The Office: Season 6 -- "The Homest Fry"

Life in The Office continues as hairy and hilarious as ever. Recently we welcomed Peter back to the show, but otherwise the cast remains---considering the state of the brains involved---remarkably stable....

“Wow! I’ve arrived; now I’m a home fry.” – Mom
“You are the homest fry.” – David

“You’re a penguin.” – David to Christy

In the following conversation, David never knew what it was that Christy was “oops-ing” about:

“Oops!” – Christy
“Whoops-a-buttercup.” – David
“Pretty much.” – Christy
“Did you break it?” – David
“No; it was already broken” – Christy

“We’re organizing our lives. It’s this whole ‘turning 50’ thing” – Mom, about herself and Dad
“What do we mean by ‘organizing our lives’?” – Christy
“We mean our faith, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” – Mom
“I think you’ve been doing too much with the Declaration of Independence.” – Christy

“I will uncan a jar of whupping on you if you misquote me.” – David

“That’s false! It as false as a piece of toast….disguised…as a cake!” – David, groping for a way to make his metaphor stick

“Are you a careful bouquet or a wild cluster?” – Christy to David
“Wild cluster all the way.” – David

“Hungry sailors always leads to defeat” – Peter

“Brittainy.” – Christy
“Hmmm?” – Brittainy
“Apparently, we basically got all our hard sciences from the Arabs, via the Crusades. Math, chemistry, biology, everything. Do you know what this means?” – Christy, who is researching the scientific revolution
“Umm…. It means that God had a purpose?” – Brittainy
“No. It means we should never have gone crusading.” – Christy

Aching

It is rare that I feel truly empty, or truly lonely. My days pass by in extreme busyness, which leaves little time for hurt---also, I have in general little hurt to feel. I am content.

But these last days have been different. I remember past hurts, and it is as if all those yesterdays happened today. My heart aches and is hungry. "For what?" I ask. "Why are you so empty? Why are you so lonely?" No answer.

I think that I miss God. My soul has been far from Him, lately. I don't know why, but somehow I can't seem to make it stop wandering. I want to tell Him I'm sorry, but I can't find the words. I want to press close to Him, but I lost the way. And my heart hurts---oh, it hurts! I stretch my hands out, and there is nothing. Darkness, darkness presses against my eyes.

When I was a young girl, I lived inside this ache all the time. I knew it so well, I could tell you every one of its special tortures. There is the squeezing one that makes it hard to breathe, and the terror one does the same, but from the inside out. There is the one about believing that you can't be loved, that you are too horrible, that it will never happen. That one works from the outside in and the inside out at the same time, and when the two meet in the middle, they shatter you into a million pieces.

I remember the one about being afraid of death, and the one about being afraid of the dark. I remember the one about being tired to your bones of everything. I remember the one where you seem to realize that nothing matters. That's the one that makes you want to die and get it all over with. I remember the one about hating everybody who is happy. I remember the one about wanting to be cruel to other people so that you will have company in your miserableness.

I remember all of them, and tonight they are all swarming over me. I can't call for help, because then they will get in. I can't send them away. And I can't breathe, and I'm so empty. Oh, emptiness hurts! It gnaws at you. It feeds on you.

It aches.

Oh, will the sun never rise again? I can't remember what it feels like to be warm.

Spring

I let my mind wander today, and it came home to me bearing a slender branch, heavy with redbuds, in its beak. I looked at that branch for several moments, silent and astonished. Then I lifted up my head and saw that, indeed, spring has come.

There are purple crocuses at the feet of the trees, my dear. There are clumps of pungent chives. The air is pristine and very young, not yet hot with summer's sun, not yet strong with summerstorms' tempestuous passion. It is the breeze of playmates, not of lovers. My trees are bare yet, but their bark is smooth and supple, and green inside with sap. The scent of it has the power to drive me mad with joy.

I took a walk today, away from my Romantic poets. I ought to have found them reflected in the spring, for did they not love spring, and is spring not Romantic? But, to my great joy, I found that spring is older than the Romantics, and is in no way bound to their expressions. While their best work reflects it, it does not reflect them. It is far less self-centered, and maintains even in its excesses a restraint, a gravity, and almost a grief, which their expostulations know not.

I broke a long twig from a fallen branch, on my walk, and swung it in my hand, and scraped the earth, and found that I am only twelve years old, not twenty-four. I remember now that when I was fourteen I wrote a letter to myself, to be opened in my twenty-fourth year. I wonder if I have that letter still... I wonder, but I care little. I remember what was in it, and the questions asked by my fourteen-year-old self were--not to put too fine a point on it--rather silly. In another person I would show consideration, but since it is only myself, I will not look for the letter or think of it. I will be twelve, not twenty-four, and different from my self at twelve only in being wiser than I was, and less inclined to nonsense of that sort.

But in the nonsense of spring, which is not nonsense at all, I will wisely revel. Spring is all to me. In April I become more than happy; for that month I am radiant. The days are too short, in April, and the nights too short also. I am in love with every hour. It is a month that answers all my wishes, for it is sad and gay, melancholy and furious, funny, kind, sweet, and above all hopeful and loving. In April I am ruled by April.

It is no accident, to my mind, that April follows immediately upon Easter. I imagine to myself that spring begins with Christ's passion, and that all the angry rainful days of March are the groanings of the passion, and that the glorious morning of Easter Sunday is the first true spring morning, and that after that the whole history of the church can be chronicled in a rising crescendo of things bursting into bloom. Then I think to myself how rich a harvest the autumn of the world will bring, and it seems to me that even the perishing of Earth, in a blaze of fire as rich as red maple leaves, will be magnificent, because after that there shall be no winter, but rather an entirely new season, which leaves my imagination breathless.

Meanwhile, Easter. By now, on that day so many years ago, Jesus would have been in His tomb, perhaps. By now, had I been a disciple then, my heart would be shattered. I would walk in bewilderment about the streets, neither knowing nor caring where I went, aware only of an absolute despair. I would feel, I am sure, that the sun could not ever rise again. Had it not been blacked out when He gave up His last breath? And moreover, I would not want it to shine more on a world that had not Him in it. By now, I would be standing idly, swaying and empty and spent from tears, in the middle of a dusty alley, perhaps, wondering that the dogs still barked and the children still laughed. These things would seem to me unnatural.

If you told me, tonight, then, that I would know joy again... I would only shake my head and stare. So, just for tonight, as I do every year, I will live it over again. He is gone, gone, gone, and I am desolate, though every now and then my heart throbs with a mad hope. For, after all, he raised others from the dead. Is it possible that....?

Fairy Tales

These last weeks have been thick with work and basement-dwelling. To keep sane, I have been reading fairy tales over lunches and late at night just before bed.

Fairy tales are remarkable citizens of the literary world. As a gens, they remind me of nothing so much as the principles figures for whom they are named: fairies. There is something severe, magnificent, improbable, and proud---with the connotation, now very rarely used, of superb dignity---about the best fairy tales; just as these qualities belong to the best fairies and to Tolkien's elves.

I have been noticing, also, how simple and shocking fairy tales are in plot and narration. They are often grimly violent and bafflingly composed. Consider, for example, this fairy tale which Danya made up and told to me once:

There was a young man who fell in love with a fairy. One evening he stood beneath her balcony and said, "I love you; will you marry me?"

"I cannot marry you," the fairy replied, "for I have no heart."

"Take part of mine," the young man replied. He gave her a piece of his heart and went away. The next evening he came again and said "I love you; will you marry me?"

"I cannot marry you," the fairy replied, "for I have no heart."

"You have a piece of my heart," said the young man.

"It is too small," said the fairy.

"Take another." And the young man gave her another piece of his heart.

On the third night, the young man came again and said, "I love you; will you marry me."

"I cannot marry you," the fairy replied, "for I have no heart."

"You have two pieces of my heart," said the young man.

"They are too small," said the fairy.

"Take another." And the young man gave her another piece of his heart.

This went on until, one evening, the young man gave the fairy the last piece of his heart. When she woke the next morning, the fairy found herself overcome with a sweet painful longing she had never known before. She waited eagerly for evening, but when it came, it did not bring the young man.

The fairy waited three days and then, in desperation, used all her magic to find out where the young man might be. She flew to his house the next night and stood outside his window. "Young man!" She said, "Let me in, for I love you and I will marry you."

"I'm sorry, but I cannot marry you," said the young man. "I have no heart."

Aside from the usual assurances that the fairy is as beautiful as possible, that her palace is the most splendid thing ever seen, and that the young man is both brave and handsome, this fairy tale is perfectly in accord with the rest of its species. But was always surprises me about it is its simplicity, and its utter disregard for what is now known as "realism."

If a young man had given a fairy a piece of his heart (and how, by the way, was he to do that while remaining alive?), he wouldn't surely turn around without another word and not inquire until the next evening whether she felt any effect. Also, we are told nothing about what either thought, or felt, or anything: only what they said. The whole thing could have been performed as a skit with bitter hatred and sarcasm on both sides, and the story would be completely transformed without a syllable of it being altered.

But somehow, the strong narration and simple straightforwardness of it all is captivating to me. I find it more beautiful, and also more painful, than many a fulsomely tragic scene in a novel. The very lack of detail, the unexpected but still conceivable reactions and statements, the passion and coldness and hope and regret, which are all set forward with such austerity, leave plenty of room for my imagination to act.

I do not say that it is better than a fairy tale by C.S. Lewis or George MacDonald, for they are masters who know exactly which details will enrich the story while yet maintaining its simplicity---however, I will say that it stands in my mind in sharp contrast to the "fairy tales" written for young adults nowadays: tales of magic and adventure and young heroes and heroines there are, but they are full of the trite, the foolish, and the fat.

Yes, they are fat with details and descriptions and glimpses of the inner mind, like rosy-lipped Victorian cherubs. Personally, however, I prefer the stately angels of the fairy tales, even they whose smiles are melancholy and made of stone.

Flame Forth

I have found that being a writer is, very often, a bizarre experience. Take the following case as an example. For days now the phrase "flame forth" has been drumming in my head, demanding to be written---but I had no idea what came after those two words. Then, while watching the sunset last night with paper and a pen, a voice arose to match it and began to speak. All I know of this voice and this character is what I wrote at her dictation, though she never even noticed me. Make of it what you will. She said,

Flame forth, O my words, and speak for me. Say to the long pale lances of the winter sun, "How you die in my west-facing windows! I am dying too." Speak the longing of my eyes, blue as they are, following the light where it falls into blue shadows. May my eyes never grow black, as the shadows do; but let my eyes kindle their sea-colors to fire!---to bring back the sun and his warm hands.

Light! See how he bids tenderest farewell to earth, and everywhere those fingers touch, green life appears. The lilies, the lily-shoots, they grow again. I am mad with joy! My bones are as crystal, and silver my skin; my face is as radiance; jewels of fire are my eyes. I reflect the light, but it and I are dying.

Speak, my words, to the sun for me. Tell him that all my heart is his, and beg to know whether he will meet me again at dawn. Tell him that my room faces the west, and I will sit with him until he and I are dead or sleeping; but tell him that my bed faces east, and that I will open my eyes again when he comes.

Without him I will dream of forests filled with mournful hooting owns, and mist, and dreary frightened deer. But when he appears---ah!---tell him that he brings glory with him, and beauty, and himself best of all. Flame out, my words---tell him that I am sick with love. Follow him burning with my message, as a shooting star should! Track him through all the constellations of the night, and know of him, will he keep faith?

"Will you meet me in the morning with your bursts of song? How your light sings!"

For love is strong as death, stronger than blue shadows and sleeping. The world and the deer of the forest and I---we long to be green, lively, and afire, to reach up into his presense once again. We wish to smile at him. Flame forth, my words, and tell him so for me.