Guinnie's Memoirs

Guinevere has decided to finally sit down and write her memoirs. It's something I've been urging her to do for a long time. We've decided that she can dictate and that I'll be her scribe. But just a quick preview--you can expect to read about such high points in her life as

when she was working as a waitress and was picked up by a mafia member, thus getting her start in the world

her involvement as a U.N. goodwill pup

her alleged involvement in the Pup of the Year scandal, the scandal that rocked the canine world, leading to the end of the coveted Pup of the Year Award and even the Pup of the Month award.

Guinnie wants you to understand that whatever she's done, it's always been for the "greater good" and not for "what could appear as the bad aspects" of the activity. She also says that she's a Jesuit.

Look for further posts as Guinnie begins the task of composing her memoirs.

Crazy

One more thing. . .some days I think I must be crazy.

Miscellaneous

There's all this random stuff I want to say. I'm drinking tea, and as I've said before, I do wish that sometimes there were someone else to make the tea. But there's just me. All I really want to do is drink tea and lie on the floor and listen to U2 until it's all better, you know?

Today, in class, we were talking about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and one young woman raises her hand and says, "I know this doesn't have much to do with our reading, but I was just wondering what you think. Do you think chivalry is dead?" (I just talked to Carina about this.) I know that the proper, academic answer would have been to talk about how chivalry is a construct in literature and social history and never really existed, not like she's thinking and blah, blah, blah. I know that's the script I'm supposed to speak from. But instead, I said, "Well, judging from the men I've dated recently, I'd have to say that, yes, chivalry is dead." So, I know that was really the wrong thing to say. But it just sorta happened, you know?

So maybe temporal happiness is U2 and really good tea. Or maybe U2 and tea and a hot bath. And then a episode of House MD. Or maybe just bed in clean sheets. I have this thing for sheets right out of the dryer, you know?

Is it weird that I like George Michael? Does anyone remember back in the day when we could use the word "gay" as a general insult, and that was OK? I miss those days.

Maybe temporal happiness is reading John Donne and drinking tea. Or maybe temporal happiness is 1:00 am with your best, best friends, drinking wine and making biscotti or some such. Come to think of it, there are lots of things I like.

The Cutest Dog I've Ever Seen!

So I know that I'm silly and prejudiced and all that, but I think that Miss Perfect Polly is the cutest dog I've ever seen. Here she is asleep on my pile of dirty laundry. It's nice that my sloth is providing someone with comfort, don't you think? I think she's just beautiful and good and perfect, like an angel in canine form.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

As I've probably mentioned, I'm teaching Sir Gawain this week and next--oh what fun!

And since Archer asked, I thought I'd mention something about the hunt scenes in part III which parallel the Lady's purusit of Gawain. So these scenes are pretty clearly written to mirror one another, I would say. The narrative structure, if nothing else, indicates this for us. What I find most interesting is that on the three successive days, as Lord Bercilak hunts a deer, a boar, and a fox, both the Lady and Gawain seem to take on the characteristics of these creatures. I'd expect Gawain, the hunted, to parallel these animals, certainly, but I think the Lady does too. On the first day, her purusit of Gawain is graceful and apparently noble, like the deer. Gawain's response is the same. As one of my students said today, they are very "deery." On the second day, both are more stubborn, pig-headed even, as is the boar which Bercilak hunts and kills. In both scenes, the literal hunt and the figurative hunt back at the castle, both hunter and hunted show tenacity. Finally, both the Lady and Gwain behave in the manner we traditionally associate with the fox: they are cunning, sly, tricky, and not totally above board. So that's that. And it's interesting.

But I keep asking myself, "But what does it all mean?" And it seems to me that Gawain finds himself in a situation where he can only fail; it's a question of which fault he will pick, I suppose. Again, in the words of my students, he needs to cut his losses and get out with as much dignity in tact as possible. Arguably, this is what he does. But he still feels himself to be a failure. And I think this is exactly what it "means." Humans fail. Expecting perfection just doesn't work. Gawain can't be entirely perfect all the time, as he learns, in spite of his intentions. And, in the end, it's OK. I suppose that as much as anything, this analysis is really coming from where I am right now. (Ok, ok this is maybe not very sophisticated literary criticism, but it's what it is. And really, if we can't learn about ourselves from literature, what's the point?) We try to be perfect; maybe we think we have to be perfect. But we can't. This world just doesn't work that way. And in the end, it's Ok.

I'm entirely honest that I struggle with perfectionism. And it makes me crazy and anxious and miserable, sometimes. And it also means that I do a really good job with some things, but I don't even enjoy my successes because I focus only on the one, tiny thing that could have been better. I'm learning more and more to move away from this, but it's hard. I know that some of you can identify. I was talking to a colleague today, and he seems to think it's a product of being a female of my generation. Maybe there's something to that. Maybe it's the same old issue that I have with feminism--the idea that I have to be all things to all people all the time. Only I can't.

So I've done it again: I have taken a post about something outside of me, and I have made it about me. But I guess this is what I needed to write.

One more thing: henceforth, I want to be known as Pajama Sam.

Some days, you work and you work. And you feel guilty because you've made a student cry. And you come home and work at not having a panic attack. And once the panic subsides, you work some more, grading essay exams, which turn out to be much better than you'd anticipated. But still, the panic is there just below the surface. And you try really hard not to give in to the urge to pick up the phone to call your ex-boyfriend. You just want someone to talk to, but you know that calling him will bite you in the backside in the end. So you just keep working. And all of a sudden the exams are graded, and it's 6:30. So you order a pizza with feta an artichoke hearts. And you watch Empire Records, all the while unable to remember if you've seen in before. And you think how you love this genre of cheezy, high school hijinx movies, all the while telling yourself that maybe tonight's the night to start that "thing" you've been meaning to write. And you hope that bed time comes soon. And you hope that once bed time arrives you'll be able to sleep. And the phone never rings.

Sometimes Blessings Come From Unexpected Places

I'm taking a break from grading midterms for my "Touchstones of Western Literature" course. One of three options that my students had was to write an analysis of the story in Genesis chapter 22, where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. I was pleasantly surprised at how many students chose this particular option. I was even more pleasantly surprised by the insight of their responses. So many of them pointed out that doing what we are supposed to do is difficult but that we are blessed in the end, blessed precisely because we do the difficult thing. I suppose this is exactly what I needed to hear, yet I didn't expect to find it among a set of sophomore-level midterms.

It so often strikes me that what we need comes from a source we wouldn't have expected.

iPod and Podcasts

I have little energy for today's post, so I'll keep it short.

NPR's free podcasts are a wonderful thing.

D

Larry McMurtry

I am reading McMurtry again. So far Texasville is pretty trashy. But he's this funny writer.

How's this for an opening sentence: "Duane was in the hot tub, shooting at his new doghouse with a .44 Magnum."

And here's something about Duane's wife: "She had thirty or forty T-shirts with lines from. . .songs printed on them. Every time she heard a lyric which seemed to her to express an important truth, she had a T-shirt printed" Couldn't this be me? Well, Karla does a lot of crap I wouldn't do, but couldn't this description be me in a weird, alternate universe, one where I live in Texas and have the means to obtain all the tees I want???

Lonely / Sad / Alive / Happy / Working

So today I read the first two "fitts" (that means parts, I suppose) of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I know that I pretty much claim to love everything that I read, but I really do love Sir Gawain. You know, it's all medieval and stuff. No seriously, doesn't Sir Gawain's predicament tell us something about human nature, about how no matter how hard we try, we always fall short, yet others see us as being wildly, dazzlingly successful? What does it all mean? Is Gawain just a perfectionist? The Green Knight / Bercilak forgives him, so why can't he forgive himself? Ok, so I know that theologically some would quibble with this notion of "forgiving" one's self, but you know what I mean. Anyway, it's all interesting. Gawain's character is interesting. The language of the poem is interesting. If you are nerdy enough to care, I'm reading Tolkien's translation. It's all just wonderful and comforting on this very personal level. I realize that I say this kind of thing about nearly everything I read, and that's fine. Most of what I read for work / class is stuff I've selected because I like it so much and find it meaningful.

So Gawain is the good part. But I feel so very alone. I am overwhelmed and anxious. And I want to feel like someone cares, like there's someone I can call who won't be too busy or annoyed or whatever. But right now, it feels like it's just me and Polly and Guinnie, the evil non-genius. I don't want to always feel so alone. And most of the time I'm OK and all. But still.

Well, if you've read this far, thanks for listening to my rant. I love you for it.

D

Diana Wynne Jones

I'm reading Diana Wynne Jones's Charmed Life, and I want to say that Jones is, in my professional opinion (I say that because it sounds funny), one of the most under rated contemporary writers for young adults. She is inventive; she is a good writer. Why aren't more people reading and talking about her novels? I totally recommend her to anyone who is interested in YA fantasy, my current fixation. Jones seems to understand the experience of being a child in the late 20th century; there's something authentic about the perspective from which she writes. And I love it! If anyone's really interested Patricia Wrede is OK, and Jane Yolen can be good, both writing in the same vein. I wish there were something more academic or at least smart-sounding that I could say about Jones's work. In Charmed Life she writes a world parallel to ours where magic is fairly common. What's the theory? Where one posits that for each event (or maybe each major event) that occurs, there's some alternate world where that event turned out differently? If anyone knows the term for this theory, rather common in fantasy, let me know. I should know this. Anyhow, the characters find ways to travel between these parallel worlds, and it's all interesting, a fun read. But more than that, I think Jones has her finger on something about the selfishness of human nature. J.R.R. Tolkien would say that the great thing about fantasy is that it allows us to see truth about ourself in a clearer way by putting human nature in a different setting. (If anyone's really interested, read his "On Faerie." Now I really sound like an academic. I don't know if I can help it; I read, even think, through the lens of Tolkien and Lewis. Sometimes I feel silly about it; other times I just accept it.)

Anyway, I realiz that none of this is too profound. I think I'm writing to begin to collect my thoughts about Jones as much as anything.

It's The Little Things

I often find myself saying that I think, at least for me, one important part of being content each day is appreciating, even reveling in, the little, daily things that one enjoys. Today specifically, I am enjoying and am thankful for really good tea, my iPod (it's hard to remember living without it), Guinnie and Polly, a hot bubble bath, interesting reading material, fun DVDs, my physical health, my emotional health (hey, it's taken me a long time to get to this point!), the way my body and spirit feel after yoga, friends, and most of all God's presence in my life.

I know it may all sound cheezy (is that a technical term?), but I feel so joyously thankful for all this abundance! And I somehow feel as though I should share it with the world.

I sometimes feel invigorated when I wake up in the mornings, knowing that there's so much to look forward to during the day. I even happen to like Mondays.

Update on Augustine

Ok, so I just wanted to quickly say that I am reading the section on memory in the Confessions, and A. is beginning to rectify some of the concers and questions I had about the ability to trust one's memory. I'm feeling better about things. And I'm rather obsessing about A., which I am fine with (or rather, with which I am fine.) My biggest concern is what to read next.

The Office (and other DVDs)

I've spent the last three hours or so watching the first few episodes of the BBC's The Office, and boy, is it funny. And it's really offensive at the same time. And I can't remember the last time I thought that offensive could be funny. But this is. I guess the point is that these characters, while saying and doing potentially offensive things, are presented as real asses. And this is funny to me.

I have also started watching House M.D. on DVD. It's also very entertaining, but it took a while for me to get beyond thinking of Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster. But once I did, House seemed brilliant.

Ah, so much TV, so little time!

More on Augustine: This for "PDempsey"

My head is full of Augustine right now. And there's so much I want to talk about, but I am not sure how to organize my thoughts. But here's some of it:

The Confessions is interesting in that it's more about Augustine's intellectual and spiritual growth and less about the external events and trappings of his life. In this way, it rather reminds me of C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy, a book that always fascinates me. But how can one really retrace and recount for us his spiritual development. I mean, there seems to be something artificial or constructed about it, you know? I can barely remember what I was thinking last night. How can someone so clearly remember what he was believing and mulling over at a particular period in his life, a period maybe years in the past. I don't think that Augustine is making it up or anything; it just strikes me that he can never really get at the texture and sense and "quidity," to use a Lewisism, of his own mind at any particular time. Yet, I applaud the attempt and generally think that Augustine is successful. (Forgive me for comparing him over and over to Lewis. I suppose that for a variety of reasons, Lewis controls how I tend to think about the world, the mind, and literature specifically. This is sometimes troubling.)

I'm struggling to "get" Augustine's ideas about sin. Before I started reading, I would have been able to give a simple definition, maybe even an explanation, of A's theory of sin; that is sin as a falling short, but also as a kind of nothingness, something that does not exist because God has created all that does exist, yet God could not have created sin. Ok, ok don't jump all over me because that wasn't perfect--I'm just trying to get out the working definition I'd assumed when I began the Confessions. Yet there's something about it that just isn't adding up for me. And I don't know whether the intellectual and maybe imaginative shortcoming is in me or A. or both. But I want to understand. I'd like to better know what sin is (or isn't.) But I am just not getting it. I suppose I just need to keep reading. I'd like to believe that if I keep reading everything will be ok somehow.

I realize that this post isn't very coherent. I'm rather tired (what else is new?), and I'm mostly trying to frame questions. I'm not quite ready to work at answers yet. Maybe the questions are just as important as the answers anyway.

Where Does the Time Go?

I get frustrated often because there never seems to be the time for all the things I want to do, things that I think are important. There's so much I want to read and write about and talk about. But it seems as though my days are filled with meetings and phone calls that I let drag on for too long and doing nothing. Sometimes doing nothing is fine, but I'm talking about the doing nothing that isn't even enjoyable.

I mean, what I really want to do lately is read and take notes on what I'm reading and write about what I am reading. Augustine is calling me. But there are always papers to grade and bills to pay. It's not that I'm lazy or that I don't want to work. In fact, I am by nature, pretty highly motivated and disciplined. It's just that here it is, after 6:00, and what have I accomplished? Not all that much. I proctored two miderms: boring, but a necessary boring, I suppose. I went to a yoga class: three cheers for me, and boy does my back feel better. I had a doctor's appointment for my annual girl stuff: unpleasant, but again a necessary unpleasant made more barable by the fact that my doctor is wonderful. I came home and rested: rather a let down that I rested rather than doing productive things, but seemed needful. I cleaned and organized stuff around the place, athough you may not be able to tell by looking. I watched Dr Phil: this was highly unnecessary, and the silly part is that I watched it only because there was a dog in some of the footage that looked like Guinnie; couldn't miss seeing her again. But, really, where did my day go? And what beyond the work, yoga, and doctor was even meaningful or useful?

I want more time, not just to be lazy, but to pursue things that I believe are important to my intellectual and personal development. And here's my deep, dark secret: I want time to write, not just this silliness, but something meaningful. I think I need to pursue that for myself. But I don't; there's always a reason not to start, to put it off until another day.

I'm not upset. And I'm not being overly hard on myself. I am just baffled somehow.

NB: I realize that I've way overused the colon in this post. It may be my new favorite punctuation mark. The dash is my old favorite.

NB: I'm still avoiding writing about the things that matter to me most: love, pain, faith, doubt, people.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say. I'm here writing because of some silly rule, some New Year's Resolution, that I've imposed upon myself. But I don't know what to say. I woke up this morning, thought "I can do this," and got myself out of bed. And the day just was. It wasn't anything noteworthy. There were high points and low points. And yes, I cried but only a little.

OK, I have decided that it's OK to cry. C. and I have been talking about this, and my mom and I have been talking about this, and I'm OK with crying. It doesn't mean anything is wrong with me or even that anything is wrong with my life. It could just mean that I'm tired and want a break. And I feel content and satisfied most of the time, so it's OK if I cry sometimes. I guess I have just decided to accpet that maybe this is normal for me. Or healthy for me. Or even if it isn't, it's who I am right now. And obsessing about it isn't going to make it any better or any different anyway, so I might as well just decide that it's fine. Maybe it's the whole 1-11 thing again; maybe I have those 1 moments each day, but it's OK because there are more and more 11 moments all the time.

What I do know is this: that even if I am crying a little each day (or most days, not every day), I am more satisfied and have more direction than I have for the past 2 1/2 years. That's not an exaggeration.

Tehanu

I've been reading Ursula LeGuin's Tehanu for a class. And there a just a couple of observations that I want to record, more for myself than anyone else.

LeGuin deals in this novel with the possibility and paradox of being two things at once--the old woman who is really a dragon, the abused child who really is powerful, and the woman who is both domestic and heroic. Tenar, a central character here, often reflects on her decision to pursue traditional, domestic female roles rather than learn to be a sorceress of some sort. And yet, we are never quite sure that she's made the best choice. It seems to me that Tenar can do both things, be a traditional female and be a radical female, maybe not at once but in one lifetime. Maybe this is what LeGuin is urging each of us to do.

I don't know; I'm still working through this.

"Evil But Not a Genius"

I have a brother J. who is 15. Some of you have known him since he was about 3. And if you know me or him at all, then you know that he tends to say really, really funny things. He also tends to do funny things. He has a way with words, sometimes a tendency to misuse words, that has been a source of amusement for me since he started talking. Here's an example:

About 4 years ago, when our niece E. was a baby, E. arrived at my parents' home wearing a winter time hat. It was a silly little hat, but she looked cute. And here was J.'s analysis. . .

"Hey, in that hat, don't you think like E. looks like she could be one of Santa's minions. You know, evil but not a genius."

Oddly, I think he's used the expression "Evil but not a genius" about my dog Guinevere.