye, hear ye

I have an announcement to make.

I am a "bad Christian."

I have proof.

You can find out if you're a "bad Christian," too. Take the test. I would encourage you not to endeavor to improve your score (despite the exhortation at the end when you get your results back). Think of it like golf: the lower the better.

my interior castle

For part of my History of Doctrine comprehensive exam in the fall, I am reading women mystics: Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, and Julian of Norwich. I have never read them before, which is part of why I'm reading them now. The doctrine I am following in this part of the exam (and also in Augustine, in another section of the exam) is Christian anthropology, or as my professor prefers as more accurate, Christian psychology (using psychology in a radical way, referring to the psyche as the soul/mind, rather than the current professional use of the word).

And that's all very interesting. I am very interested in Christian anthropology/psychology, it is academically relevant to the direction I'm headed in with regard to the dissertation, etc., etc. But I have an ulterior motive here, too. I want to know what it's like to be a woman mystic. I want to know what "union with God" really means, not in an academic sense such as "when Teresa of Avila refers to the prayer of union she means x, y, z," & footnoted. I mean, I want to know what union with God is. I think I want a mystical experience.

Unfortunately for me, Teresa says quite clearly that union with God isn't granted for the sheer wanting of it. It's a fleeting and unpredictable favor which God grants to whom God chooses, inexplicably.

So I've been reading along in The Interior Castle, where Teresa compares the soul to a castle of clear crystal, within which are myriad "dwelling places," and within which, in the center, dwells God. Each dwelling place, in her metaphor, represents a certain level of spirituality. Union with God is a process, a journey through each of these dwelling places (although, as she points out, there's nothing ironclad about this process; God can give you a shortcut if God wants to). Not everyone makes this journey. And, it seems pretty clear to me, that Teresa thinks not everyone can, or should feel compelled to; she's not writing a pop-Christian manual for the laity, but to her Carmelite sisters.

There are seven dwelling places that Teresa talks about. I am about to begin reading about the sixth (which has eleven chapters to it--clearly this is something big!). I was going to finish the work before writing anything about it here, but I found something so wonderful in the third chapter of the fifth dwelling place that I had to stop and write about it.

As you might imagine, there's been a lot of stuff about spiritual consolations and spiritual delights of union...stuff that, while I can try to understand what she's getting at, I just don't have a personal experiential grasp of. But after all of this, she says:

"...it will be good to avoid giving the impression that those to whom the Lord doesn't give things that are so supernatural are left without hope. True union can very well be reached, with God's help, if we make the effort to obtain it by keeping our wills fixed only on that which is God's will."

I got very happy at this...and then very disappointed. I have in the past ranted (although not on this blog but I'm sure it will happen sooner or later) about the vagueness and uselessness of the trite phrase "God's will." (I especially hate when people affirm that vacuous sentiment "everything that's happened in my life has brought me to this point" and think that that's some kind of description of God's will. Uh, HELLO! Is it not obvious that everyone's life can be viewed as one long chain of cause/effect from any point? Shall we all pause before we get up off the toilet to reflect, "everything that's happened in my life has brought me to this point! Praise God!" Hmmm...guess that counts as a mini-rant and it seems to have happened sooner rather than later. But hey, "everything that has happened in my life has brought me to this point"...Praise God!)

So, I read on, a little disappointed in the Holy Mother, but thinking, well, obviously she has some idea of what that means even if I don't. But luckily for me, she goes on:

"There is no reason to doubt the possibility...of true union with the will of God. This union with God's will is the union I have desired all my life; it is the union I ask the Lord for always and the one that is clearest and safest. ...The Lord doesn't have to grant us great delights for this union; sufficient is what He has given us in His Son, who would teach us the road. ...Here in our religious life the Lord asks of us only two things: love of His Majesty [note: she often uses this phrase to refer to God] and love of our neighbor. These are what we must work for. By keeping them with perfection, we do His will and so will be united with Him. ...The most certain sign, in my opinion, as to whether or not we are observing these two laws is whether we observe well the love of neighbor. We cannot know whether or not we love God, although there are strong indications for recognizing that we do love Him; but we can know whether we love our neighbor. ...I have said a lot on this subject elsewhere, because I see, Sisters, that if we fail in love of neighbor we are lost. May it please the Lord that this will never be so; for if you do not fail, I tell you that you shall receive from His Majesty the union that was mentioned. When you see yourselves lacking in this love, even though you have devotion and gratifying experiences that make you think you have reached this stage, and you experience some little suspension in the prayer of quiet (for to some it then appears that everything has been accomplished), believe me, you have not reached union. And beg our Lord to give you this perfect love of neighbor."

It is astonishing to me that in what is basically a manual for prayer with the objective of achieving mystical union with God, in the middle of it, love of neighbor becomes the means of union with God. And how perfect is the last bit? Teresa of Avila scolding those who take their visions and emotional gratifications as proof of union without worrying about their neighbor. Can we hear this too much? I don't think so.

So maybe I'll stop worrying God for some kind of mystical experience. Maybe I'll take Teresa's advice and beg our Lord to give me this perfect love of neighbor instead. And we'll see what happens, sisters.

who sinned?

The disciples were gazing at a blind man. They probably were feeling something like "but for the grace of God there go I." And they wanted the explanation. Why him and not me? Who sinned, this man or his parents?

Yesterday the baby across the hall from Ira died. And now it seems everyone is searching for an explanation, one which will assure them that there's a reason this happened across the hall and not to Ira. One that will assure them that this won't ever happen to Ira, because Ira is safe from the dangers that strike other babies in the NICU.

It's too early in the morning for me to rant about this. It just makes me feel tired. Why haven't we learned? Why do we insist on fabricating neat little explanations for things that aren't neat and tidy? We read the Bible. We have Elie Wiesel and The Sparrow. Why don't we hear truth? Why do we close our ears to it and prefer to make comforting shit up?

Here's some truth. God didn't "spare" Ira because Joe is a good Christian man. God didn't "take" the baby across the hall because the parents didn't pray hard enough. And Satan is not "poofing" out my faith because I dare to notice and say these things. If Satan is involved in this in any way, I'd say he's playing the role of false comforter and dispenser of easy lies. Get thee behind me.

on my own

So, Brent is in Florida all this week for the Stephen Ministries training. I think this is a great thing and I'm really glad that Brent has been asked to help do it. But this is the first time I've ever stayed behind while he went off on a trip. I've been to OR twice to visit A & J up there, for a week each time, and left Brent behind. That was fine...but it sucks to be the one left at home. As I'm finding out, 2 hours into the deal. This place is so echoingly empty.

Thank goodness my cool Lutheran neighbors get back today from their vacationing so I'll have someone to hang out with when I get super lonely. In the meantime, I've got the cat. And LOTS of books to read. Up for this week:
the last few pages of H. Richard Niebuhr's The Responsible Self
Plato, The Republic
Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle
Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (hopefully it arrives soon)

Of these, I've read Niebuhr before (and am almost finished with it anyway--will probably knock it out on the train into Brooklyn for church later today) and also the Republic. But I haven't read the Republic since 10th grade, except for a couple of times in various classes over the last decade where the Allegory of the Cave was excerpted. But I am so glad that I have read it. James Cockerell, wherever you are, bless you! It took some balls to put Platonic philosophy on a 10th grade reading list. But you did, and I read it, and now I'm reading it again...for a PhD comprehensive exam in philosophy & theology. Way to think ahead! Way to prepare us 10th grade self-absorbed neo-hippie deadbeats for our potentially bright futures!

Of course, this also means my copy of Plato is seriously and embarrassingly doodled all over with everything from sunbursts to "I love ..."! I really might find myself compelled to get another copy, especially if it turns out that there's agonizingly adolescent marginalia. I find margin notes from college embarrassing at this point now; I can't imagine what 10th grade notes are going to be like. And I was never one to write in pencil. (What's frightening about all that is, I remember doing it, and I feel exactly as mature now as I remember feeling then. So the question is, is this feeling of mature selfhood a total illusion? Or is that I'm doomed to fifteen-year-old consciousness for the rest of my life? Or am I reading back my own self-awareness now into my memories from then?)

So. Here am I, on my own for a week. What am I going to do? Probably watch a lot of movies, and Gilmore Girls re-runs instead of annoying Dr. Phil at 5:00 pm every day. Maybe finally change that flat on my bike and enjoy some of this awesome sunny hot weather we've been having. Start a new knitting project. Hit the West Windsor Library and check out some more sci fi. (I can justify this: I'm looking for sci fi writers who incorporate ideas about the posthuman into their fiction, for later use or reference in the dissertation. Any of you who read sci fi and are interested, send me recommendations.) Study for comps. Finish editing vH's mss. Bake some bread. Eat lots of things I like that Brent doesn't like. Make some strawberry jam (2 quarts from the farm this week! Wow). Call my parents 'cause I'm lonely (already). Blog overtime 'cause I'm lonely. Go to bed early so I can get up early maybe and do yoga. Maybe make some progress on that long overdue to-do list...

aardvarks and humans

Aardvarks and humans share the rare distinction of being the only surviving species of their genus.

Em? How 'bout a chorus of "I'm all alooone in the woooorrld"? Maybe the aardvarks'll join in...

tomorrow's fun fact

What do humans and aardvarks have in common?

(I'll take suggestions.)

recipe for Em

Pasta & Greens

1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch watercress
garlic
3/4 cup ricotta
salt, pepper, nutmeg
1 lb. penne or whatever you like

Saute the washed and coarsely chopped greens in olive oil with some garlic. Add your seasonings, don't forget the nutmeg. When they're nice and wilty, take off the heat. Put the ricotta and the greens in a blender and blend till smooth. Toss with your cooked pasta. Top with pinenuts, Parmesan, chopped tomatoes if you like.

P.S. The greens are interchangeable. Use spinach or whatever you can find.

the Chinese way

Thanks to everyone for putting up with my fit yesterday. I'm sure that there's some kind of decent reason for there to be an anonymous option for comments. Actually, a certain level of anonymity is what's attractive about blogging at all. People stumble across your words inadvertently, and without knowing anything else about you, learn what you think about the things that are important enough to you to blog about. That's a weird kind of anonymity that goes hand in hand with a real intimacy. You're inside someone's head...but you don't know anything else about that someone. We're all disembodied talking heads here in BloggerWorld.

So I'm not saying that's bad. A couple of weeks ago my husband told me the thing he liked best about this blog was that it reminded him of the emails we sent back and forth when we were dating/engaged, when I was in China and he was in Texas. I remember the freedom of composing those emails--I could say whatever I wanted, without editing, without worry. And this is kindof like that. I just get to be me, and follow whatever line of thought catches my fancy, and make whatever stupid puns or weird associations or abrupt subject changes I want. It's intimate to talk that way.

So, it's not really anonymity that puts my back up. It's just plain cussed meanness. Or maybe occasionally I mistake utter stupidity for meanness, but there's a point at which stupidity is inexcusable, too.

Abrupt subject change. Brent and I have joined a CSA (that's Community Supported Agriculture! I have now successfully remembered the meaning of the acronym without asking for help! YEA!!! For some reason I had been suffering terrible mental blockage on that one) for the summer, and every Saturday we drive out to Pennington, NJ, to the Honeybrook Organic Farm to pick up our share of various veggies for the week. So far we have been inundated with exotic lettuces, bok choy, arugula, and picked our own strawberries and sugar snap peas & a big bouquet of flowers as a bonus.

So Saturday night when we finally had our across-the-street neighbors over for dinner, we had a Chinese feast which included our bok choy and snap peas. This was da bai cai, not the small ones, so it was a little different from what we used to eat all the time in China. But it tasted right. So here's all you need to stir-fry some authentic Chinese greens: oil (with a high smoking point, because you need very high flame to properly stir fry), lots of garlic, greens, and salt. Yep, that's it. Let the oil heat in the wok and then toss in your garlic. Stir it around for just a few seconds and let it get fragrant. Then throw in your greens and stir them around. Maybe toss in a little water to steam them a bit, especially if they're taking awhile to get tender--stir fry should be fast. Salt to taste.

For the sugar snap peas I added some ginger along with the garlic, and seasoned with a bit of soy sauce and some sesame oil at the end.

We also had carrots, tofu, and eggplant. The eggplant wasn't from the farm, but I think we get eggplant in the future (maybe), so when that happens I'll be letting you all in on the Best Way to Eat Eggplant Ever. I love eggplant all kinds of ways, but the Chinese way is best.

Yes, I said "the Chinese way." I cannot count the times I heard the phrase--usually in the form of a censorious "that is not the Chinese way" in response to some clueless American lao wai question I'd just asked. Most often (predictably) I found I was not enthralled with "the Chinese way." But the Chinese way with eggplant...oh, yes.

plague of the anonymi

This is to all you anonymi out there.

Go get a name.

Quit hounding people with your cowardly, self-righteous, destructive stupidity.

Blogs are great. I love writing what I think, and feeling that every so often someone will stumble upon it, maybe read it, maybe think a little bit, and go on with life just a little bit changed, or encouraged, or challenged. But the dark seamy stinky underside of the blog world is YOU, Anonymous. You skulk. You take cheap shots and run away and hide under your non-identity. You SUCK.

But here's something for YOU to think about, no-name. Maybe in being Anonymous you have robbed yourself of your own identity. Maybe each time you write a wounding comment on someone's blog and click "Anonymous" you have eroded your very own self in the process. Maybe, if you do it enough, you will shrink down and fade away and eventually disappear from the earth with a soft, gushy little "pop!" and there will be no more of YOU. Maybe in betraying everyone else with your nasty, pusillanimous weaselly comments you are at the same time betraying everything good in your own self. Maybe in hiding who you are, you lose who you are and should be and might have become.

THERE. Go think about that as you skulk back to your evil slimy den and eat your Cheetos. And hey! If you want to comment on this blog, Anonymous, go right ahead. Because I already know how much an unsigned comment is worth. I won't delete it. I'll leave it there so everyone can witness what a coward you are. Maybe we'll laugh at you. Maybe we'll pity you. But we won't be able to respect you. Because there's no one there to respect.

life needs a soundtrack

(long mellow prelude)

baby, I see this world has made you sad
some people can be bad
the things they do, the things they say
but baby, i'll wipe away those bitter tears
i'll chase away those restless fears
and turn your blue skies into gray

why worry
there should be laughter after pain
there should be sunshine after rain
these things have always been the same
so why worry now
why worry now

baby, when i get down i turn to you
you make sense of what i do
and all it isn't hard to say
but baby, just when this world seems mean and cold
our love comes shining red and gold
and all the rest is by the way

why worry
there should be laughter after pain
there should be sunshine after rain
these things have always been the same
so why worry now
why worry now

(long mellow postlude, at some point the drummer wakes up)

Dire Straits, "Why Worry Now." I don't expect any of you to get what this song is for me. It's a piece of history. For awhile the only way I could sleep at night was to down a melatonin and put this song on repeat. That lasted about 6 months, maybe longer, and still, whenever I feel inextricably sad, I put this on. The song itself isn't profound. Just putting the words up doesn't really communicate. But there's something mesmerizing in it, something that doesn't offend by negating the sadness but sweeps it up and carries it.

During the insomniac phase I had a crisis. I was supposed to go to HUF and leave my cd player with its repeat button and go live in a villa and share a bedroom with 6 girls. How would I sleep? This was a problem. I was more dependent than ever on my song because I was trying to wean myself off the melatonin (Mom freaked out about it and, despite what she may tell you, I've always tried to make my mother happy). So my friend Ben recorded the song on both sides of a single-track cassette tape, and bought me a new Walkman that would automatically reverse and play all night long (as long as I had the battery power). I could listen to it in the villa on my top bunk, and I could listen to it on the many overnight trains. It was one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever done for me.

So this is my recommendation for Joe. He asked for a song, not too fast or slow or too perky or preachy. This may be a bit mellow, but the drummer does wake up at the end.