Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Juli and Dealing With Frustrations (not in that order)

We've had Juli in the office a lot lately, and we've had a lot of frustrations to deal with in our various work spheres. The two are not related. <:0)

“Yes, I feel like a trash disposal as well.” – David to Mom, who just made a frustrated sound to her computer.

True Confessions: Juli on IM, about the new Bookshelf website…
Juli: ... it's so good
Juli: I want to marry it
Juli: not really
Juli: but I am deeply in like with it
Juli: the buttons...
Juli: the icons....
Juli: the blue blue blue everywhere
Juli: ::sigh::

“’How much misery can you heap on a woman?’ you ask, and Juli, from the depths of the Resource List and her experience readily answers ‘Plenty.’” – David

“David! Come control your young!” – Mom to David about out-of-control jpeg files (all images are his department), also magnificently quoting Night at the Museum

“I am realizing that with regard to this I have the intelligence factor of a duck; a drunk duck… who flunked out of duck school.” – David apologizing to Juli for the lines he made

“I mean, I’ve heard of ‘care and feeding of the mother,’ but this is ridiculous” – Mom on being Christy’s “hobby.”

“There are minor deities at work here, and they’re not appeased!” – David, issuing one of his standard statements on the causes behind work that refuses to progress in a timely fashion.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

The Other World

She had the saddest eyes I'd ever imagined, full of ripples and longing. You think you know what sadness is, perhaps; you think it is the eyes of a starving child. But I tell you there is a deeper sorrow, one born of a more spiritual anguish. What is food or not-food, life or death, when you are alone as she was?

I remember it was a cold, cold night in January, nearly eleven, only an hour before curfew. I had come out to the pond to cry for my own loneliness, which was as nothing to hers. But perhaps that is why I saw her; because I too felt that pain--that and because I was so young, just nineteen. The pond between the college dorms was the only place where I could have my agony out in private, unnoticed and unheard. Ah, I was so young, and my sorrow seemed to demand the grand and bleak setting of the winter night.

But when I saw her, my own tears became insignificant. Her back was to me, but I saw her face even so. She stood at the center of the water and looked up through it at the lighted dorm windows. The pond seldom froze, but there was a light silvery sheen of ice on it, and she stood behind that as behind a window, looking out at our yellow windows from her blue one. Her skin, I remember, was silver-grained and dark. Her eyes were the blue of midnight, almost black. She stretched out slim fingers to touch the ice above her, and smiled a smile half sad, half tender.

I looked at her and loved her. It was a simple thing. She began for me the "other world" of Patrick Henry College, the one that was to dominate my imagination for five years; and in spite of all my attempts to grow up, hers is the world I still long for in my dreams. Hers is the world I still touch. So strange it is to me, that I walked about by day and by night as a young adult in professional clothing, learning all the knowledge that a classical liberal arts education has to offer, and all that a vibrant group of young Christians can teach each other, and yet in some ways that world faded while hers remains---the dream within the reality, or the reality within the dream?

She was at the center of all that went on in that other world, and everything else grew up around her. Within a month or two of knowing her, I became aware of the warm-voiced spirits that inhabit every lamp on campus. There was one, I remember, exactly at the center of the back of the boys' dorm. He was the guardian; he faced the red light that winked in the distance---the Eye of Mordor, I called it---and stood his ground. Sometimes I would go to him and stand, cupping my hands around his warmth and glow, and be comforted.

Some of the lamps were tall, some short. Some died easily, and I mourned them until their lamps were restored. I always spoke to them; I always caressed the low ones, almost thanking them for burning, certainly thanking God for their soft strength against the greedy fingers of night. Ah, so many nights they comforted me, walking solitary and exhausted late at night, shuffling from study room to dorm. They did not know the water fairy; they were there for us, to comfort the students. They could have done nothing for her. She was locked beneath the long blue rills.

So few, so very few, ever entered her world with me. Most advised that I grow up and put such childish things behind. But Stars came with me, when I opened that place for her, and Teo sometimes led me in. He showed me more of the people of that world; he gave me a flock of seven fairies. All through a long summer I cherished them, first for his sake, then for their own. I loved them; they were so real.

They knew of the water fairy, of course, but their task was me. They pricked me on when I would have lapsed into apathy; they sang and danced for me that I might not know sadness. I remember Teo once said that a lamppost we were walking by was really Simile, one of the fairies. She could transform herself into anything. She knew me best. Paradoxus was my Peter Pan; he ruled my heart and forced me to be strong. The others were my children, dear, so dear!

The fairies gave me the gazebo, which was theirs alone to give. I would take off my shoes whenever I entered it. Teo laughed at me, but I told him that it was their rule. I left messages in the eaves of that fragile structure, somehow so solid and full of freedom, and it sang to me whenever I went to it. The water fairy heard and smiled. I played with the willow tree that grew on her banks, and waded in her waters. She never spoke to me, but she didn't have to. I knew that she gladdened because someone was aware of her.

The fairies treated her reverently and spoke of her as if of a distant queen, but they whispered her story to me while I slept. She was sad because she had been enchanted; she would remain at the bottom of the pond in an emerald palace guarded by a dragon made of mud and fire, until a hero came to set her free. Then the pond's waters would become sweet, and all its mud would turn to golden sand, and we would be able to swim in it. The water fairy would take her husband to a magnificent castle now invisible, but really there in the cornfield, and the college would vanish, and the whole place would become once more the kingdom that it had been before her imprisonment by a wicked enchanter.

I told myself this story so often that it grew elaborate. I knew her courtiers and the various spells that held them silent and ugly. I knew her kingdom and knew what joy would come to it when she set a king on the throne and become his queen. I knew that she would wait a long, long time. I knew all her moods; some days she was hopeful, others sad, still others angry, and sometimes still, waiting. Whenever I needed to cry, at night, I went to cry by her shores. She understood tears, and I understood time and again that my sadness was insignificant beside hers. I was one person who felt pain; she was for me somehow the personification of pain, but always hopeful, always steadfast, always waiting, among blue shadows, for her dawn. I drew strength from her and from her world, her people, the lamps and the fairies.

I shall never forgive myself for denying them. One night, one of the last of the nights that I lived on campus, Stars asked me "how the fairies were." Teo had died by then in a terrible accident, and I was still angry with him for dying, so I said, quite savagely "There are no fairies. I don't believe in fairies."

Oh, my dear ones, I did believe in you! I do still. I believe in you, and in the water fairy and the warm-voiced lamps. I believe in the promise of the hero and the golden kingdom, which is as much as to say that I believe the water-fairy will be happy again, someday. I believe that her fingers will not always be pressed against an achingly cold wall of ice. I believe that her dark, longing eyes will spark someday with laughter. I believe that her palace in the cornfield is there. I believe that pain cannot endure forever.

I believe in the other world. Do you hear me, water fairy? Do you hear, my little white palace, my gazebo, my delicate home of dreams? Do you attend to my words, you beautiful aerial fairies, whom I once denied out of my bitter regret? Will you forgive? Will you return to me? Will you remind me once more to look beyond my self, my own sadness, to a larger sadness, and choose hope even so?

My dreams are full of shadows and labors, dear water fairy. I am weary. I go to the forest here to find you in the brook, but it is winter, and I cannot go often. Beloved other world, my other heart is with you, and my other mind is constantly in your fields; I feel your joys, fears, anguish, hope, and my arms are raised with your uplifted swaying trees limbs. I thought I had forgotten, and I wanted to forget. I denied, and I wanted to deny. I thought that I could not see you alone, and that all children have to grow up. But even though all my playmates are vanished or dead or lost to me, I still see you. Child or not, I shall always see you. You are mine; I am yours. You are my picture of reality, only painted sharper and brighter so that I can understand.

Dear water fairy, don't give up. Sweet sprite, lift up your eyes to the stars, from which you were surely born, and have hope. God does not forget us.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

So True..


"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea." -- John Ciardi


Danya my graphic arts brother sent me this quote, which he says is a profound insight (I think I agree). But what I particularly love about it is that, all unbeknownst to him, John Ciardi is my favorite translator of Dante's Commedia.

Cheers to you, Ciardi!

Monday, November 12, 2007

Funniest Obsolete Law: Care to Vote?

They are still laws. They are hilarious. They are English. Here they are:

1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament
2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down
3. Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day
4. In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter
5. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail of the queen
6. It is illegal to avoid telling the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing
7. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour
8. In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow

Saturday, November 10, 2007

We're Big Kids Now

I feel like this should be a country song. Let me see if I can make it fit lyrically...

Verse 1
Well me and my best friend got up this morn
Bleary-eyed from workin' all evening before
But we're back at the office by 10 AM, though it's Saturday.
Caught a few laughs on the way in,
Sat down to our work with music and then
Next thing you know, it's time for lunch
Well, it just seems like...

Chorus
The load piles up and the time runs out
Can't remember bein' unresponsibile
But big loads, long days, we're big kids now
And that don't mean that we can't still play
Can't still laugh; and when we say "I love,"
It means more, because we're big kids now

Verse 2
We went to lunch, as only big kids can
With wheels and plastic and no real plan
Spent half an hour talkin' over this and that:
Mostly angels and planets, and we started to laugh
Then she said something deeper, she loves God
And I said yes, that's how it is for both of us
And it just seemed like...

Chorus
The load piles up and the time runs out
Can't remember bein' unresponsibile
But big loads, long days, we're big kids now
And that don't mean that we can't still play
Can't still laugh; and when we say "I love,"
It means more, because we're big kids now


Well, it's not a very good country song, but that was my attempt. ;-) I was just thinking today how true it is that I'm a big kid now, but that it doesn't mean I don't still have joy. And thank God for Brittainy---a best friend makes everything better.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

I Have A Niece


Not only that, but my niece had the admirable good taste to be born on her due date, today, November 8th.

Her name is Nora Caryl, and yes, she is the first.

I always wondered whether, when Nora was born, I would collapse into fits of adoration and proclaim her the sweetest, prettiest, best infant in the world.

Well, I won't proclaim any of the above....yet, for the simple reason that I haven't been to visit her yet. Mike and Jess are understandably asking for time to recover before all the new uncles and aunts flood the hospital room. However, from the pictures I conclude that she looks like most newborns---all scrunchy and red.

The pictures, of course, don't keep me from believing with all my heart that she is the sweetest, best, and prettiest child that has ever been seen. It just means that I haven't yet had a chance to prove it by close observation. :-)

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

The Office -- Season 5: "David Among Us"

“George II of Britain looks like a really scary woman.” – Amy, out of nowhere

“John, Jacob, Jingleheimer Schmidt! His name is my name too!” – David, jumping up and down and singing at the top of his lungs, completely randomly, in front of Juli
“Wow. And you’re in the season of life ahead of me.” – Juli

“I can geek out about pencils if I want to. I’m an art major.” – David

“He’s creepy. He’s right up there with Oompa-Loompas in my book. I mean, he needs to be spanked. He’s like one of those creepy people who hangs around and stares.” – David on the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland
“Um, he basically is one of those people who hangs around and stares.” – Christy
“Yeah, but he’s like their patron saint.” – David

“This is so dumb! It’s like pants made of swiss cheese!” – David
“That’s pretty dumb.” – Amy
“Yeah. Good thing I’m not having a bad attitude about it.” – David

“C’mon, paste! You know, the stuff you eat in kindergarten!” – Juli to the computer

“It’s kinda like ‘B.C.’ and ‘A.D.’” – David on his life before and after marriage
“I agree that it is like that, though perhaps you should call it ‘B.C.’ and ‘A.C.’ for ‘Before Casey’ and ‘After Casey’?” – Christy, trying to avoid theological problems
“No, just change the ‘D’ in the second one to stand for ‘domesticus…’ or, what, ‘domestice’?” – David, drawing on his knowledge of high school Latin
“’Domesticus’ is an adjective.” – Christy, doubtfully
“Okay, then, ‘the year of the house’!” – David
“Why don’t we just say anno uxore, ‘the year of the wife’?” – Christy
“No. I want the ‘D.’” – David
“Hmm… well, actually it looks like domesticus is a noun also… second declension… you’ll notice it’s very rare…” – Christy, looking online
“Yes! I win! I was even right about the ending—domestice!” – David

The Day David Decided to Be the Office Cinderella…
“That does it! We need another man around here so there’ll be somebody else ‘other’ enough for you all to mock!” – David, rebelling against the teasing he gets (and begs for) from the all-girl Development department of the office.
“Okay. You go find another guy.” – Christy
“Okay I will.” – David
“After you finish all your other chores, Cinderella.” – Christy
“That’s it! I’m just going to put on an apron and go around singing ‘Sing Sweet Lullaby.’” – David
“’Sweet Lullaby’?” – Brittainy
“’Sweet Nightingale.’ Whatever! You knew what I meant. And I’ll get roaches and name them Gus and Jack-Jack…” – David
“You already named Jack ‘Jack-Jack’” – Christy
“That’s right, I did! So I won’t name roaches; I’ll name minions! And you will all get wicked stepsister names.” – David
“As long as it’s a good one, I don’t care.” – Amy
“Someone’s going to wind up as Lucifer [the wicked cat], and they’re going to have to wear that. Cookies will be accepted as bribes for a better name.” – David
“Better stepsister names?” – Christy
“There’s Drusilla and Anastasia. Anastasia is way better than Drusilla.” – David
“I’d go with Drusilla. It’s better than ‘Amy.’” – Amy