New Year Wishes . . .

...from the Big Brother, uttered at the dinner table:

Happy New Year!  We are all going to celebrate in our beds!  Wooohooo!  That will be lovely.

If you're reading, may your new year be lovely indeed.  Wherever you are.

New Year Letter

O Unicorn among the cedars,
To whom no magic charm can lead us,
White childhood moving like a sigh
Through the green woods unharmed in thy
Sophisticated innocence,                                                              1655
To call thy true love to the dance,
O Dove of science and of light,
Upon the branches of the night,
O Ichthus playful in the deep
Sea-lodges that forever keep                                                         1660
Their secret of excitement hidden,
O sudden Wind that blows unbidden,
Parting the quiet reeds, O Voice
Within the labyrinth of choice
Only the passive listener hears,                                                      1665
O Clock and Keeper of the years,
O Source of equity and rest,
Quando non fuerit, non est,
It without image, paradigm
Of matter, motion, number, time,                                                    1670
The grinning gap of Hell, the hill
Of Venus and the stairs of Will,
Disturb our negligence and chill,
Convict our pride of its offence
In all things, even penitence,                                                         1675
Instruct us in the civil art
Of making from the muddled heart
A desert and a city where
The thoughts that have to labour there
May find locality and peace,                                                          1680
And pent-up feelings their release,
Send strength sufficient for our day,
And point out knowledge on its way,
O da quod jubes, Domine.

(Auden, 1940)

Christmas night

No snow, much to Big Brother's chagrin.  "But Christmas is supposed to have snow!"  Well, it doesn't snow a whole lot where we live.  "Why not?"  It doesn't get cold enough.  "awwwww maaaaaannnn"

I didn't grow up with snow on Christmas; it wasn't even cold.  I don't remember it being a big problem, even when we did sing things like "jingle bells" and "white christmas."  One of many cases where the dominant americanized culture where we lived led to some fascinating contradictions.

Here's what I do remember: 

1.  The nativity scenes displayed on almost every major building and in front of many houses.  We happened to live in some pretty rich neighborhoods, so we saw some elaborate displays.  Which didn't entail good taste, necessarily:  I remember one that looked like a giant alien baby had been lowered onto the portico at the front of the house.  It was hideous. 

2.  Carolers.  lots of traditional caroling, which often meant that a mob of children gathered outside our gate and sang "jingle bells" (or the Tagalog version, "kling kling kling, klang klang klang") at the top of their lungs.  Often accompanied by piece of metal being clashed into another (in time, usually).  It was the custom to go out and provide them with a treat or reward:  a few coins, or some cookies, etc.

3.  I remember the Christmas after I learned that Santa gets significant help from my parents:  that was the year I got my HO-scale train set.  It may be the best present I ever got as a kid.  I managed not to break it for a good long while, actually.

Anyway.  Enough of that.  Seems like I always look backwards at Christmas.  This time, though, I'm looking around, at each of us, at each of the people I know, all of us looking for a true connection with someone else--someone to tell us that we do matter, that we are a light on their tree.  Maybe even THE light on their tree.  I often say (and the spouse takes no offense to this, worry not) that I'd be okay living by myself, just as a matter of personality.  But not on a day like this.  We all need somebody to love & to love us. 

Either that, or I'm getting carried away, which seems to happen an awful lot.

Just a favorite carol sung by a favorite ensemble.

The Temptation of St. Joseph

 Joseph
Through cracks, up ladders, into waters deep,
I squeezed, I climbed, I swam to save
My own true Love:
Under a dead apple tree
I saw an ass; when it saw me
It brayed;
A hermit sat in the mouth of a cave:
When I asked him the way,
He pretended to be asleep.


Chorus [off]
Maybe, maybe not.
But, Joseph, you know what
Your world, of course, will say
About you anyway.



Joseph
Where are you, Father, where?
Caught in the jealous trap
Of an empty house I hear
As I sit alone in the dark
Everything, everything,
The drip of the bathroom tap,
The creak of the sofa spring,
The wind in the air-shaft, all
Making the same remark
Stupidly, stupidly,
Over and over again.
Father, what have I done?
Answer me, Father, how
Can I answer the tactless wall
Or the pompous furniture now?
Answer them . . .

Gabriel
No, you must.


Joseph
How then am I to know,
Father, that you are just?
Give me one reason.

Gabriel
No.

Joseph
All I ask is one
Important and elegant proof
That what my Love had done
Was really at your will
And that your will is Love.

Gabriel
No, you must believe;
Be silent, and sit still.

(from For the Time Being, A Christmas Oratorio by W. H. Auden, 1944)

Herein an illustration of living with these two boys

The elder brother:  sleeping hard, but face cool and serene. 
















The younger brother:  Also sleeping hard.  Looks like he crash-landed.

Holly Jolly

The grades are posted, the papers and textbooks all put away until early next year.  I've got time to spend at home, as I'm doing right now, watching the cat as he keeps watch over the back yard.  He never looks so noble as when he's sitting at attention.  He's become an old friend, Sidney has. 

**
We are actually going to be at our abode for Christmas Day.  I think I'm going to like it.  I do very much like the time to sit in my own chair with my cat in my lap (he moved just now).  Especially when the kids are quiet.

**
We had an Elf on the Shelf mishap yesterday.  The Big Brother has been getting a real kick out of looking for "Frisbee" every morning, but yesterday Frisbee showed up in a location that he could reach.  Well, during the afternoon rest time (while he was playing in his room in lieu of a nap), he touched Frisbee, which as the book says is a big no-no.  When asked about it later, he at first tried to lie, but then gave it up, meanwhile asserting in his piping voice that the magic was NOT gone from Frisbee.  We told him we'd just have to see.  This morning, the elf had not made it back from the North Pole, but a letter did arrive explaining that Frisbee would be back once the Head Man had restored his magic. 

**
Lots of packages have been arriving at our door this past week; some of them probably ought to make it into wrapping paper & under the tree before too long.  A Christmas Tree, even one as bedraggled as ours is, needs presents under it to really look respectable.  Of course, if they're under the tree, then we need to protect them from the depredations of one Little Red . . . and he has been absolutely wild since Thanksgiving.  Good thing he's got a winsome personality.

**
The lesson I taught yesterday in ss has left me thinking about memory.  And then, wouldn't you know it, I read something this morning about . . . memory.  Sounds like a blog post being composed in my head.

**
(purring cat looks up at me)

**
I went up to work to print a few things off that I forgot on Friday . . . and the parking lot was full, to my great surprise.  However, you wouldn't have known it once you walked into the building.  I saw one other person while I was in there (I didn't stay long).  "Staff" (you know that university pecking order/caste system: admin-faculty-staff-students) have to work until the 23rd.  They did not take kindly to faculty complaints about having to go all the way to the 18th. 

**
My feet are cold; I'm not thinking very much or very hard.

**
Big drive to the ATL on the 26th.

"speak that I may see thee."

I live a life surrounded by and made all up of words.  It's not just a matter of my job, though certainly that's part of what's made it happen.  As fate would have it, I'm just made that way. 


The rub is, that most of the people I know are not that way--for them, words aren't real in the sense that they can do work or be the main thing.  As a result, my efforts to make something happen by using words tend to fall far short.  As a result, sometimes I just don't offer what others need.

Often, actually.

For the Time Being

III.
Chorus

Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power?  Gone.  Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?

The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

(Auden, 1944)

Last Day

Grades submitted, gradebook shoved in the drawer where it resides in the off-season.  I've turned off the music.  I know some will be surprised--and not in a good way--at what they earned this term, so I will have to field some emails.  The desk is still littered with stacks & stacks of paper; some of it needs to be shredded, some filed, and some--well, probably just pitched.  Recycled.  You know what I mean.  Big Brother woke up this morning at 4:00--he'd had a nightmare probably brought on by fever.  Something about spooky hands in his closet--that's the most we could get out of him.  Turns out he has a sinus infection, so we'll be watching that for the next couple of days.  People have been asking if everyone's well at home, and I've been saying, "for now, yes."  And this is why.  One of my colleagues got a hand-knitted toboggan from a student he's been working with.  How awesome is that?  I got a couple of cards, and was glad to get them. 

Well, it's a bittersweet time of year.

Non-compliance update

I am no longer "NON-COMPLIANT."
Which means I am now "COMPLIANT."

unless one counts what's in my head.  But we're not worried about that, are we?

No, we're not.

if you need me next week, I'll be somewhere with my nose buried in one.

Dilbert. The Office. Office Space.

 Below, part of an email I received yesterday evening (with names, specifics, etc. removed):

this is a busy time, but this is a must do—we are under a federal mandate.  As I explained in the last department meeting (and was discussed in the department minutes) all employees must take the online ADA training and exam. You have been enrolled in a blackboard course to take it (an email came out from Dr. _____ around the first of the month with the instructions).  

Go to the portal and from there to Blackboard.  On the right should be a list of classes you are teaching with blackboard and under that courses you are enrolled in; this course is there.  It will take 10-15 minutes.

The administration is taking this very seriously.  This morning VCAA ____ said that not doing this will result in termination of non-tenured faculty and will have a negative impact on future merit, tenure, and promotion decisions.  Because it is a legal issue to not do it is considered non-compliance with your contract.  I hate to say it but E/MFL had the longest list of non-compliance.

The official deadline is Friday.  If you absolutely swamped, probably no one will say anything as long as it done before the first of the year.   But you need to get it done.

When I read this last night I blew up in a cloud of cursing and throwing things.  Nothing makes me more irritated than make-work.  Nothing makes me more irritated than online make-work.  And for the cherry, we're supposedly being called on the carpet for "non-compliance" even before the due date.  How can one be in non-compliance when the standard for compliance hasn't even come into play yet?

It's a small thing, I know.  But it's that time of year.  I'm doing my duty today, in case you're wondering.

Good career news

This means that my Herbert article is almost published . . . and that I have something "academic" to show for the five years I've been here.  Is it enough?  Not really.  But it's good.  Good good good.

The rest is silence

(Pete Jolson, blurburger)

A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;

         The sun is spent, and now his flasks

         Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;

                The world's whole sap is sunk;

The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,

Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,

Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,

Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring;

         For I am every dead thing,

         In whom Love wrought new alchemy.

                For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness;

He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,

Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;

         I, by Love's limbec, am the grave

         Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood

                Have we two wept, and so

Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow

To be two chaoses, when we did show

Care to aught else; and often absences

Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)

Of the first nothing the elixir grown;

         Were I a man, that I were one

         I needs must know; I should prefer,

                If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,

And love; all, all some properties invest;

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun

         At this time to the Goat is run

         To fetch new lust, and give it you,

                Enjoy your summer all;

Since she enjoys her long night's festival,

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call

This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this

Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is. 

 

(Donne)

Still Riding

I used to do these weekend updates on a pretty regular basis.  I  don't remember why I stopped doing them.

Oh.  Yes I do.  I think it dates back to the only blog post I ever took down after posting.

**
In Nashville for a wedding this weekend. . . the bride was a "Junior Bridesmaid" when we got married back in '96.  It doesn't seem possible that she was ever that little  . . . she has grown into a lovely young woman.  In other news, I'm now at the age where I'm using "young woman" to describe a twentysomething.

**
Please, oh please, someone help my friends & associates remember the difference between "lose" and "loose."  My English Major is showing, but honestly, it drives me nuts.

**
I bet I caused some pause this week when I was teaching Johnson's Rasselas.  There's a passage in the story where Rasselas and his sister are discussing the pleasures and perils of marriage and family life.  I blurted out, "isn't our need to 'pair off' kinda absurd?  Isn't it absurd to tie your happiness to the whims of another person??"  In response, I got some weird looks.  I tried to explain, as I continued to expound on Johnson's point that marriage is no sure road to perfect happiness, that to say it's absurd is not to say that it's wrong--just that it ought to make us laugh at ourselves at least a little.  "Because," I said, "if we don't laugh at our own folly, we'll cry!"  Well.  That got them to pay attention at least.

**
The only other comment I'll make about teaching this past week:  Paradise Lost is a black hole, a vortex of such gravitational force that nothing can escape its orbit. 

**
Finally marked The Queen Elizabeth with the proper school insignia.  Now there's no mistaking our cruise ship for any of the others in our little town.

**
My mind is restless.  Not sure why that is, but it manifests in some interesting ways.  First, I can very easily get caught up in playing game after game of Wii Table Tennis (yeah, you heard me right).  Second, I'm afflicted with point-click-and-purchase-itis (a good time of year for it, but still).  Third, I'm anxious to finish the books I'm reading so I can get to other books.  Fourth, I'm anxiously planning for the next term's classes before I'm even finished with the classes from THIS term.  Fifth, my dreams have gotten most vivid, and have featured the same location for over a week now.  If only I could remember the details. 

**
I brought the bike indoors, pulled out the trainer, and got in the saddle a couple of times this week.  So yes, I am still riding.  Both metaphorically and literally. 

**
Just read this passage, and I think the student did a good job with (most of) it:

A person must comprehend that God has a plan that is larger than he is, and that this plan can only be defined as Providence; with this new term comes the weight of all of the world's joy and sorrow.

No surprise, I don't think, that this is written by an older ('non-traditional' is the term I think we use) student.  One has to live for a little while before one can really talk about even a fraction of the weight of the world's joy and sorrow. 

(Poor use of parenthetical statements, I know.)

**
I am concerned that I come across like a complainer.  That isn't intentional:  I have learned that to have a "happy" life (in the way we usually mean it) isn't necessarily the same as having a "good" life.  And that to be overly focused on the former is (for me) a mistake.

(More parenthetical statements.  The sign of a distracted, restless mind, perhaps?)

**
The end of the term is bittersweet.  There's probably a money quote about that somewhere in Rasselas.

Caliban to the Audience

Yet, at this very moment when we do at last see ourselves as we are, neither cosy nor playful, but swaying out on the ultimate wind-whipped cornice that overhangs the unabiding void--we have never stood anywhere else,--when our reasons are silenced by the heavy huge derision,--there is nothing to say.  There never has been,--and our wills chuck in their hands--There is no way out.  There never was,--it is at this moment that for the first time in our lives we hear, not the sounds which, as born actors, we have hitherto condescended to use as an excellent vehicle for displaying our personalities and looks, but the real Word which is our only raison d'être.  Not that we have improved; everything, the massacres, the whippings, the lies, the twaddle, and all their carbon copies are still present, more obviously than ever; nothing has been reconstructed; our shame, our fear, our incorrigible staginess, all wish and no resolve, are still, and more intensely than ever, all we have:  only now it is not in spite of them but with them that we are blessed by that Wholly Other Life from which we are separated by an essential emphatic gulf of which our contrived fissures of mirror and proscenium arch--we understand them at last--are feebly figurative signs, so that all our meanings are reversed and it is precisely in its negative image of Judgment that we can positively envisage Mercy; it is just here, among the ruins and the bones, that we may rejoice in the perfected Work which is not ours.  Its great coherences stand out through our secular blur in all their overwhelmingly righteous obligation; its voice speaks through our muffling banks of artificial flowers and unflinchingly delivers its authentic molar pardon; its spaces greet us with all their grand old prospect of wonder and width; the working charm is the full bloom of the unbothered state; the sounded note is the restored relation.

(Auden, The Sea and the Mirror, 1944)

No comment necessary.

(xkcd)

Words to Live By?

Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy.  Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t.  No one does.  You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you.
(Hoehn)

And for some of us, it's more like 14.5

(from Learn Something Every Day)

New Object of Desire

The Specialized Roubaix. 

How much does it cost?  ha! ha!  we'll just say it's more than a full month's salary.

Furioso. Furori. Furor.

"There is a stronger power inside the self, and this is identifiable with the passions that force one to act, with the dizziness and disorder within the mind.  Orlando, like Hercules, is the hero who conquers all but succumbs to the treacherous figments of his own mind."

(Giuseppe Mazzotta, Cosmopoiesis, p. 39)

(with thanks to Watterson, the master)

Harrod & Funckism

Nothing is random nor will it ever be.
Look to the east away from this tragedy.
With a shake and a fleeting smile, you'll look back at me.

Unable 'cause you're blinded.
Look back at me.
Unable 'cause you've been blinded by this mystery.

("Unable")











Nothing is sweeter than the softness of the hungry sky
When it calls out your name.
Green fields are full of the life of your flowered touch,
And now I'm feeling the same.

I want to know you like a saint, like a beggar man.
I want to cry in your ear.
I want to fly a million worlds out of reason's reach.
I want to touch you right here.

And here I am on time.
Will you throw me a lifeline?
I've seen spirits filled with fear and rotting on the vine,
But your breath is in me now
And I hear it whistle all up and down my mind.

("Lifeline")

**
I saw Cleopatra floatin' down the Nile.
I said, "Hey, won't you share your kingdom with me for awhile."
We rested easy in a city built by slaves,
While the truth hid in mountaintops and caves.

("For your time")

It's Christmas time.

Little Red likes the tree.

A study in contrasts.

We have a "Little People" nativity set.  Every Christmas we pull it out, and the boy (or boys) play with it for most of the Christmas season. 

Herein is an illustration of the difference between the two boys:
--the Big Brother used to take Joseph, or a Wise Man, and tell a story, etc.
--Little Red sweeps Baby Jesus, the stable, the Wise Men, and all the livestock, etc., onto the floor, and then commits an eye-watering massacre among them.

That's about it.

I'm waiting for pasty and concave-chested to be in style.

...for someone other than Mr. Pattinson.

anyway.

From WSJ, man-cleavage is the new thing.  All I can say is, GROSS.

Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

Thus they rose in the morning, and lay down at night, pleased with each other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, began to withdraw himself from their pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He often sat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the dainties that were placed before him: he rose abruptly in the midst of the song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of musick. His attendants observed the change and endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure: he neglected their officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the fish playing in the stream, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes.

(from ch. 2)

Talk

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.”
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Bang!

I'm glad I was able to get out of my office early today; I had the misfortune of being within inescapable earshot of an incredibly annoying conversation.  Evidently, a student of one of my colleagues wrote an essay in which he expressed some disagreement with the philosophy and implementation of gun-control laws.  The professor discussed it with him at length, and as far as I can tell, once you strip away the red herrings about documentation and vocabulary choices:  the teacher's problem with the essay was that she didn't agree with it.  i.e., she is in favor of gun-control legislation, and is sure that all right-thinking people agree with her.  Any essay written against such legislation must be fatally flawed.

My favorite moment was the quibble with the word "primer," which the student explained he used metaphorically -- it's a reference to the part of a bullet casing that starts the explosion.  Frankly, it was a well-used metaphor.  The instructor, however, would have none of it.  When he correctly explained his use of the word, then demurred that not everyone knows firearm terminology, her response was: 
"Do you know how many advanced degrees I have?"

Oh dear.  Once you pull out that lame retort, it's a sign that you need to go out for a walk or something. 

I left before he did, so I wouldn't get my ear chewed off about how dare he believe something like that.

Adventures with Students, vol. 14

...dude comes into the office (this is his second time to attempt my class; he had to drop due to excessive absences over the summer):

Dr. Hill, I was wondering what it would take to get a 'B' in your class.  I'm graduating this term and I just--I just--I just didn't know what I needed to do.

Well, coming to class might be a good start, I think to myself.  I then mutter something about a lot hanging on his final and term paper grades. 


Okay, well, I was just wondering.


What you should be wondering is how on earth I'm letting you pass the class at all. 

I mean, seriously.  I'm fine if the guy's got other fish to fry, and has to miss some classes.  But then to come in and drop hints about a 'B'?  wow.

Give me simple.

Aaah, Althouse, with words to live by:

"I lost my patience with unnecessarily complicated writing a long time ago. Life is too short to give parts of it away to careerists who are bolstering their résumés and reputations with scholarly writing that takes extra time to read because, as you go along, you have to undo the obfuscation that the writer seems to have generated to give the appearance of depth to ideas that could be stated simply and crisply."

...we'll see if it works out professionally.