Snow snow snow! Thanks to this we haven't been able to visit Oklahoma yet, but hopefully by tomorrow some of it will have been moved out of the way... some of it....

Now Playing: Handel, Concerto Grosso No. 4 in A minor, Op. 6/4, HWV 322, "Larghetto - Affetuoso."

I've been reading a lot of poetry this week, trying to knock some books off the list that people keep recommending. Jay Hopler's Green Squall, Seamus Heaney's North, and Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III were more or less new to me, but now I'm revisiting Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris. Although Gluck is by now so famous as to be almost a cliche among young writers, every time I read her books I'm struck again by the incredible pacing she displays in her lines' rhythms and her use of line breaks. Also, her imagery. In this one, for example, I love the last two lines for the way they capture physical and metaphysical together.

Vespers

I don't wonder where you are anymore.
You're in the garden; you're where John is,
in the dirt, abstracted, holding his green trowel.
This is how he gardens: fifteen minutes of intense effort,
fifteen minutes of ecstatic contemplation. Sometimes
I work beside him, doing the shade chores,
weeding, thinning the lettuces; sometimes I watch
from the porch near the upper garden until twilight makes
lamps of the first lilies: all this time,
peace never leaves him. But it rushes through me,
not as sustenance the flower holds
but like bright like through the bare tree.

We spent this morning shopping for Christmas presents and this afternoon wrapping them. Well, I already had bought and wrapped some of mine, but Scott commandeered the basement and spent the afternoon wrapping all his down there.

Here is our tree, all decked out, complete with gifts:

Now Playing: Archangelo Corelli, Concerto grosso in C, Op. 6, No. 10, 2 - "Allemanda (Allegro)"

Earlier this week I finished reading Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Most people would object to that sentence based on the fact that Hardy has the reputation for being oppressively depressing, particularly in Tess. For example, this quote is fairly typical of comments throughout Tess and The Mayor of Casterbridge:

“To her and her like, birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify, and at best could only palliate.” (456)

On a side note, I don't think Tess actually needs to or ought to have ended the way it does: I think Hardy ended it the way he did because of his personal proclivity for tragedy, but I think that the characters and themes actually demand a comedic ending. 

That aside, I found the book fascinating for several reasons. First is the binary Hardy draws between nature and convention, between natural law and social law. Because of this binary he has no room for God or Christianity: conventional Christianity is a dead system of doctrine and obsolete, merciless ethics as far as he's concerned; it needs to be replaced with something more organic, more natural, more agnostic. In a sense this seems to be the entire point of the book, driven home by Hardy's emphasis on Tess's pathos--the fact that she is a pure victim who has been ostracized from society for nothing in her control:

“She was ashamed of herself for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature.” (355)

I also love Hardy's portrait of the relationship between Angel Clare and Tess at its beginning:

“Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare was a man with a conscience. Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and dismiss; but a woman living her precious life—a life which, to her who endured or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension as the life of the mightiest to himself. Upon her sensation the whole world depended to Tess; through her existence all her fellow-creatures existed, to her. The universe itself only came into being for Tess on the particular day in the particular year in which she was born./ This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the single opportunity of existence ever vouchsafed to Tess by an unsympathetic First Cause—her all; her every and only chance. How then should he look upon her as of less consequence to himself; as a pretty trifle to caress and grow weary of; and not deal in the greatest seriousness with the affection which he knew that he had awakened in her….” (198-199)

And then there are Hardy's glorious descriptions of the English countryside, his detailed portraits of agricultural life before the Industrial Revolution. As I read the book, I could walk the hills and smell the rivers and feel the flanks of dairy cows. Hardy doesn't idealize any of this--he doesn't shy away from the brutality, pain, ignorance, and inconveniences of this life--but he also recreates it lovingly 

“The swede-field in which she and her companion were set hacking was a stretch of a hundred odd acres, in one patch, on the highest ground of the farm, rising above stony lanchets or lynchets—the outcrop of siliceous veins in the chalk formation, composed of myriads of loose white flints in bulbous… shapes…. Every leaf of the vegetable having already been consumed, the whole field was in colour a desolate drab; it was a complexion without features, as if a face, from chin to brow, should be only an expanse of skin. The sky wore, in another colour, the same likeness; a white vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone. So these two upper and nether visages confronted each other all day long, the white face looking down on the brown face, and the brown face looking up at the white face, without anything standing between them but the two girls crawling over the surface of the former like flies…./ The pensive character which the curtained hood lent to their bent heads would have reminded the observer of some early Italian conception of the two Marys.” (363-364)

This passage in particular chilled me the first time I read it:

“Tess, who continued to live at the cottage with the warm gable that cheered any lonely pedestrian who paused beside it, awoke in the night, and heard above the thatch noises which seemed to signify that the roof had turned itself into a gymnasium of all the winds. When she lit her lamp to get up in the morning she found that the snow had blown through a chink in the casement, forming a white cone of the finest powder against the inside, and had also come down the chimney, so that it lay sole-deep upon the floor, on which her shoes left tracks when she moved about. Without, the storm drove so fast as to create a snow-mist in the kitchen; but as yet it was too dark out-of-doors to see anything.” (367-368)

Finally, his description of an old city:

“The prospect from this summit was almost unlimited. In the valley beneath lay the city they had just left, its more prominent buildings showing as in an isometric drawing—among them the broad cathedral tower, with its Norman windows and immense length of aisle and nave, the spires of St. Thomas’s, the pinnacled tower of the College, and, more to the right, the tower and gables of the ancient hospice, where to this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale. Behind the city swept the rotund upland of St. Catherine’s Hill; further off, landscape beyond landscape, till the horizon was lost in the radiance of the sun hanging above it.” (507)

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2, "Andantino Marziale Quasi Moderato."

First things first: White rabbits everyone except Peter!

Yesterday was quite a day for its end, though its beginning and middle were pretty standard. I worked on final projects, taught both classes, went to the bank and ate lunch in between, and came home to find Scott busy baking a chocolate cake. Shortly thereafter, Mary showed up with a back seat and trunk full of props and costumes, and craft supplies in case we decided to concoct even more. Most of the stuff was reprised from this summer's VBS. While she laid everything out in the sunroom, I polished off some W131 materials. Mary and I made chicken piccata for us for tea--or rather, Mary stirred pots and supervised me while I chopped and floured--which was delicious.

After tea Mary and Scott threw themselves into their roles in the evening's production of an abridged Macbeth. Scott had adapted a script he'd found online and had managed to condense 29-odd parts into 8 or 9 roles. He and Mary each rifled through the costumes to find bits of armour and capes and feathered masks to wear. Scott ended up with the knight's hauberk and shoes from VBS, which Mary and I had to tie onto him. While we waited for people to show up, he and Mary, fully-attired in character, staged an impromptu dance party in our dining room (I shudder to think what anyone walking down the sidewalk must've thought of the sight!).

Nathaniel was first, but by the end of the evening we'd had quite a crowd at various points: Cindy came early, left, and returned later; Lisa arrived just in time to act in the final scenes of the play, and Laura arrived after the play ended. Rich, Amy, and Jane came for cake. Matt and Janet, Bob and Carmen, Eric, Scott, Mary, and I were the main players.

Before the play started, we sang happy birthday to Amy (whose birthday actually was today) and myself. I served everyone to pieces of Scott's scrumptious, dense, moist chocolate cake and some of the sugariest, creamiest icing ever. At one end of the dining room table, Eric and Mary amused Jane with magic tricks while Nathaniel watched; at the other end of the table, Bob told Amy and me stories about teaching at LCA and Ivy Tech. In the kitchen, Scott conferred with Rich about the new coffee shop possibility, and in the entry hall Carmen discussed art with Janet and Matt. Full house. Happy house. I pulled faces at Jane and teased her.

After Rich, Amy, and Jane left, the fun began. Matt and Janet were a little startled at first, I think, having never encountered quite such elaborate props or quite such thespian enthusiasm in a home production before. Mary's witch and Lady Macbeth, and Scott's Macbeth were particularly convincing. Bob's drunken porter was quite possibly one of the funniest moments of the evening (he nearly knocked over a bookshelf by staggering around the living room). I died twice, once at Eric's hands, and once at Scott's, which also provided amusement. By the last two acts, everyone was thoroughly enjoying themselves--which led Carmen afterward to request that next year we try a slightly longer theatrical since we always seem to need about half-an-hour or forty minutes to acclimatize ourselves to our parts.

All-in-all, the evening was a smashing success. Lisa and Nathaniel helped out with the crowded closing scenes. Afterward, we all sat around the living room, talked, munched Pringles, and drank. I caught up with Lisa; eventually, I migrated to the sofa to talk to Carmen about the artistic process and about what we've been reading lately--British mystery potboilers for her, Calvin and Hobbes and Thomas Hardy for me.

Everyone lingered... and lingered... and lingered. Matt and Janet left around ten; Bob and Carmen, around eleven. Eric, Scott, and Lisa stood in the kitchen discussing family situations; Nathaniel, Laura, Cindy, and I stood in the dining room talking about nothing much. Nathaniel and Eric didn't leave until past midnight. We went to bed exhausted but satisfied with an evening well-spent.

Thanksgiving Break: A Brief Photo Essay

I spent many hours this break writing thank you notes, but now they're finally all done! Well, except for the ones to Scott's family members, but since I delegated those to him, I'm just going to buy stamps for them, too, and hope for the best.

Our house looked very festive for Thanksgiving. Mary and Kat came over to share the evening and the feast with us, which was wonderful. Scott roasted a delicious turkey, made stuffing, roasted brussel sprouts and cauliflower, and generally did just about all the cooking. Between Mary and Kat, we had the requisite pecan and pumpkin pies, so it was quite a traditional success.

Today I sewed curtains for our kitchen on Jemima, as I've christened her. Somehow she managed to last through three curtains without having been oiled or tuned up since who-knows-when. She's probably about forty or fifty years old, one of those rock-solid Singer sewing machines that never quits. Thanks to Scott for picking her up at the ReStore.

 

Otherwise, we've spent the afternoon very quietly. One of the complex board games Scott loves has deeply absorbed all his attention. The paper wreath on the wall is the product of a hard afternoon's work on Mary's part; my product of that same afternoon was a paper bird mobile that's hanging above my head in the living room right now.

Monday, last two weeks of class, here we come!

Some more Christian Wiman, from Every Riven Thing, for your Friday reading.

One time

I. Canyon de Chelly, Arizona

Then I looked down into the lovely cut

of a missing river, something under

dusk’s upflooding shadows

claiming for itself a clarity

of which my eyes were not yet capable:

fissures could be footpaths, ancient homes

random erosions; pictographs depicting fealties

of who knows what hearts, to who knows what gods

To believe is to believe you have been torn

from the abyss, yet stand waveringly on its rim.

I come back to the world. I come back

to the world and would speak of it plainly,

with only so much artifice as words

themselves require, only so much distance

as my own eyes impose

on the slickrock whorls of the real

canyon, the yucca’s stricken

clench, and, on the other side,

the dozen buzzards swirled and buoyed

above some terrible intangible fire

that must scald the very heart

of matter to cast up such avid ash.

2. 2047 Grace Street

But this world is more often refuge

than evidence, comfort and covert

for the flinching will, rather than the sharp

particulate instants through which God’s being burns

into ours. I say God and mean more

than the bright abyss that opens in that word.

I say world and mean less

than the abstract oblivion of atoms

out of which every intact thing emerges,

into which every intact thing finally goes.

I do not know how to come closer to God

except by standing where a world is ending

for one man. It is still dark,

and for an hour I have listened

to the breathing of the woman I love beyond

my ability to love. Praise to the pain

scalding us toward each other, the grief

beyond which, please God, she will live

and thrive. And praise to the light that is not

yet, the dawn in which one bird believes,

crying not as if there had been no night

but as if there were no night in which it had not been.

Now Playing: Bach, Mass in B minor, "Gloria/Quoniam to solus sanctus."

Up early this morning, I'm working on poetry for a project for my Writing from the Earth class. I randomly stumbled across an online edition of The owl and the nightingale, a 13th-century Middle English poem, with this lovely paragraph in the introduction:

Despite their worth, her activity and her personality contained elements repellent to all well-balanced beings…. Mere seriousness or usefulness, even the happiness that comes of serious living and practical service, was not enough. The right life was made up of these and something more. The life of the owl needed as its complement the life of the nightingale, the joy of being and doing for the sake of being and doing. God made the world not merely for lamenting and for consoling distress, but as well for rejoicing and for sympathy with joy. Life was serious if rightly led, and it demanded the utmost of all who partook in it: yet that very seriousness could not exist healthily and healthfully in its common, less in its highest, aspirations and endeavors, without joyousness. – Introduction to The owl and the nightingale ed. John Edwin Wells (1907).

For your Friday evening reading pleasure, another selection from Christian Wiman's Every Riven Thing.

From a window

Incurable and unbelieving

in any truth but the truth of grieving,

I saw a tree inside a tree

rise kaleidoscopically

as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.

I pressed my face as close

to the pane as I could get

to watch that fitful, fluent spirit

that seemed a single being undefined

or countless beings of one mind

haul its strange cohesion

beyond the limits of my vision

over the house heavenwards.

Of course I knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old tree stood

exactly as it had and would

(but why should it seem fuller now?)

and though a man’s mind might endow

even a tree with some excess

of life to which a man seems witness,

that life is not the life of men.

And that is where the joy came in.

Essay 2, Part 4.

Of course, my personal associations with bread include more than heavy theology and obscure etymology. A quick glance in any recipe book would reveal this food’s wide cultural use. Somehow, the English word manages to include everything from Indian naan to South Asian roti, from Irish soda bread to Southern corn bread. The fact that bread is present in almost every culture in some form gives it a cultural breadth that my family has always enjoyed. It’s one of our favourite foods, a relatively easy way to participate in humanity’s diversity. My sister, a skillful baker, manages to produce beautiful loaves that look completely different from each other and that hail from totally different traditions—highly-frangible rice bread, sweet, glossy challah, hard, bubble-filled baguette. Perhaps the most coveted bread she makes is Finnish pulla. This bread only appears at Christmas because it is so labor-intensive. Laura usually bakes two loaves, but none of it ever survives past one meal. Sweet, dense, flavoured with cardamom, pulla is a family favourite. Though we have no Finnish ancestry whatsoever, we maintain the tradition from which this bread derives by using it to celebrate this holiday.

So perhaps it’s time for me to overcome my long-standing fear of yeast and try to bake some bread myself, as a way to experience afresh the layered importance of family history, of cultural appreciation, and of faith. Aside from the connection I always see as I watch yeast shaken out of its packet into the mixture, bread requires self-sacrifice from the baker, too—you have to be willing to dedicate significant amounts of time and attention to bread. Is the dough too sticky? Add flour. Is it too flaky? Add water. Why is the dough not rising? (My perennial question.) Probably it needs to be tucked away in a warmer, moister spot. Why is the loaf baking lop-sided? (Check your oven coils. Probably there’s one that’s not heating properly.) It commands attention from all the senses, from sight to touch to smell to hearing. Does the timer have ten more minutes, or was I too preoccupied with The Georgics to notice that it went off five minutes ago? By forcing me to employ all my senses, as well as my seldom-used biceps, bread forces me to enact my own incarnation, my own physicality, even as it reminds me of my fragility, my dependence broadly on other human beings and on microscopic eukaryotes in particular.

A particular dependence that I think I’m going to have to cope with by removing myself from the fermentation process by one step. I can never seem to coax yeast to thrive for me; most of my loaves don’t rise properly. But one of my friends, a born-and-bred Hoosier, recently introduced me to another variation on this food. It might have been concocted just for yeast-phobes like myself since it doesn’t require the baker to deal with live yeast. Or it might have been the creation of a backwoods Indianan with too much alcohol on hand. Though it’s not as classy as brioche or as nutritious as anadama bread, it’s much easier to make. Tonight it’s time to try some beer bread.