I am gathering these days. Call me pre-industrial. Quote that made me howl -
"They say a smile is a gift that is free to the giver and precious to the recipient. But giving the finger is free, too, and I find it more personal and sincere."
Thanks, J!
Borrowed brilliance today. Ben inspired me, I mean I copied him, because this kind of thing can't have a sign on it saying "Do Not Touch." The idea is to pick a band and answer all the questions using only song titles from their albums.
Band: I'm actually cheating and choosing two, and they are Blood, Sweat and Tears and the Doobie Brothers.
Are you female or male: Lucretia McEvil (B,S,&T)
Describe yourself: Black Water (DB)
How do some people feel about you: You Make Me So Very Happy (B,S,&T)
How do you feel about yourself: Jesus is Just Alright With Me (DB)
Describe your ex girlfriend/boyfriend: And When I Die (B,S,&T)
Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend: Takin' it to the Streets (DB)
Describe where you want to be: China Grove (DB)
Describe what you want to be: It Keeps You Runnin' (DB)
Describe how you live: Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie adapted from "Trois Gymnopedies" (B,S,&T)
Describe how you love: Spinning Wheel (B,S,&T)
Share a few words of wisdom: Hi-De-Ho (B,S,&T)
So I did read a book called Enchantress from the Stars. It was good - but preachy - but the preaching was all about this Oath that was rather like the Star Trek Prime Directive. Basically the story was all about saving unenlightened cultures without letting them know you exist. They ended up being quite manipulative to do it, and I think it was supposed to make you think of how God might do things, except I don't know if the author meant it that way at all. But I think it was off.
Sean told me I was a liar, that there never was a show in the 80's about a blue dog named Foofer. I finally realized the important fact that the show was actually called Foofur, and that one little spelling change led me to find on the Big Cartoon Data Base (bcdb.com) the show that had been tormenting my memory! Yay! bwahahahahhahaha
http://www.80scartoons.net/toons/foofur.html also shows it.
I just finished reading C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces for the third time in my life. The first time, I was a young teenager and did not understand it to be anything other than a darkly interesting story. The second was last year, when I was nearly undone by Orual's undoing, the crawling filthiness that I found in myself as the gods showed her her own filth, and the beauty and rest and glory that she found in the end that (I sometimes remember) I am finding in my life and death.
This third reading has made me marvel at Lewis' understanding of women. I wonder where he learned it? His first-person narrative of Orual more honestly portrays the sins of my feminine heart than I could have written myself. All that I think of as noble, and all that I think of as evil, are in Queen Orual. The way she thinks makes sense to me at the core - so much so that I dislike reading the book. Her motivations - both good and ill - are the same motivations I have, and the same as what I see in every girl I know, to some extent at least. I've rarely read a book by a woman that managed to etch such a painfully fine engraving of my insides. I've never read a book with a male protagonist that hit so close to home. How did he do it?
Maybe my pet theory - that a good deal of masculinity and femininity comes less from our sex and more in context of our varying relationships - might not be completely off-base. In most of my friendships with other women, we do not meet each other as the same kind of woman. One of us is more masculine in the relationship, one more feminine. Sometimes (in the best friendships) we take turns - not consciously, but as need requires.
[For example - I once had a counselor point out to me that a disagreement my sister and I were having came from the fact that I was viewing something as a man would tend to, while she was viewing it with a text-book woman's opinion. Yet in other situations, I've used frustrated words to describe a friend that sound very like what you stereotypically hear wives bring against their husbands.]
So then, Lewis might have been able to write as a woman thinks ("You also are Psyche" - the bride of the god of the mountain) because of his femininity in being part of the Bride of Christ. Femininity to masculinity is at least somewhat like us (mankind) to God. I wonder.
One of the most unearthly - and most earthly, too - things I ever saw was a man praying to God outside where he thought no-one saw him. He had his eyes open and was talking while looking skyward. I didn't realize he was praying at first, but something about his face caught me. I realized the look in his eyes, played out on his smile and even in the movements of his neck and arms, reminded me of something - what was it?
A little girl looking at her adored father, or a young woman memorizing the face of the grown man that loves her with his life. Don't get me wrong - this guy was in no way girly - that's not what I mean. This male femininity was one of the most fitting things I've ever seen. When I realized what made his face look like that, I had to leave, because it was beautifully private and holy.
And it made me realize truth in the language of Christ as the lover and us as the beloved that I'd only slightly imagined before. Probably now I'm not really understanding it any more than then. But I'm intrigued, I tell you!