Monday, March 31, 2008

I'm feeling vaguely distressed

Why is there no good antonym for "aloneness" in the English language?

I very much enjoyed the collection of wittier-than-average insults Heather posted today, and I suspect you will too, if you haven't seen it already.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

I haven't really stopped being a child who does crazy things.

Tagged by Summermoon and Taiger.

Rules:
1. Follow this format
2. Copy/Paste the rules
3. State who tagged you and add a link to their blog
4. Write 5 crazy things you did as a little kid
5. Tag 5 people

1. I climbed doorframes.
2. When new people were at our house, I would run and get our Barbie tent, then proudly show them how I could squeeze myself into it.
3. I tried to take pictures of scenes on the television screen. Oh, and extremely close-up shots of our pet rats' faces.
4. When we took long car drives (read: seven or eight hours), I was most comfortable sleeping with my body curled up in the seat and my head on the floor.
5. I would make lists of hundreds of horse names and write descriptions of each horse's physical characteristics and personality. When I got bored in church, I would start writing them out from memory on the attendance sheet-like things in the pews.

Hm...I'm not much for tagging. If you want to do it, please go ahead, or send me a brainwave and then I'll tag you here.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Today I'll simply direct you to other blogs

If you don't read Miss Erin's blog, she posted a most excellent quote today.

Also, I've just discovered (and become a fan of) Indexed and added it to my "writers and strangers" blogroll. It's full of graphs and diagrams like this that the author creates to "make fun of some things and sense of others":


Teehee!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Why I changed the layout

Because black pages use less energy than white ones! Woohoo!

Check out Blackle, the black version of Google, and read the story behind its creation here.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Day of miracles

The tomb is empty. Wrong has been made right, and innocence has been restored; sin is dead and death is conquered....Thank God for the gift of his Son, whose sacrifice allows us to return to the perfect joy of communion with him! Christos anesti!

"A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind."
-Theodore Roethke
from "In a Dark Time"

"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
-Jesus
John 10:10b

Friday, March 21, 2008

But everything about me is important...;)

Tagged by Fantasy and bookbutterfly: the Six Unimportant Things Meme
But I'm breaking the rules and not posting them. Because I don't think there's anyone left I could tag. Ha.

1. I take way too long to write book reviews for me to make a habit of publishing them here.
2. My favorite instrument is the piano, without a question.
3. I think I may go the twins' harp recital, even though I don't know them.
4. I just bought the film score of The Painted Veil from iTunes.
5. I'm a fan of Frizz Mizuno (of Extras) and the Radical Honesty surge program.
6. My first pet rabbit belonged to a magician before we bought her.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

I could publish a San Francisco quote every Thursday, but that might be a bit much...for you, not me

"San Francisco takes strange hold on the hearts of man. Even the most insensitive individual is conscious at times of this attraction, but it appears most importunately to young people, newspapermen, poets, and other sub-varieties of lunacy. For them (to whom Paris seems a weary bawd; and Vienna a gay girl-widow, and Chicago the 'hog butcher to the world'), San Francisco is the gray-eyed mistress of sea captains, not young, but youthful, not old, but wise, a comrade of youth, a lover of the vigorous and adventurous, always a gazer over blue water, with the salt upon her face."
– George Dyer
I love this description of my city! Not to mention being classified as a lunatic. :)

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Thank you, Wucius Wong

Last night I fell asleep around 8:30 and as I was lying in bed waking up an hour later, semi-looking at our room and semi-dreaming, I had three realizations:

1. I should wear my new purple scarf-like thing with my old yellow hat.

2. The meaning of "wucius" (one of my roommate's textbooks was authored by Wucius Wong, and I decided I had to make up a meaning for the word "wucius" and begin using it in everyday conversation): very powerful, intense, perhaps even overwhelming so. Can be used as an adverb with the suffix "-ly." Example: I had a wucius craving for French dance music. Pronunciation: WOO-shus

3. The six pears I bought in San Francisco and brought back with me, so carefully packed (I thought), had been injured by each other. That's why they're so bruised. Darn pear-on-pear violence. Also, I think they were too close to ripe when I bought them.

And you know what? Today's chapel speaker, a middle-aged and scholarly-looking theologian, began with, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a student in near possession of an undergraduate degree must be in want of a status symbol." Ha! He was a great speaker all around. Austen allusions and guys who are Austen fans make my day.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Notes and not-notes from a first class

(course title: Third World Issues)

"It is not easy to live faithfully in a world of ambiguities [, contradictions, and paradoxes]."

"Life is community: I am because we are, and we are because I am."

This December, for the first time in history, more people were living in cities than in the country.

It's now 8:19 We have a fifteen-minute break sometime, and we get out at 10:15. Huit heures dix-neuf. Dix heures et (le?) quart. Quarte? Le cours de français, je le trouve assez facile.

Discovering God in others and in their stories. Their stories becoming our stories. Our stories becoming their stories.

Matthew 25

There is only one explanation for the existence of poverty: selfishness, which is a manifestation of incomplete (?) love.

Merton: "We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God..."

Consuming more than we need is stealing from those in need.

Flannery O'Connor: "You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people's sufferings and not your own."

Mother Teresa: " We should not serve the poor like they are Jesus; we should serve the poor because they are Jesus."

You can be rich only when you can bear the sight of suffering.

Merton: "In the economy of divine charity, we have only as much as we give. But we are called upon to give as much as we have and more: as much as we are."

Friday, March 14, 2008

small epiphanies every day

(I think:)
I change small things about myself — tastes, habits, clothes, etc. — to resemble the best people I know — not only because I'd love to be more like them — but so I'll remind myself of them when they're not with me (someone's always gone).

Monday, March 10, 2008

And two more memes

Tagged by ennagirl and Anilee:
My life in six words...hmm...

I have much; I seek much.

Not too exciting, but I think that's a good summary of my life, especially right now.

Hum de dum. So many people have done this already; I think I'll take the easy way out and say, if you're reading this and haven't, do it, unless you don't want to.

Secondly, from Nerd Goddess:
Share seven random things about yourself!

1. Whenever I say or hear someone say, "The sun is shining," I feel a strong urge to add, "The weather is sweet" (Bob Marley) or "The tank is clean-" (Finding Nemo).

2. I'm home on spring break right now, and yesterday I rode my bike to the co-op by the beach to buy incense, granola, and some special flours. Then I rode along the beach path and people-watched and stood in the waves! It was fabulous! Oh, and now the groceries smell strongly of nag champa (incense). Muahaha.

3. My bangs are behaving badly in the more humid air of San Francisco. I have to straighten them once or twice a day. I've always considered straightener-dependency rather hateful, but now it's one of my own vices. Sigh.

4. Last night I was doing laundry, and needed the dryer. My sister's clothes were in there, and I needed to take them out, but she was asleep and there wasn't any basket around to put them in. So I put them on a piece of furniture in the dining room. Based on what I heard from her this morning before she left for school, I think I have provoked her wrath. Bah!

5. I am getting over an addiction to Sara Groves's song "When The Saints."

6. I miss my friends from my dorm and cannot wait to see them again.

7. I have three short German papers to write while I'm home, and I am worried.

So you're supposed to tag seven people, but I feel like given the number of bloggers in this circle-like thing we have going on, that's a bit high. How about Ani Isilee and Bohae?

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Reading challenge, attempt #2

Hurrah for Enna Isilee's reading challenge!

So, for the Twisted Fairy Tale Challenge, I intend to read:
Wildwood Dancing, by Juliet Marillier
Spindle's End, by Robin McKinley
The Princess and the Hound, by Mette Ivie Harrison (I didn't know it was a "twisted fairy tale," but if the challenge organizer says so, it must be true!)
Magic and Other Misdemeanors, by Michael Buckley (I figure, it's got fairy tale characters running amok in it and that should be enough. Also, I don't think the Sisters Grimm books are very well-written, but for some reason I'm slightly addicted. How annoying.)

But the list is flexible.

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
- Romans 8:37-40

Monday, March 3, 2008

This reminds me of the Keys to the Kingdom series...

From Sarah Louise at pink sneakers n'at:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Her Excellency Cuileann the Mirthful of Yockenthwait Walden
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

I like that very much. I'm a Walden fan for sure, and mirthful is a supremely lovely thing to be. What's yours?

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Let us welcome spring with a little sprung rhythm

We read this poem last year in English, and I found it immediately enchanting, in a melancholy way. I put in the diacritics (accent marks) as they were where I read it (yes, the poet included them himself), though I'm not sure they're completely correct, 'cause the first Margaret has two and the second "Margaret" none...but anyhoo, you stress the accented syllables to help get the sprung rhythm correctly, though it's supposed to fit in the natural accents of speech, or mimic them at least. And please, please read it aloud to yourself; that's half the magic.


Spring and Fall
to a young child

Márgarét, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins