"the oldest joke"

Now Playing: "Not All who Wander Are Lost", by Chris Thile. Track 1, "Song for a Young Queen".

It turned out on Halloween night that I did not shut myself in my room. Instead, I ate supper with Rachel. The cafeteria was even crazier by night than it had been by day. I saw a boy dressed as Peter Pan, down to knife and panpipes. There was a girl dressed as a nurse, wearing only a flimsy white slip with a big red cross painted on the chest. Cafeteria cooks were dressed as doctors, cowboys--even a Hershey's kiss! Everyone seemed to have gone mad. Sitting and chatting with Rachel, though, I considered the reason behind all the craziness, and my thoughts turned to Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", which we recently read in Major British Writers. "Twelfth Night" has the theme of carnival, the ritual overturning of conventions with a time of brief feasting and celebration. In the Catholic calendar, Twelfth Night was the night when the Magi supposedly visited Christ. It was a time of masquerade and frolicking. Servants ordered their masters around; boys were crowned king or pope. Our culture has no such set times of carnival, and so perhaps it has turned to Halloween as an excuse. Of course, we cannot neglect the fact that festivals such as Twelfth Night and Halloween are linked with pagan customs, such as the Roman Saturnalia and Celtic devil-worship. However, there could be something deeper going on. It seems inherent in human nature to seek masquerade. Perhaps this has to do with the "oldest joke", as Rachel called it, quoting from C.S. Lewis: the fact that human beings, who have immortal souls, also possess mortal bodies. Bodies seem so ridiculously clumsy and burdensome compared to souls. Our bodies are almost like masks for our souls (don't worry; I'm not turning into a Gnostic here). But you cannot "pretend" with a soul the way you can with a body. A soul is what it is; there is no covering it. Bodies can change, can be hidden, can be transformed. Maybe the human love of play-acting is part of all this. Perhaps it is a looking-forward to the time when we will no longer have to masquerade, but we will "be known even as we are known". After all, Christ Himself took the form of a Man, though for Him what might appear to be masquerade is actually reality, and He, being divine, truly became human. Anyhow, these were some of the things that crossed my mind as I sat, shrinking, in the midst of the noisy cafeteria.

After supper, Rachel persuaded me to go with her to a talk by Charles Martin, an African-American writer. He seemed quite knowledgeable, but also (if I may say so) rather too focused on his own achievements. He quoted his own books as basis for his talk, and he constantly mentioned the contests he'd won, editorial boards he'd been on, etc. But he had some interesting ideas about storytelling. There were a couple of young girls in the audience who were positively star-struck over him. It was rather funny, especially since, had I not heard them say their ages, I would've thought they were in their early twenties. Their clothing was sophisticated, their hair perfectly combed, their hoop earrings impeccably shiny. When they started to talk, though, they sounded quite ditzy, and when Mr. Martin asked them their age, they giggled that they were only fifteen. Later, during the question-and-answer session, Rachel and I nearly jumped out of our skins when Dr. G's lazy voice came out of mid-air behind us. He'd come in after we had, and had taken a chair directly behind Rachel's. As soon as we heard him, we both sat up straighter and stopped fidgeting so much. *grins*

After the talk, Rachel and I went up to my room, where we watched the short clips about the making of the new Narnia movie. Whenever the "real" story was mentioned, we both sighed, as star-struck as the silly girls at the lecture. Rachel didn't much like it when the director said that his job is to "exceed imagination". I myself think they've gone a bit slap-happy with their computers. These huge battle scenes, which are far bigger than the ones in the book, appear to my mind to be showcases for their sleek new toys.

So, that was the end of Monday.

Tuesday, there was no oceanography class. I sat around and read depressing Greek drama ("Oedipus Rex") and complicated British metaphysical poetry (Andrew Marvell).

In linguistics today, a lesson on patterns in human thought. All through class, ther was such a racket from the roofers working overhead that Dr. L could hardly be heard. A fine, yellowish powder sifted from the vibrating ceiling. Whenever there was a particularly loud hammering, Dr. L would pause and pull a face so comical that it was har dnot to laugh. Kendall Hall, where linguistics is held, always reeks of evil to me (its main purpose is to be a home for the theatre department). It's a dark, asymmetrical building, built at the height of Modern architecture, with few windows. All the rooms and hallways seem jumbled together, without any right angles or reason. The colors are all wrong: greyish white, faded blue, watery black, dirty orange. It smells musty. It seems as though all the people inside it hate God and enjoy hating Him as fully as possible.

This evening when I ran, I passed the university-run elementary school. A bunch of kids were playing soccer on the lawn outside the school. Off to one side, two girls, a clarinetist and a flutist, were playing duets. Their music was pure and plain. As the sun set, the sky turned the stormy blue of a wind-tossed lake, with clouds churned up on its surface like whitecaps or drifts of dark, fallen leaves.

Tonight (or rather, tomorrow morning) at midnight, freshman get to enroll. So... I have dutifully decided to stay up until 12:01 precisely. Which means that there may be more than one post on here this evening. Not very likely, though. Last night, a strange thing happened to me: I dreamed a story. Just one brief scene from a story, and while I woke up and got dressed, it was still with me, ongoing and vivid, so I embroidered on it in my mind. I shall have to see where it takes me. Nowhere, most likely, but it has promise to spin out into some sort of weird science fiction/fantasy yarn (yes, that was a bad pun :).