An Exercise in Thankfulness

I fenced a tournament today. I was pretty stiff this morning, not really sure I was at all up to doing anything other than skyving off for one more day watching puppy videos, but I'm going to a NAC this weekend in Pittsburgh, and I really needed the warm-up. I did only so-so in my pools in foil (2-5), but I fenced my first DE well (15-9, or maybe 15-8, I'm not quite sure). I did even worse in my pools in epee--seeded LAST after the pools! And, of course, I lost my DE, even though I did get some good touches in the end (10-15). And now I'm sitting here on the couch with a cat curled up next to me, thinking about how busy I'm going to be for the next couple of days because this weekend I didn't do my grading or class prep or anything other than the reading for my classes this upcoming week.

But--can you believe it?--I'm still glad that I went. Not ecstatically glad. I still hate fencing, and I still want to quit. But sort of soberly glad because, truth to tell, I did fence well today, just not outstandingly so.

I might have lost that first DE in foil; the girl I was fencing had, after all, beaten me in our pool bout. But I pulled ahead at the beginning and then, when she started catching up, I regrouped and actually (mirabile dictu!) listened to the advice that one of my clubmates was giving me. I didn't do exactly what she suggested, but I did give myself the space to find the opening that I needed to get the last touch. So that was a good bout. And I was able to listen to my clubmate again in my second DE and actually make one touch, if only one. My opponent there was an A-rated guy, not someone I typically manage to get very many touches against, even when he is having (if he ever does from my perspective) a bad day (he won the event today). So that was good.

I didn't actually think I was doing that badly in epee; I did, after all, manage to get at least one touch in every bout I fenced in the pools, some of them very sweet. But, as it happened, nobody else in the round managed to lose absolutely every bout (go, me!), so there I was at the end of the pool round, at the bottom. Which, of course, gave me the opportunity to fence one of the top fencers in my first DE (she had seeded 6th). At one point in our bout, the score stood at 3-10, but somehow I managed to get a number of good one-touches against her, making seven touches to her next five. So, I'm learning, right?

Sigh. Double sigh. The amazing thing is--the truly amazing thing is--I'm not really sure why I didn't end up in tears. I could have. I thought about it. I nearly did when I was changing clothes and bumped my ear, still tender even now after the piercing I got in May (not easy to heal when you're dragging a mask on and off every other day, despite the headband I've been wearing to protect it). But I didn't. Someone else did though (come to the dressing room and end up in tears, that is), and although I didn't really know her, I thought, "Here's your chance. Give her a kind word." So I did. And that was good, too.

Now, I have no illusions that this means anything whatsoever about how well I'm going to be able to keep my cool this weekend. But I am thankful that I stayed dry-eyed today, even after losing several bouts that I don't think I should have. One day, one day, I'll be able to fence as well as I know I can. Oh, but I'm quitting, right? Soon, soon. Just not quite yet....

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New Kid on the Block

For the better part of oh, let's say, 37 years, that was me. Unlike my son, who has now lived in the same neighborhood in which he was born for nearly the whole of his first thirteen years (and counting), by the time I was thirteen, I (and my parents and siblings) had moved four times and another move was on the horizon. Even today, when people ask me where I am from, I have no idea how to respond.

I was born the year my parents were finishing their internships for medical school; we moved when I was five or six months old, so to begin with my birthtown is in no way my hometown. Five years in one city, two in another, another one back in the city where we had lived until I was five, six in a city I had never even heard of before I found the map in my parents' room when I was eight, three in a city I associated only with the route to my grandparents' house, and then I was off to college (yes, I was seventeen; I skipped second grade after the first two or three months, which made me the new kid in the class twice that year). Four years in college, two in postgraduate studies abroad, two and a bit doing my coursework and oral exams in one city before moving back abroad to yet another city for three and a half years, and then finally here, where, miraculously enough, I have now been living--with one interruption when my son was two--for the past fifteen plus years.

I have no idea how to behave. All my life, the one thing I wanted--okay, one of the few things that I wanted most, including (oh, will I carry this for the rest of my life?) to be thin--was not to have to be the new kid on the block--again. Okay, so it's not as if we were army brats, moving literally every two years (although one of the moves, when I was five, was to the air force base where my father was posted for two years; he spent the second of those in Thailand, sewing up soldiers), but if we had been army brats, at least that would have given us some identity. As it was, my siblings and I were always just perpetually new: new to the neighborhood (we moved within the city when I was two, right after I got my puppy), new to the grade mid-year (the kids on the playground that year insisted I was going to fail third grade), new to the accelerated program (which for some reason I was not put into until I was in seventh grade, despite the fact that my siblings had both been attending the accelerated elementary school for most of that time; of course, all the kids in seventh grade already knew each other, too), new to the high school twice (my first high school started in ninth grade, then we moved and I started again in tenth, with people who for the most part had known each other for the better part of their lives). Even in graduate school, which for many people provides at least a certain degree of stability, given how long history and humanities Ph.D.s tend to take, I was never in one place long enough to achieve any kind of seniority. Indeed, it was not until our son was six and I had just gotten tenure that I had lived in any one house or apartment longer than the six years between eight and fourteen--and then we moved to the apartment where we have been living since.

So--I am sure you are asking--what? So what, indeed? Have I told you how painful it was to be bullied that year I was eight simply because I was the new kid on the block? The neighborhood girls (yes, the girls) would ride their bicycles past our house calling out names ("Full Ton, Full Ton! Get out here, fatty!"), challenging me to (ahem) come out and play. Eventually there was a bit of a punch-up and after that at least one of them became my friend, but it was years before I had anything like what felt like a group of friends. That year, the year I was thirteen, still counts as probably the best when I was growing up: I had friends at school, friends on the swim team, crushes on cute guys that even seemed interested in me (and, for once in my life thanks to adolescent hormones, I wasn't even fat)--and then we moved. (My friends built me a dollhouse as a going-away present; I'm still waiting to make it real.) I had some friends in high school, but only one with whom I am at all in touch now. The last summer after we graduated, before we all scattered to college, my closest group of friends, along with my s0-called "first boyfriend," dumped me; at least, that is what it felt like whenever they would come to the pizza restaurant where I was working and tell me about the movie they had just seen, while I was begging them to invite me along some night when I didn't have to work. (They never did.)

No, I don't expect you to feel sorry for me. (Well, maybe a little.) I am sure most of us have similar horror stories about growing up (although, happily enough, I don't think my son does, thank God!). The irony is--the fraking (as my son would put it) irony is--that now that I actually have lived in one place long enough to know quite a few people in the neighborhood, have deep histories with many of them, as well as lots of experience getting around in the city and lots of memories about things that I have done here, it doesn't make any difference. The new kids (and oh, how I wish I could name names at this moment) are now telling me what to do.

I want to punch them.

Maybe I'm just old. How many times have I had that look on my face that I remember seeing so many times when I was growing up, sententiously trying to explain something to my elders who for reasons I couldn't quite explain looked so clueless when now I realize they were simply holding their tongues? Why is it so painful for me to be told how to drive in my own neighborhood or when such-and-such an annual event is supposed to start? Why does it drive me so crazy to have the new kid telling me things about people I have known now (if they're fencers) for well over six years (the limit of my childhood knowledge of any one group of friends); if they're colleagues, some of them for well over fifteen? Why do I care so much about my status as the One Who Has Been Here Longer Than You Have? Why can't I just smile that smile and let the puppies (alias, newcomers) get on with being young?

I'm a bitch, I know it. If the puppies are misbehaving, it is largely my fault. I encouraged them, lowered my status in some way to make them think that it was okay to challenge me. It does help, I must admit, to complain about the puppies to even older dogs than I am. They know what it feels like to have their seniority challenged, maybe even by me in my younger and more foolish days. And yet, it's not as if they never bit me on the nose in order to put me back in my place. Oh, but I really don't want to be a bully. I always knew why the other kids hated me so much: I disrupted the social order simply by being me. I was new; I was (sad to say) smart. They more or less had to pick on me in order to reassure themselves that their status was still intact. But I put up with the bullying; I put up with being new for the better part of my life. I put up with having no memories to draw on of how so-and-so behaved back-when in order to help guide me about how to interact with them in the moment. I do not see why now I have to put up with being told, quite frankly, how to suck eggs, when I am the one who has the local knowledge, not them.

St. Benedict was wise in a number of ways, but quite possibly the wisest was in the provision he made in his Rule for determining the status of the monks in any given community. As Benedict put it (chapter 63):

"Let all keep their places in the monastery established by the time of their entrance, the merit of their lives and the decision of the Abbot. Yet the Abbot must not disturb the flock committed to him, nor by an arbitrary use of his power ordain anything unjustly; but let him always think of the account he will have to render to God for all his decisions and his deeds.

"Therefore in that order which he has established or which they already had, let the brethren approach to receive the kiss of peace and Communion, intone the Psalms and stand in choir. And in no place whatever should age decide the order or be prejudicial to it; for Samuel and Daniel as mere boys judged priests.

"Except for those already mentioned, therefore, whom the Abbot has promoted by a special decision or demoted for definite reasons, all the rest shall take their order according to the time of their entrance. Thus, for example, he who came to the monastery at the second hour of the day, whatever be his age or his dignity, must know that he is junior to one who came at the first hour of the day. Boys, however, are to be kept under discipline in all matters and by everyone" (my emphasis).

Alas for all those of us who do not have the discipline of the Rule to help smooth over the inevitable changes in status that occur when a stranger arrives in town! What I wish most at the moment, however, is that the stranger would get out of my head and let me go back to the way things were before.

Or maybe it's just time to move.

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Latter-Day Martinmas

For all those of you fretting that the Christmas lights went up a week ago and the songs started playing in the shops even before that, when everybody (at least in the United States) knows that you shouldn't start worrying about Christmas until after Thanksgiving, it may be reassuring to realize that we Americans actually start the Christmas season somewhat late. Okay, so friends in England have been making the same complaint about the precocious tendencies of town councils and retailers to want to get us thinking about Christmas, but eight hundred or a thousand or even twelve hundred years ago, they, too (that is, the town councils and retailers) would already have been behind.

According to certain Carolingian sources (which I would reference if I hadn't left them at work, but one of them was Theodulf of Orléans' instructions for parish priests, I'm pretty sure), there were three major fasts during the liturgical year, each lasting forty days: a fast before Easter (a.k.a. Lent), a fast after Pentecost, and a fast before Christmas. Now, since Advent proper only begins four Sundays before Christmas and the fasts did not include Sundays, this means that the fast must have started somewhat earlier, around, say, November 11*, that is St. Martin's Day.

And, indeed, well into the seventeenth century, even in post-Reformation England, St. Martin's Day was observed as a kind of harvest carnival, famous for its meats and wines. No turkeys, of course, since they were still far away in another part of the world, but pigs and cows most definitely. It is a little unclear (at least to me at the moment) whether the pre-Christmas fast was kept throughout the Middle Ages,** but I seem to recall one of the texts that I've read for my course on the later Middle Ages mentioning it. Certainly, thanks to James W. Walsh***, I am certain that St. Martin's Day was kept as a day of special feasting throughout the later Middle Ages in England.

Which means, if you think about it, that it is not that the town councils and retailers are early when they start putting up Christmas decorations the second week of November. Rather, Thanksgiving as we celebrate it in the United States is actually late. We should have already killed the fatted calf, drunk ourselves silly, and be spending today not feasting, but fasting in anticipation of the coming of the Lord. Silly Protestants, confusing the calendar. Mind you, the original New England Puritans didn't celebrate Christmas at all; they thought it was just a pagan debauch.

*Coincidentally, now kept by Americans as Veteran's Day and by the English as Armistice Day. It would be interesting to know whether the signers of the peace at Compiègne were aware of this coincidence when they met at "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. They certainly seem to have been aware of the elevens!
**Jerome specifically condemned the observance of "three Lents," but it seems to have taken hold throughout early medieval Europe, in the Gallican, Celtic British and Irish churches. See Pádraig P. Ó Néill, "Irish Observance of the Three Lents and the Date of the St. Gall Prisician (MS 904)," Ériu 51 (2000): 159-180.
***James W. Walsh, "Medieval English Martinmesse: The Archeology of a Forgotten Festival," Folklore 111 (2000): 231-254.

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Sexiest Man Alive...Ever

"In the third place there is the physical, visible, palpable beauty of Christ.

"This can be sub-divided: supernatural beauty, which His most holy flesh was granted in His glorification. It is to configuration with this that our body aspires; and to this it must be brought, when, in the resurrection that is to come our humble body will--according to the apostle's promise (Ph 3:21)--made like to the Body of His Glory. But first we must be conformed to the Passion of Christ and to His crucifixion.

"But the natural beauty of Christ's Body, when He lived on earth, was so great, so lovely, that of it the psalmist sang: 'You are beautiful above the sons of men' (Ps 44:3). For perfect physical beauty, there are three requirements. The first is that the body should be tall and shapely; the second is that the parts of the body should be in due proportion; the third is good, healthy, clear colouring. As we read in the second chapter of Augustine's City of God: physical beauty consists in the graceful formation of the body and in a sort of splendour of complexion. In the eleventh chapter of the City he says: Beauty does not consist in great size, but in the regularity of the features and the proper proportion of the members. Certain people lovingly claim that this was the beauty that was eminently Christ's, above the beauty of all the sons of men.

"Firstly, because, as Chrysostom says, those things that are supernaturally made by divine power, are the more perfect. Now, we know that Christ's Body was formed by the Holy Spirit in a most singular and supernatural way. By that same Spirit it was knitted together, built up, given its shape and form, so obviously it is the most beautiful. In the second place, you have to remember that He was fashioned out of the very purest material, that is to say, the most sacred blood of the Blessed Virgin. In the third place, all natural perfections, whether of body or soul, resided in Him. In the fourth place, seeing that His soul was the most beautiful of all souls, it was appropriate that His body should be the most beautiful of all bodies. In fact, Augustine in his letter to Dioscorus, says that there existed in the soul of Christ such a plenitude of grace, that some of it flowed into the lower realms of His soul and into His flesh. In this way, the very flesh of the Saviour took on a marvellous clarity, and would have been incapable of suffering or death only that a divine dispensation ordained otherwise.

"In the fourth place, we come to the moral beauty of Christ; and here I speak of the charm and delightfulness of His manners and bearing. Every member of his body was regulated by utmost dignity and modesty.

"Regarding the two latter forms of beauty, we read in the Annals of the Romans, that Jesus was of handsome figure, medium height, and distinguished appearance. There was an awesome quality about His face that made those who looked upon Him either love Him or fear Him. His hair was of a light colour, like that of a chestnut before it ripens, and was straight almost to His ears, after which it fell in curls to His shoulders and was of a deeper more brilliant hue. His hair was parted in the middle, as is the custom with Nazarenes. His forehead was smooth and serene, His face without spot or wrinkle and illumined by a lovely complexion. His nose and ears were regular. His abundant beard, which was similar in colour to His hair, was forked and not long. His expression was guileless and mature. His eyes were a blue-grey, brilliant and shining, varying with His mood. When He rebuked, He was terrible; when He admonished, He was gentle and lovable. He was cheerful though He sometimes wept; He never laughed. He was well grown and erect; His arms and hands were marvellously graceful. In speech He was grave, and His words were few and courteous.

"Such is His description, and you will readily agree that He merited to be called 'beautiful above the sons of men.'"

--Dionysius (Denis) the Carthusian (d. 1471), Contemplation, bk. 1, section 55, trans. Íde M. Ní Riain, in Spiritual Writings (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 91-92.

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Eighth Week of Term

As best I can recall, to the tune of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969).

On Sunday, I went to church, bought some cookies and pumpkin bread at the church auction, graded two sets of papers, and watched two (or was it three?) episodes of season three of Dexter.

On Monday, I marked another set of papers (actually, bibliographies for research papers-to-be), attended a staff meeting on Luther's On Christian Liberty, held office hours (during which students came to talk with me about their research papers-to-be), went to a department colloquium on the history of pirate broadcasting in the UK, and spent the evening having dinner with the search committee for our parish rector. We spent a fair amount of time talking about whether we give money to beggars.

On Tuesday, I led discussions on monastic reform and the relic trade in the Carolingian empire in the morning and on Geert Grote and the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life (a.k.a. the devotio moderna) in the afternoon, met with my son and his homeroom teacher about how he has been doing this term, listened to the last part of St. John of the Cross on the "dark night of the soul" on my way to yoga and fencing practice, and fenced six bouts (the most I've managed in a single practice since I hurt my foot in July).

On Wednesday, the contractor came to take out the old window in our kitchen and do the masonry for fitting the new window. (Among other things, this involved having the floor covered with dust despite the fact that the masons did all of their work outside.) I made a list of essential equipment that we are going to need to buy before we get our puppy, reread Thomas of Kempen's The Imitation of Christ, took my son to his dentist appointment, sat in on an agility class, read about Vikings and got to bed well after midnight.

On Thursday, I woke up at 4 a.m., finished preparing for the morning's discussion on the Vikings in Frankia, led the discussion on Vikings in Frankia, graded another set of papers, sat back and enjoyed while my graduates led the discussion on Thomas of Kempen (really, they rocked!), met with more students about their research papers-to-be, began listening to Patricia McConnell's For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in Your and Your Best Friend (2007) while sitting in a traffic jam on the way to yoga and fencing practice, did lots of ab-work in yoga class and fenced another six bouts (or was it five?), including one in epee and one in which I was ahead 12-3, only to lose 14-15 (sigh).

On Friday, the plumber came to rod out the stack that drains the washing machine and kitchen sink so that our floor will stop flooding every time our upstairs neighbors do laundry. I read excerpts from John Wycliff on the study of Holy Scripture, took a walk with my husband, got my hair cut and had lunch at the local diner, bought a book by the ASPCA on dog breeds and confirmed that Cardigan Corgis adapt well to cats and city life, began reading Denis the Carthusian's treatise on contemplation, and had dinner with my husband, one of my senior colleagues and his wife in their beautiful apartment on the north side.

On Saturday (or such is the plan), I helped direct a tournament for our high school [correction: college] fencing team and had dinner with yet another senior colleague, her husband and various friends to celebrate this year's beaujolais nouveau. Hopefully, tonight I will not have a tummy ache (although my abs are still a bit sore from that yoga class on Thursday)!

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Reading Lassie's Mind

"It is okay to guess what an animal is feeling, just as it's okay to guess what any human is thinking. This is how we learn to know one another, by guesses based on our own experiences, our (always imperfect) understanding of how someone else communicates what they are feeling or thinking, and our willingness to accept feedback and fine-tune our behavior. It's okay to guess what your dog is trying to communicate as long as you're willing to accept that you might be wrong, correct your misunderstanding and try again. It is not okay to guess what an animal is thinking or feeling if you are unwilling to accept nothing less than absolute compliance with your wishes. Far too common are assertions that someone 'knows' why a dog did or did not do something; rarely is that guess tested against the reality of the dog's responses. I make a lot of guesses based on my observations of a dog's behavior, the situation and many years of experience. But I'm also interested in testing my guesses against reality. In one way or another, I create a situation that asks the dog, 'Is this so? Is that how it is for you? Did I guess right?' I'm as grateful when I'm wrong as when I'm right. Results I did not expect are evidence that I've guessed wrong and need to try again; they are also opportunities for me to learn more than I knew when I guessed incorrectly. This is how all of us learn anything, and it is how all of us learn to understand others."

--Suzanne Clothier, Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening Our Relationship with Dogs (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2002), pp. 100-101.

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Puppies 103: Shopping List

1. Collars, lightweight for starters; heavier for later. Not sure whether to go with leather or nylon for the grown-up collar. Probably not a good idea to get rhinestones, but wouldn't my puppy look good wearing diamonds like me? (Really, just kidding, no diamonds. But there are some really pretty patterns, maybe the fleur-de-lis? Or red? Actually, I want the Swarovski crystals.)

2. Leashes, one 6-foot, lightweight, nylon or cotton-web (it's only a puppy! No need for a leash heavier than the puppy herself); one 20-foot for training (not retractable!).

3. Crate(s), small enough that the puppy can just turn around. I'll need one for home and one for my office. I can get bigger ones once the puppy has grown.

4. ID tag--but what is the puppy's name? My husband has suggested "Megan" if we get a girl.

5. Food and water bowls, preferably stainless steel, but I saw these really cute ones at the local pet food store skeuomorphed to look like bejeweled cushions....

6. Brushes, one for fur, one for teeth. But what kind of toothpaste do I get?

7. Portable exercise pen, metal. Maybe one of these hexagons? But how tall? Looks like we're going to have to make a trip to PetSmart to test them out.

8. Baby gate(s) for closing off door to hallway to keep puppy with us when we are sitting in the front room.

9. Enzymatic cleanser, for accidents (not that we're--ha!--going to have any).

10. Treats, for training. If you are at all skeptical about this, read Suzanne Clothier's description of the game "Fruits & Veggies" then try it on one of your (human) loved ones. Treats are simply a way of keeping your dog interested long enough for her to be able to do what you are trying to will her to do, at which instant you reward her with a treat and say the cue word that you are trying to teach her. For a dog, "grape" is no different from "sit." It's just a sound that humans happen to make.

11. Food. Given that our cat just spent the weekend throwing up the food that we had inadvertently switched her to ("hairball" formula, rather than the usual grown-up diet), this is a tricky one. What kind of food will be best for our puppy so as to keep her humors in balance?

12. And last but not least: toys! Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, what will our puppy like to play with? We need good toys for little puppy teeth to chew on; some of the rubber ones in the local pet food store looked good. I'm intrigued by the toys that are supposed to be filled with food, but I'm already worried about keeping a corgi on her diet.

And if this isn't enough gear, there are always harnesses and shoes and beds and bike trailers, not to mention the Shop-Vac--because, so I hear, corgis shed. Maybe we need one of those grooming tables, too.

With thanks to Howard Weinstein and Mail Order Annie for the beginning shopping list.

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Never Mind the Horse and the Holy Relics, What Happened to the Puppies?

"I do not think it amiss if miracles done by divine grace at this time are inserted in this treatise.

"A certain brother was sent to carry from one cell to another a consecrated container in which relics of Saint Denis and other saints were put. With him he took along also some puppies, but returning after several days he negligently strove to bring back the consecrated container without having washed his clothes. He embarked hurriedly in a boat--for his cell was situated between a lake and the sea. As soon as he reached land he mounted a horse, settling the puppies first and then picking up the container to attach it. But divine punishment overthrew him: at that very moment the horse reeled in a circular motion so that the brother fell to the ground. The container slipped from his hands (it was later recovered unharmed); the horse died at once; and the brother who had fallen was knocked into unconsciousness. He remained that way a long time, but ultimately regained his health.

"When the brothers learned what had happened, they sent back another brother to look for the relics. Being a priest he took a long a cross in which some of the Lord's wood was embedded. As he entered the lake his boat was shaken by a mighty wind. But when he held up the cross, which he wore about his neck, to the swelling waves, the winds subsided. Earlier, while he was resting in his cell, he had seen in a dream a man of dazzling brightness who addressed him thus, 'Unless you take with you the Lord's wood, you will never leave here at the time you want to leave.' He was also warned to carry the relics on foot. But he did not obey and, when he recovered and returned them, he was stricken with severe illness. Afterward to the church from which the relics were removed he presented a lamp, in the vessels of which there was very little oil. But on the next day they were found to be filled. That happened three times. I learned this story from the brother who fell and fainted."

--Ardo, "The Life of Saint Benedict, Abbot of Aniane and of Inde," c. 25, trans. Allen Cabaniss, in Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints' Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, eds. Thomas F.X. Noble and Thomas Head (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), p. 236.

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Homework First, Then Bliss

I'm doing it again: blogging about how much I want to be writing but feel like I can't or shouldn't be because I have so much work to do. It's Sunday morning, you say, how could I possibly have work to do now? Oh, but I spent yesterday at the bank, then at yoga and fencing practice, then I took a nap and finished the novel that I've been trying to read for nigh on the past week, then made dinner, then watched several episodes of Dexter (season three). I've had my down time, it's time to get back to work. But I don't want to, not just now.

I had a rule for myself when I was growing up (presuming, that is, that I am grown up now): every day when I came home from school, I would do my homework first. That way, I told myself, I could spend whatever time I had left in the evening doing whatever I wanted confident in the fact that I was caught up. This system worked well through college, when the homework was still more or less manageable. It has been somewhat less successful ever since. Oh, I've still kept to it for the most part: don't take that vacation until you've finished designing that syllabus, don't take time off in the middle of the day (say, for lunch) when there is still class to prepare, don't have another child (thank goodness I had the first one!) until you've finished your book. The problem is, I haven't been "caught up" in the sense of having all of my homework done since, oh, I graduated from college.

Happily, I have made myself some new rules since. I am, as a rule, not free for meetings or seminars on evenings or afternoons when I have fencing practice. If I did not have this rule, I am sure that I would have stopped fencing years ago, not because I wanted to, but because I would never have "had the time." I try to blog at least three times a week, not because I have to, but because I feel happier after I have. I don't schedule meetings with students except during my office hours unless it is absolutely impossible for them to meet with me then. But in other respects, I am still the schoolgirl trying to get her homework done. What I would like to do today is write this blog post, then go to church, then maybe take a walk, then read a bit more about dogs. My husband has a party that he would like to go to tonight and it would be fun to see some of his friends. Instead, however, if I follow my first rule, I am going to have to spend the day grading papers and doing laundry, if, that is, I don't want to fall behind.

Carl McColman over at the Website of Unknowing has a post this week about discipline that speaks to many of the issues that I am struggling with here. Full disclosure: I've just started reading his blog a few weeks ago, and I am incredibly jealous. He (like Jennifer at Conversion Diary) is pretty much saying everything that I want to be saying in my blog, but much better than I ever could and without even having an academic degree. Plus he's published ten books and counting while I, as you know, am still struggling with number two. Which is actually relevant to my frustration about doing my homework. See, here I am, the good student, having gone to graduate school and gotten my Ph.D., having jumped all the hoops and been well trained, and somehow they who have not jumped even one hoop (at least of the "do your homework first" sort) are doing exactly what they want to be doing (respectively, working in a bookstore owned by Trappist monks; raising four kids and writing a memoir about her conversion) while I, somehow, am not.

Don't get me wrong, I love teaching. In fact, that is one of the few things of which I am relatively sure. I am, like it or not, temperamentally a natural-born teacher. I love explaining things and thinking of ways to explain things better. If "following your bliss" means finding the things that give rather than take energy, I'm pretty sure (most of the time) that teaching is the right thing for me to do. But teaching can happen in a number of contexts, not just academically, just as there are plenty of writers out there who have never published an "academic" book. So this isn't really about teaching as such. It's about wondering whether in my discipline to get my homework done I somehow missed doing what I actually most wanted to do. "Discipline," Carl says (citing a sign that used to hang in his friends' jewelry studio), "is knowing what you want." Pathetically enough, however, one of the things that I want most--at least, have wanted most for most of my life--is to be the Good Student. And that, as I'm finally coming to realize, is more or less a dead end.

Most of my colleagues realized this years ago. They have no scruples whatsoever about vanishing for weeks, missing meetings, canceling classes. They travel and publish and could care less about having their homework done; I know this because I hear every so often from students about how they still haven't gotten papers back weeks after they turn them in. Oh, that I could be that irresponsible! But, no, homework first, then bliss. It might be more satisfying, even more productive to spend the day doing something other than grading, but I've promised my students to have the papers back to them within the week and so I will. Bliss will simply have to wait.

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Monkey Mind

I'm blocking. I've started this post now three times and I don't know what to say. Keep writing. Just keep writing. Watching my mind as I try to pray this morning, thoughts streaming in. John of Ruusbroec would not be surprised. Or would he? He doesn't really say much about watching one's thoughts, not like the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, whose whole emphasis is on pressing down all the monkey-mind (not his word) thoughts so as to make space (again, not his image) for God. I want to make space for God in my life, I really do. I've been doing my centering prayer now since August, and...well, what? What would one expect to report? Great lights? Visions? Consolations? John of Ruusbroec would definitely say not to be deceived by such experiences. No, that's not quite right. I wish I were one of my graduate students right now. They have no idea how easy they have it. Again, no, not easy. They are worried about their grades and preparing for orals and whether they will get jobs in the future. But they are in a special time, which, predictably enough, they will not appreciate until after it is over. Time to be training--okay, I started trying to rewrite just there and needed to let it go. Let it go. Let it go. If you haven't guessed, I'm trying to do Morning Pages here, but, interestingly enough, it's not working. I'm out of practice, I suppose. The Censor (see, I wrote Editor first and then backspaced over it), the Censor is out in force and telling me I can't say this or that because, well, it's dull. Dull. Dull. Dull. That's an interesting word. I need a name for my--our--dog. I got my D2009 in foil on Sunday, did I tell you? Funny that I didn't. I've been waiting, working, fretting over renewing my D for over two years now. Frustrated that getting my D for the first time in 2007 did not mean that I began to place regularly at that level, quite the reverse. It's been two and a half years since I placed high enough even to make an E, never mind a D. And then, wonderful to report, on Sunday I was finally in the right place at the right time to earn the ranking again. See, I have so much to tell you and I just can't seem to find the energy. These ramblings are nowhere near as interesting as all the things that I've been thinking about wanting to say. How about that insight I had at practice on Tuesday fencing against one of the younger fencers at our club, when I suddenly saw the difference between launching an attack just to finish--which is always, always, always parried, it's so obvious to my opponent--and beginning an attack with the clear intention of finishing, confident that it would land? See, I can't even find the words now, but there is a difference, I've felt it. It even stayed with me last night fencing again the same fencer, and there it was: I knew suddenly that one of the things that has been holding me back is, well, myself holding myself back as I start an attack, as if starting without actually meaning to finish because I'm afraid that my opponent is going to parry. But with what I felt Tuesday, there is a lightness: start lightly, not aggressively, with confidence but not certainty. No, not quite right again. Anxiety now: if I can't find the words for it, will it still be there for me tomorrow or the next day? Like God. Oh, my oh my. I could barely stay awake reading Ruusbroec's Spiritual Espousals on Wednesday. Bang, bang, bang, I fell asleep I think four times trying to work through the text. I understand it now much better, in large part thanks to the outline that one of my students made for our class discussion yesterday. Can I describe the treatise to you in 500 words or less? There are the comings of Christ into our heart, our spirit and, oh, what was the other thing? "See, the Bridegroom is coming. Go out to meet him." Go out to meet Him, He is coming. I'm having just as hard a time listening to St. John of the Cross on my way to fencing practice these past couple of weeks. Really, it makes no sense, The Dark Night of the Soul. Not so much the idea--although I'm pretty sure most people don't mean by the dark night exactly what John means, that is, John of the Cross; John Ruusbroec is less interested in darkness, much more in light, Christ as the sun shining into our hearts--but the argument of the treatise, all broken up into divisions and subdivisions, very difficult to follow orally when all you hear is: "Three, gobbledy-gook, gobbledy-gook, seven, more gobbledy-gook, two..." and you start thinking, "Wait, weren't we just on four, how did we get to eight?" Where is God in all of this? I don't think God is made up, I've written about that before, but I'm not sure I quite believe in Him. That is, I'm not sure I quite trust Him, which is the point of faith. Faith, faith, faith. Anamchara had an excellent post about faith this week (I linked it on Monday, if you want to see): faith as the continuing pursuit of faith throughout one's life, and I realized on reading it that I really do have faith, because otherwise why would I be so tormented all the time about not having it? My faith manifests itself as a continuing doubt, nagging, nagging, nagging at me not to let go, God will be there for me, is there for me, loves me, wants me, desires me like a bridegroom longs for his bride. And I, bitch that I am, cannot find it in myself to surrender to him. Alpha bitch. Now there's another image from this week that I just can't shake. Can I tell you about this? No, not even here. Too many feelings at stake that are not mine. Here I can confess to you all of my innermost fears, but the fears that I see in others are theirs. No, that isn't it. Blocking, blocking, blocking again. The Clock of Wisdom, tick, tick, tick. We were reading Henry Suso for this week, too. Such heady stuff. I'm not getting any relief here. Twenty minutes into this exercise and I am still just as blocked. Let go. Watch the thoughts drift along the river. What do I want to tell you about? There, I'm sitting on the chaise lounge (how do you spell that?) now, rather than at the table. What do I want to tell you? Things that I can't because they aren't only about myself but about the people that I am interacting with in my classes, at fencing, at the church. No, not the church, things have been fairly peaceful there now that the profile is finished. But...but what? Why don't I feel anything much when I go to worship anymore? This is the dark night, the time after the consolations and insights when there is nothing but the dark plain stretching out before you, like the afterlife in one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels: a plain of black sand with a black sky overhead sprinkled with stars and maybe, just maybe some mountains in the distance but still no clear direction to go. Where is God in all of this? These were the thoughts that came to me this morning as I sat in my prayer, pounding and pounding and pounding against me. Good that it's Friday the 13th today, don't you think? A good day for a post that is not a post but a frantic scrabbling at a post, watching my thoughts, trying to bring them to stillness and failing. But that's really okay because God is there anyway, watching my thoughts, waiting for a moment when I can let them go by without attaching myself to them and turn instead to look at Him. "See, the bridegroom is coming. Go out to meet him." Confessions to make, impurities to cleanse from my conscience. Getting angry after losing my second DE on Sunday to another of my clubmates who does not practice, not at least with us, as much as I do, and saying as much to her, "But you don't even practice!" "I practice," she said. "Where?!" I cried. "By myself," she replied. Now, how, I ask you, can you practice fencing by yourself? Can you feel the "Aha!" moment hovering on the edge of consciousness here? Aha, I need to practice centering myself as a fencer; she doesn't need to practice the physical actions so much--although she's lost weight in the last year, so maybe she's been working out physically in some other way--because what she is really working on is the practice in her head. And she's right, of course. I am absolutely confident now that my problem is no longer with my physical skills; they have definitely improved. It's really my mind that is a mess. See, it's a mess right here. Hop, hop, hop. No wonder I can't get the touches I want: I'm not even thinking about getting them half of the time I'm on the strip. Instead, I'm thinking about everything but: winning the bout, whether I'll be embarrassed if I lose, whether my opponent will be upset if I win, how I lost the last bout, how I won the last bout, what the score is--everything except the moment on which I am supposed to be concentrating. Simone Weil said it very well. The key is attention, laser-sharp, concentrated attention. Which, of course, is not attention at all, but attending: waiting for God in the moment, waiting, waiting, waiting--go! There is the opening! There is God, meet Him! But is He there all the time or only when I am looking for Him? Jealousy of the fencers who can see Him constantly, in my errors, in my bumblings. Just as I can see Him--that moment, that space--in fencers who are weaker than I am. It is not a space so much as the possibility of a space if I make it there. It was there and then it goes. No, no, it is only there if I am able to use it, otherwise it was never there. Monkey mind, monkey mind, are you really calming down, centering into a thought? But not a thought: the space that is not a space because it does not exist except insofar as I wait for it and then seize it. Oh, I am so close to something here. You can't make it happen, that space, but on the other hand, you can give it the potentiality to be there. Those who have had the experience will know what I am describing, those who haven't will simply have to trust that what I am trying to give words to is real. It really is real. Does this mean that God is real? Did John Ruusbroec know the Bridegroom in the way that he describes? Coming into him (that is, John) as light streaming over the mountains, as a threefold stream inflowing his faculties (memory, understanding, will), as a source ebbing and flowing throughout his life? Again, not throughout his life, but there, always in the instant, life nothing more or less than the instant, the moment when the space that was not a space opens and the Bridegroom comes in? Alas, alas, there is such a good metaphor potentially here and I can't seize it in language. Perhaps this is why I've found it so hard to write these past couple of weeks. Not just the busyness of life, the pressures of teaching--which aren't really pressures so much as insistences, the need to be ready for class so as not to let my students down--but the movement into a new level (not level, wrong metaphor, perhaps space) of understanding. The texts that we've been reading for my graduate class are pretty overwhelming: The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection, Birgitta of Sweden's Book of Questions, Langland's Piers Plowman, Henry Suso's Clock of Wisdom, John Ruusbroec's Spiritual Espousals, none of them an easy read, none of them easy to summarize. I want to be a great spiritual writer. Ha! Like saying, "I want to be a mystic." I want to be able to describe for you great insights and ecstasies; again, no, not ecstasies. I don't think that is the point any more. When the Bridegroom comes, it is as if He has always been there, because, of course, He has. My son is right, fencing isn't as hard as I make it out to be, I'm just not paying attention. I'm confusing getting the touch with the point of things; I'm making getting the touch too difficult when it isn't really. Just set it up, be ready, like the Wise Virgins with their lamps trimmed, awake and attentive for when the Bridegroom comes. I am a Foolish Virgin, I think that it is okay to sleep, I don't buy enough oil or bring extra. I confuse practicing a lot with practicing well.... Interruption here while I talked with my husband before he set off for work. Peaceful thoughts now about where we live, about doing up the kitchen and making this apartment really our home, recognizing that it is foolish, indeed, to spend more money on a home than we need to, no need for a house, much better to concentrate on making our apartment the space that we want it to be. That is serenity: knowing the things we can change. Our cabinets and countertops and floor. The window and the door. The shape of the counterspace. Space again. Space that is already here for us, space that we can move into and use. No need to look for more space, fallacy of looking for space as an emptiness, space rather as potential for activity, just as in the bout. Have I told you--no I haven't--about making peace with not having a house? How stupid it would be to waste money on a house when we quite honestly don't need one? The light streaming in through the windows in our apartment these days is so beautiful, this is the most beautiful space in the entire universe, sunlit and brilliant. I am happy here, have been happy here, will be happy here, with my family--and dog! With the work that I am doing and will do. With the memories with which I am going to continue to fill this space, waiting for God. Like on my blog. Plenty of space, plenty of time.

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How to Achieve High Status

1. Do something really impressive, preferably requiring a skill that others appreciate as difficult to master. Examples: playing a musical instrument, writing a novel, acting in a movie, winning at a competitive sport. Downside: not everybody will be equally impressed by a particular activity. This is especially true for writing (unless you can write a best-seller), even more so for activities for which the necessary skills are difficult to isolate as such. Examples: becoming an expert in a particular academic field (in some contexts, this is a guaranteed status-killer).

2. Live a long time and build up experiences. Corollary: have seniority in your organization or professional field. Downside: people younger than you are will not necessarily have any sense of what it means for you to have lived longer or experienced more than they have. Nor is it typically possible to explain said experience to them precisely because they do not yet have sufficient experience to appreciate what you are talking about. This will be especially the case when they are new to a particular situation and have only their own experience as a reference.

3. Be especially good looking--or, at least, believe that you are. Confidence counts here. For men, it is also helpful to be taller and/or somewhat heavier than average. For women, of course, it helps to be thin, at least if you are a WASP. Downside: looks may depend on being young, particularly if you are living in America where youth rules as an aesthetic. Depending on context, good looks may lower your status because they make it difficult for people to take you seriously. Also, great beauty may engender great jealousy; people tend to be most comfortable around those of similar physical attractiveness.

4. Have a lot of money. Downside (I'm guessing here, I'm not sure there really is a downside): you may not be able to be sure whether anybody is actually your friend. Maybe they just hang out with you because they hope you will be able to make them rich, too. Perhaps guilt at having so much more than others, potentially mitigated by large charitable donations. According to Jesus, great wealth makes it somewhat difficult to enter the kingdom of God. And the taxes are high (or so I'm told).

5. Know stuff. I wish this were true and I am sure that it is sometimes (think the Professor in Gilligan's Island), but in the United States at least it works better for more practical knowledge (again, think the Professor--he invented things) than for what most would consider "book-learning." Pastors occasionally manage to overcome this prejudice against more theoretical or intellectual knowledge, but I suspect that is because they have a practical role to play in the community whereas intellectuals by definition don't so much, except as teachers.

6. Be calm in a crisis. It is possible to fake this one if you learn to control your body language well enough by keeping your head still, not touching your face, standing with your feet pointing outward and not moving your hands erratically. High status in stressful situations means maintaining control of your emotions, but if you can control your voice and body language, nobody will know what you are actually feeling. Plus, the better you can control your body, the calmer you actually will be able to be. Downside: none that I can think of if you are a man. If you are a woman, you miss out on the opportunity of being the center of attention when you collapse delicately into a faint.

7. Be humble. That is, on the one hand, don't actually care about status; while on the other, recognize that nobody really has any status relative to God, including yourself. Humility from this perspective is not so much placing yourself below others as realizing the futility of the whole game. Downside: none.

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Words of Wisdom

I'm listening

...to Anamchara on faith,

...to Jennifer on the good life,

...and to Jay Shafer on the luxury of tiny homes.

Time to regroup and give thanks.

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NaNoWriMo Wannabe

It's insane. I have no business even thinking about it. Not for an instant. Not even in an insomniac, slightly flu-ridden (hard to tell, but my face hurts) state. I can't tell stories. I don't think in stories. I have nothing to say.

Oh, but I want to. I love novels. Well, sort of. I don't really think of myself as a reader of, ahem, Literature. I like fairy stories and some sci-fi. Mysteries mostly. I know I should like more historical fiction than I do, but it's so hard to get the voice right. I like novels that make you think, but not too hard. Mainly, I want to be Lewis or Tolkien, writing deep theology in story form. But I'm more or less certain I could never pull it off.

Really, it would come off all stilted and silly, pontificating about the Trinity and how to understand the relationship between the Three Persons as drama. Now that would make an interesting story: what does the Trinity talk about? Other than love. Maybe there isn't anything other than love. How would one narrate that? See? It would just be too pompous. Me, wannabe Augustine.

It's a genre difficulty. Do I want to write essays or fiction? Scholarly articles or popular non-fiction? Spiritual advice or learned analyses of texts? For the moment, all I seem to be able to write is letters of reference. No, don't go there. I wish my face didn't hurt. I wish that I were not awake in the middle of the night before a tournament. I wish that I could write easily in something other than the first person.

I have a title for my novel that wants to be: "The Anchoret Falconer." It's from a Facebook game: what's the longest word you can make out of the letters of your name? I can also make "outlearn" and "eulachon" and "loculate" and "turnhall," but I'm not sure whether most of those are actually words. Oh, okay, I checked the OED: Tennyson used "outlearn," so that counts. And "eulachon" is a candle-fish. "Loculate" is the same as "locular," which means "having loculi" or little chambers. And according to a video I found on YouTube, "turnhall" seems to have something to do with flinging oneself off of trampolines onto beds of foam. But I like "The Anchoret Falconer."

There's a germ of a story there, isn't there? There's this anchoret, see, and she lives in a castle. No, anchoresses lived in cells next to a church. And she spends all of her days contemplating God, waiting for the touch of the Holy Spirit. Her soul is the falcon and she is the falconer because she is trying to fly it. Or capture something with it. Maybe God is the falconer and her soul is His prey. And then one day....

This all seemed much more promising before I started trying to write about it. I'm hopeless. My son now, he thinks in stories. Well, not so much stories as scenarios: he is already a Dungeon Master of some renown, at least among his classmates. For his birthday party this year, he designed a space "dungeon" on the model of the interior planets of the solar system. Try as I might, it's usually beyond me to follow the stories that he sets up. But they just come to him. I wish stories came to me in that way.

Oh, it is painful enjoying art so much and not being able to make it. Drawings and music and stories. It's cruel of God (or Fate or genetics or luck) to have given me such longings without the wherewithal to fulfill them. You've seen a few of my adolescent sketches: they're not that bad, are they? But somehow they never matured into something that really seemed to count. I love singing and music, but I can't really hold a tune to save my life. And I default into diary entries (or blogposts) whenever I try to write. Perhaps I could write something in the first person as a novel.

Let's see. "I'm cold here in the cell. It has been three days since my last visitor and my servant is starting to get on my nerves. I should be more patient, I know, but she whines about wanting a puppy and I can't convince her that it would be cruel to bring a dog in with us, more so to the dog than to anyone else. But she says that other anchorets have pets, she knows of some nuns at Caen who keep larks. Archbishop Rigaud tried to make them give them up, but they knew that the birds would come back if they pretended to let them go."

Not bad as a start, but where will it go? The anchoret and the servant quarrel over what kind of dog to get. One day, a young man comes asking for her prayers and she falls in love. It could happen. Or maybe the anchoret simply sits in her cell, listening to other people's stories. Or telling them stories, like Scheherazade. She could tell them miracle stories. Stories about the saints. Or she could have visions. Write prayers. Experience temptations. Read theology. Gradually reveal the deep secrets of her past, about the things that she did in her youth before she was walled up. Maybe she was a noblewoman famed for her hunting birds.

Now you know that I'm dreaming--who wouldn't be?--of somehow translating all of this into something that would (impossible to think!) sell. My sister has gotten sick of my whining about how I'm not as successful as I'd like to be. "Work harder," she says. "If you want to have more money, work harder." If only my muse would let me. Oddly enough, when I'm writing, like this, there really is no effort. My best writing (not to say this is my best) comes when I'm not really trying. "Try harder" usually means that everything comes out stilted and dead. Also, I'm pretty sure that writing simply in order to make money would be wrong. At least for me.

It's a test: if you really want to write, you'll do it anyway, whether there is the prospect of making any money or not. So why not start another blog for the Anchoret and let her write? No, I'm not thinking of giving up on Fencing Bear, but she's me. She can only know what I know. What does the Anchoret know? We've already established (thanks to the above vignette) that she lives in the thirteenth century. That's a start. So we want to know more about the thirteenth century and how women became anchoresses. Why an anchoret rather than a nun? Because I know better what it is like to live by oneself than I do in community. Plus I've been reading the Ancrene Wisse and I know what her prayer life would be like.

But could I really create a character other than myself? Maybe novelists have a different way of thinking about themselves than I do that makes it easier for them to imagine other people's thoughts and emotions. Maybe that could be her problem: needing to learn to connect. "The Falconer Anchoret" sounds better, scans better. Oh, great, look, we've got a name for the band! Now all we need is some music to play.

I'm hungry. I can't believe I'm awake. Keeping vigil. I was so good yesterday (mere hours of sleep ago) getting my grading for the weekend done. I even managed to stop watching videos of the Queen and her corgis long enough to fold the laundry. Sunday was going to be a relaxing (ha!) day at the tournament. And now I'm going to be too tired to fence. But there you go: I've written just over 1300 words.

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Puppy, Age 11

Drawn by RLF, age 13
September 12, 1978

(And, yes, my childhood dog's name was Puppy. I named her when I was two: "Puppy, puppy, puppy!" You see?)

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American Dream

I say that the last place that I want to live is suburbia, but the problem is...I grew up there. And, yes, weirdly enough, there are things that I miss.

I miss hanging out in somebody else's kitchen, talking for hours about, you know, stuff.

I miss calling my friends--on the telephone!--and asking if they want to come over and play without having to schedule weeks in advance.

I miss sitting on the front lawn pulling up blades of grass and watching the cars--never very many--go by.

I miss walking home from school through the neighborhood pretending that my book bag was my friend and that bushes were actually matter transporters if only I had the courage to walk into one.

I miss sledding down the hill beside the freeway with the creek at the bottom.

I miss spending every day in the summer at the subdivision pool getting browner and browner and playing "Sharks & Minnows" in the deep end.

I miss piano lessons with Mrs. Reiser, even though I never practiced as much as I should.

I miss the backyard full of dog poop that it was theoretically my job to pick up. I think Mom probably ending up picking up more of the poop than I ever did.

I miss having a house with a garage and an upstairs.

I miss Jell-o pudding and Zingers and Chef-Boyardee.

I miss Saturday morning cartoons.

I miss gymnastics class and trying to learn how to do a back walkover on my mat in the basement.

I miss the backboard in the driveway where I used to practice shooting hoops.

I miss the smell of grass and trees and honeysuckle in the evenings.

I miss the feeling of coming home from school.

I miss my friends.

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